Eve Multistory: Part 1

Eve: Chapter 1

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The console screen rolls a loading icon in front of you. The large vid-com file downloads within seconds and compiles to the proper format as you lean in on your elbows. Your computer begins to play the first file, and static temporarily fills the screen. The picture clears, revealing a young woman. Her face is dimly lit, as the only light in the scene seems to be emanating from a console in front of her. You can just begin to trace the faint outlines of a starship's bridge, a plaque hanging along the far wall with the name of the ship: Serenity-7. The file must be partially corrupted; there's intermittent static about three-fourths of the way down, making it difficult to read what you believe to be her nametag, or maybe an insignia of some military or corporation. All you can really tell is that she is exhausted, on board what can only be a Caldari vessel, wrapped almost completely in a thermal blanket beyond part of her traditional blue uniform, with her breath coming out in small white puffs of condensation. She takes a moment to gather her thoughts, then begins to speak to the camera.

"My name is Lieutenant Chaos Vedane of the Caldari Navy."

She pauses, an unsure look in her face, before continuing.

"I guess if you are watching this, you might've somehow found us adrift somewhere. Hopefully not with our corpse laying around in some dark corner of a maintenance shaft."

She laughs, a small unsettled giggle that is misplaced in the darkened space in front of her.

"Anyways, I want to record this. If Berlin and I don't make it out alive."

The lieutenant stops, a long pause that lasts several seconds. It appears that she is having difficulty figuring out what to tell you first about what has happened. Soon enough, though, she has made up her mind.

"I guess I'll start from the beginning with why I am here."

----------- Lieutenant Chaos Vedane ------------

"At 2200 hours, my fleet of five attack cruisers with an accompaniment of three logistical frigates, totaling eight ships in all, jumped through the Vylade Gate in the Dodixie system pursuing a war target by the name of Dorain Locure. Once we reached the other side we were... We were ambushed. Our war target was just a rabbit, bringing us into contact with a fleet of six Gallente ships of varying classes, including one battle cruiser and three assault ships. I was the last to jump in-system."

Chaos shakes her head. In frustration? Confusion? Perhaps both.

"It was a bloodbath. They targeted our frigs and destroyed them utterly. Without them to repair us in battle, we were sitting ducks. The enemy targeted our leading ship. Forgone's ship. I saw it ripped to pieces by railgun fire in seconds, and they began walking the fire back through each ship in our fleet."

"I was scared. Terrified, even. I never saw conflict before. I was only just accepted into the Capsuleer program a month or so ago. The scientists and other veteran Capsuleers tell us in initial training that if our physical clone bodies die, our consciousness and our Aura unit would automatically transfer to the home base in Uitra. But I only just became a Capsuleer, having had my consciousness transfer from my natural-born body to the Biosynthetic Capsuleer clone three weeks ago. I still had the natural human fear like trillions of normal humans stranded across the Eve galaxy."

She sighs. You can tell she was disturbed, and maybe slightly disappointed by what she is about to tell the camera.

"I… Ran. Just aligned to some random location out of the system, and spooled up my warp drive. Before they could get a solid lock on me with their weapons, we went to warp. Unfortunately..."

"Finally," you mutter under your breathe. Chaos is dragging on the explanation a bit beyond your patience.

"Our warp bubble was disrupted after only a few seconds in warp by a space anomaly. As we slowed down to sub light speeds, the ship was practically rubbing her nose with an increasingly unstable wormhole. The electrical and gravitational interference of its decay made it impossible for Serenity to keep up the ship's warp, and we dropped within just a few Kilometers from the hole's event horizon. I commanded the ship to be turned away from the anomaly and it responded by alarming proximity sensors. Two of the enemy cruisers followed me into warp, and were now dropping in only a few klicks behind us."

"I had only two choices: Turn, and try to outrun the Gallente cruisers —"

You visibly flinch, knowing all too well that Gallente ships are well-known and feared for their speed in combat.

"— Or head directly into a place they wouldn't dare follow us into. Well, as you can see..."

She motions around the bridge, emphasizing her survival. She looks down towards her lap, and a sigh of fog escapes her again.

