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Hmm, back in a pod… The fun of it all; fecking ganking rats!

A nice long warp home in a flying egg.

I close my eyes and see myself screaming, back in the pod where I was found.

Why do I always see that when I'm in one of these silly little eggs after losing my ships?

I still wonder how long I had been in that pod…


I move my hand to my temple and feel the pod gel move around me as I cradle my head in my palm.

What? I wasn't in a pod......

I run my hand over my scalp and touch the slightly warm cranial implant. Feeling it clinging to my skull, I start to scream.

Flashes of memories surge through my eyes, glimpses into someone else's life. Then the pain ripping through my body.

Seeing images; things that I can't remember.

I didn't know how long I was there in my pod seeing another life; stuck in a floating egg… seemed like months

Drifting through space with nothing but my screams echoing around me.

Feeling everything all at once. Feeling this person's life.

I did have it explained to me once but the vodka was more interesting than the conversation. Something about disconnecting the consciousness or some thing sciencey...

All the whip lashes, all at once, tearing at my back… the rape… fear of the moment and worse, the creeping terror of what comes…

The cold loneliness; wary of everything around you, jumping at the smallest noise, thinking it starts again. Getting beaten to un-consciousness to wake up with some random male over the top of you.

Something in me feels… broken.

At some point in my hysteria I must have kicked a comm link and scared any one in local half to death.


My eyes snap open dragging me out of my vivid recollection of the first Pod experance…. The only thing was that experance was a nightmare. My first tangable memory.

I look at the readouts on the HUD

“Damn! Still a few jump still I’m back home”

Why did I decide to go out retting?

I close my eyes again trying to relax, slowly getting enveloped by the soft comforting sound of Eva’s voice. Recalling how she slowly calmed me down from that frantic hysterical state she found me in. Telling me where I was, instructing me in the basics, guiding me to the station I was to start calling Home.

My Pod rips back in to normal space pulling me back to reality. My mind is torn at with a barrage of noise disorientating me slightly as I flick on the filter that for some reason had turned off. I hear the familiar sound of the Gulfonodi Traffic Controllers, quite comforting welcome when you’ve lost another ship in the arse end of Amarr space.

I hear my engines start up again as the Autopilot warps me back to Station.

God I’ll need a very large drink after I’ve docked

The inertia in the Pod changes as the Autopilot roughly pulling out of warp in its breaking maneuver, and is caught by the Station’s docking systems.

Fucking thing!

I kick at the Pod wall

Thought I’d finally sorted that out….

Feels good if you get the timing just right. Knowing nothing’s going to happen to the Pod but it giving off a rather satisfying cracking sound and starts resonating. Was told this was because of the Tractor Systems on the Station pulling you in to dock. Even knowing this I still like to think I’ve damaged some thing.

Home sweet home… Not long now and I can get sorted and have that large drink..

A voice calls over the Station comms….

“Pilots. We are very sorry due to heavy traffic you will be delayed slightly… Please accept our apologies”

What else could go wrong?

After waiting 5 minutes the Pod arrives at my hanger and unceremoniously excreted out of my Pod.

Why can’t some one develop a system that knows what way up you are?

I fall naked, covered with the internal fluids from the pod face first on to my hanger floor for the umpteenth time this week.

Like getting born they said! Bullocks! Just once I would like to be shat out my Pod feet first!

After seeing the hanger floor rushing to meet me like a lonely puppy I decide to take a long bath and dissolve my annoyance in a couple of thousand ISK of hot water.

Should I see if Eva’s found out any thing or just buy some more hot water?

I lounge in a quickly cooling bath of tepid water thinking on what to do next… I reach for my Neocom and shoot off a quick mail.

“Set destination Eva RE-AW via EM local network, mark in as private with usual encryption”

The Neocom flashes and beeps indicating its recording.
Eva should get a nice picture of my ceiling.
I grin to my self.

Eva should like that picture.

“Hey Eva, just wondering if your in the bar tonight? Did you manage to find out any information on that name that you found engraved on my cranial ports? Oh sorry about the view of the sealing but well I’m kinda indisposed”

I splash about in the bath.

