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Annals: The Search for Home Pt 3

My tongue wants to shrivel up and die; my cheeks puckering in as if to save it. The Synth Coffee I had been given as a gift for taking on a tribesman's son as an employee may be the worst tasting thing I've ever tried to drink. I'm not sure if it's a measure of the father for his son, or if this stuff is just that terrible in general.  Or maybe the hydrostatic fluid of the capsule is slowly killing my taste buds. Could it be that the nanobots, the cybernetics, and the life of a capsuleer was slowly rewiring my body to taste the stars and give up terrestrial food and such delights?

The faint whir of the door opening breaks my reverie and I look up to see my second in command, entering. His jacket is unbuttoned and I can see the start of white ink against bronze at his collarbone in a half-familiar image of our people, but not enough to be sure of the design. "Captain," he says in greeting before taking a seat across the table from me.

"Entohk," I call him by name. We've been through too many scrapes already for me not to feel some kinship. Besides, he's a Sabeitor too. We're the same tribe. "Do you drink this drek?" I shove the cup of dark liquid towards him, disrupting tendrils of steam curling on its surface.

Leaning forward, Entohk gives the coffee a look and crinkles his nose. "Smells good, but I'd rather drink engine cleaner." Oh, good, so maybe the newest crewman won't be completely worthless. "Never understood why that stuff goes for so much on the market."

"They just have a really good marketing team is my guess. Keep the supply low, get some of those holo celebs to praise it, and then make it hard to find." I smirk. "People lap that up."

"Yeah." He nudges the coffee away as if afraid something will crawl out of it. I find I can't blame him. "So, uhm," Entohk tries to get words out. He's rarely the nervous sort, so I instantly assume he wants to say something he thinks will offend me, personally.

Trying to hold back exasperation, I tell him, "Go on. If you think you need to say it, say it."

Entohk grimaces at being read so easily. "We're starting to get a real thing going here, Captain," he finally decides on a tact. "We've got ships operating out of several stations now and, if you count the support crew on the stations, you're responsible for around eighteen hundred at this point. But outside of the command crews, most only know you as a capsuleer. And, look, things are getting a bit dangerous now with the war decs and all. It'd help morale, and efficiency, if the crews knew a little more of their captain."

"You mean some of the newer crew are nervous about going into Thera or wormhole space with someone they've never met. They've been listening to spooky stories and seen the loss of the ship in J004150?" I question.

He looks off to the side.

"You did tell them that everyone made it out of there, right? All we lost was a ship and some cargo, not a single life. Even brought you through three other holes to get back into known space," I point out, bringing more guilt to Entohk's features. I make him squirm for a moment under a piercing stare - something I learned from my mother, and nothing they taught me in command classes as a capsuleer.

"Assemble those on station and set a holo recording for the rest," I finally say. "I can't say that anything we're about to do is going to be easy. They might as well hear it from me." I let him leave to set up the little speech thinking it was his idea, while pulling out a data pad and marking off the corresponding to-do item from my own list. Sometimes you just have to let people feel useful and needed.

And Entohk was certainly that.

----

By the time my stomach began to grumble that it was time for dinner, I stood atop a crate in my hangar. Five hundred crew had gathered in here, some taking the time to rest from overseeing the ship loadout and others having come from their bunks or recreation. I looked across them, knowing that most were tribesmen, a few were wanders, and the likelihood that at least one was an agent for the Sisters.

I taste the metal in the ring that pierces my lower lip when I run my tongue across it, the only hint of nerves I allow myself to betray. "It's been over two thousand years since the first Matari was launched into space. Two thousand years of exploration, of struggle, of fighting. Two thousand years of learning who we are as a people. We didn't let ancient stargates lying long dormant stop us, did we? We didn't let the Amarrians stop us, did we?"

Pausing, I give them time to shout or meekly mumble their nos. "In two thousand years, my friends, we developed an identity all our own. We kept our culture with us when we traveled. We held firm to our beliefs when we were forced into slavery, and we came together again to fight for our independence." This time there's a longer pause; we Matari can be terribly proud of our perceived independence.

"But that's not to say we haven't lost parts of ourselves too. The Starkmanir are with us again." I smile when a young engineer in the back of the crowd cheers, my lone Starkman. "The tribes are united again. The Elders are known to us again. But we still don't remember all of our history. And that's where we come in." Expansively I gesture about, including all listening in my body language. "That's what we're setting out to do. We're going to backtrack all the way to the New Eden gate, move forward, and follow every sign and clue we can of our civilization."

Looking around, I wait a second before speaking again. "I chose this mission to get us started with Signal Cartel for a reason. It's not because it will make for an easy shakedown cruise for the new ships. No, we'll be traveling into the Wildlands and that's not easy. We'll be moving through Amarr space, and we all know there's no love lost there. No, I chose this mission for us so that we can remember why we Trust in Rust."

This returned some confused looks and a low murmur, as I knew it would. I even smirked when Edde, the chief engineer, tried to explain it wasn't really rust but a ferrous compound in our metals. Finally, one of the new kids took the bait. "Isn't that just a derogatory term?"

I laugh, showing all the confidence and ease I can. "Edde will tell you why the metal's reddish, but it's more than that for us. We could paint, enamel, cover over the color easily enough. But we don't. Why? Because it's camouflage. Our gates and ships hide against the stellar clouds. Our ships when seen look like crap, and become underestimated. We lull our prey into thinking we're not there, or we're too weak to be a concern..." My grin becomes feral, fangy. I activate the facial nanos and dial my war tattoos up to woad blue. "Then we pounce!"

Now there's a roar of approval.

"In Rust We Trust! That's the motto of taking our weakness and making it a strength. That's the tenacity that got us into space. And that's the spirit that's going to get us through this!" More cheering. "And if I find one actual spot of rust anywhere in my ship you're all going on tight rations!" And now some laughter. The tension is broken.

------

Later, I'm swimming in the hydrostatic fluid of the capsule. I swallow stardust and shiver as cosmic rays touch my metallic skin. I feel four hundred crew members walking inside of me, hear them talking against the bulkheads of my internals.

And I know the mistake that the Empires made when they allowed independent capsuleers. These are my tribe, but I'm not as connected to them as I am my ship. That's the comradery that only another capsuleer can know.




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