Electus Matari Forums

Dear Kara,

You know I have always loved the look of a Rifter. The one in the view screen before me was no different. Its’ gun metal armor seeming to glow in the low light of the hanger bay as it sits ready for its’ owner to take it into battle. Shame that one is owned by Jonas Cage, the flak head I know whose family I know is responsible for Élan Noir. Jonas has made it his young life’s work to make mine as difficult as possible. You always though I was being paranoid, that surely the “Noble” Cage family we have no part in all the bad things that kept happening to us. Noble, no, our family’s curse has a name. Soon I will exact a little revenge for the wrongs done.

This whole stupid contest had been setup by Jonas Cage Senior. The publicity he will get from his son winning it would surely help him in his third consecutive senatorial bid. Even though he is running unopposed he is still show boating. Damn if only ... well its' was not your fault sis and dad took it harder then most so we can't blame him either. Just wish his heart was still in the fight, but I'm going to do my part and win this contest. The 1 million isk prize will also help pay off some of dads old depts.

This evening has been an eventful one Kara. It all started with Mom and Dad stopping by to visit me before the finals. Dad as usual had not taking care of his exoskeleton. So his entrance was marked with the usual wining of servo motors.

“Come here old man”, was the first thing I remember greeting them with. I pulled out my multi-tool and a can of lube stray. I needed to take care of his knee joints before they drove me batty.

“Not even a hello Markus” mom said while I was toiling away.

I sighed, kiss mom on the cheek and said “Hello mother, sorry but that damn squeaking your know gets on my nerves.”

Father answered “well with you away at school who is there to fix me?" I could tell by his goofy grin he was trying to be funny.

After some other exchanging of pleasantries father began asking about your name sake.

“So you named it after her then?” he asked, knowing the answer but I humored him just the same.

“Yes I thought she would like it.” I said. “She came to everyone of my events and this makes it seem like she is still with me.”

"She is son", mother said with a small tear rolling down her cheek.

Clearing his throat dad asked, "Markus how did you solve the issue with the avionics?" "I know when you bought her the electronics had been striped out." He was trying to change the subject so mother would not dwell on you.

"Well pops during a training run my flight was jumped by 6 pirate sabers" I began. "They did not notice that our instructor Lenks was in the system." We warped out and he made short work of them." "During our free fly afterwards I stopped back at the wrecks and salvaged the electronics." "Kara's smile is a hybrid of sorts." Her hull and engines are Matari but her electronics are modified Caldari."

"How on Rens did you make that work?" Dad said with a puzzled look on his face.

"A little luck and a whole lot of sleepless nights". I said.

"That would also explain why your grades slipped a little this semester huh Markus" mother asked in a whimsical manner.

"Hey at least you know I wasn't getting into trouble". I shot back.

"Well I'm hungry and we should go as to not be late to our reservation" Father finally piped in.

"Dad I still can't believe you want to go to Levasa, I mean one dinner there is a week retirement pay." I said.

"Look son, you have paid your way through school, bought your own ship, the least you can do is let me pick up dinner." he said. With the money issues mom and dad have been facing ever since dad had to pull out of the senatorial elections they barely have a pot to piss in but I was not about to bruise dads ego more then it already had been. So I just smiled and nodded my head.

Half way to the restaurant I remembered I had not totally powered down the systems I had been working on when mom and dad arrived. I excused myself and told them I would catch up shortly and sprinted back to the hanger.

That was when I found Jones and some of his flunkies trying to hack into our ship. I picked up a large wrench from a tool box near the door. No Kara I'm not stupid enough to think a little wrench would have helped me fight off 5 other pilots. Beside we all were armed with combat knives and there was no way I wanted to make it a knife fight.

I did end up throwing the wrench at Revins who was trying to hack my security protocols. It hit his data hacker like I had hope and damaged the screen.

"What the hell," Revins said. "Markus, your gonna pay for a new hacker!"

After passing a few more choice words between us, Jones and his goons began to surround me. As they did I had a chance to get a better look over the hanger and I saw it was empty aside from us. The security camera’s seemed to be non functional. It turns out Revins had found a way to put them into a 15 min diagnostic cycle, much to my displeasure.

"Where you going little Markey" asked Jones in his usual mocking tone. "No security folks here to bail you out so what you going to do now?

I had already been thinking ahead and while my class classmates stalked me I had time to activate my wrist com and dialed the security service on the station.

"Concord, what is the nature of the emergency?" The operator said.

"There is a fight in the student hanger bay, please send security to break it up." I said while I was in the process of slamming my fist into Jonas's face.

Kara I knew I could not win the fight but just taking a beating was not my style. Calling security directly would also insure I would only get my ass kicked for a few minutes before it was stopped. I do have to tell you I was not at all happy with concords response time. It seems a little slow for my ribs liking.

I by far got the worst of the fight. Three fractured ribs, a broken left hand and a collapsed lung. Nothing station med bay couldn't mend though so I was happy. When instructor Lenks got the call about the scuffle he tried to get to the truth but Jones claimed him and his friends had been the ones who caught me snooping around his ship. With the cameras down I couldn't blame Lenks for not pressing the matter further even though all the evidence pointed to Jonas being the one at fault not me. His hands were tied because without concrete proof to try to charge the younger Cage with anything would have brought the wrath of his Senator father and would most likely meant career suicide. He did post guards in the bay to prevent any more foolishness from happening though which is all I could ask for.

