The alarm rang throughout the ship, as it shuddered. The shields had melted within seconds. There was a brief pause before the hull crumpled ending the lives of four hundred souls. No chance, no time to respond. What should have been a brief mining trip ended in disaster. Outside the wreckage of the ship a pod sat still in space. Inside the pilot lay paralyzed. ‘What had just happened?’ She looked at her readouts trying to think, she should be doing something. ‘A gate, get to a gate!’ The pod ripped open and another life ended with a scream…..

….back in the station a clone slid to the ground, released from the stasis chamber, a pilot reborn. She lay on the floor head spinning, vomiting New Eden’s amniotic fluid onto the floor. She rolled onto her side, her eyes stinging in the cold light of the chamber. As she caught her breath she sobbed. ‘So this is what it means to be ‘ganked’?’

Alakgur had been a quiet system up to then. She and her crew had been able to mine without interruption amongst the belts. Everything was relatively safe, after all this was really her first venture into space. Her sizeable inheritance had been spent escaping her previous life in Alakgur IV and she joined the capsuleer race with all the naïve hope that brings. It ended that morning. Her naivety that is, along with the lives of four hundred souls. She cried and cried and cried.

She would never see them again. Johnny with his stupid oily grin as he came back from fixing yet another broken relay circuit in the mining array. She had not quite mastered power management yet and the result was a ship that often creaked and groaned at the edge of her skills. Gone was Scarlet with her red cheeks, strutting around the bridge analysing the mining yield, planning Karen’s next training, checking prices in Jita, Rens and Tash-Murkon. It had never occurred to Karen as she looked down on them from her pod that everyone was so vulnerable. It was her fault this had happened. She had read the stories of ganks in high security space, ‘you’re never safe in New Eden!’ Boy did she know that now and the cost. Four hundred souls gone in the blink of an eye.

She rolled over and slowly got up, a little unsteady.

‘Breathe Karen, Breathe.’

She stood on the wet floor, stasis fluid rapidly cooling, clone skin tingling with cold. Shivering she slowly walked across the room. Stood under the shower and turned it on. Cold freezing cold. She braced against the wall as the cold water blasted her skin. Closing her eyes she slowly collapsed against the tiles and curled up into a ball on the floor the water running over her new born skin, everything went foggy as the steam rose around her.

After an indeterminable while she emerged from the steam turned the shower off, got dried and put on the robe provided for her by Cromeaux Inc. The company had expanded into New Eden with the advent of cloning technology. The capsuleers had kept them busy. The sterility of the room belied everything that had just happened out on the belt. It seemed wrong that she should be here and the others gone.

_________________________

Later, down in the station, Karen settled into a chair at one of the stations many bars. A new clone is always starving with hunger. But to get the clone working properly you have to slowly introduce food, or risk making yourself ill. You can also, if you are careful, introduce the right food and the right amount, and the clone will adapt. This way you can keep it slim and ‘even fitting’. At least that is what the Cromeaux Inc brochure had said in that kind of cheerful corporate language.

‘Welcome to your new clone! We at Cromeaux Inc take pride in providing you with the very best in clone technology. In order for you and your new clone to get along there are a few things we would like to advise……

And on and on. She leafed through the brochure whilst she was sitting at the bar. She was ravenously hungry, when her mailbox blinked.

She looked at the mail stunned. CSM? What is that? Whatever it was she was never going to vote for someone who was nothing more than a low life terrorist. Gay Pride Boom’s ship would have been destroyed shortly after the gank by CONCORD. He had also killed hundred’s of people, and to what end? In seconds she received a request to open a chat channel with Gay Pride BOOM. She declined. What motivates someone to do this? Why be so outrageously hostile? She bit her lip in cold fury, and just like that she had got knocked sideways.

It was right at this moment that she saw him. Sitting at the end of the bar.