Covenant Network Disruption

 

Syndicate, 10/124

It seems the Sani Sabik abominations have started their annual 'Crimson Harvest' again. These vile heresies are like insects. I must have killed literally millions of them in their spacecraft but they keep on coming. It is among the highest of religious duties to purge them.

And yet they persist.

This time the Order of St.Tetrimon has stepped up and declared its intention to fight the Covenant during this 'event'. All of us in Khimi Harar are committed to assisting the Order wherever we can.

For me this takes the form of locating the Covenant's comms and data network nodes here in Syndicate and hacking into them and shutting them down. The fact that these installations exist out here in Syndicate at all is remarkable enough, but they are here so they must be eliminated.

These Covenant nodes are well disguised, hidden deep within fields of rubble surrounding fractured planetesimals, and it takes considerable scanning power to pinpoint their location.

It's a primordial setting, dangerous enough with drifting rocks bouncing off my shields and the possibility of the node blowing up in my face if I mess up the hack, but then with the added risk of opportunistic capsuleers trying to stop me from doing this important work and 'ganking' me and looting my ship, which would be a magnet for them since they would see 'Pacifier' on their directional scanners and know it's worth three-quarters of a billion ISK.

Of course, the flip side of this is the other work I'm doing to defend the Order's own network nodes from those same opportunists who would disrupt the Order's work for personal profit, and from the absolute scumbags who are actually siding with the Covenant. This of course means me ganking them.

One of the scumbags I caught attempting to hack a Tetrimon node didn't take it very well when I destroyed their ship -

- because this happened:

This capsuleer I killed (the other name is some random who was passing through the system), turned out to be one of that group who insists on communicating in a non-Standard language, so I had to use translation algorithms on her rage:

She called me a bitch. I mean, how rude!

But the translation algorithms are a bit off as it otherwise doesn't make a lot of sense, except that it's obviously insulting. Salty, even. I don't think I ever got salt before. The thing is, I've always found it funny how so many capsuleers can dish it out but can't take it. If the tables were turned, this capsuleer would not have hesitated to take down my Pacifier, and would unquestionably have gloated about it because, as I said above, my Pacifier is worth three-quarters of a billion ISK. Her Probe was worth a tenner, tops. She had a few choice modules and loot that survived the destruction, which was useful, but the real imperative here was the prevention of the interruption of the Order of St. Tetrimon's work against the Covenant. This is God's work.

Anyway, I didn't actually kill this capsuleer at all, just her ship. She warped away in her capsule and delivered the polemic I've just described. You could even argue there's no point in killing them, because a TEBS cycle and a new ship and they'll be back. That 'cycle' will repeat, forever.

As long as capsuleers exist, the names may change, but the game will always stay the same.

That is a terrifying concept...

All Roads Lead to Khanid, Part I: Manifest

The Yulai System, Sanctum Constellation, Genesis. Directive Enforcement Department Logistic Support Station - Yulai VIII (Deck 4, Section 8 - Licensing Dept.)

Weary-looking middle-management-filing-clerk-type enters what back in the day might have been called a 'Records Room', where, back in the day, millions of hard copy files might have been kept in reverent seclusion in a warehouse-sized space, with an army of people tending them in silence like a form of clergy. These days, it's just like a bunch of terminals in a small, under-lit office where no more than five people sit, day after day, performing the never-ending task of updating the DED Starship Registry Database. It's nowhere near as visually impressive. There aren't even any windows in here.

Weary-looking middle-management-filing-clerk-type sits down at his assigned terminal for the day (for hot-desking is a thing at the DED), and logs-in. The second thing that happens during the login process is that The System asks the person logging-in a question. This time it's 'Does your work at the DED fill you with a sense of purpose?'

Middle-management-filing-clerk-type reads this and gets a gigantic flashback to the fork-in-the-road-of-life that was the time when he got chopped after Year One of capsuleer school; an event that caused the kernel of a lifetime of bitterness to form within his then-young soul, a soul too young to recognise that kernel for what it was: the poison of thwarted ambition.

