Negotiations

“I think I shall take my leave. I have nothing more to live for.” - anon.

Spinning and weaving through a swarm of enraged drones, a nimble Crusader-class interceptor stabbed and hacked with its cannons at a seemingly bewildered Gallente Thorax cruiser desperately trying to mount a defence, as it broadcast frantic pleas for salvation over its corporate emergency channels. Hull-fracturing pillars of greenish-white light struck the cruiser and it began to billow great clouds of atmosphere and gas-plasma from its drives. Aboard the ravaged cruiser, the co-CEO of the Nemesis Corporation shrieked orders over the ship-wide p.a., tracking the movements of every panicked and insubordinate crewmember as they ran screaming to their escape pods. Blips vanished by dozens into the unforgiving vacuum as compartment after compartment was ripped open by the assailant’s lasers, sending gasping crewmen to their death; some meeting their inexorable end blissfully sooner than others, their bodies instantly vaporized as they intersected ravening beams of energy. Soon, another interceptor joined the fray, its rapid-firing lasers quickly dissecting the combat drones one by one, and clearing the path for his chalk-mate to deal the killing blow.

Buried in his capsule aboard the first nimble fighting frigate, Guiding Hand operative Arenis Xemdal witnessed the telltale shudder of his target’s iridescent external skin, that uniquely recognizable sign of tremendous internal collapse and imminent superstructure failure. Commanding the ship with the finesse of an artist handling a paintbrush, he cautiously veered off to a safe distance and, finding it strangely appropriate for the moment, rattled off a passage from the Holy Scriptures’ Book of Submission in his mind. “And I shall exert my righteous dominion over thee, for I am thy Lord and thou shalt kneel before my holy countenance.”

With at-once a silent and deafening concussive thump of decompressing gas, the cruiser ceased to exist.

A pacifist will readily argue that all war is senseless, his otherwise blatant deviation from harsh reality amounting to little more than naïve, wishful thinking - yet here it was, thought Feaux Tomai as he pored over a stack of red papers. Even though the majority of faster-than-light communication could be received on any networked monitor, the governments of the four Empires decreed that war declarations carried with them sufficient gravity to warrant hard copy.

Feaux thought of such trite courtesies, showered needlessly upon a killing field, as futile; a desperate attempt to civilize that which remained savage even with the advent of particle weapons and myriad other implements of homicide. It did the nature of war a disservice to try and sugarcoat it with notions such as these, and others - the very prospect of “rules of war”, arrived upon by dour men sitting in their congress chambers, having never tasted strife but deciding how strife should unfold, seemed somehow offensive to a fighter’s sensibilities.

Yet here it was, a completely senseless war. The paperwork had arrived no more than a day prior, and in the few minutes that the operations chiefs of the Guiding Hand Social Club spent looking over the casus belli, they could find no reason for it. Never being ones to dwell on paperwork, they all sprang to action like hornets whose nest had been threatened. A scant day later, the war was over.

They found him cowering inside his station quarters. The chief executive of Nemesis Corporation appeared to be in a state of shock, his very sanity taxed to the brink by the swift and methodical dismantling of all he had worked toward. The operatives who finally broke into the locked quarters had to disarm the trembling man of his pistol - not for any danger to themselves, but because he was raising it to his temple.

It took nearly a dozen slaughtered enemy captains, and uncounted crew, to get to this point. Whether through a stroke of luck, or dire incompetence on the part of the foe, the Guiding Hand’s operatives sustained no casualties. So many irretrievably dead, thought Feaux, and for what? The reason, they all discovered after first interrogating then negotiating with the broken man, was an intelligence mix-up - somehow, he had been led to believe that the men and women of the Guiding Hand transgressed against him. For his blunder, he and those around him paid the ultimate price - that of their trust, and that of their dignity. As the great beast was escorted from the enemy station by a mighty armada of hitherto-unseen Guiding Hand battleships, the enemy leader stood despondent at a view-port, watching his future escape into warp.

A voice called to him from the doorway of the darkened nightclub’s back room. “The naming ceremony’s about to begin!”, hollered Tetsuo Shogaatsu, uncharacteristically decked out in formal wear, before disappearing from sight. Bolting to his feet in excitement, Feaux cleared the table with a sweep of his arm and ran after Tetsuo, leaving a bundle of neglected red paperwork lying in a litterbin as the only epitaph to those who met their end.

“So what do you think he’ll name it”, muttered Tetsuo, nudging Feaux with his shoulder. The two of them stood alongside a neat row of other well-dressed operatives, those few who felt like attending the somewhat tongue-in-cheek ceremony.

Feaux thought. “Well, it’s Amarrian… bound to be something religious.”

The two of them were well aware of Istvaan Shogaatsu’s fondness for Amarr architecture and design method. He stood there on the glide-hangar’s access catwalk with them, busily knotting a piece of string around the neck of a champagne bottle. When the old man called them into a meeting after completing surrender negotiations with the enemy executive, they did not know what to expect - they certainly didn’t expect the man who declared war upon them a day prior, to now make a bid for peace - nor that he would make his bid with so tempting a prize.

They had all inspected the captured Armageddon class battleship carefully, sweeping it deck from deck to ensure it was not booby-trapped or otherwise sabotaged, a last strike from a defeated foe. Instead of traps they found the signs of inhabitation, and frantic evacuation; the ship’s mess hall had long tables laden with unfinished dishes, and pots of soup still bubbling on the heaters. The crew quarters were in disarray, with clothes and personal articles strewn everywhere. Underneath the clutter, however, were all the signs of a worthwhile find - old man Shogaatsu was seen practically skipping through the ventral spinal corridor, admiring the baroque internal architecture of the old war-bird with child-like wonder. It hovered there now, moored in one of Wirashoda station’s glide-bays, nearly a kilometre in length and radiating glory from its brass coloured armour.

Tetsuo leaned over the catwalk, silently admiring the catch. If anyone were able to negotiate a man’s most prized possession away from him, it would be his brother, he mused.

“I wouldn’t spit over that ledge”, groused Artel Rivaad, standing beside Feaux and appearing thoroughly uncomfortable in his designer suit. Tetsuo smirked.

Without warning, Istvaan Shogaatsu let go of the tethered champagne bottle, which began plummeting and swinging toward the battleship in a leisurely arc for what seemed like an eternity.

He cleared his throat, and spoke. “Our reconsidering enemy has been kind enough to offer us this marvellous star-faring vehicle as a token of his remorse and desire for peace.” He suddenly appeared as though he was doing his best to stifle a chuckle.

“However, for such a splendid prize, he chose to name her Entropy, a designation I find wholly unsuitable, as decaying is the last thing she’ll be doing in our capable hands.” Almost in unison with the completion of his statement, the descending bottle finally hit home, shattering brilliantly against the ram-shaped prow of the mammoth war machine.

“I hereby re-name her… the Stalwart Devotion”, Shogaatsu bellowed proudly, amid a flurry of somewhat enthusiastic applause. The others began to crack jokes amongst themselves, mostly focusing on the ecclesiastical theme of names assigned to vessels under the old man’s command.

He dug around in his pocket and produced an access card, which he then tossed to Artel. “And as soon as we take on and commission a crew, you’re going to captain it”, he finished, leaving the stunned operative with his jaw planted firmly on the floor.

A league of systems away, a single vibrant gunshot rang out in the night. Startled by the sound, a few station residents awoke from their slumber, only to shrug and go back to sleep - none of them heard the body of a broken man slumping dead to the ground.