All Good Things
Part 2
Dont Roll me Out bro
The end had been unavoidable. Sitting cloaked nearby in my Tengu the 'Isis' I watched on as my sister Dani along with my assistant Candi unanchored our home, 'Pandora Harem', the large Angel Control Tower we called home in Rolled Out's own C5 system. It was a sad time, my pilots and I had a tremendous time flying in Rolled Out, and also in Sky Fighters with many of the same colleagues. The mood within the corporation as we closed our doors and packed our bags was somber, but kinda optimistic. During the last days I had some humbling comments made to me by various members as they went about saying their final goodbyes to me in corp chat.
Kalel Nimrott > Dusette you're fucking crazy, you know that right?
Kalel Nimrott > o/
Jack Miton > well, it's been emotional. dont be a stranger
Jack Miton > o/
They were both right, especially Jack. My sister Dani and I had made many new friends, learned an enormous amount of things, enjoyed many battles both large and small, killed our first capital ships, partaken in our first Black Ops operations, carried out evictions and rescue ops and even enjoyed our first singing ransom. We certainly wouldn't be strangers and intended to keep in close touch with all our new friends. In fact we hoped to even follow some of them, a great deal of Rolo pilots joining well-known wormhole corporation Hard Knocks, including our former leader Sith1s Spectre. I had Sith1s's vouch and wouldn't need to pass Hard Knocks' trial period so it sounded like it could be the perfect opportunity for me to continue working for another corporation.
However our future was something we could ponder later, for now we still had to move all our things out of Pandora to Empire space, where I planned to have them hauled to my family's home system of Horizon. I intended to relax and holiday there for some time before deciding on my next move. It would be the first time all my siblings and I had been together for well over a year. The past six months had been hectic, action packed and somewhat tiring with three moves and I dearly looked forward to some lazy downtime with my family. Sometimes though even something this simple can be too much to ask for. During the final week of Rolled Out's existence there was still drama and action to contend with, as well as betrayal. When a corporation closes it's amazing to see those pilots who weren't genuinely loyal begin to show their true colors.
Pilot Corowen - Likes rolling corpmates out then logging
As it would turn out, one such pilot would be Corowen. A pilot of no real significance, to the best of my memory I'd not really seen him around in corp chat, comms or on operations. Like many of Rolo's pilots, Corowen owned a capital ship or two and getting these out of Pandora was a priority for such pilots. On one particular day Corowen had decided to move his Moros out, I was making my way home at the time and just about to jump into our static, paying only partial attention to the general chatter in corp ...
Corowen > bf h
Michael Hakomairos > wait
Corowen > ah sorry lol
Michael Hakomairos > wtf dude
Michael Hakomairos > you better work on scanning out a new chain
Dani Dusette > lol rolled?
Michael Hakomairos > yes
Michael Hakomairos > I was right next to him
Michael Hakomairos > and waiting
Michael Hakomairos > and he just rolled it and logged
Michael Hakomairos > I'm so close to being in the right mind to combat scanning that moros and tackling it
Josh Tsutola > he even has a 15 minute pvp flag
And so it was. Corowen had not only jumped back into Pandora, pointlessly rolling our static chain before turning his systems off, but in doing so he'd also locked both myself and Josh out of our home. I'm sure he thought he was clever, but he'd obviously forgotten two important facts - He still had an aggression timer effecting his ship's systems .. and I had a big family. Among four pilots of mine, both my sister Dani and my assistant Candi were still in Pandora and after Josh announced he'd scanned down the errant Moros we quickly set to work tackling it.
Dani Dusette > Wonder if Sith would mind us awoxing a moros >.>
Dani Dusette > We could put it into structure and let him log back in to see it close to death
Josh Tsutola > low armour :P
Braxus Deninard > where even is the moros now
Josh Tsutola > under tactical
Josh Tsutola > called
Josh Tsutola > dick moros pilot
Josh and Candi quickly had the Moros tackled and when joined by Dani they began chipping away at it. It started melting very quickly without the aid of a pilot at it's helm and it wasn't long before we had it below 50% structure. At this point we had a decision to make... Our leader wasn't awake and while I was spurred on by Braxus's laughter over comms I just couldn't bring myself to destroy the Moros without knowing for absolute certain the motivations of Corowen who so selfishly rolled out his own comrades. And so it was we let it go at 35% structure. It wasn't long though before word got around corp of what had happened and Corowen soon became Rolled Out's most wanted - it was agreed next time he was spotted all corp members had a green light to awox him.
Sadly we didn't get this chance though. Corowen eventually became active once more while almost nobody else was around, managing to slip out of system in his heavily damaged Moros, still trailing flames no doubt as it jumped through the static wormhole.
