A Sense of Dread
The Citadel region — Caldari Border Zone constellation
Hatakani system — Planet VI — Moon 4
Hyasyoda Corporation Refinery station
13 July YC 127
“What? Not a single circuit?!” Immuri Asaka cried in disbelief.
I shook my head ruefully. As expected, the agent was disappointed when I told him that I hadn’t been able to loot any components from the drone wrecks.
“I don’t know, mate. I really don’t know what to do,” Immuri mumbled pacing the room. “Without drone components, I simply can’t proceed with the research.”
“I can try once again,” I suggested. “The hive will soon produce new combat drones and I’ll use a smaller caliber on them. Sooner or later, we will get lucky and get some intact drone parts.”
Immuri rubbed his temples wearily, “There won’t be another chance. Before you returned, the Navy got in touch with my supervisor and told her to stop interfering with their operation. They said that the hive became agitated after you had killed the combat drones. The fleet is now on high alert and prepares for the total extermination of the structure.”
“So what do we do?”
“Me? Nothing. The corrupted drone problem will be solved by the Navy, and I will never know what caused the corruption. As to you, you are summoned to Sisters of Eve Bureau in Arnon by Sister Alitura.”
“Alitura? Are you sure?” I asked incredulously.
Alitura and I didn’t part on the friendliest of terms, and I didn’t expect to hear from her ever again. Immuri stopped pacing and checked his commlink.
“Yep, Alitura,” he confirmed.
“What does she want from me?”
“Dunno. She is an agent, so some kind of a mission, I guess.”
Judging by his brusque replies, Immuri was quickly losing interest in our failed collaboration. In a sense, it was a relief. My sojourn at Hyasyoda proved as fruitless as my previous engagements with CreoDron and CONCORD, and I was thinking of a gentle way to extricate myself from that dead end. As much as I disliked the idea of working with Alitura again, I grasped at the opportunity eagerly. Not being one for long farewells, I stood up and extended my hand.
“Well, it was a pleasure working with you, Immuri,” I said empty formal words and shook the agent’s hand.
“The pleasure was mine,” was the ritual answer.
In the docks, I asked the crew to load the contents of my items hangar to Kaukokärki. It was mostly low-value loot from my missions.
“Are we going to Jita to sell this junk?” asked Aura.
“No, more like changing bases, and I don’t want to leave it behind,” I replied, and explained the situation to her.
“Whew!” Aura whistled. “You are going to work with that hot blonde again.”
I rolled my eyes, “I’ve never touched her to check the temperature, but from the way she talked to me, I would surmise she was made from ice.”
“Do you want to touch her?” Aura teased.
I shuddered, “No, thanks. Depending on who of us is right, I will be either scalded or frostbitten.”
Aura giggled, “May be an interesting change after spending all that time in the body-temperature pod goo.”
I snorted, “If this passes for interesting these days, then we indeed live in blessed times, according to the ancient curse.”
“What curse?” Aura asked curiously.
“‘May you live in interesting times.'”
Aura’s image flickered a few times and froze, as it did when she performed CPU-intensive computations.
After a minute or so, she came alive and said accusingly, “Vlad, your humour is so dry that it would strip the grease from me if I had any moving parts.”
I laughed and said, “I see you are learning,” meaning her joke.
“I had to!” she exclaimed, missing my point. “I had to perform a multi-step semantic analysis of our conversation, simultaneously researching your cultural background and correlating it with biological features of your species. By the time I got to the punchline, I was not sure if what you said was funny or profound.”
I sighed, “Aura, please don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try to explain the joke.”
“Why not?”
“Because they say that to explain a joke is to kill it.”
Aura froze again.
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System – Planet IX – Moon 3
Sisters of EVE Bureau station
As I saw the familiar outlines of SOE station, I experienced an almost nostalgic sensation. It was less than three months since I left that place, but so many things happened after that, that it felt like years. The flow of events polished the rough edges of my memories, and I looked back at the time I spent there with a surprising fondness. Walking the station corridors toward the Alitura’s office, I tried to recall her face but found that all I remembered was a bit fuzzy image of a blonde woman. That image came into a stark relief and jolted me back into the reality the moment I opened her office door.
Sister Alitura looked up from her datapad and said primly, “Captain Korff, what took you so long?”