After the Seven – Ruse

Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Tsuguwa system – Planet VI
Caldari Navy Assembly Plant Station

9 December YC 126

I thought that the engineers would need a few days to forge Phenod’s transponder, but Purkkoken Honuken gave me a call this morning asking if I was ready for the next mission in The Seven saga.

“You know what was in that sample bag that you brought to me yesterday?” asked Purkkoken when I entered his office.

I shuddered and said, “Phenod’s blood, I suppose.”

The agent made a dramatic pause, and blurted, “It was Quafe Red!”

My jaw dropped, “What?”

Seeing my face, Purkkoken laughed heartily.

“B… but that means that we haven’t got his DNA,” I stammered.

The agent wiped tears of joy from his face and said in a calmer tone, “Relax, mate. Luckily, we managed to detect and separate traces of his saliva from the ‘specimen’. It was sufficient to sequence Phenod’s DNA and now we have a copy of his transponder.”

“Phew!” I exhaled with relief. “Honestly, I am not cut out to deal with such assignments. I hope the new mission does not involve untangling pirates’ viscera from burnt conduits.”

“No, no, it’s as clean as vacuum. All you need to do is fly a shuttle to the pirate base, collect a container with prisoners and get them to CONCORD.”

“A shuttle?” exclaimed I. “To the pirate base? Do you want to punish the pirates by making them untangle my viscera from the shuttle wreck?”

“Sorry, mate. We just can’t send you there in a military ship. Anything combat-capable except Phenod’s ‘custom rig’ will immediately raise suspicions. On the other hand, a defenceless shuttle will not trigger any alarms which will give you time to collect the prisoners and escape.”

I looked at the agent gloomily and said, “I hope you know what you are doing. All I might lose is a clone; prisoners though…”

Purkkoken gave me an earnest look, “There is no other way to rescue them. Now, when Phenod is dead and his gang doesn’t know about it yet, we have the best chance of freeing the kidnapped. If we do nothing, the best fate they can expect is a life of slavery, that is, if they are not butchered for their organs.”

The mention of organs gave me the shivers.

“Alright,” I agreed. “I’ll do my best to deliver the prisoners here safely.”

“No, not here,” objected Purkkoken, “The shuttle that I’ll give you does not have any life support in its cargo hold. You’ll have just a minute, maybe two, to transfer the container with the prisoners to pressurised environment. There won’t be enough time to bring them to a station. Listen, there will be a CONCORD ship nearby. You can reach it through an acceleration gate. As soon as you’ve got the prisoners, burn to the gate, activate it, and on the other end burn to the CONCORD ship and transfer the container to it. If everything goes well, the transfer can be done within 60-90 seconds.”

I shook my head disapprovingly, “You are cutting it too fine, Purkkoken.”

The agent’s face stiffened and suddenly I saw a different person who looked old and tired.

“I know, Vlad, I know. It’s not my first time,” he said wearily.

Looking at Purkkoken’s contorted features, I didn’t dare to ask him about the first time.


Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Ekura system – Mission location

The deadspace pocket whither Purkkoken sent me in a shuttle contained a pleasure hub and an acceleration gate, and was patrolled by a non-hostile Gallente Frigate named Anakism. I noticed that The Seven liked to name their ships after themselves so, in addition to using fake Phenod’s transponder, I also named my shuttle Phenod. The prisoners, I suspected, were in the pleasure hub and I started approaching it. When I was halfway through, I got an incoming video connection request from Anakism which I promptly declined. A few seconds later I received a text message from him.

Anakism
Anakism

“Phenod, is it you? Why didn’t you take my call? And why are you flying this rust bucket?”

I replied, “Yeah, it’s me. My ship was shot by a fucking egger, so I bought the cheapest second-hand clunker that could warp. Sorry, the camera is not working.”

Pleasure Hub
Pleasure Hub

There was a pause during which I stopped the shuttle a few meters away from the pleasure hub cargo bay and requested its inventory. The list had just one line item – a container with kidnapped citizens which I immediately transferred to my cargo hold. At that moment the overview changed the colour of Anakism’s frigate from blue to red, indicating its hostile intent. As I started moving toward the acceleration gate, another message appeared on the HUD.

“Hang on a sec! Phenod has never said ‘sorry’ in his life and he could never approach a structure without bumping his ship into it! Who are you? Hey, get back here, motherfucker!”

It was all the encouragement I needed to fly to the gate as fast as I could. If I had a propulsion module, I would overheat it without thinking twice. The shuttle was 26 clicks away from the gate, 41 seconds of flight time at full speed.

Escape
Escape

20 km, 32 seconds to the gate. Anakism realised that the shuttle was too fast, and turned on a prop module. His speed doubled. Thanks Bob, it was just an afterburner, no an MWD.

10 km, 16 seconds to the gate. The pirate got into the targeting range an yellow-boxed me.

5 km, 8 seconds to the gate. Anakism was getting into the firing range. I expected a volley from his blaster any second now.

2 km, 3.2 seconds to the gate. The gate started glowing, accumulating energy in its acceleration coils.

1 km, 1.6 seconds to the gate. Why hadn’t he shot already? Was it possible that he had antimatter charges?

Suddenly, the frigate’s blasters flashed, spitting its charges in my direction. At the same time, the gate’s force field enveloped the shuttle and hurled it into the space. As if in slow motion, I saw streaks of hybrid charges almost reaching my ship. For a split second they looked immobile like they were suspended in the vacuum, and then they rapidly fell away as the gate propelled the shuttle to another deadspace pocket.

I realised that I was holding my breath all the time I flew from the pleasure hub to the gate, and hungrily filled my lungs with the pod goo. But there was no time for rest. Just two or three seconds later we arrived to our destination and I frantically started looking for a CONCORD vessel. It was nowhere to be found. Then I noticed a strange object on the overview – it was classified as a container and named ‘Stolen CONCORD ship’.

“What the hell?” I muttered suspiciously.

The object was just 3 clicks away so I sent my camera drones to take a closer look at it. And there it was – a CONCORD ship which was totally shut down, and looked like a brick to my Neocom. While I was inspecting the ship, it suddenly came to life, and the overview icon changed to indicate it was a friendly vessel. I spurred my shuttle and in a few seconds I reached its cargo bay door and initiated the container transfer. The tractor beam pulled the box in and the door was shut. I looked at Aura anxiously.

“Fifty-seven seconds,” reported Aura, and gave me an approving nod.

I smiled back and felt how the tension in my muscles gradually dissipated in the pod goo.


Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Tsuguwa system – Planet VI
Caldari Navy Assembly Plant Station

When we returned to the station, I went straight to Purkkoken’s office.

“How are the prisoners?” was my first question.

The agent raised from his chair and came around the table to shake my hand, “Stellar job, Vlad! Outstanding! Everyone is alive. Just some bruises caused by sudden acceleration.”

“Great!” exhaled I. “But that was so close! Do you realise that if I didn’t have level V Navigation skill, I wouldn’t be able to escape the pirate and deliver the prisoners in time?”

Purkkoken smiled sadly, “I do, Vlad. If you didn’t have that skill I would not have offered this job to you. This kind of attention to detail is something all security agents must learn,” he looked away, his eyes unfocused, and added, “sometimes the hard way.”

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