Two days before Thanksgiving and there’s not much to be thankful for these days. Zombies have taken over the city and who knows how far the contagion has spread. I’m holed up on the roof of an office building with three other guys, none of whom are in my age bracket. I guess I am thankful that we’re on the west coast. I can still get by on this hoodie jacket. If I was in Vermont during the Outbreak I’d be freezing my ass off right now.

Oh, and I am glad that fear of the zombies and our own survival instincts kept the guys from thinking of me as companionship. God knows I’ve seen many horror movies where the girl hooks up with a guy only to get blasted, burned or bullet-holed to death. Besides, I can’t even imagine doing that without taking a shower first. Blech, I’m filthy.

A chopper did a low-flyby here just now. Its loudspeaker said any survivors have to make their way to Mercy Hospital if they want to get rescued. I can see the hospital from here. Its only a few blocks, normally a nice 15 minute walk. But with the zombies and who knows what else it will be the the longest run of my life.

Wish me luck. And if you’re reading this I hope to god you’re human.

Zoey

After 2 full hours of nonstop playing on the full version I’m happy to say that I won’t get bored of this game anytime soon. I decided to try out the game mode that wasn’t in the demo – 4 v 4 versus mode. The mode has 4 players playing the part of the human survivors while the 4 players on the other side play the infected zombie bosses.

The humans have to make their way to the safehouse without getting killed while the zombies do their best to stop them. After the humans survive (or not) the teams switch sides. The game awards points to the team playing the humans for distance traveled from the start point to the end point, where the end point is either the safe room or the point where the last human dies. The game also awards point multipliers for each surviving human. Both teams are thus playing to see “who can survive best”.

The zombie side gets to spawn as one of 4 zombie bosses. The smoker is named for his wheezing and coughing and the choking smoke he emits when killed. His primary attack is to capture and choke humans with his long tongue, and has claws for a secondary attack. The hunter can jump over long distances and heights to pounce right onto an unsuspecting human. Once there he bitch slaps you to death until either he or you are killed. His secondary attack is also with claws. The boomer is a bile engorged zombie who lumbers around spitting up on humans. His spit-up obscures his target’s vision temporarily and also draws a zombie horde right to the target. Finally, the tank, which is basically The Hulk as a zombie. His blows will knock you back a few feet and he can pick up large objects and throw them at you.

The zombie players can walk around the level and choose where they want to spawn. The only restriction is that they can’t spawn in view of a human player. Anywhere else, including just around the corner or behind a closed door, is ok. Once spawned they have to wait for their primary attack to “charge up”, as indicated by a meter on the lower left side of the screen. As fitting their “zombieness” the zombie players do not lose health from falling. The zombie team also has “zombie vision”. As long as one zombie (AI or player controlled) can see a human, then all zombie players can see that human. In addition the zombie team can see an aura around each human indicating the relative health left, thereby letting them pick off the weakest link. And finally, their zombie vision shows them pipes or other surfaces which they can climb in order to get on a roof and pounce on their prey. The scoring mechanic in versus mode does not penalize the zombie players for dying; encouraging the zombie team to keep up the pressure on the humans. However, the zombie team still has to work together and with the AI in order to be most effective. Especially since the survivors have the advantage of firepower.

The game pacing is just right and captures the quiet lows and panicked highs of a horror movie quite well. It says something about a game where even losing was fun. And our team lost quit a bit as we were still trying to work together as either the zombies or humans. Playing versus mode itself is like eating popcorn, a quick and tasty snack that just leaves you wanting to eat more. I had to pry myself away from the computer last night so I could have at least some sleep before working the next day. Its that good.

I can’t wait for FIOS to get here. The only reason I’m even with comcast is because of its monopoly in the area. Please Verizon, you’re my only hope!

So you wish to know more about the game, Pirates of the Burning Sea, yes? Well, lets cut to the chase. The game is about combat and conquest, either economically or through the clash of wooden ships and iron men. It is set during the early 1700’s, when the New World is still new and all of Europe seeks to plunder its riches, particularly the riches of the Caribbean, Florida, and parts of Mexico.

The ships, crew, and colonies of the French, British, and Spanish make their way here. Naval officers captain massive warships through bloody engagements at sea. Freetraders charge through blockades and smuggle war materials needed to conquer enemy ports. Privateers raid enemy shipping, looting rival ships of treasure and rival nations of their glory.

