Deus ex machinomgpwn

It had all happened so fast.

Among the many phrases running through the man’s head at that moment, that one was prevalent. The pieces of the proud Achnavah V floated slowly around him, named for an old friend in old times. It wasn’t the newest ship, wasn’t the cheapest, but it was the best he could find with the money he had, not counting the added cost of removing the pod interface so he could fly the thing. Hell, he had been flying the barge for months and was still afraid to pull or turn one of the many, many levers that surrounded the chair, not after the last one he tried had tried to eject the pod that wasn’t there and almost vented the atmosphere (and him along with it) into a sudden, chilly death. Figuring that terrifying experience proved some god or devil was watchin out for him, he had signed up for this expedition. The poster next to the bar made it sound glamorous, promising food, bed and very nice pay, completely shut off from the outside world. After the first few months, however, the outside world found them again.

A pang of loss ran through him as the rotation that had been spinning him slightly to the left and forward for the last ten minutes turned his visor towards the pile of scrap metal that used to be his ship. It could be worse, he reflected. The other miner could have not pinged his scanner (his own scanner currently required 6 levers to be held down while turning a knob, and after the first week of carefully holding down those and only those levers with his body while turning the knob with his teeth, he had scrapped the whole complicated business, assuming that the other, more expensive ships and people would spot danger much more efficiently), and the few second of cursing with his spacesuit could have been replaced with him cursing without atmosphere at the hull of the nearby battlecruiser class ship burning through his ship. The random lever he had kicked at with his foot while struggling could have been something other than the engine bulkheads, which would have not stopped the explosion from the engine room that would have killed him if he had not pulled the ejection lever after accidentally kicking the bulkhead lever. Yes, he reasoned, as a salvage beam played over his suit and the pile of metal he used to fly, it could certainly be worse.

He was about to start listing the ways his situation could be better when the beams suddenly stopped trying to determine if the metal just below his left knee was worth anything and vanished without a sound. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a beautiful yellow explosion, which was puzzling. What barges that hadn’t gotten away had been destroyed completely ten minutes ago, leaving him the only survivor in the belt which, just a few scant minutes ago, had been happily mining. Well, as happily as you can pull 3 levers for each strip miner every three minutes and seven others once the cargo hold was full, all of which in the most difficult positions to reach.

He REALLY should have tipped that engineer. In hindsight, the man was smirking at him a bit too much as he had left the station.

Wanting to see more of the yellow light, the pilot cursed as he rotated out of view, being treated instead to the ships who had been picking his barge’s corpse a few seconds ago lighting their engines and hightailing it in the direction of the light.  His frustration at this suddenly winked out with nary a farewell as the section of space in front of him shimmered and coalesced into the ship his friend had purchased before joining him on the expedition, citing a small disclaimer on the poster that being able to operate scanning equipment and detect the fluctuation of this hellhole-pocket of space they were in would result in a nice bonus. The ship had been cheap, it’s systems ranging from anywhere from second to fourth hand, and the scan Equipment worked most of the time. In keeping, the cloaking device that the merchant had assured him was straight from the Caldari navy supply store he had given his friend for his last birthday could only work for three minutes at a time.

The ship was ugly.

He was sure that the designer of the Gallente scanner fitted ship had had a glorious dream of a ship with sleek curves, that would be pleasing to the eye while designed to be invisible. He was similarly sure that somewhere along the line an engineer took the glorious, beautiful design and scrapped it due to a drunken bar bet, replacing the blueprints with those of an item generally seen in the hands of exotic dancers on holoreels.

Regardless of how he felt about the ship in general, as the green glow of a tractor beam guided him into the cargo hold and the ship burned space-rubber out of the , he didn’t give a flip what the damn thing looked like.

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Written suddenly while wiring the new lights for the kitchen. Not based on actual events, though some have been close. Seriously, the way the helios looks is why I cross-trained my main for caldari frigate, the damn thing looks like some sort of vibrator. In my opinion.

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