I woke up again in a clone bay that stank of antiseptic, burnt ozone, and the leftover fear of the last body I wore. The machines had already finished printing this new slab of meat, and the neural link slammed into place with the same cold indifference New Eden always shows. Another day, another corpse waiting to happen. I didn’t even check the mirror. Looking at the face doesn’t matter when you know it can be replaced for a few million ISK.
I undocked in a Navy Issue Destroyer that still smelled like the previous owner’s panic. T1 rocket launchers, kinetic ammo, a single web, and a shield tank that regenerated a pathetic thirty-two hit points per second. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t expensive. It was mine. The local channel was already spitting blood — frigates swarming like flies on a fresh kill. They came from every vector: bow, stern, port, starboard. No polite 1v1. Just a knife fight in a phone booth made of vacuum and bad decisions.
I webbed the first one and watched its transversal die. Rockets left the tubes in angry little streaks of kinetic hate. The frigate’s shields peeled, then its armor, then its hull. It popped in a brief, beautiful flash. The others didn’t care. They kept coming. Scrams lit up my overview like Christmas lights from hell. My capacitor bled. My shields screamed. My hands stayed steady on the controls because fear is a luxury for people who only have one life.
I have died before. I will die again. Every capsuleer knows the sound of their own ship rupturing around them — that final, hollow crack followed by silence and the soft chime of a new clone activating. I have heard it enough times that it no longer surprises me. What surprises me is that I keep undocking anyway.
Between the fights there was a woman. Soft skin, sharp nails, a body that arched and broke under me until she couldn’t walk straight. She left long red lines down my back that still burned when I sat in the pod. I carried her to the shower, cleaned the mess we made, kissed her forehead while she trembled, and let her sleep. Then I came back to the station, repaired the destroyer, restocked the rockets, and undocked once more. New Eden does not wait for love. It does not care about aftercare or sore hips or the way someone looks when they’re finally at peace. It only respects the ones who return to the field with blood still under their fingernails and someone else’s scent still on their skin