And through it all sail the pirates. Bloody, bold, and resolute, they serve no flag and heed no king. They live free, die hard, and obey only fate.

So that is it in a nutshell. One day you could be sailing the calm blue seas, admiring the moon at night or sun by day. The next day can find you and your fellow captains taking down Spanish galleons filled with gold and spices.

That should be enough for now. Come back later and we’ll talk more. Perhaps I’ll even tell you about my first mission, killing those damn pirates who took my captain’s life as they tried to take our ship.

Captains Log, Jan 3, 1720

The captain is dead. I sorely wish he wasn’t. It was all due to a surprise attack by The Jackals. A viscous bloodthirsty gang not even worthy of the term ‘pirate’. Now the crew looks to me for guidance, calling me their Captain after my successful repulse of the Jackals boarding party. Sinking their two schooners also raised morale a bit. Of course now I have to worry about such things as paying the crew and finding more loot to pay them with.

It could be worse I suppose. The crew could put me ashore and leave me to find employment in the brothel. No crying over it now. I shall have to learn the ways of piracy if my crew and I are to survive. I always wanted adventure. I just wish it didn’t have to start so soon…

With that, the bridge of the ship dissappeared, along with all tactile feeling of standing on a floor. A brief moment of vertigo grabbed hold of Reiko and wouldn’t let go. She couldn’t open her eyes and something slimy and cold was drapped down her back. Another long slender slimy sensation brushed past her leg. Count to 10, she reminded herself. Count to 10 and wait for the ground to come back. And it did. Her vertigo eased and she felt her nude body lie prostate on the cold metal floor. Opening her eyes she was greeted to the long slender tubes retracting back into the walls – where the slimy sensations came from. She got up as the door to her pod opened and walked outside to the real world of her ship.

Capsule pilots are a different breed of pilot from all others. Only a small fraction of space pilots are able to directly interface with their ship through the capsule/neural interface. It is through this interface that capsuleers have near instant access to the information provided by their ships sensors, and have the ability to quickly react to such input. Through mere thought they can drive the ship and align it for warp. The rest have to satisfy themselves with the clumsy analog interfaces of stick, buttons, switches, and readouts. The capsuleers on the other hand seal themselves in small circular containers, called pods. There they wait while interface cables and nutrient feeds are plugged into them, and fliud fills the capsule. The body then floats in suspension while the fluid provides cushioning against harsh acceleration/decceleration maneuvers during ship transit.

It is said that each capsuleer experiences the neural interface in his own unique manner. Some experience themselves as the ship itself, their eyes providing an out of body experience as they feel themselves flying through space. Reiko, who grew up flying manually, interprets the direct brain signals as the familiar environment of an old-style ship bridge. Complete with seat, switches, buttons, and viewscreen. The illusion was simply how her brain interpreted the direct neural signals, and to an outside observer the ship still responded at the speed of thought. But because it felt so real it was always disorienting for her during interface shutdown.

Minutes later, a groggy yet excited Reiko Yutani found herself seated across from the mission agent. “So, are we in agreement then?” The courier agent smiled his half-smile as he held out his hand. As Reiko grasped his hand and shook it tiny biosensors embedded in the agent’s skin recorded her unique bio-signature and transferred the information to the agent’s computer. There it was cross-referenced to the contract that hung in the air on the agent’s desk, courtesy of his holo-generator. Truly the handshake had become the gesture that bound one to a contract in more ways than one. It was then, just after her acceptance of the contract, that she saw what her ship AI was worried about. It wasn’t three small cargo containers. It was three large cargo containers. Each with a volume of 350 cubic meters. That meant one would barely fit in her ships cargo hold. Which also meant she would have to ferry each container individually, bringing the total travel time to 35 system jumps. She sighed and told herself this was the last time she would accept missions before calling it a night.

In fleet combat the small frigates would frequently target larger ships, taking advantage of their small sensor signature to engage at close range, orbit, and “web and scram” their targets. The small sensor signature of frigates made them harder to track and engage by vessels of cruiser class and larger as the frigates closed to optimum range. “Web and scram” referred to webbing the sub-warp engines and scrambling the warp drives. This would prevent the ship from warping away to safety and also slow the affected ship to a crawl, making the victim an easy target while simultaneously making it harder for said victim’s weapons to track and engage the orbiting frigates.