His response to getting chopped was a few wasted years of oblivion spent in bars and pleasure hubs. When the hangover wore off, the opportunity to move sideways into being a regular starship meatbody had kind of passed him by or not even occurred to him (because the glamour of pseudo-immortality is everything!); so the only remaining choice was to return planetside from whence he came, or embark on an oxymoronic 'career in admin' with the DED.

Thus it was, or is, that middle-management-filing-clerk-type reads the question that The System is asking him, here in the present moment, and he sees the abyss of failure encoded within it. He clicks on 'Skip To Main Menu'...

Then the swoosh of the door opening behind him announces the arrival of a boss/leader type, whose name he doesn't even know, because it doesn't really matter. This boss person approaches his burning hot-desk and its expectant terminal and hands him a sheaf of printouts and says: 'Here's today's updates for The System. There's a new one for the Watch List.'

That last sentence generates a brief flicker of interest in the filing clerk. He says: 'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah,' the boss says. 'Legion-class, recently returned from a long deployment to the Anoikis Cluster. Spent the best part of a year there. '

'What's unusual about that? Happens all the time doesn't it?'

'Yes, but this one, its captain has changed employer at the same time. Left a research-focused pacifist group with no record of criminality and joined - or rejoined a group that's based in low-security space. Thing is, she's worked for them before. It's all there in her history. We've seen this pattern many times. It's a slippery slope, and who knows what the hell she's brought back with her from that place.'

Middle-management filing clerk takes the sheaf of papers and turns to his screen. The boss-type turns and swooshes out of the room.

Filing clerk starts typing...

>DED: A DIVISION OF CONCORD

>STARSHIP REGISTRY ENQUIRY: READY

>WATCH LIST: NEW ENTRY

>Legion-class Strategic Cruiser
>Ownership: Private
>Registration: ARX/O/12883745/III
>Name: Empress of Amarr
>
>Crew Manifest (see appendix for further crew details):
>
>Ship's Master: Cassandra Orizi-Habalu-Dannidaana.
>Security Status: 5.0 (provisional - subject to change - see below)
>Personal Details:

Birthdate: 10/28/90.
Ethnicity: Ni-Kunni.
Homeworld: Kor-Azor Prime IV.
Assessment:
Subject is heiress to the Proxima Direct Shipping Company fortune (status restored after recent Imperial decree clarifying capsuleer legitimacy within the Amarr Empire citizenry). Subject also known to possess interests in the Aridia region where she is a prominent political activist in her role as co-founder of the Ni-Kunni Capsuleer Development Foundation. Also known to possess interests in the Genesis, Tash-Murkon and Khanid regions. Operational track record demonstrates non-aggressive tendencies in general, except towards Covenant interests wherever found. However, recent activity involving a prolonged deployment to the Anoikis Cluster with her previous employer indicates the subject retains a strong interest in Jovian/Sleeper/Drifter culture, with a presumed interest in the acquisition of Sleeper-derived technology beyond that which is already developed as part of the baseline architecture of the Legion-class Strategic Cruiser she commands. 

Subject's addition to the Capsuleer Watch List is therefore based on the subject's recent change in employer within the context of the default operational strategy of her new employer, combined with the presence of a former Amarrian Templar in her bridge crew in the role of Chief Weapons Officer [see appendix for full crew manifest], a combination which requires the DED to assume that unverified Sleeper-derived technology will be used in flight operations in low-security space with her new employer outside the authority, control and jurisdiction of DED/CONCORD.
>
>Status: Expected to change. Watch-listed as of 10:49 NEST - 14/11/119.

>FILE Y/N?

Interceptors Are Our Business And Business Is Good

I embraced the philosophy of the jump clone for the first time.

The principal, founding tenet of the capsuleer is the separation of mind from body: treating the body as merely a disposable vessel that carries the consciousness. If that body gets damaged or destroyed, just insert the consciousness into a new one and carry on.

