The burdens of leadership

Being promoted isn't all good. People are looking to me to organise things. Asking me for things to do.

I'm setting up some manufacturing, if you can say I'm setting it up when I don't actually do any of the manufacturing. And people seem to be getting involved. I just need to keep thinking of things they can help with faster than they can do them. Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to do it myself than get organised enough to delegate it.

The Privateers withdrew their half of the mutual war, and they're very hard to find in the Republic now. The war should end in a couple of days. Without targets, I'm not too disappointed.

Cia is looking better. I don't know if that's just a new clone or whether Nerila has made progress. Cia has announced a mission op for the weekend, so she might be feeling better, but it might just be that the war will be over.

Saw Sarakai for the first time in a few weeks. Must schedule tea sometime.

War and illness

EM declared war on the Privateers. Then their friends, DEMON, war-decced us. That was fairly ignorable for a few days, and then they attacked one of our moon towers. We fought back, but didn't really do any damage. They gave up after incapacitating all the guns.

The surprising thing was that Eva is back. She's been sick for so long that I was wondering if she'd ever be back on duty, and now she's back in time to help respond to the attack. We were running around setting things up, getting reppers, sorting out responses. Somewhere in the middle of it all she made me a Director of the corporation. That was a bit of a surprise, but on reflection I'm quite pleased. Of course, she didn't tell me, I just started getting new and interesting mail messages, and had a lot more access.

DEMON came back the next day. I came on shift to discover that there'd been fighting, and we'd managed to destroy one of their battleships, although we'd lost one undocking from the station to try to defend the moon tower. So it was back to repping modules and putting more guns online.

And they came back the next day as well. By now, we'd hired some pos gunners, and heavily fortified the tower. But they seemed to draw the lesson from the day before that they should instead camp the station.

KJ did a fantastic job baiting a dozen battleships in his Vagabond, shooting their drones and keeping them interested. He wasn't really going to be able to destroy one, but he could make them frustrated. Captain Sparre organised a reception fleet for them. He asked us to get some battleships ready to undock into the station camp.

Evanda, KJ and I undocked in RR Battleships into a group of about 12 enemy battleships and a vagabond. We started shooting, and Captain Sparre jumped in the rescue squad. Matariki was flying an ECM cruiser for the first time, and was helping keep us alive. Things were looking a bit hairy for a minute, and then the tide turned. We got 3 battleship kills, and a vagabond kill for no losses. Our pos gunners were a little sad they didn't get to help, but the enemy all docked up and refused to come out.

The thing that pleases me the most is not that we won that battle, but that the corporation came together. Re-Awakened earned its name, and we woke up. Everyone helped. Even if it was only moving stuff around, repairing the POS guns, scouting the surrounding systems. Even volunteering to learn how to use the tower guns. It's been refreshing. Invigorating.

Even Cia was out there, getting involved, and helping repair guns, despite her being still sick.

I got mail from Nerila. Two of the samples I brought back, Therese and Luc, have the same genetic markers that Nerila thinks are causing the problem for Cia. Luckily there's still one sample that Nerila can culture for a potential donation.

Camille has the markers too.

Should I tell Cia? Therese and Luc could die of the same thing. So could Camille. But while we don't have a cure, is there any point?

I once before found something out that I thought was important for Cia to know. When I told her, I hurt her. I broke us. We're just back to the stage where I think we're comfortable together. Friends. I don't want to screw that up again.

I'll tell Amieta. I'm pretty sure that she's working on the same problem. If she tells Cia, Cia's probably not going to drive her away.

A small amount of good news

Cia's doctor, Nerila, sent me a mail.

At least one of the samples I brought back is a good match. Now she's going to culture them, and try working on one of Cia's jump clones, to check for possible rejection issues.

KJ also found an unrelated 6 point match. So Nerila's culturing that one as well.

Nerila sounds almost hopeful, but it will be at least a week before the clone rejection issues are known.

More waiting.

Waiting

Got back from Intaki without incident. The space around Intaki was practically empty, and CJ was running a fleet to chase war targets closer to home. All the potential threats were hiding.

Delivered the samples to Nerila. She seemed relieved; thankful. I hope one of them is a match.

Now I have to wait a day until the results are ready.

It could all have been for nothing.

Influence in action

I have contacts with the Republic Security Service. It's useful sometimes, they have offices spread around the various empires, even Amarr space. I put out a request for movements of people matching the description of the Roth family. I figured that if they were in highsec, the RSS could probably find them.

Then I did a run down through lowsec Placid. The area that has a lot of systems that now belong to the Caldari, but used to belong to the Federation.