After getting out of the Med bay it was already too late and we had missed out reservation. Father couldn't believe that Lenks did nothing about the fight. Mother was just happy I was safe. We stopped off at the food court grab a bit to eat there and talked more about the fight and the finals match tomorrow. Mom and Dad walk me back to our ship and shared a drink with me in the crew cabin before we said good night.

Well time for me to head to bed, looks like it is going to be a busy day tomorrow and I can't wait to see the look on Jones's face when I .....

"Mr. Uthar, this is hanger security" "Your girl friend is here and would like to come in" the guard said.

Huh really, girl friend, what do you think of that Kara. I don't remember having a girl friend, but hey why not, should be interesting.

"Uthar here, is she cute?" I asked.

"Ah yea real cute" the guard responded.

"Then go ahead and let her in, I’ll be at the air lock shortly."

Dear Kara:


Good morning Kara, oh frak my head in pounding. Hold on let me get a cup of recaf started here. Man sis, I think I might still be a little drunk. Anyway where did I stop at? Right I was meeting April at the air lock. It took me a few minutes to get to her. I wanted to lock everything down first.

I don’t think you ever met April Liberatore. We were an item a few months back.

I met her in the market, where she was having trouble with a local clothing vendor. Seems she was trying to buy a dress that she could not afford. Sprinting through the mid day crowds she was fleeing from the shop keeper and two concord security guards when she ran head long into me. The impact knocked her on her butt and allowed the guards to catch up with her.

“Take her away, I want to press charges.” the shop keeper said.

You should have seen the look in her eyes. April was so scared and all she could do was look at me. That is when it happened, I don’t want to call it love but I was definitely infatuated. She was beautiful. Long raven hair messily tied back. Her out fit was will made but well, out dated and ragged looking.

“Sweet heart, when I said you need to get a new outfit at any costs for our date tonight I meant for you to pay for it to silly” I began as I helped April to her feet. “I’m sorry officers for the misunderstanding, let us head back to your shop and take care of this.”

“No, there is no misunderstanding.” The shop keeper said. “She is a thief!” “When here credit check failed she took the dress and bolted!”

“Madam please calm down.” I answered. “Look I have the isk please check my account.”

With that I handed her my data stick and she checked it against her data pad. I had over one hundred thousand in my account at the time. I had been running delivery missions all that week when not in class and had done pretty well.

The shop keepers eyes lit up as she saw the total. “Oh, of course sir, I’m sorry for the confusion, it looks like you could even use new pair of boots yourself."

Over the course of the next couple of hours I got to chance to get to know April better as she modeled different outfits for me, each one more revealing then the last. She had come to the station to try and get a new start, her father was Dommel Liberatore. A Caldari special Ops Commander who switched sides when he met and later freed her mother from an Amarr slave camp. He had been killed by Amarr assassin’s years back forcing April and her mother to struggle for survival. Her mother had died only a few months ago in a riot where she was trying to get them some food and cloths. April after the burring her mother on Rens had stowed away in a mercenary freighter to get to this station.

I guess I have always been a sucker for tough luck stories and over the next couple of months I let her stay with me in our ship. We really seemed to be falling in love. Each day seemed to be better then the last and even thought she was not full Matari I proudly took her to the spring formal. It seems however it wasn’t meant to be and she had bigger plans. At the spring formal she had caught the eye of Jonas and a few days later she was spending all her time with him and I didn’t seem to matter. I’m not bitter however, those few months were amazing and after last night I still find myself entranced by her.

When I open the door I was greeted by April in all her glory. She had thoughtfully worn an insanely revealing blouse and something that could barely be called a mini, accented with a silver locket I had bought her and finished off with black high heels with a strap over the ankle.

“So are you going to invite me in?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, would Jonas approve of you being here?” I replied.

We bantered back and forth like this till she revealed that she and Jonas were no longer an item. She had gotten a job waiting tables and had even found a small apartment. I knew she was lying but I missed her so I decided to play along.

“I see you haven’t done much with the place Markus” she stated as she walked over and sat down on the circular couch in the center of my state room. “You know I could really go for a drink, you got any whiskey around.”

Now she knows I have an affinity for good whiskey and cheep cigars so I of course had both. “Sure, I have a wonderful 15 year in my collection I’ll be right back.” I said.

I didn’t head strait to the galley. I instead stopped off at the bridge and turn on the interior cameras to see what she was doing. My heart immediately sank; she was sitting at my command desk. Trying to access my ships build out. I was sad but not surprised, I knew this was probably the reason April had come over. The beast had not been able to find out what he was looking for so he sent the beauty. Lucky for me April could do a lot of things well but hacking computers was not one of them. I made sure the terminal she was working at would shut down the next time she tried anything before I left the bridge.

Upon returning to my cabin I found that April had switched her plan of attack. The blouse I had spoke of earlier was gone and she had grabbed a bottle of scented oil from her locker I had not had the heart to clean out.

“Thank you Markus” she said as she took the glass from me. “I don’t know whatever made me think Jonas was half the man you are.”

“So April is this your idea of an apology?” I asked as I poured her a drink.

“Well”, she said pausing flirtatiously. “It is the start of one.” April added as she slammed the contents of the glass back and placed the bottle of oil and glass on the table next to us. “Why don’t you let me show you how sorry I am?”

Without going into to much more detail let me tell you the next few hours were the most excruciating pleasurable interrogation I have ever ….

“Captain, your presence is needed on the bridge!” piped in my first officer, fresh from the two day leave I had granted my crew.

“On my way” I replied. To be continued Kara.