That refreshing waking-up-in-goo feeling

[IC-Furious]

My eyes started blinking involuntarily in rapid succession, some futile instinctive reaction to the mass of goo that seem glued to my face. All I could see was a white haze all around, until a hand reached out from it to wipe a clear path across the upper half of my face. That same hand proceeded to lift me up slowly to a sitting position and wrap a heating blanket around my shoulders.

“Well, we haven’t seen you in a while. Been playing it safe, eh?” A snickering laugh.

A white and red suited technician stood over me, with some kind of shit-eating smile on his face that in some twisted way put me at ease.

Familiarity.

Ah…the medical center, clone section, in the schoolhouse orbiting Marthia I. An old friend. I grunted out something approximating “nah, just lucky” and started at last to gather my wits and recall how I ended up sitting waist deep in a vast of nasty, clear jelly.

Adrenaline. Stabbing at drone controls. Radar targets dancing in and out of range. Gate flashes. A final desperate explosion.

What a fight. An ill-conceived, rash, ultimately losing fight, of course, but instead of feeling regret I felt keenly alive. And yes, I see the irony in that statement, having suffered corporeal death just moments before. The life of a capsuleer provides for some strange kinds of perspective on experience.

Just a few hours before, after taking a long week off from the Minnie front lines, staring at walls and silently going crazy buried in the cavernous walls of Emperor Station, I decided the time had come to shoot something. If only for the sake of sanity. Surveying my hanger, and doubting my own rusty reaction time after so long out of my pod, I selected “Mama Duckling”, a sweet Arbitrator cruiser-class drone boat, as my ride for the upcoming patrol. She has wonderful lines, with almost a predatory maw out front, and of course glistened Empire Gold. Plus or minus a few rust streaks – it shows character.

The Arbitrators are the oddball of the Amarr fleet – more Gallentean in their focus on drone-based weapon systems with laser almost an afterthought. Fortunately a Gallentean “business woman” owed me a favor or two back in the day, and paid her debt with a wealth of drone skill books, turning me into a vaguely competent drone captain. But that’s for another story.

As I immersed myself in the loving embrace of my pod’s special goo – not that grade C junk in the clone vats – and felt my neural net come online, I rapidly tuned into the comm channels for the 24th Imperial Crusade. A disorganized lot, which I found downright ironic given the nature of the Empire I so love, it still yielded the best opportunities to kill Matari. So my banner flew with them, for now.

Tonight however, the comm channels were more of a wreck than normal, and that’s saying something spectacular. Anger and recriminations flying back and forth – from the brawl of human voices I made out that several of the capsuleer corporations flying for the 24th had decided to wage war against each other. New or old grudges, I could care less. For my immediate needs this translated into a distinct lack of major fleet operations to link up with. Itching for a fight, and finding no one to coordinate with, I steeled myself for what could only be considered a suicide operation – running scoutless into Minnie-controlled territory in a armor-plated hog of a ship that couldn’t run a stargate camp by any stretch of the imagination. I loved the Mama, but speed was not her forte.

“Disgusting…” I forced the infuriating, pointless backchatter from militia comm channels out of my mind, just as the ship slid out of interplanetary warp to cosy up to the Kamela gate in Tuomuta – right on the edge of the true combat zone. Or in it, for all I knew of the news of late. The word was Amarr’s capsuleer forces were backpedaling in the face of overwhelming Minmatar numbers – what drew independent corps to the Minnie side I have no idea, but come they did and pushed Amarr back system after system through the Bleak Lands front. Whatever – the politics I could less about. I’m in this war to kill some rebels, damn to whatever flag flew over the starsystem on the neocom map where they died.

Gate flash. Kamela, lowsec space and definitely front lines. Silence. Local comm net indicated an even mix of Amarr and Minmatar capsuleers, but oddly none at the entrance gate to secure Amarr space – a natural killing ground most days.

Let’s go hunting, screw waiting to find a fleet to join up with.

10 minutes. Nothing aside from a friendly waggle of an allied Megathron-class battleship as it warped off the 24th’s station in system. Let’s take this a step deeper – warp right on the gate to Kourmonen, a major staging ground for rebel fleets. I was sure to find a fight there.

The flashing red radar signature that greeted as my warp bubble collapsed was the reward for my effort. A Thrasher-class destroyer – an excellent frigate killer but by itself no match for my cruiser. So of course, it wasn’t by itself. Two more Thrashers warped in from deep space to join the fray. All worked for something (someone?) named Huang Yinglong. Whatever – their autocannons ranging on my hull, followed quickly by EMP rounds ripping into my shields, proved their loyalties.

I stabbed out my scram, tracking disruptor, weapon systems, all the while toggling the microwarp drive to slide into a tight orbit with my target. Once within 10km a quick flash of my energy neutralizer danced out alongside twin pulse laser beams to wreak havoc on the smaller ship. 5 Galentean drones spiraled around him, adding to the sheer joy of the moment.

Seconds later, the first Thrasher exploded in a satisfying fireball. His compatriots fled, though I realized that it wasn’t entirely from my own combat prowess: an interceptor and stealth bomber from the 24th had joined the fight at the last moment. I loved the help but admittedly felt a bit cheated of the ego-padding solo kill. Fortunately Mr. Thrasher yielded some nice loot. Unfortunately, I yielded that loot right back to his friends just moments later.

Why? Eh, boredom. I knew his fleetmates had fled into Kourmonen, and that in all likelihood a gang was clustered around the other side of the gate waiting for me to be stupid – or aggressive – enough to follow them through. Stupid or aggressive, I was probably a bit of both.

“Ah, screw it. Let’s see if we can catch them off guard!” Plus I had recently updated both my medical clone and ship insurance, so the loss wouldn’t be too hard to take (goo notwithstanding). Who knows, maybe I could pop one or two along the way.

My instincts, unfortunately, proved accurate. Three Thrashers and a Stabber-class cruisers awaited, and my newfound gangmates had scouted a couple jumps out in the opposite direction. No help for me. Well, that’s what you get for being greedy – might as well go out in glory.

Fast forward 90 seconds and some tens of lightyears, and back to my vat of revolting clone goo. I didn’t even manage to kill one of them, and what’s worse, records show much of the original Thrasher’s loot survived the carnage of my ship’s destruction. I may as well have gift wrapped it for them.

Trading a cruiser for a destroyer is not the fast-track to fame, fortune, or respect among combat capsuleers. But the thrill of diving into the fight was worth every last ISK.

At least that’s what I told myself as I boarded a shuttle for passage back to Amarr Prime and my waiting ship hanger. On to the next one.

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