RSI, with elements from our new/old alliance, Moose Alliance, have been running incursion fleets the past couple of weeks. We are using an interesting fleet concept: the Dominix incursion fleet. Basically, we are using an all Dominix, spider tank setup, with cap stable Dominixes releasing a swarm of Garde sentry drones and assigning them to the FC, who runs a triple TP/triple web Huginn. With offsite booster, the fleet runs wonderfully and completely without requirement for much stress, or the running of uber-expensive faction battleship fits. This new Gallente-centric EVE is great!
Times are tough for my former fleet mates and allies the Brave Newbies. Their leadership has both shown itself lacking in the leadership department, and has displayed a disturbing propensity for jumping ship when the going gets tough. And now here they are, jammed in the EVE equivalent of south east Asia, and caught in the EVE equivalent of a land war, being hounded and pounded by every major PvP group in the game. There has got to be a limit on their interest in continuing in this sort of a grind fest. Brave leadership needs to Step Up, and they need to step up now.
The pure raw potential of a group like Brave though is staggering. Imagine what they could be once they get a bit more experience and training under their belt. Imagine the power projection of 15,000 crazy (former) Brave Bewbs, born in the fires of Catch and loosed upon an unsuspecting EVE galaxy. I think Goonswarm is aware of this, and I think that is a big part of their decision to suddenly open up the gates, with help from Brave's former spymaster, Porkbutte, and form a Goons version of the Brave Newbs - Karmafleet. For the sake of all that is holy newbros, please, please do not join Goons. What BN should be and could be is a group based on the good fight, good times, friendly environment attitude that I have seen within your great alliance, that could actually some day completely supplant the cancer and poison that is Goons in EVE. I urge you - stay the course. If needed, get out of Catch, move somewhere a little less volatile, but continue in your course, to glory. Be aware that TheMittani does not admire you or value you in any way, save that you serve his purposes, which are to continue Goon domination of this game. Joining him might seem like a good idea right now but where does it lead? I have been down that road before. I know where it leads. Don't be fooled by it as we were. Fatal Ascension gave up its heart and soul to be the kicking boy of Goons, and there they stand, a mockery of what was once a really good team. I flew with Brave Newbies back in the days when they were considered to be little more than a curiosity, an oddly risk accepting group of PvPers in Talwars down in Rahadalon. Back then, the elitists would make a raid on Rahad a part of their Saturday afternoon EVE content, and go home chuckling about the plucky newbies in lowsec. But I began to see what you could become, and I greatly enjoyed flying with you. I enjoyed your joy of life and joy of EVE, and I enjoyed the fact that you were honestly a happy go lucky gang of friendly, fun EVE pilots. Well those same elitists are now sitting up and taking notice of you, Brave. They are no longer chuckling. In all of their history, it is unprecedented for Goonswarm to recruit as they are right now for Karmafleet. This should tell you that you are being taken very seriously indeed. Some of your leaders have made their deals with the devil. So now you have a choice - to go over to Goonswarm and live a slave, or fly free and someday help free EVE from the dominion of the Goon. The choice is yours. Nasty pirates messing up all your grand plans for market domination? Has production taken a serious hit lately due to marauding swarms of asshats blowing up your retrievers just as you were getting down to some comfy, casual mining? Have you given up on the Hulk? Well, hang in there friends. I am about to inform you of what you need to do to Beat the Gank! Oh, yes you can!