Within days I'd had all my ships and structures dismantled and hauled out into Empire space. I still remember sitting in my Tengu, waiting to depart system during the final day or two when Il Sharazen called out over comms that he'd found a Megathron doing sites while scanning a new hauling chain to Empire. With few of us in system even having combat ships, those of us left scrambled in whatever we could find and quickly responded. iL Sharazen, in true Rolled Out style, hero-tackled the battleship in his covops frigate managing to hold it long enough for our gang to arrive and finish the job. Not a particularly exciting or dramatic kill, however what made it special was it would be the very last time I'd fly in combat with my Rolled Out colleagues.
Erica's last kill with Rolled Out
Soon afterward I said goodbye to Pandora for the last time as I jumped out, making my way to the dismal space lanes of Empire and onto my family home of Horizon, dropping corp to rejoin my own temporarily and begin what would be a short vacation of sorts. It'd been a very long time since I'd visited home, and in my absense I'd appointed my baby sister Shelby as corporate CEO to manage it's affairs. Young, erratic in nature, easily excited and always craving attention, Shelby would go on to do a terrible job at managing family affairs while I was away, finding myself returning to a tower that was in a mess, damaged and in bad need of fueling. Despite my anger at Shelby, it was wonderful to be back home and for the first time in ages in the company of all of my sisters, my brother and our extended family of loyal, long-serving pilots.
Horizon Tower - Erica's heavily fortified family home with a view
Suprisingly though I'd returned to find my family had grown even more in size since the last time I was here. I have many siblings, seems my mother has a penchant for making them, but most remain planetside or in transit with my parents who still undertake a travelling trading career. Only myself and a few select others had become capsuleers. Shelby was one of them, illegally converted at the age of sixteen, I'm sure mother was glad to get rid of her given Shelby's emotional and psychological issues. Shelby also had a non-identical twin though, named Kellie.
I still remember seeing her for the first time - Finally docking my Tengu at Horizon Tower and exiting into the main hanger within I dumped my bags onto the hard steel surface of the tower's floor and took a long, deep breath, casting my eyes around. Home again. Across the hanger I could see both of my sisters Dani and Shelby, waving with exciting smiles. But who was this third female? Standing the same height as Shelby, but with dyed platinum blonde hair, freckles and numerous facial piercings she also sported a cybernetic right arm. It was Kellie. Having not seen her since she was a baby I didn't recognise her at first, and I listened with sympathy and sadness as she relayed the tale of how she lost her arm in a docking accident only months earlier. Seems mother had figured her an eyesore now with her cybernetics and told Kellie she'd never amount to anything.
Thinking her useless for the family's trading enterprise she was then converted to capsuleer illegally at the same time as her arm was repaired, mother then wasting no time of course in sending the "family shame" off into space to join me and the others in Anoikis.
Kellie Dusette
Slight, and thinly built, it was obvious Kellie was the runt of the family, however I couldn't disagree with my mother's opinion any stronger. After spending time with her I formed the opinion that Kellie was in fact extremely intelligent and empathic, wise beyond her tender years and with a strong spirit seemingly uneffected by our mother's rejection. I have the feeling she'll go far, but until she's learned to pilot a ship properly she'll not be leaving our tower's forcefields. She would need to spend much time studying, and for the rest of us it was similarly time to brush up on our training a little while otherwise just taking things easy.
Over the coming weeks we'd go on to see very little combat action. It was nice just to spend time socialising, catching up with friends over comms or in the Galnet forums. Visiting some for coffee or dinner in Empire stations, or even hosting a visitor or two ourselves. Of course though even with simple daily life in a low-class system like Horizon there often comes some action, and not every day was completely uneventful. Early one morning when Dani and I completed our exercise routines, we were conducting our daily scans and bookmark updates for the system. Probing down our static wormhole I jumped through to take a look for activity as I always do. Often there is nothing, but this time I caught sight of numerous sleeper wrecks on Dscan along with a Thrasher who was seemingly salvaging. Seems he wasn't an idiot either, having noticed me scan him down he began warping between pre-prepared safe spots in system. I remembered the pilot in lowsec who once did the same, and so began scanning for the Thrasher, attempting to narrow down at least one of his safe spots. I had success after a couple scans, managing to land cloaked in one of his safes just as he was warping off. Certain he would return I got on comms to my sister Dani and had her sit with her Onyx cloaked in the Thrasher's safe spot.
Sure enough a few minutes later the destroyer landed on grid once more, Dani quickly decloaking and promptly deploying her warp disruption field. The Thrasher naturally died seconds later followed by it's brave, but slightly confused pilot. He'd later contact me by message to ask exactly how we managed to hunt him down. We happily explained it for him.
One of the things to keep in mind when you're a wormhole ghost pilot is that to come and go without a trace you need to remove any signs of the murders you've just committed, especially if you're hoping to attract more prey in the same system. We'd only just scooped the Thrasher pilot's corpse for our collection and disposed of his wreck when we noticed a fresh ship in Dscan.... a Megathron no less and it seemed it wasn't at a tower either...
