The engineer who modified my pod couldn’t understand why I wanted audio specifically designed for music. A “waste of time, effort and your concentration”, he said. Heh, engineers. They may have the smarts to design every weapon system we capsuleers have available...but it’s all nuts and bolts up there. Efficiency, speed and product quality. Any loss of this triumvirate and a engineer breaks down. They don’t understand though. High security space is noisy; our HUD displays a constant chatter of local talk, low sec is threateningly quiet...almost an unease in the air, no matter where you are. Null sec space is almost as bad as protected high sec...alliance chatter, corporation chatter, intel chatter, you name it and people are talking. Talking, talking talking. Ship this, pilot that. This system, ship type blah blah blah. Every once and awhile, capsuleers need to get away. Sometimes, we pod pilots become the nuts and bolts we fly.
I think sometimes that the covert ops frigates designed for scanning down locations in space were designed by someone other than the technical engineers. When you look at them, they seem to absorb the darkness around them. As if they wrap themselves in the dark to calm the raging soul of a combat pilot. They're small, almost invisible even without the cloaks that make them so useful. These aren’t the hard, battle ready frigates that swarm the known and unknown depths of space...they're the information. The quiet calm in the innumerable conflicts that span constellations and regions of space.
So leaving my combat ships that are so loud, even when not moving, my custom designed pod is loaded into my frigate-class covert ops ship Anathema and I undock, allowing the initial momentum of the station flinging me into space to drift. Intel and alliance chatter still graces what my HUD calls "local"; that is: the pilots in the region or the solar system I'm currently in. I glance briefly at my starmap, and out of the 5000 systems I choose one at random. My onboard computer Aura informs me my warpdrive was active and I shoot away from the station. The gate fires and I jump, repeating the process until I arrive at my destination. Warping to a planet, its mass looms before me ever turning, ever silent. There have been “loud” planets before. The ultra rare shattered planet are in very few systems caused such an uproar that many now fear them as omens of the future. As many times as I have seen death, I know now nothing can portend the future. I launch my probes, infinitesimally small in comparison to the gas giant, and they float there waiting for orders.
A few minutes later I’ve found one. My probes have located the final frontier, and the quietest place in the EVE cluster. The pulsing wormhole is larger than my ship, but only known by the distortion of space around it. I order my ship through, and Aura informs me the wormhole has sucked my ship through to undocumented space. At first, my HUD informs me it can’t connect to the subspace network. This was obvious, as I could be an incalculable distance or I could be next door to known space. Essentially, I was both. I didn’t care; the majesty of the wormhole and the sudden and absolute quiet forces one to consider things greater than themselves. I close what was left of my functioning chat windows...truly quiet. We capsuleers don’t land on planets...but I imagine there are species there. Living their quiet lives, absorbed into their own conflicts and problems...their planet is all they know and it’s their biggest problem they know. I realize their “wormhole” would be space itself, if only for the inability to define space. It makes one think...how often do greater species jump into our EVE cluster and marvel at our inability to see outside our defined limits. That we escape death by machine, when they have found a way to simply ignore death altogether. Somehow, I feel as if these wormholes hold the answer to our issues, our cares and our woes. They twist the very fabric of space time and manipulate ships within their influence. If they're capable of supplanting the well established laws of space and time, would not those manipulations stretch to those who dwell within, possibly extending life or even eliminating death altogether?
All is quiet as I warp to a local planet. My scan probes are deployed again, and I use them to search the system. These systems are quiet, but they are not empty. Broadcasts can still be sent in wormholes, and this is often dangerous. Even aside from that, there are the system "sleepers". Drones from a forgotten race, still functioning perfectly, and some say more dangerous than they were originally designed. So dangerous in fact, our Tech 3 strategic cruisers come from their shattered remains. Not only are these ships dangerous, they are able to be modified to fit most any purpose. I have one of these ships, and I almost yearn to allow the sins of the son to punish it's father. Billions of ISK go into these ships though, and indeed so much skill is required to pilot them that to have the ship destroyed whilst piloting it can actually cause your knowledge of flying it to severely decline. I tend to believe this is caused by the unique physique of a pod pilot and what we're flying.
Today though is a mission of exploration. I have no intent of even firing the single rocket launcher attached, let alone the demigod power of my strategic cruiser. Still silent and cloaked, I simply use my ships onboard scanner.. I find my query, and the ship uploads its location to my HUD. Just as silently, my ship engages the warp drive. I exit the warp tunnel 100 kilometres from them, those quiet drones. If you turn up the audio when near them...you can hear them quietly murmuring to each other. I haven't a clue what they're saying, but it must be important...for what could one say after an eternity of existence? They’re slowly orbiting a local station, protecting it as they have for time immemorial.
It's unnerving, almost. Looking at them, armed to teeth as it were, encircling their station constantly scanning for any threat. My paranoia starts to take over, accented by the fact that I'm a pod pilot. Paranoia is what we do. In spite of this, I silently command my ship to play some of the classical music I found. The one chosen was of particular interest to me...all I got from the archives was that it was called "Moonlight Sonata". It was mystical, and at it's end I would leave these creatures in peace.
For the moment though, today...this pod pilot would just watch and meditate. The silence of space combined with the haunt of this sonata put in me in a reverie. I don't know how much time passed...but it did, or so I assume; did that concept matter here? Eventually, that ever-present voice in the back of my mind told me it was time go. I was young again. These ancient creatures showed me the meaning of age and silent guns, and no longer would I be fooled to think that my fate was consigned to war making and noise. I would one day be at peace, and although it would take war to achieve such a goal...I would see silence rule the guns of our age. Was it possible?
My ship had bookmarked the location in space where the wormhole was. As I warped to the destination, the thought leapt in my mind: why not stay? Why not just crash land on a planet, engage the emergency pod evacuation and build a life? For the longest moment I've ever experienced, I considered it. As I commanded the ship to jump back into known space, I was curious if someday I would regret not turning around. The noise returned as I reactivated my chat and my compatriots contacted me for a fleet that was forming. The guns were not yet silent, and I put aside the foolish notions of the wormhole. Would I return though, and possibly make it a one way trip?
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