Nature Pictures
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System – Planet IX – Moon 3
Sisters of EVE Bureau station
24 July YC 127
Although my previous mission was a success, it didn’t get us any closer to tracking the mysterious rogue drone which corrupted well-behaved domestic ones. After I shot down the drones blockading the Food Relief Corporation station, there were a lot of wrecks but no loot. The little buggers were a crunchy lot — when they exploded there wasn’t anything big enough to salvage and study. Sister Alitura was disappointed but she asked me to hang around as she was pursuing a few other leads which could require my assistance. I didn’t mind. Alitura was her usual sardonic self but I noticed that it stopped rubbing me the wrong way. I guess, I just got used to it and didn’t take it personally.
As the subdued atmosphere of a charitable and religious organisation was conducive to quiet pastimes, I spent the following few days living a life of a happy vegetable. A couple of months ago, I would have been calling or visiting the agent every day or two, asking about the progress and getting frustrated due to the lack thereof. However, in the intervening weeks I grew increasingly disillusioned about the prospects of The Damsel investigation. I would still eagerly clutch at straws, but at some point I made peace with the idea that we might never discover the truth.
I was in that kind of a philosophical mood when I received an invitation to visit Sister Alitura’s office — accompanied, as usual, by the phrase ‘at your earliest convenience’. As Alitura was not the one to mince words, I took that qualification at face value, meaning that I took my time to finish a glass of Amarrian stout which I drank while catching up on the latest episodes of a popular holo-show.
As I suspected, the task that the agent had for me was not urgent. What I didn’t suspect was that it was another datacore delivery.
“Why, in the Void, are you, agents, so fond of transferring information on physical media?” I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “As if FTL transmission has never been invented!”
“Well, it’s a… special case,” Alitura answered hesitantly, obviously thinking about how much she should tell me. “One of my Sisters was able to get holopics and scans of the rogue drone we are chasing. The problem is, she is doing missionary work near Guristas space. There is only one FTL transmitter at her location, and she is afraid that it is monitored by the pirates. If she tries to use it, Guristas might suspect that she is spying on them. So she decided to physically transfer the records and drop them off at a safe place where we can pick it up.”
“And that safe place is…”
“The Scope Development Studio in Atlangeins.”
“The Scope?” I looked at the agent incredulously. “The corp which regularly publishes news about pirate raids?”
I made a pause letting the import of my words sink in. Alitura first looked uncertain, then panicky.
“Damn!” she exclaimed. “We need to extract her as soon as possible!”
I stood up and said, “I’ll leave you to it. In the meantime, I’ll go to Atlangeins and pick up the parcel.”
“Wait,” the agent said urgently, “if the pirates suspect my colleague of spying, then they will want to know her contact. You may be ambushed.”
I smirked, “So what? The mission has just got interesting.”
Alitura gazed at me for a few moments with a strange expression on her face, then said, “No, nothing. Just… take care Captain Korff.”
I nodded and went out of her office.
Essence region — Eustron constellation
Atlangeins system — Planet V — Moon 13
The Scope Development Studio
My route to Atlangeins went through high-sec CONCORD-controlled systems and, as such, was pretty uneventful. I didn’t really expect any trouble on the way in, as it was hardly possible that the pirates had found out whom to expect. For that matter, I didn’t know if they actually suspected anything. Thus, I arrived at the Scope Development Studio in a rather relaxed mood.
The station would be an interesting place to visit at any other time — the news corp would be abuzz with gossip, and there was a real chance of meeting a celebrity walking down a corridor or having a quiet pint at a bar. Not today though. If the parcel was monitored, then I could be attacked by Guristas. I wasn’t afraid of being murdered — after all, I was an immortal empyrean — but without the brain scanner built into my capsule, it meant that my memories would be rewound to the last time I made my infomorph backup. I tried to remember how long ago it was and shuddered — too long.
“Aura, darling, please remind me to visit the clone bay, when we return to Arnon. I need to make a backup.”
Aura looked concerned, “Do you expect any trouble, Cap?”
“Perhaps,” I replied, and explained the potential side effects of our ‘delivery mission’.
“I see,” Aura said gravely. “In such case I would not recommend leaving the ship at the Studio.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I agreed, and requested a docking permission from the station dispatcher.
Having docked, I ordered a transfer of all items from my personal hangar to the cargo hold. As I expected, there was just one item stored in my name. What I didn’t expect, was the size of the thing — it was a huge cubic container, approximately 3.5 metres long on each side. The stevedore drone which brought the ‘parcel’ halted near the cargo hold door patiently waiting for me to open it. I swore and called Alitura.
“Is everything OK?” she asked as soon as the connection was established.
“I don’t know,” I replied and transmitted the image of the container to the video link. “I expected a datacore, you know, one of those small pocket-sized things, but instead I got a box where you can hide a squad of marines.”
Alitura squinted at the image and then nodded affirmatively, “Yes, this is the datacore.”
