Monday, February 16, 2009

It Is What It Is.

Selina slammed the data disk down on her agent’s desk, her eyes blazing with fury. "Here's your god damned disk,” she sniped at him.

Slowly the man looked up at her. He’d seen her act this way countless times before and had numerous times considered dropping her from his list of capsuleer clients. She was fierce and short tempered. She was a firebrand that would easily light up at even the smallest attacks. If she wasn’t forewarned ahead of time….or better stated if combat wasn’t her reason for going out on a mission, you could always expect her to return with a face as red as her hair from anger. But undeniably, she was good. So good that even with all her tyrannical bullshit, he’d still hire her time and time again. “So what happened this time,” he asked wearily.

“I arrived at your damn coordinates, which, by the way, are the crappiest coordinates I’ve ever been given. I mean come on! Fifty kilometers out?! If I hadn’t decided to take my frigate, it would’ve taken me all damn day just to get to the station. I mean, what if I was in an unarmed shuttle? What if I…..”

“Alright,” he snapped, raising his hand to stop her. “I get it okay? My coordinates were a bit off. I’ll try to have better for you next time. Now….you was saying? What happened?”

Selina glared at him for a moment, not pleased at all about having been interrupted but chose to let that one slide…till later perhaps. “Like I said, I arrived at the coordinates and started burning towards the station. I get to roughly 30km out, when next thing I know, ten damn Serpentis ships drop out of warp right between me and the station. Speaking of which….seems they obviously had been given better warp coordinates…”

Rolling his eyes, he does a quick glance over of her and shrugs slightly. “Well it seems you made it out just fine and with the disk even, so I don’t see why it was too much of a probl…” quickly he cuts himself short. Too late of course. He knew better than to say that as immediately she goes off on yet another tirade. The girl’s range of insults and curses knew no bounds. Sometimes he wondered if that’s all she did at night was think up more insults to throw at people. Some were actually quite hilarious. Others were pure viciousness. And yet others were so riddled with foul language, every dead Gallentean mother was probably turning in their grave.

But finally, after what seemed like an hour, she calms enough for him to finalize the deal with her. He initiates the payment sequence for the agreed sum to which she checks immediately. Seeing the isk amount now showing in her account, she flashes her most award winning smile, as if she’d never raised her voice in her entire life, and politely excuses herself. He can only do his best to smile at her in return as she leaves. But as the hatch closes behind her, he already has the bottle of Thukker scotch in hand.
___________________________________

Waking the next morning, Selina plopped herself down at her desk. She grimaced at the slight reflection she saw in the monitor before switching it on. Checking her mail, she saw that the intended op into nullsec had been cancelled to which she was a bit surprised but wasn’t too concerned with either way. She was a bit suicidal but she wasn’t a complete maniac. She was well aware that any trip into nullsec around these parts was pretty much a one way trip. At least for that body. In fact, so far she had yet to visit the clone vats. Not once, in any combat engagement, had she not been able to get her pod out. Truth is, what she couldn’t understand was how some people managed to get pod killed as often as they did. Just keep your head and stay aware of your surroundings. Be aware of your damage remaining. Be aware of your heading. And spam the warp like mad. It really wasn’t that difficult. Perhaps it was shell shock that made pilots sit there for too long? She didn’t know. But either way, she was on a good run and had no intention of ending that any time soon. Besides, she kind of liked being in the body she was originally born into. The longer she could hold onto it, the happier she’d be.

As she was reading her mails, she decided to flip on the open comms. Promephius, one of her corporation’s fellow combat pilots was in the process of putting together a small group of cruisers and frigs to go hunting in lowsec space and immediately invited her along. Of course she wasn’t about to turn that down! She quickly hopped into the shower to rinse the grime away and upon exiting, sent a message to her attendant, Jassiel, to get the Incursus ready for launch, threw on her favorite robe, wrapped her hair in a towel and finally ran to her hanger. A couple of people couldn’t help but stop and chuckle as she rushed past them in all her barefoot glory. Most had seen her around often enough now that they were fairly used to her antics. In fact, they were more used to seeing her in her thick wool robe, barefoot, then they were used to seeing her in regular garments.

Arriving at her ship, the lead tech immediately handed her a load out spec sheet to which she made a few adjustments before handing it back. He quickly checked it and smiled before running off to get the changes done asap just as Jassiel appeared at the hanger’s entrance. Together the two women boarded the ship and headed for the pod center. By the time the requested ship modifications were completed, she was linked up within the pod and had her camera drone coming to life. It was only a few moments later that the ship was exiting the docking tunnel, headed into the blackness of space, ready for a wild ride of death and destruction. A battle for life and death. An area in space where it’s kill or be killed. Shoot or be shot. Fight and die, or run and live. A landscape of wrecks and frozen corpses. A dark canvas of laser beams, blaster flashes, and missile trails.

And yet, some four hours later it returned to that same docking tunnel, not having seen an ounce of combat.

Love it or hate it, welcome to Solitude.

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