Best Laid Plans...

We suffered six weeks of exploitation at the hands of Agent Binke of the Federation Navy, running errands and dispatching the occasional pirate drone, with little only minor benefit to our Gallente standings. He got a lot of our sweat and tears, we got a little slack from the Polizei (no more search and seizure), and one corner of our hangar in Elennaert 1-4 accumulated a small pile of worthless loot and cheap salvage. It gradually became clear that our future in Gallente space was anything but encouraging.

So on one of our trips back to Alentene to wheedle some of our gear from the authorities (trying to liberate some faction ammo from escrow so we could sell it and pay some bills) I strike up a convo with Pox. He's not all that happy flying a desk for The Cause, and I ask him if he'd like to sell his services on contract with some of the mercenary outfits I know. We study his C.V. and find some areas he needs to buff so as to get top dollar, I spring for the skill books, and he agrees to a 50-50 split on anything we can get over 500 million kredits. He starts hitting the books and me and Paramita go back to Eglennaert to grab our kit and head back to Caldari space where we can make some decent money.

Who's "We"?

Before I update you on our exploits, let me introduce the crew. My highly accomplished and lovely first officer, Paramita, is in charge of all things electronic. Although Amarrian by birth, she is an expert in electronic warfare, with considerable experience with Caldari electronic countermeasures. Put it this way: if if flies, she can jam it, and chances are good that she can keep it from jamming you. She's flown with me from the beginning, and has pulled our fat out of the fire any number of times.



The latest to join our merry band (and hopefully the next to depart) is the strongman Geronimo Pox, who is mentioned in the post above. Pox held the escrow contract on our hardware in Alentene and, happily, agreed to a mutually beneficial arrangement that freed him from his cubicle in DuVolle Labs and will bring him lasting financial security in exchange for the release of our gear. More on these shenanigans in a subsequent post, perhaps. His best feature, belying his severe demeanor (a scowling vice principal with Maori tattoos?), is a wry and irreverent sense of humor.

Logistics

Back to square one

We left Blue Republic a week ago. Let's say it was a meeting of minds: the war with Red Federation wasn't going well, Blue command was in atrophy/disarray, and irregularities in corporate accounting had somehow resulted in the better part of my assets being impounded--Geronimo Pox was holding them in escrow until, as one of the faceless bureaucrats put it, "We can get to the bottom of this." Translation: The Republic's ship replacement program is being audited to figure out how much in the way of corporate funds we received and what we did with the money.

Whether this is prelude to catastrophe (...well, bankruptcy) or temporary inconvenience is anybody's guess.

So we are stuck in Gallente space for the time being and I figure it's a good time to try to improve our standings with the Gallente Federation. That's where this low grade Red vs Blue war has been dragging on for the last however many months. You see, before we were recruited into Blue Republic we had been working for the Caldari Navy, running missions out of Motsu. That necessarily entailed conflict with Gallente insurgents and infiltrators, whom we dispatched on a fairly regular basis. Our sterling combat record for the CN didn't make us at all welcome when we moved down to Verge Vendor to join the Blues. We were challenged at every stargate under Gallente control, and were allowed in only after some mucky-muck in Blue pulled some strings. And we still get stopped and searched on a regular basis. Regular pain in the ass...
...that will soon be a thing of the past, I'm hoping. We grabbed an Incursus from the hangar in Alentene and made our way to the Gallente Navy's internal security office at Eglennaert 1, Moon 4. There we hooked up with Esate Binck, a rather pitiful but pliable agent, who agreed to give us some low level work that--so he says--will enhance our reputation with the Gallente Federation. We should know in a week if this'll work.