Mori was sitting across the table from Karen. He hadn’t seen her for at least three months since his deployment to D06. She looked stressed, then almost always she looked stressed.

“How have you been?”

“Okay, suppose.” She was looking down at her hands.

He didn’t like it when she was like this. Introverted, perplexed, it always meant she was thinking too much.

“How are you finding Pegasus?”

“It’s great.” She looked up at him and smiled. They had moved into a new Fortizar set down by the corp their new home since the eviction from Immensea. Even stranger perhaps, was the fact they were now in Goonswarm Federation. The very group who had attacked them when they first moved out To Immensea. Such is the way in capsuleer culture, alliances were fickle and sometimes associations very short lived. Mori had found himself once more on the front lines of an alliance. Only this time he had moved into logistics operations. Karen’s pacifist tendencies must be having some influence.

“What have you been up to?”

“Oh this and that. We built a load of mining ships for the alliance market in 1DQ. Those sold really well. The market is much more heavily regulated out here, if I’m honest it is much better looked after than it was in Immensea. We’ve also built three dreadnoughts for members of the Corporation and a further two we’ve been trying to sell on the market. Building dreadnoughts was a bit of a mission.” She smiled her eyes brightening up.

“How do you mean?”

“Well the materials are hard to come by. We’ve had to source gas from all over new Eden. It needed lots of planetary materials and loads of minerals from high security space. It took months to source everything and assemble it.”

He’d been aware that she had been working with Ekloke and Abby on this. But he wasn’t quite sure what it all involved. He didn’t really have the attention span for this kind of operation.

“If I told you that a wetware mainframe essential to the building of a Phoenix that probably wouldn’t surprise you. What might surprise you is that part of the materials come from livestock. Don’t you think thats odd?”

He laughed. “That is a bit weird what on earth does livestock add to a wetware mainframe?”

“Ekloke tells me they are essential for producing biotech research reports. That some construction blocks and nanites are all added together somehow in a production facility and we end up with these biotech research reports. I can’t quite understand it. It’s either some sort of strange trade he’s involved in, you know how he is? Or there is some weird thing going on in that facility in PS-94K.” She looked across the bar and glanced up at the monitor screen playing back advertisements on Quafe. “Anyway did you bring the BPC?”

“Yes I have it here.” He handed the package across the table. Then rested back in his seat drinking from his cocktail.

She looked excited in that childish kind of way that she did when she first started building cruisers for the corporation over in Immensea. “So we finally get to look at a Tech three BPC!” She glanced through the materials and smiled. “This is fairly straightforward we have most of this already I’m pretty sure I could build this within a few days.”

“It’s an interesting hybrid ship isn’t it?”

“Yeah, stasis webifier range looks very useful along with those energy drains and neutraliser’s.” You gonna build this for the corp mate we talked about aren’t you?”

“Xanden?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course it is his blueprint and up to him whether he wants to use the ship are not.” It should be fun to see this being produced. I haven’t built anything for a while I spent most of my time preparing the Rorqual for krabbing.”

“Oh really? So you’re becoming less pacifist?”

“Those blood raiders owe me a ship, and it seems like an honourable thing to do for the alliance.” She looked at him intently.

“Yeah, they’ve been good to us since the eviction.” Mori had been impressed with the Goonswarm Federation. Their organisation was astounding was so much happening in their space it took them months to figure out where to make their contribution. They were always constantly at war and there was plenty to do. The downside of this was he saw a lot less of Karen, Abby and Ekloke.

“They certainly have, I’ve learned so much about shipbuilding in such a short time that I can barely remember what we were trying to do in Immensea. Such is the way.”

“Yeah, I’ve learned a lot to about how the null blocs operate.” Mori was deployed in DO6 to support Brave Collective and what was left of their old alliance the FiRE Coalition. The Goonswarm Federation had offered them safe passage through their space. Cosmos Collective had been recruited alongside this operation into Goonswarm Federation. This move had been a very wise decision by the CEO Dan Dingle and leadership. It had given the corporation some breathing room after the constant wars.

“Yeah same here. I still think the whole idea of content and having to be at war is a bit juvenile. Such is the way.”

“Don’t be silly, everything will be so boring otherwise. Besides you can’t just let these bullies push everyone around. I’m glad we are fighting to defend free space, even if it is in the name of a large power bloc.”

“Whatever.” She looked sideways, bored.

“Okay so how does the manifest look?”

“I’m going to have to pop to 1DQ to pick up some of these materials. I definitely have the auto- integrity preservation sales and I think I have some of those life-support backup unit somewhere. The rest I can build quite quickly.” She started to get up.

“What are you up to later?” He asked hopefully.

“I expect I will be in one 1DQ if you want to join me?”

“That would be nice and pop along after the Corp operation.” He smiled as he got up and left the table.And