The jump clone facility allows the capsuleer to maintain more than one vessel just as we all have a hangar with more than one spacecraft in it.

I was resistant to the idea of having more than one vessel for my mind, as I'd got used to the idea of there being more than one version of me consecutively, but having multiple iterations of me concurrently seemed like a passport to psychosis.

But...

It's not like I'm inhabiting all of them at the same time with one mind in multiple bodies, like the opposite of schizophrenia. Also, having a bunch of exploration-focused cyberware in my head that is worth more than the GDP of half the provinces of Mishi IV had inadvertently made me risk-averse. I had become too comfortable with my 'back office' POS-maintenance role in what is actually a lowsec pirate alliance.

Then, one recent evening, in our corporation's comms channel, Nizzle Ma said: "Why don't you come on any of our roams?"

I couldn't, wouldn't, didn't want to get away with answering: "Because my head's too valuable and I don't want to get killed and besides you lot are always going on about doctrines that change every five minutes?"

Then the boss announced an upcoming interceptor roam. This I could do by using the jump clone which every other capsuleer does as a matter of course. I already had Infomorph Psychology (jump clone capability) on my training roster but had never used it. Interceptors were no big deal.


Fast forward a few days...

I now have two bodies. The expensive and intelligent one that can scan down relics-'n'-wormholes from light-years away in the blink of an eye, was now a void under stasis somewhere else. This unaugmented body that I was in now, a 'clean clone', technically a meathead and with a new willingness to do smack talk and take risks, was in Nandeza with a new Malediction, waiting to launch off to the deep nullsec of all points south of Khanid - Querious, Delve, Period Basis - in what is known as a small-gang roam. There was no fixed objective in mind, just the spreading of the word.

The word of Mortum Ravagers. We're here. In yo' face mo'fos 'n bitches of Southern Null. We comin' fo yo territory...

So, da crew: me, Tryce Jaor (FC/boss), Gettosmurf, Nizzle Ma, Marc Moonglow, nitereper, Gryndor, Serigil, MrTheGeoff and Sul Glass, all set off with fire in our hearts and a determination to not take any of it seriously. My job would be 'long point', otherwise known as the use of a Warp Disruptor module with 20 kilometres range. Maledictions are apparently very good at it. I on the other hand am not.


[Sidebar: quantum uncertainty produces some inconsistency in the generation of neuropathways in a new clone which can have personality-altering effects. None of the below was technically me. Or is that just an excuse to learn smack talk in Local?]


Delve and Querious

"a wretched hive of scum and villainy"

 

Nothing to report for the first few systems. Nothing even in the notorious choke-point/tollbooth of border system 1-SMEB. The interceptor routine: send someone through to scout. We dive in behind and fan out: check out asteroid belts and Cosmic Anomalies. Look for smug, complacent nullsec alliance fodder. Look for ratters, independents and 'neutrals'. Look for miners. Look for everybody.

There were a few brushes with possibility. Odds were weighed. Sometimes the strongest army elects to not fight.

In the meantime and during these fast-moving system scans, I found some extraordinary Covenant facilities. Predictable, since Delve and the OK-FEM region is the core territory of the Covenant, but I'd never seen anything like this before.

These non-standard stargates were something new too.

I lagged a system-or-two behind the crew a couple of times because of my compulsion to look at the scenery and document everything. The Cauldron, receding in my 'mirrors' with every stargate, was no bigger than my hand at this distance. The Cauldron is home, where my science-oriented and more sensible other body currently resided: the one that enjoys culture, fine ale, reads books without images in them, has a social conscience and is recreationally bi-curious with two women (Taltha in Conoban and Alisu on Mishi IV. You've read about them before). This body on the other hand, wants to drop 200 million ISK on a pair of those GDN-9 'Nightstalker' goggles that are so cutting-edge. This body wants to try boosters and insult people.

Eventually we tracked down a lone, unattended Mobile Tractor Unit. We shot it. It was a start.

