The Affairs of Insects - Part 1

'It is still unknown where they come from. Their structures appear on deep-space scans without warning. Nobody ever saw a base of the enigmatic Sleepers materialize in space, and nothing is known of the methods they use to move those constructs, which rival small space stations in size, from one wormhole system to the other. Neither does anyone have an explanation why they only emerge in Wormhole-Space and never travel to the known systems of New Eden. There are - of course - many theories, but little to support them, because there is another problem with the Sleepers: They are violently defensive and unresponsive to any attempt at communication. They make no attempts to foray into space, but once they are approached they seem to know only one purpose: To destroy any intruders without hesitation or mercy. They never attack escape pods and capsules, though. It is as if living beings do not register for them. Any ship – however – they will annihilate with the determination of an immune system tackling an infection.'

Such or similar were the observations everyone who ever came across those artificial creations would eventually make. Shisei Kanioota had spent enough time inside wormhole systems to have considered all of the possible theories about Sleepers many times over.

'Maybe they are some sort of immune system?' Shisei idly thought as he monitored the complex reverse engineering processes which broke apart the alien technology of gathered Sleeper wrecks to reassemble it into useful components 'Obviously they are machines built for the single purpose of defense. Possibly they, and the structures they spawn from, are part of something larger? A complex and vast machine collective with a higher awareness that we can not understand. To such a form of non-organic life our ships would only be an irritating infection'

The overlapping panels of the entrance door to the control-centre of the science station smoothly slid apart with a subdued hiss, and Sandrielle entered. She walked past workstations manned by engineers, technical assistants and science specialists who were too occupied with their work to pay much attention to her passage. To Shisei's Caldari-educated mind, the aesthetic indulgence of this Gallente-designed facility seemed frivolous and unnecessary. Sandrielle, however, fit right in with the smooth lines and rounded corners. The embroidered gray and black of her casual clothes and the soft cascade of her long, dark hair complimented the light ambiance of the surroundings.

'The Gallente spend too much time to make themselves and everything they do look good.' Shisei observed inwardly and slightly shook his head at that waste of effort.

'A pleasing workplace will motivate the worker and therefore increase output.' Sandrielle stated as she arrived at Shisei's side. 'A Caldari should understand about increased productivity' she added with a soft smile that underscored her patronizing sarcasm.

Shisei found her apparent ability to read what people thought in their expressions and body-language highly unnerving. He very much valued the privacy of his own mind. 'So do clear lines and lack of diversion' he retorted with forced calm and intently set his sharp features into a blank expression. 'But I assume you have not come to discuss the merits of industrial design with me?' he added.

Sandrielle nodded concededly and waved a hand at the viewport to the to the advanced manufacturing facility outside. 'I came to check on the progress of the engineering efforts' she specified.

Shisei activated a number of holographic readouts on the arching console they were standing at. They showed various complicated components of typically angular Caldari design under construction. An array of robotic arms moved here and there with brisk efficiency. Countless construction nanites, represented as multicoloured flowing strings, were visualized as weaving around and through the objects they were working on. 'Thanks to the extra materials we have collected from Sleeper sites recently, our work is ahead of schedule as you can see.' Sandrielle looked at the glowing holograms with satisfaction. 'We will have enough subsystems to assemble twenty Tengu-class strategic cruisers within this week' Shisei added.

'Fascinating, isn't it?' Sandrielle said musingly 'We hardly understand how those Sleeper drones work, what drives them, or even where they come from, and yet we have found ways to transform certain parts of them into technology of our own.' an unreadable smile appeared on her full lips 'What does that tell us about ourselves?' she asked rhetorically 'We are like the organisms which break down dead bodies into sustenance for themselves. Such insects and bacteria have no understanding of the corpses they decompose, just as we have no understanding of the Sleepers we salvage to build our most advanced instruments of warfare'

'It has crossed my mind' Shisei said dryly.

'Neither do they seem to care about us. They travel with their bases by means we cannot fathom, from one wormhole system to the next, for reasons only they know, and only seek to annihilate us when we interfere with their unknown affairs' Sandrielle continued her musing.