First things first: do you have a way to set a corporation red or orange? Standings, right? Yes, you really will want to set known ganker groups in your area red or orange. Do it right now. Then, if you see a local spike of red or orange pilots, what now? I know! Warp off and go mine somewhere else or do something else for a while! Best defense is avoidance. Don't be that guy who sat there mining afk and got podded to boot. Just don't. Secondly, I am seeing a lot of failfit mining barges out there and basically, to quote Yoda, "That is why you fail." Don't be so greedy my little minions! Fit those barges a little harder and you will survive to make a lot more isk in the long run, and enjoy the satisfaction of pirate tears for a change (at least some of the time.) How can we do this, you ask? This must be deep magic or indeed, veritable rocket science that Miz Annika is about to drop on us? Well, not really. OK, have you ever been ganked? What was the pirate's ship du choix? Hmm... I guess it was a CATALYST. Typically it is. What kind of damage does a Catalyst do? Kinetic, and thermal. Yes folks, they are running cheap blasters and faction ammo. You heard it here first. So what do we need to tank against? You guessed it my only slightly thick Welsh mining types! Kinetic and thermal! So what is the difference? Well, the difference between life and death depending on the size of the ganking squad. If you are properly tanked, you will require that they bring more people at the same time to the field, and that should cause you to notice the above mentioned red or orange spike more readily. it also may cause them to fail as the larger a group is the more likely it becomes that someone screws up. These things are all in your favor. Here are some example fits: [Hulk, Antigank] Damage Control II Mining Laser Upgrade II Domination Small Shield Booster Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II Small Shield Extender II Modulated Strip Miner II Modulated Strip Miner II Modulated Strip Miner II Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I Medium Core Defense Field Extender I [Mackinaw, Antigank] Ice Harvester Upgrade II Internal Force Field Array I Frigoris Restrained Ice Harvester Upgrade Small Shield Booster II Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II Upgraded Thermic Dissipation Amplifier I Small F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction Ice Harvester II Ice Harvester II Medium Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I OK, so you want to mine using an Orca? Great! An Orca not only boosts your mining yields and laser ranges. It can be a mobile logistics platform, and an anchor. What is an anchor you say? Well, have any of you mining types ever PvP'd? (Low murmurs of discontent, awkward looks.) OK, I guess not. How about tried Incursions? (A few sharp darting looks, one or two brighten up a bit.) Ah, some have tried incursions! Do you recall logistics in the Incursion fleet? Instead of flying off in random directions, logistics in incursions all orbit an anchor, and so as the anchor moves, all the ships move. How can we apply this to mining? 1. Orca is the anchor. Have all barges orbit the Orca. 2. Have the Orca rigged with a large remote shield boost, and lock all the barges orbiting the Orca. 3. Add all barges orbiting the Orca to the Orca's watch list. 4. And have an XL Ancillary Shield Booster fitted to the Orca in case they attempt an Orca hit. 5. Profit. Why is this better you ask? Because a ship in motion will take less damage than a stationary ship. As the barges orbit the Orca, they make themselves much more difficult targets. The remote repper on the Orca can then send shield reps to whatever barge they primary. Remember - you only have to last long enough for Concord to drop their donuts, clamber their fat asses into their Police cruisers, and show up. Make sure you have enough tank to last that long against most setups. Be aware though, that if you attempt to repair your allied Hulk, the Orca will then receive a global suspect flag according to the new game mechanics. So using it as a logistics platform is a serious risk. Why has CCP chosen to do this, knowing that the barge is ridiculously weak and that the advantage is always on the side of the ganker? Well, the answer is simple: they hate you. Mining is basically a high reward low risk activity in empire, and so CCP have added risk by allowing cheaply fit catalyst destroyers to suicide destroy you when you mine. They likely feel this is fair; and they might have something of a point. I feel the risk/reward ratio is far too skewed in favor of the ganker, personally. And that the Orca, if it attempts to remote repair the Hulk or other mining barge in this instance, gets a global suspect tag which likely would lead to the loss of the Orca, infuriates me. They put you out there with your pants down and you are not allowed to do anything smart to even slightly cover your ass. How to address this? I don't know. I guess what you would have to do is encourage everyone to gank all the time. Bring mining to a complete halt in empire, and crash the economy. Experience shows that CCP only responds when there are dire consequences if they don't. Granted, if they bring a huge fleet you are going to die. Welcome to EVE. But if there are only three or four of them? Fool you once, shame on them, kill you every time because you are an ignorant miner? Shame on you. Recently the former member of RSI and blogger, and my good friend Marcus Dreddlin, entered the Pod and Planet EVE Fan Fiction contest with his two stories, "The Icy Dancer" and "The Price of Learning." He was up against some serious competition, including entries by Kirith Kodachi and former winner of the contest, Sugar Kyle. He and all of us here at RSI were very floored and quite proud to see that Marcus' story "The Price of Learning" has won the second prize in the 6000 Suns of New Eden category! Before we at RSI retired to the officer's lounge aboard Marcus' carrier, "Pandora", stashed somewhere deep in lowsec, for a well-earned few bottles of champagne by way of celebration, I caught up with Marcus sitting in his captain's quarters with a big goofy grin on his face. "I feel honored to have placed second, especially considering the quality of the authors I was up against," Marcus said. "I'd like to thank Telegram Sam and the rest of the judges, sponsors, and organizers. As well congratulations to the other winners, and thanks to all of the entrants, very interesting stories about this weird and wonderful galaxy we have gotten ourselves so caught up in, EVE online. See you again next year hopefully!"
