The day felt so long but finally I finished today’s assignment. I felt tired and sleepy but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep because so many things were on my mind. I decided to spend the day in the pub alone.
“Hey buddy!”, someone tap my shoulder and I knew right away it’s Barbz.
“Hi Barbz, good to see you. Where have you been? You haven’t told me what your assignment is”, I said.
“I got the same as yours”.
“You mean hangar maintenance apprentice?”, I used the polite word of the janitor assignment.
“Yes. But I refused it. Cleaning hangar and ship are not my thing. Haha!”, he laughed.
“Are you serious? Did they even allow refusal?”
“You’ll never know until you try it, buddy”, he said his motto.
“And what assignment they finally gave you?”
“Watchmen duty”.
“Watchmen as in you guard something?”
“Something like that. Do you remember those people in local as we travel in the systems around here?”, he asked.
“Yes…, what about them?”, I didn’t get where he was going by asking that.
“They are not just locals. They are the watchmen. They monitor who are in the system and report any neuts that appear in the system to the intel channel”.
“Neuts?”
“Neutral, people that don’t belong to our corporation or alliance”.
“Oh why? Isn’t it normal to have people and strangers travel around systems?”
“No! No! That is not okay. These systems belong to our corp and alliance. Only members are allowed to travel in our systems. Other than that we kill them”.
“What? I thought lowsec and nullsec are dangerous because of pirates and criminals”, I was surprised by that revelation.
“Haha! Exciting, isn’t it? You will have a lot of new things to learn in nullsec, buddy”.
“Say, what do you think if we go mining? I believe you got your Skiff. I just bought a Procurer from the corp”, he said.
“Okay that sounds good. Let’s go mining”, I agreed to his suggestion. Mining was always a peaceful and relaxing activity for me. It would be a good distraction for me especially at this time.
We flew our ships to a local belt and I was amazed at all the exotic ores that are only available in nullsec such as Arkonor, Spodumain, Gneiss, Crokite, Bistot, Ochre, and Mercoxit.
I was drooling looking at them on my scanner. They were huge!
When suddenly I saw something else huge….
“Err… Barbz…”
“Yes? Hold on a minute, buddy. This Procurer settings are a bit strange, I can’t find…, give me a sec…. Ah! Yes found it. Damn, they surely arrange things differently here… Ok, what is it?”, he finally said to me.
“Err… look at your scanner. Is it normal to have that huge thing around here?”, I said doubtfully.
“What thing?”
“That thing in front of us and I think it’s targeting me now”, I looked out of the window and I could see it now. Even though it was still some distance from us, but I could tell it was huge.
“What the f*ck! A dread! Run buddy! Run!!!”