'Sometimes I wonder whether they know what their reasons are.' Shisei joined in with her 'They seem to have no mind of their own. Just the necessary intelligence to act as a defense-mechanism for the structures that spawn them. Some have speculated that the Sleepers are leftovers from a lost civilization. I keep doubting that. Maybe there never was a civilization. Maybe it is like you say, and the Sleepers are just a small part of something much bigger that we can not see or encompass with our mind. A form of machine-life spread across regions of space we can not access, map or travel.'

Sandrielle marked how verbose the usually laconic Achura scientist suddenly was. 'That is a subject he has much interest in and little opportunity to share' she made a mental note for later reference.

'Well, so far nobody managed to find out' Sandrielle shrugged '… and the Sleepers themselves are not telling either.' she added with an amused smile. 'One thing we do know: Those Tengu cruisers will get us the one thing we can not find in here, the isotopes refined from ice belts outside of Wormhole-Space.'

'I honestly hope that your choice of a business partner for this venture is not one we will regret' Shisei said with a look of concern in his narrow, slanted eyes.

Sandrielle nodded reassuringly 'The capsuleer Alliances of the outer regions are preparing for war. Each one of them will look for any edge they can gain above others, and they have collected such riches that money is not an issue for them.' She gestured at the holographic displays. 'That is where we come in. Nobody except wormhole explorers has access to the materials and technology for Strategic Cruiser construction.' again she smiled 'Of course we could sell them on the markets of Empire-Space, but this way we cut out the middle men and trade directly with the end-users'

Shisei grimaced slightly. Like many Gallente, Sandrielle had a tendency to state obvious facts as if everyone else was too stupid to grasp them. 'I am aware of the economic benefits' Shisei said and did not attempt to mask his annoyance at her condescending lecture. 'I am questioning whether it is a good idea to trade with those lawless warlords. They know no honour, ethics or moral code.'

'Now you are the one who assumes to tell me something as if I didn't know' Sandrielle replied. She waved his concerns away 'I know how to deal with those people, don't forget that I used to be one of them' she said as she turned to leave.

The Affairs of Insects - Part 2

Their small fleet was assembled at an exit Alira had found after long and tedious scanning efforts throughout a number of wormhole systems. As often, luck had played as much a role as skill. The lucky part was, that the isolated pockets of space connected by a chain of wormholes were largely unoccupied. In one of the wormholes they had encountered a small mining outpost, but the occupants were quickly 'convinced' that their best option would be to let them pass: Keram had gleefully disabled one of their mining vessels and Cedrien took the conciliatory role, offering them a truce. They had arranged for a meeting with the other party of their deal, and eventually their convoy, consisting of five capsuleer-piloted combat ships and two transport vessels with standard crew, had arrived at this portal to a nameless system in Paragon Soul, one of the fringe regions settled by capsuleer alliances.

'Alira, Keram, you take point and cloak immediately.' Cedrien ordered 'Sandrielle and me will take the transports out. Shisei, you'll be rear-guard. Position yourself behind the wormhole and also stay cloaked until told otherwise.

The other pilots confirmed, and soon after they had taken their assigned positions in the void outside the pulsating wormhole 'Transports, hold at the jump perimeter. If things go wrong, I want you to head back inside immediately. You understand?' Cedrien commanded.

'Affirmative commander' came the reply from the transport wing.

Of the fighting ships, only Cedrien and Sandrielle with their Proteus-class strategic cruisers were actually visible, flanking the two bulky Caldari transports. The light of the system's blue giant bathed them in cold radiance.

'Immediate scan is clear' Alira announced from her forward position. 'Where are they?' she wondered impatiently.

As if on cue, a small frigate appeared on scan and emerged from warp several scores of kilometers off Alira's bow moments later. An energy vortex like an open wound appeared in space, bleeding strands of luminous blue from a centre of angry red and ardent yellow.

'A cyno field!' Keram exclaimed.

A ripple went through the fluctuating locus of space-bending forces and a group of six large Amarr battleships stabbed into the emptiness around them, each at one corner of a rapidly expanding hexagon. The Amarrian hulls were not of the usual Imperial gold, but coloured metallic-green like the chitinous shells of beetles, streaked with the sharp-edged slices of crimson curves. Another, stronger, burst of energy sent blue lightning from the cynosural field and the vast, tapered discus-shapes of two Gallente-designed motherships were expelled into positions at the top and bottom of the hexagonal formation, dwarfing the now stationary Amarr vessels. The crackling opening in the stellar tapestry before them heaved one last time before it dissipated. Then, the light of the sun was blotted out by a massive dome-shape fringed with spikes the size of towers. It's ventral surface was structured like an immense ritual mask, frozen in a soundless scream, trailing a floating city-state behind it. The hovering giant now occupied a position behind the centre of the other ships' positions. It shared the same green-and-red colour-scheme with it's companions. The sheer mass of the assembled fleet lit up their sensory feeds as if they had just warped too close to a small moon.