Excellent walk through of CCP's new and interesting exploration content, definitely worth a look. Some people put a lot of time and effort into their characters' appearances in EVE. And sometimes, they achieve something that is really quite good. Although EVE toons are really just animation, sometimes they come out quite attractive, even what some people might term, "hot." Some have focused on crafting enigmatic and attractive faces for their characters. Others seem to also focus on certain (ahem) bountiful feminine assets. Some of these implants are clearly not just neural! This likely represents the generally repressed male hormones of the non-alpha males who are typically designing these female characters. Well, a geek can dream can't he? That's what EVE is all about! And honestly, kudos to CCP on their character creation system. I have never seen a better one. So without further ado, here are some well designed EVE characters - to all here shown, well done! Brave Bewbies and all! The oddly shaped tritanium hatch shifted minutely, and then slowly opened with a hiss of what might have once been breathable gas, and a low groaning rumble of protest. Considering the hatch had not been opened in somewhere around ten thousand years, Vica LaRousseau was impressed with the engineering. She was tall and shapely, with bright red hair, pale skin and long legs that were the legacy of her mother, and the keen brain and blue eyes she had inherited from her half-Caldari father. She had given up her life as a planet-borne nanotechnologist long ago, along with her mortality. She sometimes wondered if her family were still alive.
The point Dustie jumped through the hatch, his weapon with its laser targeting beam probing the darkness beyond, leaping in before the hatch had time to fully cycle open. Around Vica, the rest of her merc squad stood alert and tense, with the same barely restrained violence instantly at the ready that she always saw in her hunter Hounds back home on Corufeu. Ready and eager if given any opportunity. They were loyal to her, and a small comfort in a universe full of terrors. Vica stepped through the hatch as it opened fully, scanning with her specially modified datapad. Illegally acquired and assembled semi-sentient drone processor systems, with biotechnology (without doubt formerly human) sensor systems, being caught with this datapad would get you instantly jailed for a very long time back in Gallente space, but here in Wormhole space, they were an absolute necessity, all ethical concerns aside. Knowing that her datapad had on the one hand once been part of a murderous sentient rogue drone, and on the other hand likely contained parts of some poor individual’s vivisected brain and nervous system, did not improve her mood, but Vica was a pragmatist, even though she knew in her heart that her situation often forced her to make compromises that once would have made her shudder with revulsion. The scanner system was excellent, however it had been built and acquired, and her low light display lit up with tantalizing data as she and her squad of Dusties proceeded down a dark corridor that had not known the footfall of humankind in an aeon. Killing the drones that had guarded this place had been a serious challenge. The weapons systems that the Ancients had possessed far outstripped the best advances of New Eden’s science, Vica knew. And she realized, as did most other pod pilots, that if the Sleepers ever awoke, if their drones were to be guided by sentient strategy instead of sub-sentient automatic defense routines, sites like this one would become all but inaccessible. Her fleet waited outside, floating silently in the void. Some of them would be salvaging the Sleeper wrecks, she knew, looking for useful ancient parts and components. But the real work, she would carry out, here within this ancient tomb of a station. It had taken years to develop the skills necessary to slice into Sleeper stations without activating the local automatic defense systems, and years more of searching to find a Sleeper base that just might contain something… special. And this site was very, very special. The configuration of the Sleeper station was unlike anything she had seen before. Elements of what might have been Talocan engineering were evident in its construction. The Sleeper drone contingent guarding it had been large and very well equipped. She had lost two ships. This had better be worth it. She felt a chill of excitement run down her spine and rest in her gut. This was it. It had to be. Ahead the point Dustie had stopped, staring into a cavernous room at the very center of the station. Vica’s scanners went wild – near data overload. Vica hastily shunted storage over to her own cerebral interface, rapidly saving the data in unused genetic storage within her brain for analysis later. The wireless interface could barely handle the data flow. At the very center of the room, an odd triangular shaped plinth stood about ten meters high, with a curved spiral walkway built into its sides and leading upwards to a small platform at the top. Suspended there, seemingly in mid-air, was what could only be described as a glowing, blue, bubble. The