Heaven

I have a vast and ever-growing archive of cam-drone stills, because New Eden is a staggeringly beautiful part of the cosmos when viewed through the visual enhancements and augmentations that are intrinsic to being jacked into a ship through a neural link. In fact it is an aesthetic unavailable to baseliners as it is not possible to, for example, view the galactic plane with a star in direct line-of-sight. But that is not the point of this journal.

I was reviewing some of this archive on a datapad while I was enjoying some downtime in 'Gottin's Lamp', which is SFRIM's bar in our HQ in the Mehatoor system (in the 24th IC station). I came across some stills from an excursion I'd taken some four years ago and which I'd completely forgotten about: a flight through the Heaven constellation in Curse.  

The Heaven constellation is of course the former home of the First and Second Jove Empires. Then the Jovian Disease happened and the Jovians departed the constellation, leaving the afflicted behind to die, believing they had escaped the Disease - or the 'Curse' that the region is named after. What happened to them after that is history. Or speculation, or rumour, or myth.

The Jove homeworld itself was Utopia III. I came here just because I wanted to visit it. Just because I could visit it.

I knew I would find no trace of the Jove here. Only the Cartel.

I docked in a station orbiting Utopia VI and took some quarters for a couple of days, and just hung out here, with no specific intent. The station was Cartel - an assembly plant for Dramiels and their other designs, that may or may not have benefited from whatever relics the Cartel found here when they moved in.

Centuries have passed since the Jove were here. There is zero trace of their existence now, yet their ghosts - or the suggestion of them - are all around. Or maybe it's all in my mind, given that I read about them so much.

We know where they went. Whether any of them exist at all today is not certain after the events of Caroline's Star and the collapse of the gates in the three regions we knew they inhabited.

It's possible - and there is evidence to suggest it - that the Drifters and those Sleeper artifacts are and were Jovian evolutionary offshoots. Other certain 'Emergent Threats' of the last couple of years mean the Jove are becoming a fading memory of decreasing relevance. How much influence the Society of Conscious Thought - their successors in CONCORD - has within New Eden culture today is uncertain. 

There are still stations all over New Eden that are owned and run by corporations and organisations that were Jovian in origin. Who owns and runs them now..?

Curse is now a pirate-infested wasteland. All that exists here now is destruction and decay. To think that it really was once a Utopia of pure technology and transhumanism. 

But now, who the hell cares..?

The Eye of the Hurricane

Who dares wins

24th Imperial Crusade Advanced Tactical and Strategic Frigate Doctrines, Vol III 

 

LUMEN has resumed fleet patrols of the warzone since the Pochven campaign ended. Our most spectacular 'kill' during the first of this new series of operations was the ambush and destruction of a Hurricane-class battlecruiser, no less, in the Hadozeko system, deep within the Minmatar border zone.

The Hurricane should have been able to make short work of a fleet of frigates, but it was God's will that we should prevail and take advantage of a few tactical errors that the Hurricane's capsuleer commander made during the engagement, most notably not ensuring the destruction of Directrix Lunarisse Aspenstar's Crucifier Navy Issue first, which used its optimised Targeting Disruptors to stop the Hurricane from tracking any of us properly, preventing it from destroying more than the single one of our ships that it did kill - kudos and in fact probably an official commendation to Faith Griffiths for sacrificing her ship by being first on the scene to tackle the Hurricane so that the rest of us could bring it down. 

The Hurricane's commander probably also should not have completely ignored me, for my Tormentor-class frigate TES Fair Warning cut through his armor and hull like a knife through butter once his shields were down, since my ship was outputting over 200 'dps' with Tech II-class Pulse Lasers. It must be said that I did have to nearly melt those guns through overheating them in order to achieve that firepower. And of course I was not the only one there. I'd be very interested to know exactly how much cumulative damage-per-second our fleet of seven frigates applied to the Hurricane. It is noteworthy that mine and Amicia Cora's Tormentors both applied over 56% of the total damage to the Hurricane, according to the independent 'zkill' statistics service. The class's reputation as a point-blank range brawling monster is justified.

Every fight is a learning experience. In the heat of the moment I made at least one mistake: basically forgetting I had ECM drones on board and not using them; although it is questionable what good they would have done against a battlecruiser, but by not using them at all, they did nothing.

But such perfectionism should not detract from the fact that this was an extremely well-planned and executed ambush by our fleet, where the odds were actually not in our favour. 

Our faith in God's will ensured we had the skill and bravery to win this fight.

Amarr Victor.

[Afterword: it's also noteworthy that the whole fight took less time than it took you to read this journal...]

Peace In Our Time

 

- is perhaps an optimistic and even unrealistic attitude to take in the long term (especially with respect to recent 'Emergent Threats'...), but given the status of the border systems between the Empire and the Tribal Hordes and the CONCORD-refereed 'eternal war' between us and them, we must rejoice in the fact that right now all the systems on the Empire's side of the border are safely under the Empire's control and authority once again.

Also, a number of systems on the other side of the border are currently being repossessed and indeed Reclaimed from the Tribal Hordes and will, if God wills it, stay that way, and the proper status quo will return - namely that the Empire will prevail once again and we will be able to reintroduce what our enemies refer to as 'slavery' - which is merely the imposition of the structure and discipline that humanity needs in order to thrive. 

It would also seem that our allies in the State are pushing the Fed back to where they belong. If this resurgence of our two sides is anything to do with Empress Catiz I and her efforts to forge a closer alliance with the State after her ascension to the Throne of Amarr, then the future is indeed bright.

Amarr Victor.