A Case of Kidnapping — Part II
Genesis region — Ekrin Constellation
Sheroo system — Mission location
15 September YC 127
When I emerged from the warp tunnel at the coordinates given by Alpedurch Soulobert, I didn’t know what to expect. The agent, being of distribution variety, didn’t even bother to organise reconnaissance. Naturally, my eyes were glued to the Overview window as we hit the grid. First thing I saw was a group of three red triangles, 75 kilometres away. They were labelled ‘EoM Imps’. I relaxed and exhaled the pod goo that I was unconsciously holding in my lungs.
“Frigates,” I said. “So far so good.”
At that moment, a male voice hissed in the local channel, “Fool, you’re too late. We got what we came for.”
Aura pouted, “Rude frigates.”
I smiled, “Chatty frigates. Let’s see what I can wheedle out of them.” I then opened the local channel and said, “Pardon me, my dear sir, but I don’t get your meaning. I’ve just been passing by when I ran out of capacitor and found myself in your illustrious company. What is it exactly that I missed?”
In response, EoM Imps targeted Kaukokärki and accelerated in my direction.
EoM Imp
“I’ve told you they are rude,” said Aura.
“Indeed,” I nodded sadly. “I hoped for a pleasant conversation, but their chosen topic can be discussed in only one language.”
Aura narrowed her eyes and whispered dramatically, “Violence!”
“Yesss,” I replied and targeted the approaching EoM frigates.
I read somewhere that Equilibrium had done something smart to Amarr ships that improved their combat parameters. Don’t know which ships they meant but obviously not Imps — those were crunchy as eggshells. I spent exactly one volley on each of them and, judging by the combat logs, two out of seven charges in each volley were wasted.
“With such a fleet, no wonder that they have failed to destroy the world so far,” Aura said shaking her head.
“Well, they are rumoured to have a Titan,” I pointed out.
“Oh, that changes everything,” Aura replied sarcastically. “If that’s the case, then they surely can be rumoured to have destroyed the world.”
I snickered and willed the destroyer to approach an acceleration gate which flung us into a deadspace pocket whither the scientists were allegedly taken.
When we arrived in the pocket, Aura pointed at the Overview window and snorted, “Look, they’ve upgraded the demons. We are getting closer.”
The window showed three hostile frigate-class ships labelled ‘Fiends’.
“If you believe what folks in other empires believe, then what we are getting closer to is a middle of Hell,” I replied. “Can’t say that I relish the opportunity.”
“Shoot first, whine later,” said Aura drily.
I followed her advice and found that Fiends were indeed better than Imps — they required two volleys per ship. Apart from being sturdier, they were also friendlier, in a sense that they had friends who appeared as soon as I destroyed the last Fiend. First, there were two more Fiends, then four more Imps, and finally, two Imps and a Fiend. All of them were duly dispatched to whatever afterlife they expected their god to grant them.
EoM Fiend
Having dealt with hostiles, I examined the surrounds. There were no labs or habitation modules. The only functioning piece of technology, except Kaukokärki, was another acceleration gate which I took.
The next pocket was guarded by two Imps and one Fiend initially, three Fiends subsequently, and one Incubus finally. The latter was tankier than Fiends but still needed only two volleys from my rails to puncture its hull.
EoM Incubus
“Am I imagining things, or do all those Imps, Fiends and Incubi look like the same model?” I asked.
“You aren’t,” said Aura. “They are all modifications of Amarr Tormentor-class frigate. The only difference that I noticed between them is the strength of their shields. Can’t say anything about their weaponry — you killed them all before they could fire a single shot at us.”
I frowned, “Shields? Don’t Amarr ships favour armour? It’s like a second religion in their Navy.”
Aura chuckled, “It appears that when Equilibrium of Mankind went heretic, they went all the way — shields and all.”
“Shields or armour — I don’t really care, as long as they remain frigate-sized,” I said and took the acceleration gate.
Acceleration Gate
When my camera drones showed me the picture of the next pocket, the first thing I saw was… another acceleration gate.
“Damnation!” I exclaimed. “How deep is this deadspace?”
“The scenery may be the same but we have new actors,” replied Aura.
I looked at the Overview window and saw seven Mercenary Rookies in the list.
Mercenary Rookie
“Hmm… Mercs? Looks like the Equilibrium has more money than pilots. Let’s make their acquaintance,” I said and opened the local channel. “Colleagues, good time of the day to you. Have you seen a group of scientists nearby? Lab coats, glasses, eggheads — you know the type.”
One of the mercenaries appeared on my comms screen.
“Eggheads?” he said leering. “Yeah, I’ve seen one today.”
“Really? Which way did he go?”
“That is for you to decide. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn and go back to where you came from, egger,” sniggered the merc.
I sighed. There was a significant difference between an egghead and an egger, and I felt obliged to give the moron an object lesson.
“Eggheads are people who designed this ship,” I said firing up the MWD, “these lovely railguns,” I reloaded the rails, “and the targeting system,” I yellow-boxed the merc. “While eggers are the ones who can control all these technological wonders through the mere power of thought,” I finished, willing the rails to fire.