glow was faint, almost like the bioluminescent glow worms of the oceans of her native Corufeu, at once beautiful and ethereal, almost unnatural. Vica’s breath caught in her throat, and her heart began to pound a staccato rhythm. She had found it. She had found it! Slowly, the tall red haired scientist climbed the spiral walkway, until she stood, her scanner fairly screaming, within arm’s reach of what the Sleepers had spent a thousand years to achieve. The computer in her datapad had the evidence – it was the Sleepers’ penultimate achievement, the substance they had referred to as the Essence – the ultimate form of nanotechnology ever developed by the hand of man. Her Dusties had arrayed themselves around the base of the plinth, backs to her, alertly scanning the semi-darkness of the gigantic room for any potential threats. Vica removed a specially designed container from the tool pouch at her waist. Packaged, the container was only a few centimeters long and wide, and wafer thin. Expanded, it grew large enough that Vica could have fit two of her Dusties inside. The material was nano-diamond, painstakingly grown and adapted with a biological process. Harder than steel and more durable, despite its extremely light weight, and near impermeable, the container was the perfect tool to transport the ancient wonder that she had just discovered. Vica attached a small anti-grav device to the base of the container, and then carefully placed it beneath the floating blue bubble, which pulsed and coalesced with faint blue light, bulging with the ancient Sleeper nanites within. Slowly, she raised the container until it surrounded most of the bubble, and then raised it just a bit higher, ready to close the top tightly around her prize… The darkness of the room was suddenly lit up with a harsh, fiery orange light, as an impossibly loud klaxon began to wail. From the ceiling, turrets began to descend from the hatches where they had been hidden thousands of years before. With a scream, one of her Dusties disappeared in a mist of catalyzed blood and tissue as one of the turrets locked on to his body and fired. Chaos reigned as laser and plasma fire began to shred everything in the room. Her remaining Dusties scrambled to find cover behind some of the ancient equipment that was strewn about at the base of the plinth. Vica hit the deck, inadvertently bumping her now mostly expanded container. The side of the container struck the bubble floating over her head, knocking about a milliliter of the material out and away from the nanite cluster. It formed into a small, perfectly round drop, and unbeknownst to Vica, landed with the minutest of splashes right in the small of her back. Plasma fire scorched the side of the plinth, and Vica rolled off the side of the platform, preparing herself for the impact with the spiral walkway, three meters below. She struck the hard surface with a clang and a very unladylike grunt, and rolled again, tensing for the impact as she fell another three meters to the next stage of the walkway below. This time her roll was awkward, and she badly sprained her shoulder as she hit the unyielding surface. Vica yelped with pain. But now she was very close to the base of the plinth, and the turrets had not yet tracked her position. Below, two more of her Dusties were disintegrated by the withering fire of the security turrets. Her point man saw her hanging from the side of the plinth, and made a dash for the base of the spiral ramp. One of the turrets almost hit him, but he made it to the relative shelter of the base of the plinth, and dashed up to her side, barely pausing before grabbing her unceremoniously and slinging her over his shoulder. He leapt from the platform, repulsors in his armored boots absorbing most of the shock of the three meter fall, and ran with all the might of his muscled legs and the reinforcement of his cybernetic armor, heading for the large door leading back the way they had come. Only after they had slid at full speed beneath the rapidly closing blast door did Vica realize that had they tarried just a few moments longer, they would have been trapped inside, like the rest of her Dustie squad, the last of whom was at that moment being immolated by the turret fire. “The nanotech!” She screamed, as the blast doors closed with a resolute clang. “No time,” the Dustie yelled, yanking her to her feet. “Run!” *** With her Dustie pushing her ahead of him, she had just barely made it back to the boarding shuttle. Just as he had shoved her through the doors, some turret fire had finally found him, and he had disappeared in a bright red haze with hardly a grunt. Fortunately, the cybernetic relays had worked, and shortly her Dusties were born again in new freshly cloned bodies, mostly none the worse for wear. But Vica had sat at the rear viewport of her boarding shuttle and wept silently as the Sleeper station self-destructed behind them. When she stripped off her boarding party armor, she did not notice that the molecular structure of the armor, at the part covering the base of her spine, had been slightly disrupted. She walked naked from her armory into the pod chamber, rubbing and rotating her sprained shoulder, and