“Are you sure?” I asked suspiciously. “Why is it so large?”
“Oh, the datacore itself is rather small, but we use a special enclosure for safe and secure transportation of valuable information. It protects the data inside from all kinds of radiation and physical interference.”
I still had my doubts, “Maybe I should get someone to check what’s inside before I load it.”
A fleeting smile played on the agent’s face as she said, “I wouldn’t recommend it, Captain. It has active defences too.”
I sighed, “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. If nothing ‘interesting’ happens either within my ship or without, I’ll be back in Arnon in 20 minutes’ time.”
After the call, I opened the cargo hold and instructed the drone to stow the container inside.
“Aura,” I said, “let’s hope it is what Alitura says it is, but please keep an eye on the video feed from the cargo hold, just in case.”
“Wilco, Cap,” Aura replied smartly.
I undocked and looked around. There was nothing suspicious — a usual traffic near a busy station — some ships arriving, some departing, and some just milling around. I wished I had an insta-undock bookmark at this station but it was too late to make one. I willed Kaukokärki to align to Ourapheh star gate and warped away. As soon as I was out of the warp, I jumped through the gate. On the other side, I observed the surrounds until the gate cloak expired, and repeated the align-warp-jump sequence. We were in Emsar when I decided to share my observations with Aura.
“Hey, Aura. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there is a Caldari shuttle which seems to be flying in the same direction as we.”
Aura nodded, “I have. I was just not sure if it was significant. Such things happen, you know. There are only so many different routes one can take through stargates, and quite often we find ourselves travelling in the same company for a few jumps.”
“True,” I agreed, “but this one looks suspicious. The thing is, every time we jumped through the gate, it was already waiting for us on the other side. If I didn’t take care to wait out the gate cloak, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all. But since I did, I could see that its own cloak expired a few seconds before ours, after which it just stayed put until we warped away.”
“Hmm,” Aura mused, “to track us, it would have to check our speed vector as we aligned for the warp, infer our destination, align and warp there itself, and jump through the gate before we arrived. Given its warp speed is higher than ours, it’s not impossible.”
“Mhm, and while we are talking, it still hangs around,” I pointed at the overview.
“So, what shall we do?”
“Dunno. Attacking a shuttle will be definitely frowned upon by CONCORD. Besides, we don’t really know if it’s a pirate. I can try to lose it. We know it’s modus operandi now. I can warp to Ashokon gate. It will follow us and jump through it, but we, instead of jumping, shall warp to Arnon gate. While the shuttle is waiting for us to drop the cloak in Ashokon, we will be in Arnon system and safely docked at SOE Bureau station.”
Aura shook her head, “If you were a baseliner, it might possibly work, but you, capsuleers, are highly visible species. When the shuttle pilot has realised that you didn’t follow them to Ashokon, they will retrace their steps and check other exits. Since there are only two other stargates in Emsar, it won’t take them long to visit the connected systems. As soon as they jump to Arnon, they’ll see your name in the local channel. Then it will be just a matter of time to find out at which of the four space stations you have docked. Again, your name will be shown on the publicly available guest list.”
I winced, “You are right. Once they know my name, they can find me anywhere. Do you have any better ideas?”
“How about we just fly to Arnon and finish the mission?” suggested Aura.
“But then they will know the destination of the cargo,” I objected.
“And why is it a bad thing?”
I opened my mouth to reply and then shut it as no good answer presented itself.
“Think about it,” Aura insisted, “the pirates suspect that Alitura’s correspondent is a snitch because she visited The Scope station. There she left a datacore with potentially damaging evidence. However, the parcel is not collected by a journo from The Scope. Instead, you turn up and transport it to Sisters of Eve station. Now the whole transaction has a completely different flavour — it’s just some info that a Sister sends back to base. Even if it is kompromat, the Sisters are known as a neutral organisation which will not disclose it.”
I nodded in appreciation, “You know, this is actually well-thought-out.”
“Is it?” Aura beamed.
“It is. I believe it’s the best thing we can do. So don’t dilly-dally and align us to the Arnon gate.”
“Yes, Cap!” Aura said brightly. “Warp drive active.”
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System – Planet IX – Moon 3
Sisters of EVE Bureau station
As we were docking at Sisters of Eve Bureau, my camera drone showed the image of the Caldari shuttle which was following us from Atlangeins. It did not request docking permission and instead was manoeuvring to get away from the station traffic. Just before it was obscured by the station entrance, I saw a glimpse of a warp bubble forming around it. Whatever their intentions were, at least they did not plan to follow me inside the station. I could but hope that they came to the right conclusions and would leave us alone.
“Cap,” Aura interrupted my musings, “I’ve got a message from Sister Alitura. She wants to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“‘As soon as possible’?” I smirked. “Not even ‘at my earliest convenience’?”
“No, Cap. And I think she means it.”
“I know she means it, but I have other priorities at the moment. Aura, be so good as to call the clone bay and make an urgent appointment for infomorph backup.”