“Any way will be in the bar later. End and send”

A few quick flashes and a beep and off it goes.

Hope she’s got some info would love to find out who put these things in my head and dumped me in that Pod. The body I’m quite happy with its got to be an upgrade from what I may have been in before but still would have been nice to have been consulted.

I step out of the bath and start to get dried and dressed. I stop and look at the reflection in the mirror.

Defiantly very happy with this body.

I grin to my self again.

And from some of the reactions of the first time I was in the Bar so is every one else. The attention was great and the people I met were so friendly, but for some reason I felt that I was lying to them. Not about what I was saying but about how I was looking, something with in me was telling me it was all wrong.

I finish getting dressed and glance at my Neocom to see a message waiting for me.

Where was it again? 4 blocks down and where? Ah feck it my feet should know the way.

I open Eva’s mail as I walk in what I think is the general direction of the Bar.

There are no sounds, save the sigh of the nighttime wind, the creak of the rigging, the gentle slop of the waves against the prow as the junk shears across the estuary, cutting swiftly towards a darkened wharf at the edge of a sea of lights.

The navigator, perched beside me, flicks me an envious glance as he spins the dial on his nightscope, compensating for the flare as a single lantern bursts into light at our destination. My own ocular filters simply ignore the light, parsing and analysing RADAR data through complex circuitry and unique nerves that grant me this sense no human is born with.

I watch the reflected sound, a rippling, interlaced tracery of luminescant green that exists for me alone, and for a moment, I am lost in the beauty of it.

There. A small, dense patch of blackness marks out a human body in the web of glowing sound, it's arm raised to hold the lamp that guides us in. And behind it, hugging the shadows of a ramshackle building, three others.

Tailored adrenaline begins to flow through this body I wear like a jacket, to be put on and taken off at need. Combat hardwirings tickle at the back of my mind.

I start to smile, a nasty little twist of the lips that would be quite out of place were this face my own. I gesture to the Captain, my thumb pointing back out into the open water as my other hand toys with the blaster at my hip, caressing the sleek curves of cool plastic, slipping a finger onto the safety and flicking it off with a thrill of anticipation. As the ship grinds briefly against the quay, not stopping but merely brushing past it in the darkness, I hesitate, looking within myself for the fear that should be there. It isn't. This sleeve is wired wrong for my normal gamut of emotions.

I wonder if it feels guilt?

Then I'm up over the railing, my feet barely touching the wood of the wharf before I'm off and running, skirting the lamp light and making a beeline for the shadows.

The belt of ultrasound from the blaster, while inaudible, blinds me even as it liquifies the brain of the first target. Cursing myself for this rookie mistake, I let the tracking computer guide me, spinning on my heel and discharging the weapon in what feels like the right direction. A soft thud tells me I've hit, so I whirl again, letting the ocular filter spin back to enhanced UV.

I level the sono-blaster at the third, that nasty grin dancing on my lips.

"Where's the slaver, Fresniak?"

He's got guts, this one. Half-crouched, hands hovering above the las-pistol at his waist, he snarls at me. "Who the fuck are you?"

With my free hand, I tug open my coat, flashing the RSS badge. He swears, spitting at the pier beneath his feet.

"Fuck. You can go fuck yourself!"

A man of broad vocabulary, then. I hit the laser sight on the blaster, tracing a visible line down his body that ends at his midriff, just above his right hip.

"A man can live an awful long time with just one kidney. And I'm betting your master doesn't pay medical, does he, Ammatar?"

He swears again, but I can see in his face that he's thinking it through. He looks past me towards the breathing bodies of his two comrades, alive, but utterly lobotomised, without hope of resleeving.

The sono-blaster is not the weapon of someone who's kidding around.

I wait.

He finally spits it out through gritted teeth. "District 7, The Kitten House. Arimundus is there with Lasheish."

I smile at him, holstering the blaster, then whip around, slamming a kick into his jaw that snaps his teeth together and knocks him cold.