settled into the dark comfort of the pod interface. Vica closed her eyes as the pod goo flooded over her. The neural interfaces attached, a flood of painkillers entered her system, and all at once, she was again Home, in comfort, at one with her ship. The blackened space of the void stretched out all around her, impossibly far into the distance. Far off, the wormhole system’s star burned sullenly. To be so close! And to fail! Her heart brimmed with grief and frustrated rage. So the Sleepers had seen fit to place redundant security systems around their prize. The next time, she would have to be more cautious. She berated herself for her overeagerness. Had she been more cautious, perhaps… But all this was immaterial. The past was done. She could only move forward. Unknown to Vica, deep within her body, ancient nanites spread and multiplied. One by one they clustered at her nerve endings, and thousands more flooded into her brain, swarming around her cybernetic implants. Some invaded her digestive tract, consuming molecules from her body’s waste and converting them, restructuring them, into still more Sleeper nanites. In the space of the few hours it took her to fly back to Empire space with her fleet, her body had become host to millions of tiny machines, all working in unison. Then the dreams came. The dreams of the Ancients. Long lost memories of far off systems no human had seen in ten thousand years. Ships floating in the darkness between galaxies. Crystalline shrieks as horrors were perpetrated against the sons and daughters of Taloc, atrocities committed in the name of science and of survival. Swarms upon swarms of drones, let loose upon an unsuspecting galaxy by a people who, in the quest to regain their humanity, had forever irretrievably lost it. As Vica had now lost hers. My Mattcave is nearing completion, we had a major renovation over the past couple of months due to a minor basement flood. So here it is: an EVE Online command center (and my home office.)
(Author's Note: I like to write, and have recently heard about an EVE Online fan content contest that is running on PodandPlanet. So, without further ado, here is my submission: the Salvager and the Dancer.)
THE SALVAGER AND THE DANCER "Docking request accepted; your ship will be towed into the station." Another run... It had been a long month. But Arcturus had made it back to his home base, safe and sound, once again. High sec piracy was getting worse, much worse, he realized. Concord was about as useless as a screen door on an airlock. But Arcturus was careful. He'd managed to deliver his precious cargo, and complete the mission. As always he shook his head at the thought of working for the Khanid. Gallente working for Amarrians were few and far between; once, he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams running missions for the Khanid Navy. But here he was, far from home, and now likely to be never again able to return home. The path had been long, and the decisions he had made were in the past, beyond changing now. There was nothing to be done but to go forward. The docking bay stank of ozone and leaking plasma coolant, as always. There, in containers piled high throughout the deck, were the fruits of his long labors - stacks of salvaged components and ship equipment, in and on the crates, and spilling out onto the oil-stained steel and tritanium deck. Arcturus wasn't even sure what all exactly he had. Sometimes even he was surprised by what he found, stashed away, parts he had pulled from some deadspace wreck and stashed away, and then forgotten, even if he had noticed what they were at the time he found them. Running tractor beams and salvage rigs had become almost second nature to him; he could salvage a wreck without even taking his eyes from the tactical display, a skill that had allowed him to survive when others he had known had died many times. Some could handle the consciousness transfer; others had left the life of a pod pilot. Some had decided they could not go on, and had allowed themselves to drift off into the ether, surrendering immortality in favor of the peace of the Void. As always, after detaching his body from the pod, he walked through the piles of stuff, a datapad in hand, deciding what to keep and what to sell. And as always, he stopped by the cryogenic chambers. There were a lot of them, every one discovered in the wreck of some ship or destroyed habitation module, encountered by chance or after some long grind of a strike mission. So many faces, partially obscured by the frost that crept inexorably across their viewing screens, the unknown in cryosleep, likely never to wake. Janitors, freed slaves, militants, commandos who had been en route to a battlefield they now would never reach... So many collected, and stacked in his cargo bay, collecting dust. He was no slaver - that far was his line, and he would not cross it. He had learned long years before of the dangers of opening these pods. For one thing, some of the pods might be slightly damaged. Repairs required highly specialized training, skills which Arcuturus lacked. And he lacked the resources to hire someone. He would not recklessly try and open the pods, only to