'I'll be damned … yet again.' Keram commented breathlessly 'An Avatar Titan! I have not seen one of those since Empress Jamyl's coronation ceremony'

'Those guys sure know how to make an entrance' Cedrien observed with barely contained awe in his voice. 'It takes the resources of a small nation to assemble a fleet like this.'

'The Crimson Covenant is a small nation' Sandrielle informed them dryly.

Alira's voice reflected disbelief as she chimed in 'What do those guys need Tengu cruisers for when they have ships with such firepower?'

'Not all engagements out here are fought with massive supercapital ships and battleships like these' Sandrielle explained 'There are infiltrations, commando raids, and of course all kinds of support roles for smaller ships in fleet battles' she added while fighter craft were released from the two Gallente supercarriers, swirling around them like a host of angry mechanoid bees.

'I hope you really know what you have gotten us into here, Sandrielle' Shisei said with concern apparent from the tone of his voice 'There is no way I can jam that many targets if they decide to turn on us. Not to mention that the gravitational distortion from the supercapital's mass renders my ECM completely useless against those ships'

'Gaiden Manufacturing Corporation, who speaks for you?' a deep, rasping male voice demanded to know on the previously agreed communications frequency.

'This is Tifainne Musellindis of Gaiden Manufacturing' Sandrielle responded with her false identity. Keram had previously lifted a number of discontinued capsuleer records fitting their profile from a backup cache of the CONCORD registry, and Alira had hacked their nav-beacons so their ships would transmit the appropriate codes. If the other party didn't undertake an in-depth background check the ruse would work. 'Am I speaking to Shadowhunter of the Crimson Covenant?'

Keram scoffed on their encrypted internal channel. 'And I thought we had pretentious names back in the pirate fleets' despite his attempt at sarcasm, Keram's voice had the brittle quality of fear in it while their small fleet sat there in the shadow of what they were facing.

'The same' answered the commander of the Covenant fleet. 'We are registering the IDs of three more of your pilots on our scanners. Where are they?' The tone of Shadowhunter's voice made it clear that he would not accept any evasive answers.

'We deployed them throughout the system to watch out for any surprises.' Sandrielle lied. She carefully inflected her voice to engender immediate trust and convey credibility. The overconfident arrogance of the powerful Crimson Covenant commander would make him prone to underestimate a small band of industrialists.

At least that was what Sandrielle hoped to achieve.

The Affairs of Insects - Part 3

Alira willed her body to stay perfectly still inside her pod. Only a slight deviation from her current position would bring her ship dangerously close to the orbits of the fighter craft circling their transports. The proximity of another mass would cause her ship to decloak, and if she were exposed at this moment, their deception would likely provoke attack.

'Allright, here is how we are going to do this' Sandrielle transmitted to the Crimson Covenant fleet. She seemed unaffected by the staggering display of force arrayed before them, nor did she appear to be nervous about the precarious gambit they were attempting here. Her voice remained calm and composed. 'Our transports are going to release the cargo we have agreed upon. They will hold the containers with tractor beams and you can scan them to confirm the contents. Once you are satisfied you will transfer the agreed amount of ISK to the Garoun Investment Bank account we have provided.' she paused to await any reaction, but none came 'You can then reel in the containers with your own tractor beams. We will release them once we have confirmed the transfer of funds.'

A period of tense silence followed. If they disagreed now, the whole plan could possibly be foiled. Then: ' We agree to those terms' came the reply after a time all of them had spent nervously reviewing their ships' systems and the possible options for the worst case.

'Transport wing, release the cargo' Cedrien ordered on their fleet frequency.

Moments later, the cargo containers were floating in space, held by mass-displacing force beams emitting from both of their transport ships. Two battleships of the Covenant fleet slowly crept closer and stopped at the range of their own tractor beams. The small fighter craft launched by the two motherships were speeding around the position vigilantly. Alira mentally went through the steps she had to take on the pre-arranged signal. She prepared both her ship and her crew.