"The hole was too unstable. The moment we entered the event horizon, the entire ship went on the fritz. All of our electrical systems went into overload, and the overload cascaded into the Command Capsule. If it wasn't for my Aura Berlin...."

You vaguely remember that all Capsuleers are paired with an AI unit integrated within the clone's neural pathways. Almost like a symbiotic mental parasite, meant to aid in the advanced computations necessary for a Capsuleer to command a whole ship by himself. Or in this case, herself.

"She disconnected us from the Capsule almost as soon as the cascade reached us. The last thing I saw from the ship sensors was space from the other side of the wormhole, and the wormhole collapsing completely behind our vessel, before we were isolated from the rest of the ship. If it wasn't for her, my brain, and I guess her brain too, would have been completely fried. Dead on reentry. A toasted Capsuleer in a drifting ship on the other side of the universe."

She looks around, again showing uncertainty about recording everything that has happened.

"The Gravitational wave from the collapse threw us around inside the capsule. It felt like a whole Titan-class just drove right past us, and its wake was the Gravity wave. I smacked my head pretty hard and was knocked unconscious."

You notice the slight amount of blood just above her eyebrow, where you can only assume she hit her head enough to be knocked out. Again, she pauses to gather her thoughts. “Uncharacteristic” you think to yourself. You’ve never known her to be such a slow thinker. Well, except when she’s drunk. You smile at yourself, remembering you two having drinks together before she was sent off to become a Capsuleer in your’ hometown... More than once.

The bar fights were legendary.

"I don’t know where we are. I managed, with a lot of help from Berlin when I woke up, to pry open the capsule’s access hatch and make my way to the bridge. Luckily, Berlin managed to isolate some systems when we were running for the hole so we aren’t completely helpless. Unluckily, some of those isolation measures didn’t stand up all the way. The only system that works in any reasonable sense is this science console and some rudimentary communication systems."

She taps several portions of the screen, very slowly you notice, before she brings her arm back underneath the thermal blanket.

"We haven’t been able to communicate with anyone. There aren’t any subspace signals, or any artificial signals at all in this system. Berlin can only guess by the quick classification of the hole we came in through that we are in a C3 system. Which means deep in wormhole space. Unstable wormholes don’t usually open between C3 systems and systems in the inner circle of the galaxy. It’s like a one in a million and a half chance that a C3 would even open 'beneath' the outer rim systems. Yet, here we are. Adrift somewhere far beyond anywhere anyone has explored."

Chaos shivers violently for a second inside the thermal blanket and sneezes in a way that is certainly not characteristic of the tomboy you grew up with in Fountain.

"Berlin is telling me that, unless we can somehow magically create and fit a probe launcher and a whole bunch of probes where our missile launchers are attached, there’s a slim chance if anything that we will be able to find a wormhole in the system, and that’s if we manage to fix the ship in the first place. Life support is, as far as I can tell, only just managing to recycle air at the same rate I am producing CO2. Guess the good news is I won’t wind up suffocating on my own words."

She chuckles before shivering a second time. You know that sarcasm and jokes in a situation like that is only meant to hide the fact that she is truly scared and desperate.

"Berlin and I are gonna come up with a way out of this. One step at a time. And then, I’m going home. I’m going to get home. I have to. My sister is counting on me to get us out of that god forsaken war zone of a solar system."

"I’m coming back, Serenity. I’m coming back to you."

As you hear her farewell before the video finally ends, tears are rolling down your cheeks. “I’ll be waiting for you, Big Sis!”

You cry out in your small quarters, “Come home to me safe!”

The ship suddenly lurches to the side, throwing you off your stool and onto the deck. Alarms begin blaring outside, their volume increasing as your squad mate opens the door. Several dozen other cadets are scrambling outside in the corridor, and another hit on the hull sends a few other women into the opposing bulkhead.

"We have got to go. Now!" Your squad mate scrambles to pick you back up on your feet. You just barely have time to grab the data sleeve with all of your sister's mysterious videos and relic data before she pulls you both into a sea of traditional blue uniforms.

-------------------------- Continued In Chapter 2 -----------------------