Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Intaki Niteblade]

Hello again. I bring you two more shorts from I. Niteblade, related to my other flash posts linked below. This time featuring a little capsuleer romance! Feedback welcome
My other shorts

--

Docking Permission Requested

Sometimes I think about the woman behind the docking request. It's usually not a woman. Just a voice the computer plays into your ear. In fact, it's usually a man, at least in Hek. This rather grumpy Brutor has the enviable job of managing traffic control and criminal flags at the Boundless Creation Factory during the time I do most of my docking. Has been doing it for years, or so the station crew tells me. They don't like the guy (then again, they are mostly Krusual).

I've never met him. But I don't blame the old brute. I hope they pay him well, at least.

However, there was one time when I met a woman who had the job. She worked for Quafe, or the subcontracted firm Quafe hired to manage their station traffic. Gallente. Small. Azure eyes like Luminaire.

Like an ocean seen from space. Considering my dreams of slipping into the sea, it should come as no surprise that whoever invented this body I currently inhabit did a bang up job on the subtleties. Wait,  I mean,  a trip to the Gallente home system is worth the time (the jumps, I mean. Get it together!) to remind me of why I have those dreams about drowning deep, drawing breath from real gravity. Drifting above like I do now, but more like it used to be back then when it was real.

Before I went immortal. Before I forgot how to die, she taught me how to live like I could die that very day. Like death meant something.

And her voice... I swear she could have been related to that pleasant sounding computer, reminding you that you have just landed a salvo of artillery rounds into someone's hull, and you aren't welcome for 60 seconds. You might not even be welcome until you wake up in a cold clone soup.  Her reflection against the glass is just my collection of brains long gone (but not forgotten!) surging into their new wires. All the memories explode outward from my throat, my new diaphragm reflexing against this disgusting liquid.

Hand on glass and they're gone. It's colder as they drain the tank. She still has that job back in Old Man Star, I remember, but only love enough for mortal men. Docking request accepted.

I. Niteblade

--

Say it Out Loud, Quietly

Yes, you may sit. I will talk a little tonight, again. I will admit, your Amarrian eyes really show through when you are curious... Oh? Excuse me, your exceptional Ni-Kunni eyes then. I didn't know they came in blue...

Perhaps a bit about my loyalties. Just so I can better refresh my own memory as well, the darkness closing in ever so quickly these days, it is sometimes hard to identify a time before recycled air filled my lungs. Speaking of which, a cigarette would be nice.

Inhale. Exhale. Relax a little. Turn the air up, blow this smoke around a bit. It behaves like it should, not like in space. In here it dances like proper groups of molecules should. Out there it just... Expands.

I wasn't born in the Intaki system. My father may have been, I am uncertain, but my mother wasn't.  She was, however, vaguely Intaki; her family had been intermarrying amongst the middling classes of immigrants for generations. Part Gallente, part Intaki, maybe even part Sebiestor. The communities on Old Man Star VI, the place of my birth, are typical of the federation- filled with plenty of people from plenty of places. Plenty of names, and plenty of faces. I remember the different colors of people, a young boy of perhaps 8, as they meshed together going about their day. And thinking how they looked like the many different colors on the rock-face in the low mountains near our town. It made sense to me, the rocks of different colors all working together to form an impressive superstructure.

Yes, I'll have another. No thanks, I have matches.

But my mother looked Intaki. Maybe that's why my father courted her. I don't really know why he chose her, a space man and a planetside girl. I do know she was a good mother, and that's what matters, right?

On the other hand, my father knew, it seems, he wouldn't be around long into my childhood. Named me "Intaki" so everyone would know who had made me. My surname from his particular branch of thieving ex-syndicate thugs.

Back in those days, before capsuleers, one could eek out a living as a small-time raider or weapons runner or drug smuggler. Which one (or few) of these admirable professions my father claimed as his own, I will probably never know. I do know, however, the first time he took me up into space, it was in a stolen ship.

That was also the last time I saw him. He left me at the station in orbit around the first moon of the 8th planet. Coincidently, I haven't enjoyed Quafe since that little "trip." But strangely I wasn't afraid. I didn't cry, and I was barely 9! I remember counting the stars and thinking it would be nice if I could... Only a bit closer and maybe there...

Hand me the ashtray. Can I stop talking now? The wine is almost gone and you're on the clock. I'll dim the lights. Yes, quietly, like usual.

I. Niteblade