Journal entry, — after the second awakening.
Waking Under Fire
It began with a bang.
I came to inside a capsule, already wired into a system that knew more about me than I knew about it in that moment. No quiet introduction. No technician with a checklist. Instead, tremors, warnings, displays I could not yet read, and the very plain problem that my new body was working while everything around me had stopped doing so reliably.
The AIR facility I woke up in was under fire. I could not sort it out — who, why, how many systems had already failed. But that was not my job in that minute.
Then Aura spoke.
Her voice was not consoling. That was good. Comfort would have required attention I could not spare. Aura was precise. She gave me no explanation about New Eden and no speech about the nature of the capsule. She gave me the next step.
Align. Move. React. Next.
I followed her instructions — not blindly, but without trying to understand the whole situation. That would only have been a more elegant form of standing still.
Normally I would have expected more time for the basics. How to feel the capsule. How to move a ship. How to acquire a target. How to fire. What range means. Which warning matters right now and which one only gets expensive later.
Instead I got minutes.
The result was not clean. But it was sufficient. Sufficient is a respectable category in a crisis.
It was not only combat ships in the facility. Civilian ships were being attacked too. Aura tasked me with drawing the attackers' attention to myself so the civilians had time to clear the fire zone.
A capsuleer can come back. Not for free, not without loss, but in principle. The people in the civilian ships had no such option. No capsule, no prepared restoration, no second instance. I had both — new and untested, but functional.
It was not a difficult decision. I was the only one there whose loss was already priced in.
I drew their attention to myself. My ship did not survive. Neither did my body.
Then I woke again.
This time it was quieter. The systems had a recognisable order again. The voices were less urgent. For the first time I could sort the events in retrospect without every observation immediately turning into an order.
It was my second death of the day. The first had been a few hours earlier and was accompanied by a technician with a stack of signatures. The second was louder, less planned, and without formal accompaniment — but technically it came to the same thing.
Whether that is a comfort, I have not yet decided.
Tally for today, as far as I can assemble it: conversion complete. Capsule link established. Escape from the damaged facility succeeded. Civilian ships covered. Own ship lost, own body lost — both replaced. One mission, not yet complete.
I am not trying to sort more than that today. That was an unusual amount for a first day on the job.
— Ariane Quell