kill the unsuspecting sleeper within. And as well, you never knew just exactly who somebody in a cryo-pod might be. One of the freed slaves he had let out, so many years ago in Parses, had immediately done their very best to slit his throat. The slave had nearly managed it, too; and since then Arcuturus always, without exception, wore a small handheld blaster on his hip, no matter where he was or what he was doing. He had beaten that one's brains out with a hydrospanner, while desperately trying to keep the tip of the slave’s blade from slicing into his neck. For Arcturus, one bad experience was enough. And yet he could not, would not bring himself to simply terminate them. And so they waited, in suspended animation, lined up in their dusty cryo pods, so many pale faces within a dreamless sleep, unknowing where they were and what had happened to them. Sometimes, Arcturus wondered if they had families, who either thought they were dead or wondered what had become of them. Did they have fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, children? There was no way to know, and advertising their existence would do nothing but blow his cover with the Khanid Navy, something he wasn't prepared to do. And so they remained. But still he tortured himself with them; he could not stop himself. He could not prevent himself from walking down the corridor, on either side of which the containers were piled, as he always did. He could not prevent himself from finding that one chamber, and looking in once more, at that face. Her face. He remembered the cargo container, expelled from a destroyed pleasure hub, how long ago? Years? A decade? He couldn't remember how long it had been. He remembered the humming of the engines, the whine of the salvagers. The container had been marked "Exotic Dancers." He had since surmised that it must have been an as yet unopened shipment of dancer slaves, selected for their grace and beauty from the slave pens, to be used in whatever way their purchasers in the pleasure hubs saw fit, most likely used up and then discarded and replaced. Slaves, and human life, were cheap out here in Arniri. Maybe everywhere in human controlled space. He had gotten the salvage and the components home that day, and had sorted everything out, leaving the cryo pods to last. He remembered the first time he had looked through the glass viewing plate, the first time had had seen her face. She was beautiful, pale with heavy lidded eyes, and long dark hair that flowed in a frozen cascade around her pretty face and down past her shoulders. The delicate lips were parted just a bit, as though the cryosleep process had taken her by surprise; otherwise the face was serene, at peace. He had memorized every square inch, from her delicate nose to her high cheekbones and soft chin. As always he stared for a long moment, his heart in a vise. Who was she? How had she come to be packed up this this pod, like so much trade goods, frozen in cryosleep and sold to the highest bidder? From the first moment he had seen her face, Arcturus had been in her thrall. He was in love with her, this frozen princess, this slave girl he had never met. An impossible thing, a sad hope, but here he was. He could not change it. He had lived a solitary life; there had been no time for wife or family, and then when he had come to know himself better, had a change of heart and realized such things were truly what he wanted, it had been too late. And besides, he was a scarred, old, grizzled and lumpish Khanid Navy ex-pat, with limited prospects and no home to ever return to. He was a pod pilot, but a pod pilot on the lower end of the scale in the bigger picture of things, and he knew it. What girl would look at him twice? As always, he berated himself for a coward for never having the courage to try and get her released from her icy prison. But what if he were to release her? Would she stay with him, a Gallente traitor, a scruffy scrap salvager with oil-stained hands and limited prospects? There was no chance. He had no chance. Likely she would try and slit his throat as well. He could not imagine the prospect of never being able to see her face again - the thought caused him so much pain he had to force it away from his mind. And if she were to die in the extraction process - no! She was safe in her cryo pod, where he could come and visit her, whenever he came back from his missions, and gaze upon the face that he loved past all hope, but could never touch. Slowly a tear crept from the corner of one slitted eye, and he turned away, wiping it out. Arcturus walked back down the corridor, and away from her. There was the bar, or the pod. He could not face the bar. The pod called to him. In the silence of space he could find solace. Arcturus settled into the soft interior, felt the cerebral harness and body interface reattach, felt the pod fluid flow over his body, and closed his eyes. As always, her face glowed there in the darkness. "Dock with the Gungnir," he said quietly. The pod's docking mechanisms began to whirr as the pod was lowered into the Ashimmu. With a final clang, the pod doors closed, and he reached for the docking clamp controls. Time to get back to work. |