We found a 'VNI' - a Vexor Navy Issue - trying to take down a Covenant facility. We rudely interrupted him and shot him.

Then we shot him again. He may have been 'afk' as he didn't seem to notice...

We moved on...

Period Basis

"It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there..."

This is the region with one of the most southerly planetary systems in all of New Eden. The region extends out from the rest of the cluster like a swamp vine tendril. Its remoteness reminded me of something I'd read about during my time in Hedion University. An ancient expression: ultima thule. Something about 'the borders of the known world'.

Period Basis is also full of bubbles.

Warp Disruptor Bubbles: the visible manifestations of the over-inflated capsuleer ego that thinks it can outlive eternity. Newsflash: outside the capsule you're as mortal as any meathead. All I have to do is cap yo' ass in yo' sleep and you as dead as dead!

Then I got delayed again and arrived late to one of the parties in the form of this guy's capsule:

He had a lot of headware. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid.

Tryce found a target of opportunity in the form of a Prowler apparently chilling in orbit around Y-CWQY VI.

The Prowler's pilot had a cloaking device available to him, but he wasn't using it. Now he's chilling for good. A bio-tombstone. Orbiting frozen meat. Shame about the wasted planetary interaction equipment. A whole command center. Those skills!

Later, we negotiated the most committed of gate-camps using brilliant strategy and teamwork.

We evaded superior forces like ghosts -

  - and we reached the end of the stargate line in MVUO-F.

 

Now that I'm reporting on this roam from my other, more sensible augmented body, I can be more artistic and scientifically-literate about the experience.

There are other stars to the galactic south of Period Basis that are still within the gravitational bounds of the New Eden cluster, but they are few in number and not on the stargate network. We know virtually nothing about them except what we can discern through distant survey. Some may even be inhabited by an unknown pre-Dark Ages fragment of humanity that speaks no known language. There may be a generation ship inbound from one of them right now that is in for a hell of a shock when it eventually arrives somewhere like this and meets a capsuleer with a 'NBSI' policy.

This place is nothing like, for example, Domain with its warm, comforting and enveloping bronze nebula that you can barely see outside-of. Period Basis is also known for its high concentration of pulsars: ticking clocks that never slow down because their 'tick' is a lighthouse beam of deadly radiation emission. The Vapor Sea is the only lighthouse pointing the way back to civilisation. The Caroline's Star Remnant doesn't cover even a tenth as many arcseconds of diameter as it does from Vale of the Silent. The Cauldron is not even visible. This is the end of the road - the end of the world.

Pulsars are the product of core-collapse supernovae which also go on to form nebulae from which other stars are formed. Those ancient supernovae here in Period Basis may have triggered the formation of the New Eden cluster. We owe our existence to them.

* * *

Nandeza Or Bust - Last One Back Buys The Beers

We had set out in the full expectation of returning by way of hostile action and the pod express. Two of us ended the session as 'gate camp sacrifices' (because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few), but the rest of us unexpectedly survived, which was actually inconvenient as we all had to get back to Nandeza in time to do mundane stuff like holovid boxset binges, do the laundry, clean the quarters and feed the fedos etc. etc.

On the way back to Khanid, Tryce experienced system malfunctions and fell behind, so the rest of us took refuge for a while in 'Barf's Burger Barn' in the C3N-3S system in Delve and waited for him to catch up. This station was under Freeport status as a result of its home system being contested, which, as it happens, is nothing new.

A bit of history: Barf's Burger Barn is actually a historic outpost as it was the focus of one of the biggest 'sov' battles in New Eden history during YC112. Incumbents Nulli Secunda and Southern Coalition fought Goonswarm Federation and Pandemic Legion for possession of this station among other system assets in a battle that involved capitals, Titans and up to 1,800 capsuleers. You can read about it on the EN24 service's archive.

In the interests of absorbing a bit of that history I would have taken a look around here, but time was against us so we docked in temporary berths and remained jacked-in. After Tryce caught up, we undocked and all went our separate ways in an informal race back to Nandeza.