In Intaki, I found them. They weren't really hiding when they arrived here, or at least, not from me. I found their fake names. I found recent pictures. I got an address. They were living on Intaki Prime.

They weren't at that address any more. Some Caldari bureaucrats were living in the house now. Planets are big. If they didn't want to be found, it could take some time to find them. Time I didn't have.

I sent some messages. I told Amieta and KJ where I was and what I was doing. Planets are dangerous places, especially if I got into trouble. Getting killed in a pod is an inconvenience. Getting killed on a planet is forever. Someone else should know what I was up to.

I mailed Mr Night. I asked him if he could give me letters of introduction or something, that I could use to get some cooperation out of Ishukone. The new administrators of Intaki Prime.

I'm not sure exactly what he said in the coded packets, but when I showed them to the Ishukone customs officer I got bounced up the tree quite quickly. Silver has a lot of pull with these people.

Luckily, my time with Sarakai has taught me how to have tea with a Caldari without making a complete fool of myself, because fairly soon I found myself doing tea with a political supervisor. Offering any assistance possible to an associate of Mr Night. I smiled and was polite, and told him what I wanted.

It felt like they were surprised the monkey could talk, but the monkey worked for someone important. That displeasing me would mean displeasing Silver. I didn't disabuse them. In some senses it was true. So not exactly friendly, but cooperative.

Since I have their current identities, tracking them was fairly easy. They were staying in an apartment leased by an Ishukone mid-level bureaucrat. Moved in with him when their house was commandeered I guess. Cia's mother was playing the "War Widow" line, and the bureaucrat was comforting her. I didn't blow their cover.

I told them Mr Night wanted bone marrow samples from each of them. That it was important to him. They nodded and smiled, and said that of course that could be arranged.

So now I wait. Sometime today the Roth's will be politely invited to a medical center, and the samples will be taken. Then I'll be out of here.

I hope it's in time.

Duty calls

KJ called me. Said it wasn't an order. Not exactly. And it was my personal life and everything, so I could say no. But could I please stop Cia melting down in alliance?

She was gibbering on the alliance channel. Vikarion, her old corpse. her original corpse. He was me, so who am I? Really losing it.

So I flew to Lustrevik. Knocked on the door to her hangar, and asked to see her. They took my weapon and let me in. Some of her crew know me, and they seemed glad someone had come. Like they were worried for her but couldn't do anything.

Cia was sitting on her couch. Rocking and moaning. So I gave her a hug. It seemed to help. And she told me what had happened.

It was her body. The one that Vikarion killed. She's sick. Maybe dying, and her original body might have clues as to what's going on. She asked for it back. Vikarion said he'd give it back if she met him at a particular bar. She showed up, and Vik was there, wearing her corpse as if it were a jump clone.

Cia freaked. She's not entirely stable at the best of times, and seeing herself seemed to have upset her. She remembers the Cia-Copy that her father made, to make her what he wanted rather than who she was. Maybe she's not the Real-Cia, just a bad copy who thinks she's real, and that's why she's sick. Identity issues.

She got anxious and started having difficulty breathing. A lot of difficulty. I called her med team, and Nerila showed up with a couple of medics and gave her a transfusion. Cia wasn't very cooperative, but I held her hand and talked her into it. I also talked her into accepting a monitor so Nerila could tell when she was having difficulty next time. From what Cia said, she's getting transfusions every day, and that they're getting less effective. Cia wasn't very grateful to Nerila, worryingly hostile actually.

Nerila left reluctantly. I stayed a little longer to see how she was doing.

She apologised to me, about us. She said she hadn't treated me very well, and she wanted me to know she knew. It was like she was making her peace or something. I helped her to bed, pulled the covers over her as she fell asleep. I looked down at her wondering. Why was I there? Why was she happy to see me? What did it all mean?

I kissed her forehead, wished her sweet dreams, and left her sleeping.

I made my way out of the hab-unit into the rest of the hangar. I headed for Nerila's lab. I asked some questions.

Cia's not got much time. Her marrow isn't producing blood cells, and transfusions are putting clean blood in, but something in her system is damaging the cells very quickly, and the spleen is filtering them out, so she needs new blood every day. Nerila's a surgeon, not a geneticist, and Cia's ordered her not to tell anyone off ship. I'm not sure why she was telling me. Nerila's following orders to the letter I think, and for some reason I wasn't covered at that point.

Nerila told me that if she got a tissue match for a donor, then she could do something to Cia's system that would buy her years. Long enough to find the problem. But finding the donor soon would be a good thing.

Her best hope of a donor is her family. They've tested Camille - not close enough. The rest of her family is in hiding.

Time to go looking.