'We have transfered the ISK, release the cargo' The Covenant commander demanded.

'Affirmative' Sandrielle replied 'That concludes our deal'

A mere second after her words were transmitted, two lumpy covert-ops frigates decloaked left and right of the Covenant fleet and tore open new rents in the space-time fabric.

'Transport wing, jump back now! Shisei, jam the closest two battleships. Keram launch bombs at them. Alira I want webs on all fighter craft you can target. Everyone fall back! Go go go!' Cedrien sent a burst of orders via their fleet channel.

Everything happened really fast from that moment on. Small destroyer-class vessels screamed out of the cynosural fields on both sides and launched warp disruption charges. On detonation they expanded into wobbling spheres of disruptive energy, designed to capture the massive Covenant ships and hold them in place.

Alira urged her ship to shed it's cloak and reached out to ensnare the closest fighters scrambling to engage the newly-appeared interdictor crafts which were clearly from another faction. Their hulls were gleaming in dark blue under the light of the local star, stylized gray spiral patterns stood out in the icy glow.

She saw Keram sending his devastating bombs at the closest battleship which was unable to respond due to the sensor overload emitted by Shisei's Falcon. Alira turned her ship toward the wormhole. Keram's brittle-looking Manticore bomber was then already well ahead of her on it's way back. An opponent had cast a stasis web to hold him, but he had engaged his microwarpdrive to overcome the forces slowing down his ship.

Alira felt slight pricks of pain from light close-range fire – the fighers were engaging her. A subtle tug at the edge of her senses told her that her warpdrive was incapacitated, not that it mattered with the escape through the wormhole being that close. Coils of immobilizing tension wrapped themselves around her ship too now. A quick mental command later, she felt her speed surge again as she activated her own microwarpdrive. She pushed the engines beyond their limits by psychic exertion.
Then Alira registered the blinding, burning sensation of heavy pulse lasers tearing at her shields. Subtly twisting her hands at the wrists, she swiveled her artillery cannons around. She put all her mental strength behind the barrage against the closest battleship, which had already sustained heavy damage from Keram's hit. The heat monitors of her guns screamed alarm at her senses, but she ignored that for now. She was exceeding the capacity of the weapons as she continued firing on her way to the wormhole. Finally that ship came apart in a burst of vented gases and the explosion of it's breached reactors.

Alira then saw the two newly-opened cynosural fields blossom and disgorge more ships onto the scene amid a storm of incandescent laserbeams, explosions and streaks of energized charges. An Archon-class Amarr carrier, the rounded hulks of Gallente dreadnaughts which brought their heavy guns to bear and, finally, something obscured what remained of the star-spangled backdrop to this devastation: Two emerald masses of sanity-defying immensity. The last thing she saw were beams of crackling darkness which seemed to devour space itself as they lanced toward the Avatar Titan. Then the wormhole embraced her and she landed in a world of sudden serenity.

***

'Well, we all got back in one piece … extensive repairs notwithstanding' Sandrielle told the holographic representation of a scarred Intaki visage. 'How did you fare?'

The man talking via fluid-router link jerked his head dismissively. 'We hardly had any losses. Sure they took our interdictors and the cyno-frigs, but that was to be expected. We downed their Avatar and the two Nyxes, not to mention the support ships. Got the subsystems for the twenty Tengus you promised too.' He shrugged and smiled lightly 'They did a bit of damage to one of our dreadnaughts, and we had to do some repairs on the armour of one Erebus Titan, but all in all it was a good day for Rasenzoku. We are of course very thankful for your contribution. Apart from a small token of our appreciation, we will arrange for a rendezvous with our freighter full of Ice Isotopes as soon as you can make it out again.

Keram looked at the rapidly trebling balance of their corporate account 'Looks like it has been a good day for Awakened Industries too' he pointed out with a greedy sparkle in his eyes.

'You always had the best ideas for traps Sandrielle' The Intaki said and nodded approvingly 'Are you sure you want to stay with those wormhole lightweights?'

Sandrielle breathed in and sighed languidly 'I very much think so Koi-Tang. I sort-of like to deal with the affairs of insects decomposing corpses' she replied and shot a conspiratorial glance at Shisei.