At the notorious 1-SMEB border, I evaded a freshly-formed gate camp that wasn't there when we passed through two hours earlier (interceptors totally rule), and because I'd cocked-up my routing a couple of times in an attempt to program 'avoidance systems' into the nav system, it was actually me that was the last ship back to Nandeza.

Beers were on me.

* * *

Epilogue

The reason why interceptor roams work is that they are the purest form of piracy - fast, nimble vessels that operate under no political agenda, and in small co-ordinated raiding parties seeking out targets of pure opportunity. This doctrine is exactly the same as the method used by those pirate ships that used to sail the seas of Athra. If you're an Amarrian you'll have read about them in school.

Furthermore, now I've left my sensation-seeking, 200-million-ISK-goggles-wearing gung-ho combat head in Nandeza and I'm back in my rational and sci-curious explorer head in Danera, I'm lobbying the boss to make interceptors our 'go-to' ship. Because they rule. I've also done some recruitment propaganda which you'll soon see on holo-boards, forums, station dock atriums and even your favourite trade hubs. Come down to Khanid and join us!

Finally, the jump clone has liberated me from risk-aversion and eliminated the need to crawl light-years across New Eden in order to do something. Now I can go to sleep in one place and wake up in another.

I think of it as taking a holiday from myself.

Point Genesis: The EVE Gate

Everybody knows the legend of the EVE Gate. It's taught to us in school; it's part of the foundation of the Amarrian religion; it's the reason for humanity's presence in the stellar cluster that's named after the system it's situated near: New Eden. It's not in New Eden, but more about that later.

Such an important celestial object should be a natural destination - a form of pilgrimage even; at the very least a massive tourist attraction, especially for any capsuleer who has a cosmic perspective and a scientific background by default. Knowing what the EVE Gate is and why it persists, raises more questions than it answers.

Visiting the New Eden system and the EVE Gate was the third reason I became a capsuleer, which is a hell of a commitment to make - having your body cyborgized and implanted, and getting killed a few times along the way 'just' to see a unique cosmic spectacle, but the state of regional and cluster politics in the current epoch means that becoming a capsuleer is almost the only way to see it. The reason why is that the New Eden system is at the end of a long 'pipe' of  sparsely-populated resource-poor systems that have no regular transport services and yet, ironically enough, all carry names that imply a previous era of optimism and hope that failed to materialise, no doubt due to the 'abomination' that's at the end of this particular line, and how history itself panned out.

This 'pipe' to New Eden, to paradise, is all low-security space, so it should be a haven for gate camps and gankers, pirates, freelancers etc., but it isn't. It's that dead end: there's no reason to come down here unless you're visiting the EVE Gate. But that perception of a lack of threat does not mean you're exempt from the usual rules of lowsec conduct. In my case, I waited two months to train the skills necessary to get a Covert Ops frigate with an advanced cloaking device. A Purifier, no less (a stealth bomber on an exploration mission? Hell yes! It's my ISK. Why not?).

Transiting down this lowsec pipe towards the EVE Gate is different from any other part of space. It's like EVE is drawing you to it. An accident of galactic geography means the New Eden system is one of the most northerly systems in the cluster in respect to the galactic plane, so as you progress towards it, there is a commanding view of the region's three major nebulae: Verge Vendor, Domain and The Cauldron; the Domain looks like a hollow-eyed skullmask.

The last accessible orbital station is in Angur, a full six systems away from New Eden itself, and after Angur it's either gas giants or irradiated desert worlds with automated weather stations and hardcore agri-settlements that don't want to communicate and where people go to disappear.  Cluster politics will have passed them by.

The theme in every system is abandonment and desolation, presenting an unsettling contrast against those systems' names: Promised Land, Access, Gateway, New Eden itself.