I glance back, briefly, at the two still bodies lying behind me on the quay.

I was right. No guilt.

It was pissing down as I walked across Aabest'a Square, but that was the least of my worries. It had been half an hour since I'd engaged in any kind of physical violence, but the tweaked adrenaline in this body didn't seem to have an off switch. If it wasn't for the rain, I doubt I'd have even been blinking.

I'm pretty sure that's why my entrance to the brothel wasn't as discrete as it should have been. That, and I'm really not used to being in a frame with physical hardwirings - nano-meshed musculature augmented with molecular servos and tiny chemical batteries all triggered by - you guessed it - the tailored adrenaline that was giving me such a headache.

At any rate, sending everyone scarpering as I ripped the door off its hinges was not my intent. But it did give me an excuse to run.

And that was a high. Every time my foot hit the floor, it propelled me with such force, such speed, it felt like I was flying - like I was back in my interceptor, the room blurring past me, the scattering crowd individually picked out and highlighted by the targetting reticule in my ocular filter. I had to snap out a hand to grab the balustrade and spin myself round onto the stairs, taking them three at a time, every breath coming so easily, but every lungful singing like the twilight song of the aurora over Sebes'ayr to the voraciously-hungry muscles in my limbs.

Another door, too close, too fast to stop, so I simply spun my shoulder to the wood, covered my eyes and hoped.

In. The bed was too close so I hit the air, flipping the trajectory analyser on to try and plot a course through the furniture that wouldn't end with me going out the window and into the street...

In essence, I was trying to find the brakes on this thing.

Then the target reticule popped up again and, acting on instincts I was no longer in sufficient control to deny, I dived on the target and headbutted it sharply. As I came to a halt, the world resolved into me kneeling in Lasheish's lap as his unconscious body and I glided in a leather office chair to a sharp thud against the warddrobe.

At this point, something resembling Evanda managed to assert itself in the hormonal chaos of the borrowed brain, as I climbed out of the chair, cleared my throat and dusted off my uniform.

I have no idea why I do that. Anyway...

Arimundus very, very slowly took his hands off the fair-haired prostitute who must have set him back the price of three or four human lives, watching me like a hawk the whole while. A bead of sweat I couldn't entirely take the credit for, ran down his ridged forehead towards one eye. The smell of it was unnaturally strong; sweat, and coitus interrupted.

Well, his day wasn't about to get any better.

I made the speech.

"Go for your weapons? You die. Yell for help? You die. Try to get out from under that sheet and expose yourself to me? You die a woman. Are we all clear, here?"

He nods, licking his lips nervously. Things were going well. I nodded to the girl.

"Stick some clothes on and pop over there to the guy in the chair, make sure he's not drowning in his own blood or something. RSS are gonna want to speak to him afterwards."

She scampered out of bed with the eagerness and agility of a hooker who got paid in advance, collecting her scattered clothing and hopping into a corner to get dressed - it wasn't a large room. A tiny green target lock appeared in the corner of my eye and tracked her movements, blinking unobtrusively while the main scope focused on Arimundus.

It crossed my mind that at this point, I should probably draw a weapon and menace him with it. Then again, from the look on his face, I didn't need to. So I went on with the show, pulling a creased - and slightly bloodstained - piece of paper from my pocket and handing it to him.

"The name on that piece of paper... I want to know who makes those implants, where, and what the hell they're for."

He nods hesitantly, opening his mouth to speak. I cut him off, holding out a pen.

"Best write it down. I'm really not sure how smart the brain in this thing is."

Half an hour, a shower and a clone jump back to my own body later, and the mail is on its way to Khalyn.

I slowly scroll thru the mass of information sent from Eva.

So nice to see Eva enjoying herself.

I smile to my self as I glide thru the spectrum of colours, highlighting people as shadows on a background of purple before they burst in to a complex hue of reds and blues as my implants show their body heat and threat levels.

Walking around any Station using these settings makes every thing look so much nicer.

[b]I let my feet lead the way down to the Bar trusting their judgment and following their slow march onwards,