This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 3. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms.
Arturo leant over the rail in his ship hangar and surveyed his new property. Even given the amount of time he had been in his new body, he hadn't yet become used to it, and he found that the extra weight on his front nearly flipped him completely over the side. As he righted himself, he felt a surge of pleasure at the thought of extent to which his money had changed his life. A little, simple trade route, a few years, and now he was destined to spend the rest of his days as an experienced combat pilot; one with nice tight little curves at that. It was marvellous that all you needed to do was pay a few billion, and you could be the combat pilot you always dreamed of being, all with no risk. He took a moment to run his hands over his body, and knew he had done the right thing.
As he walked down the gangway to his fearsome new ship, he wondered again whether he missed his old self, with its humble implants, limited abilities and decidedly worn-out look. After all, people become accustomed to themselves, whether they like it or not - but no. His sleek lines and ferocious new skillset filled him with a vigour he had never imagined. All those years spent warping between stargates, listening to the insipid female voice of the autopilot - they were a distant memory. Now, he was the one calling the shots and he wanted to get himself some rocking combat action.
He took a moment to sneer internally at those people who had to sweat, and bleed, and die over and over again to get what he had. Just 30 billion isk, a quick transaction, and he was a combat idol. A paragon of deadly effectiveness. He added a little sashay to his stride as he walked to his marauder. A Vargur, bought on contract, with full faction and officer fitting, and a complete set of implants imbuing him with the knowledge that if there were any skills he still had left to learn, he could do it practically instantly. The pilot who had sold him this new body went to great lengths to describe how it had survived for years in nullsec space, racking up kills - but he didn't need anyone else's kills. He had the skills, and the ships, and the implants to destroy anyone he came up against. He wasn't the same hopelessly amateurish hauling monkey the other capsuleers had avoided since he first stepped out of the cloning tank. Losses or no losses, he was a winner.
He walked into the ship and entered his pod. As he sat down his subconscious prepared his ship for the forthcoming battles, gearing his marauder up for a fight his pathetic enemies would never forget. He didn't care about anyone else's feelings; he was an unstoppable podding machine, and the first ship he came across was going to feel the full brunt of his anger, sublimed over his hauling years into a kind of restrained apoplexy that only intensified the symphony of the abilities playing in his head. He registered his undock, and let his body pull his ship out into space. 'Look out capsuleers,' he said out loud, 'vengeance is here.' The feeling of familiarity he experienced then was ignored.
******************
He pulled out of station and set his destination as the nearest pirate system. He accessed the local channel and put a warning out: "Dangerous bitch here - you want trouble? You found it!". He ignored the crowing of the uneducated plebs responding to his message. How pathetic that they, pilots with a mere four years experience, could believe that they knew anything better than this body; a lithe, 7-year-old rattlesnake of a capsuleer. He didn't need their adulation; in time, they'd learn to fear him. But in the meantime... he had some ass-kicking to do. He warped off to the stargate manually and felt the thrill of pure confidence running through his nubile body.
When he finally reached the stargate to the pirate system, he laughed scornfully at Concord's plaintive message coming through over the comms; he KNEW it was a dangerous system, he didn't care if they'd rated it a 0.2 or a -1, he was about to become the biggest fish in a very big pond. He dismissed the message with one casual thought, and jumped through the gate.
He rematerialised on the other side, and set his coordinates to the nearest asteroid field. Twenty pilots registered in the local comms channel - twenty corpses waiting to happen. As he warped off he activated his armor hardeners. The mark of a true expert, he thought, was fitting a ship unpredictably. With his magnetic field stabilisers, his projectile weapons would tear through any ship like a hot knife through butter. He was lucky enough to pick up an invulnerability field, too; it sounded like a deadly addition. His ship wasn't even going to get scratched. 'Insurance,' he snorted, 'Why would I even bother?'
When he arrived at the asteroid field, he saw a sure-fire victim: a tiny rifter sitting by a colony on a hollowed-out rock. His ship cast a monolithic shadow over the tiny hull of the rifter, shielding it from the sun and enveloping it in darkness. He imagined the pilot's face, twisting in fear as his gargantuan ship held theirs in its immense thrall. He narrowed his eyes, and prepared himself for claiming his title as the universe's greatest superbitch.
He started target locking the rifter. He knew it wouldn't be able to get away; he had fit three sensor boosters for just that purpose. As the target locked, he hesitated giving the “fire” command for a moment. 'Let them feel fear,' he thought, 'Let them feel something before I wipe their pathetic clone from the plane of the space-time continuum.'. He finally started his guns, and revelled in the thick, powerful sounds of the artillery raining ammunition down upon his hapless enemy. 'They don't even have a chance,' he thought, 'little frigate thinks he can get away? These guns can even hit BATTLESHIPS at 70 kilometres!'.
The noise of his booming guns had distracted him for a moment from the position of the rifter. It took him a moment to realise that the rifter had moved behind his ship, and was now hovering there without moving. 'Nice try, little rifter,' he said, 'but you can't escape me that easily.' The rifter was evading his deadly attack – likely beginners' luck. Just as he was convinced his victory was imminent, his guns fell silent.
'I've lost my target lock,' he thought, 'I'll lock him again – must be a glitch'. As he attempted to retarget, he realised he was unable to lock anything. He knew there had to be a mistake, there just had to be - then he became aware: the rifter was jamming him. 'Well, no problem, I'll warp out and back in... I'll just let my drones do the work.' he thought, releasing three Tech II heavy drones from his drone bay. His drones popped out of the bay, and resolutely orbited his ship. Attempting frantically to get them to lock on, it took a moment before he remembered he didn't have a target lock.
'I'll just warp out,' he said to himself through gritted teeth. This wasn't how he expected this fight to go, but he could still regroup and return with even greater potency. The ship failed to respond to him. With an increasing sense of panic, he realise he was being warp scrambled. He only had time to swallow in fear and mumble 'Oh, sh-' before a fleet of ships dropped out of warp in front of him and opened fire. He had a fleeting moment of deja vu before everything went dark.
*******************
He woke up in the medical bay of a highsec station. It took him a moment to understand where he was, and how he had got there. Anger surging through him like a booster, he got to his feet. 'Ship must have been defective,' he said to himself, 'I must have been scammed. How could I have such a run of bad luck? When I find that merchant bastard...'
As he went to storm out, a technician approached him.
“Excuse me, er – madam - have you remembered to upgrade your cl-” he started.
“Get away from me! I have very important business to attend to!” Arturo shouted, and swept out of the medical bay in a rage.
The technician returned emotionlessly to the viewscreen at which he had been working, and carried on with his task.
“Hey,” said another technician sitting next to him, “Aren't you offended that she spoke to you like that?”
“Not really,” said the first one blithely, “That's what she did the last eight times.”