I passed long-abandoned orbitals, half-hearted Covenant gate camps, and tantalizing indications of pre-Dark Ages human presence in the form of fragments of unidentifiable wreckage or a derelict stargate-like structure that has to be Old Earth in origin. I was the only ship in the last three systems on the pipe, which meant that I was the only ship for several light-years in any direction; so when I got to the New Eden system and came face-to-face with the EVE Gate - Point Genesis - it felt like I was having a one-to-one communion with it.

The flaw in spacetime that the failed EVE Gate is assumed to be, projects a visible luminosity that far exceeds that of the New Eden primary, yet the object is not actually in the New Eden system at all; it's another 3.3 light-years beyond it. It pulses organically, like a beating heart. EVE is alive, and the Amarrian in me appreciates how this thing became the foundation of a religion.

On the other hand, the scientifically-literate capsuleer in me asks questions like any good scientist: what incredible forces are really at work here? Why, when the universe constantly tends towards entropy - when even a black hole evaporates eventually - has the EVE Gate persisted like this, in this flawed state, for over 15,000 years? It can only be because it is being fed - supplied by something. What power is feeding it? Who is behind that power?

The EVE Gate decided to show me a hint of a possible answer...


I was holding station near the automated customs satellite orbiting New Eden I. I heard the 'thump' of an arriving vessel - four Roaming Sleeper Cruisers! I cloaked up immediately and disappeared, mindful of the recent changes in Sleeper tactics. The Sleepers started their bizarre scanning routine on the customs satellite instead.

While they were busy, I noted the presence of another Jove Observatory, here, in New Eden. I decloaked and warped over to it, to see if the Sleepers would follow.

Sure enough, they did.

So I'm station-keeping, here in New Eden, and I'm within sight of the EVE Gate, a Jove Observatory and four Roaming Sleeper Cruisers.

The Sleepers.

I would have felt a shiver down my spine if I wasn't jacked-in and floating in neuro-embryonic fluid.

* * *

I made my way back to the station in Angur to dock for the night. The entire seven-system pipe was deserted. The lack of activity gave me plenty to think about:

Established wisdom/dogma tells us what EVE is and what it may have looked like. Listen to any capsuleer conversation in any bar in New Eden and they'll all talk about the same legend - that EVE is co-located with remnants of Old Earth pre-Dark Ages human tech: ships, stations, detritus that fell victim to whatever caused EVE to fail. The Jovians have apparently seen fit to hide much of it from us in our own best interests, and besides, EVE is supposed to be a radiation environment that is off-the-scale hostile, so we can't go anywhere near it to find out for ourselves. Sisters of EVE have an ongoing interest, basing their entire faith around it, but they aren't telling.

The Jove Observatory: this system is otherwise completely deserted and rarely visited, so the Observatory can only be monitoring EVE. Why?

The Sleepers are believed to be an ancestral offshoot of the Jove race. They will have come through the EVE Gate the first time round. Jove, Sleepers, an SoE 'research' presence somewhere round here...

Then, after the events of Caroline's Star (which was an event similar in spectacle to what the EVE collapse would have looked like) , you can't discuss the Jove and Sleepers without discussing the Drifters. Drifter Battleships are known to be responsible for the structural damage to the Observatories; damage which is also present on this example, so Drifters have visited this system too.

I believe the Drifters are associated with EVE - that their battleships use tech that is openly acknowledged to be in advance of ours, and that the tech is recovered from Old Earth remnants found around EVE, or maybe even from the far side of it; and that the Sleepers - rumoured to be the 'body snatchers' behind the Drifter faction that is a means for the Sleepers to return from their virtual world - are in turn behind the whole damn thing.

Since the rise of the Drifters, everybody has been watching Jove space for another sign following Caroline's Star. Could it be that we are all looking in the wrong place?

Meanwhile, the EVE Gate patiently watches us all go about our business from its position above the centre of the cluster, and has done so for at least 15,000 years. Any visitor to EVE must be prepared to leave with more questions than they arrived with.

We may not have to wait much longer for the answers.