This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 2. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms

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Whirling Wheel

Cato, the new recruit lashed out. The spiced wine was cheap and mixed poorly with the synth X she was accustomed to taking. It mixed even more poorly with Sark's uniform. Sark remained unresponsive, perhaps a momentary grimace shot across his visage. It was hard to tell beneath those scars. The wine dripped audibly to the floor.

Perhaps Sark Rex switched the sample for drops, maybe the barkeep switched it for the "other" spirits. Spirits freely given out on Sark's orders. She knew better than to accept any gift from a Minmatar. Even amongst capsuleers the old rivalries remained. Cato had heard rumors of Sark's long past, a martial dictator, one of the first escaped Kameiras. Then again labels could be misleading, like the label clinging to a shard of broken glass on the hexagonal table before her. Cato had just one message from her mistress regarding this delivery - take caution. She remembered the meaning of "gift" in the language of her ancestors. This one would be hard to read, but unlikely to be impervious to her Ni-Kunni charms.

Sark growled from his dark corner.

"Is the trade acceptable?"

"The deal needs sweetening, if you want the added Vitoc that comes with these shipments kept secret from your boys."

The neocom flashed : an extra 50 million Isk deposited into her personal wallet. Trade accepted. 2 billion left the corporate acquisitions wallet, her tablet showed the new inventory.

"Nice doing business with you again Sark, my mistress sends her regards"

Cato left the darkened bar promptly. Nullsec was no place to tarry with valuable cargo, or with pilots such as these. The strong boosters packed safely in a small container would fetch a small fortune for her corporation, if they went unnoticed amongst the Prorator's other cargo. Just a few systems over in a quiet backwater a covert cyno was being lit for a profitable rendezvous.

Sark was waiting.... on the other side of the gate wheeling in his taranis, his goodbyes and alignment at the undock a clever deception.

She realised too late.

"Ransom? I'll make it worth your while." she pleaded for time, for mercy, for fate to intervene.

A crack of light streaks across Cato's vision, thunder roars in her ears. Rarely does a capsuleer sense except by proxy of a capsule anymore, in grim efficiency, some clones no longer even have functioning eyes, though this one direct experience was known and dreaded by all of the immortals. Capsule breached. The heart races, the mind burns before the quick fade to nothing. Eyes unaccustomed to seeing frantically wake once again, naked and writhing in a vat. A fortune made, a fortune lost.


Sark was no stranger to piracy... he was a stranger to mercy.

"Thankyou for the Isk.... no deal" he whispered.

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