Quickly disappearing under the cover of cloak once more, Dani and I set about finding the battleship, succeeding minutes later when I came across it finishing off a fleet of sleepers that our earlier victim had started shooting in a site. We'd likely need a little more DPS to take down this target than we did the Thrasher, so I jumped on comms to wake up my assistant Candi along with my baby sister Shelby who both responded straight away flying a cloaky Proteus and Stratios respectively. Getting tackle on the big battleship wasn't a difficult task, my Tengu decloaking and scramming him as he flew around the site un-aligned. The others warped in, our bubble was deployed and the Megathron went down in short order, follow by it's pilot who managed to utter a short noise of surprise in local before his inglorious death at my family's hands.
With only sporadic encounters such as these in space, it left me with a lot of time to pursue one of my other favorite past times - socialising. I truly dislike Empire space, and cannot stand a great deal of the people and politics that takes place there. In fact large groups of people in general disturb and discomfort me, but that's not to say I can't be the socialite when I'm able to keep the world at a comfortable distance. Hence part of my love of living in Anoikis, where I can speak to friends and strangers alike by such mediums as holo-comms or Galnet forums. Interestingly it was in one such forum where I enjoy spending a great deal of time that I met a pilot who works as an Agent for the organization known as CODE. I don't know a great deal about them, other than they're on what they see as a very serious mission to bring order to highsec space. I've always had respect for an organization that sets about spreading and defending their beliefs consistantly and by any means necessary. It seems many people take issue with CODE though, as well as their methods, however my family and I never had trouble from them and whenever I've had the chance to speak to their members I've always found them polite, respectful and very approachable.
Agent Jolly Rancer was no different and after a small game of sorts on the Galnet forums he presented myself and some other friends with free, sponsored CODE mining and hauling permits valid for 12 months. How fantastic, my excitement was palbable.
I thought this was wonderful, and a very sweet, thoughtful gift. It only reinforced my belief that many people have formed a wrong impression of these CODE people and we would proudly wear our sponsored permit with honor. We'd support and endorse their "code of conduct" and their leader known as James315 as "the saviour of highsec". While I still don't quite understand what all that means I'm still happy to support James' endeavors to make Empire a better place for everyone. I mean afterall we didn't want that highsec anyway.
Free CODE permits aren't the only fringe benefits to galnet forum socialising though. Another is lovely friends. One morning I found myself sitting in my expansive, plushly decorated quarters taking up the penthouse level of Horizon Tower. I'd just finished my morning workout routine with the other girls and was catching my breath, sinking into the sofa with my feet resting on the coffee table before it as I studied my datapad. Wearing my exercise outfit consisting only of a small, form-fitting pair of synthetic shorts and a matching black boob-tube the bright light in my quarters shined as it reflected off the smooth, olive surface of my long legs and cast small shadows across the outlines of my defined abdominals. My datapad revealed we had an corp application from a new pilot, a lovely girl I'd met on the galnet forums who'd expressed a desire to dip her toes in wormhole space once again, Miss Kaaeliaa.
Kaaeliaa - Khanid babe and "adopted Dusette"
I explained to my attractive, talented young Khanid friend that my siblings and I were currently in holiday-mode and that there'd be little in the way of exciting adventures and high paced action taking place within my family's corporation. Regardless, keen to get involved and learn a thing or two anyway, Kaaeliaa didn't hesitate in joining us in Horizon where today we're helping her establish her own home with us at Horizon Tower.
Kaaeliaa wasn't the only friend I'd made in recent times, a new capsuleer by the name of Vlady had also taken an interest in speaking to me often about life in Anoikis. His enthusiasm was tangible after hearing some of my stories and so it was he too would come to Horizon to visit, socialise and hopefully learn some of the basics required to live life in a low-class wormhole system.
And it wasn't just new friends that I'd find myself spending time with either - old friends were also never far. I'd learned many of my Rolo friends who'd migrated to Hard Knocks had since been forced to make the hard decision to pull out of the corp, going on something of a vacation themselves as events planetside began taking their toll on their time in the capsule. With few friends left in HK I began casting my mind around for other options for a corporation to seek employment with. It was about this time I was contacted by another old Rolo friend, Foedus Latro. A skilled combat pilot and one of the best scouts in New Eden, Foedus had found himself employed as Diplomat for a wormhole combat corporation known as Isogen 5. With Bronya Boga as it's CEO and other former Rolo pilots such as K3rmyT, Henrayyyyy Andven and the ever-dreamy Jack Miton I would certainly be in good company if ever I decided to join them.
Isogen 5
When Foedus contacted me one evening asking for assistance in breaking a hole-camp so he and other Iso5 pilots could return home I eagerly accepted, my sister Dani and I making our way to join the Iso5 pilots in our HAM Tengus we successfully helped force a small gang of campers off their hole, allowing my friends to return home safely. The few hours spent flying with Isogen 5 that night only gave me more confidence that joining them, if they'd have me, would likely be my best future option. A professional, yet laid back corp full of competent pilots, many of whom I already knew well. While it would be another week or two until I was ready to leave my family corp once more, I decided I'd come to my decision, and opened up Isogen 5's holosite on my datapad to set about registering my details on their corporate forums ...