The Mercenary Rookie ship illuminated nearby asteroids with the bright light of its exploding power core. One would have thought that humankind survived and thrived as species due to the ability of its specimens to learn from others’ mistakes. Unfortunately, the remaining mercs represented an evolutionary dead-end as each one of them targeted Kaukokärki and gave chase. There was nothing left to do but remove their genes from the human gene pool. Six more explosions briefly lighted the surroundings.
Mercenary Fighter
Just when I thought that the pocket was cleared and headed towards the acceleration gate, three Mercenary Fighters appeared on the grid. They were not as chatty as their junior colleagues — without much ado, they yellow-boxed me and tried to close the distance. Although the Fighters were frigate-class ships, they were not fast enough. With their direct, head-on approach, my railguns had no trouble tracking and hitting them. In less than a minute, there were three more piles of scrap metal, drifting silently as sad monuments to the victory of ambition over caution.
I headed towards those monuments to see if they contained any valuables which I could loot. Suddenly, there was flash of light and Kaukokärki shuddered slightly.
“Touché!” cried Aura.
“What was that?” I asked, alarmed.
“That was an Inferno Light Missile.”
“Where did it come from?”
Aura scrolled through the Overview window cluttered with a catalogue of Small Rocks, and pointed at a line item near the bottom, “From here.”
I looked at the red triangle in disbelief. It was labelled Mercenary Elite Fighter but it wasn’t the name that caused my amazement.
Mercenary Elite Fighter
“How in the Void did it manage to reach me from such a distance? Light missiles have the base flight distance less than 20 kilometres, while that ship is 80 klicks away!”
Aura shrugged, “Dunno. Maybe it’s called ‘Elite’ for a reason.”
After all those cozy relationships I had had with EoM and mercenary frigates, the fact that someone could actually reach me with their weapons gave me a shock and an adrenaline boost. The damage dial had hardly moved but my survival instincts kicked in. Almost unconsciously, I targeted the merc, orbited it at 80 klicks and opened fire. The bastard managed to send one more missile my way before the first hybrid charge smashed into its shield. The missile launcher cycle time was 9 seconds while my rails took only 3 seconds to reload. Before the Elite Fighter could fire its third missile, I delivered three volleys of Spike, enough to finish it off.
“Whew,” I said, “that was emotional.”
Aura snorted, “You lost just 70 hit points. It doesn’t take much to get you all excited, eh?”
“Every kill mail starts with someone losing 70 hit points,” I remarked philosophically. “Now, be a darling and watch that bottom part of the Overview list, please. Let me know if another uncouth personage decides to pay us a visit.”
“Oh, look!” exclaimed Aura.
“What? Where?” I cried in panic.
“Ah, no. Sorry, just a rock,” Aura said innocently.
I gave her a filthy look and jumped through the acceleration gate.
Large Metal Structure
The view of the last deadspace pocket (and it was last as there was no another gate in sight) was dominated by a large circular structure. Before I could take a closer look, a message popped up on my comms screen:
You managed to get past my guards along with my brethren. Intriguing. Perhaps we kidnapped the wrong specimens …
That came from a lonely frigate classified as EoM Succubus.
EoM Succubus
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere,” I replied and attacked the equilibrist, or whatever they called themselves.
Aura raised an eyebrow, “You don’t want to talk to a chatty frigate?”
“I am not taking any ■■■■■■■ chances,” I replied through clenched teeth.
As soon as I locked the Succubus, I willed my rails to fire. The EoM frigate targeted me back but 50 kilometres was too large a distance for its weapons and no return shots reached me. Six seconds later the fight was over.
I peered fixedly at the Overview window, ready to jump into an action if reinforcements arrived.
After half a minute, I said, “It doesn’t look like that Succubus had any friends.”
“It doesn’t,” agreed Aura, “but even if it had, I’d suggest to prioritise collecting the container that was expelled from the frigate during the explosion. It looks robust enough to preserve valuable cargo, but does not appear to be equipped with any life support systems. If your scientists are in it, they don’t have much time left before they run out of oxygen.”
“Damn, you are right,” I said and sped towards the object.
When I dragged the container into my cargo hold, I indeed found 10 frightened men and women inside. They confirmed that they were contracted by Sisters of Eve and kidnapped by Equilibrium of Mankind. They said they would be very grateful if I delivered them to a safe station, not necessarily the one belonging to the Sisters.
“Aren’t you going to continue your research with the SoE?” I asked.
“This assignment turned out to be too exciting to our liking,” replied one of the scientists sardonically. “The Sisters promised to provide adequate security but failed to deliver. We don’t feel obliged, either contractually or morally, to proceed with this engagement.”
I remembered that my mission was not to save the researchers but to prevent their exploitation by EoM by any means necessary, and I couldn’t help feeling sympathetic towards them. I dropped them off at Amarr Certified News Publisher station and headed back to Sisters of Eve Bureau.
Alpedurch Soulobert was quite unhappy about the fact that I didn’t return the scientists to his custody and tried to withhold the reward. After I pointed out that my objective was not bringing the scientists back to him and threatened to escalate the matter to his superiors, he grudgingly acquiesced. In addition to kredits, I received a Limited Neural Boost implant and a chunky 0.313 increase in standing with the entire Servant Sisters of EVE faction!
“A few more missions like this and we’ll be able to work with Level 3 SoE agents,” I noted smugly.
“But not with Alpedurch,” winced Aura.
“Not with Alpedurch,” I agreed wholeheartedly.