The destroyer was thus conceived as a “frigate destroyer” or “ship that destroys frigates”. The Shinmai Maru, as Reiko already named her, was built especially for long-range fights versus frigates. Her new ship enabled range bonuses on any mounted gun turrets, with space for up to 7 in all. All 7 slots were filled. Five with long-range 125mm autocannon and 2 with the shorter-ranged but more damaging 150mm railguns. Plus 1 missle launcher. Since the destroyer mounted the same weaponry as frigates it would have no problem tracking and engaging the little ships as they tried to close the range. The ship’s 4 mid-module spaces were filled with shield extenders, shield boosters, and an afterburner. The extender increased the maximum shield points, the booster enabled rapid shield regeneration at the expense of draining stored power from the ship capacitor, and the afterburner let Reiko boost the engine max speed up to 400 meters/second. The afterburner provided the extra boost by draining the ship capacitor of stored power as well. Her checkout complete, she turned her attention to getting her ship underway.

“So what do we do now, Rei-chan?” asked ORI. “Pirate hunting. Seems like there’s a pirate turf war going on over some brothel shacks in-system. Our job is to remind them that such overt showdowns are not tolerated, even if whoring still is.”

“I sense from your tone that you dissaprove of the oldest profession?”
“Careful ORI. I know a 3rd-rate garbage flitter that could have your name on it.”
“Right. Lets get those pirate bastards!”

“Ugh, all that time spent in military school just so I can mine rocks?” Reiko nonchalantly selected the next asteroid and set the ship to lock on target.
ORI, the ship AI, responded. “It could be worse. We could be hauling holoreels from system to system. Imagine, jumping into space to try and find a buyer for ‘Susie does the Ore Pirates, Part VII’.”
Reiko scrunched her face as she recalled their first trade run. “Ugh. Thank you for reminding me. Okay, so I made a bad trade on our first run out. I promise to study the trading guide before we enter the delivery business again.”
“Just one question. Did you figure out it was a bad idea before or after the station buyer asked if you came with the holoreels?”
Reiko engaged the mining lasers as she tried to come up with a reply. Failing that, she hmmmphed a response and went back to monitoring the overview.

The ship overview provided a list of contacts picked up by the ship sensors, also known as sensor returns, or returns for short. By changing the settings Reiko could filter out less important returns, such as planetoids, and view the more important sensor contacts – such as other ships. It could also provide additional information, such as distance from her ship, or the transverse velocity relative to her own ship – which was important for determining whether her turrets could lock on and track fast enough. Right now her overview was set to allow asteroids as sensor contacts. In particular it was showing asteroids filled with Veldspar ore, the easiest ore to mine for people just starting out with their shiny new mining lasers.

A dash of red on the overview window caught her attention and she looked closer at the return. Three contacts, each designated with a red cross shaped symbol. The overview description called all three Pithi Arrogators – ships piloted by the Pithi Pirate clan. Pirates of various clans frequented the asteroid belts, coasting on low power from asteroid to asteroid so as to avoid the long range scanners of the CONCORD police force.

The pirates were always on the lookout for newbie players – those who didn’t yet have enough experience or savvy to defend themselves while mining. Reiko glanced at the holoscreen showing the info on her current system, 0.8 security – which meant a sizeable CONCORD presence. The pirates therefore would have to be very stupid and flying low-powered ships, frigated sized or even smaller. She decided to fight rather than leave her mining spot.

“ORI, align the ship for warp to the station, spin down the mining lasers, and ready the launchers.” Reiko rattled off her combat commands, still fresh in her mind from the countless simulator runs endured in combat flight school. She locked on to the nearest two pirates as ORI manipulated the ships thrusters to realign the ship and point to the nearest station in-system.

It was a precautionary move, drilled into her by her instructors. Warping to a celestial body, whether natural or man-made, required that the ship be pointing in the direction of the body before entering warp. By pre-aligning the ship now she would save several critical seconds of re-alignment, allowing her to warp away if things turned bad.

Not that she expected they would. Her ship was fitted with two missle launchers, each loaded with Piranha missles that could fly out to about 28km. Way outside the combat range of frigated-sized ships armed with conventional turret guns. Still, it was good practice and a prudent move. She kept hearing time and again that there is such thing as a safe spot in EVE space.

“Target in range.”
“FIRE!”

“Station control to Orizuru Maru. Cleared for departure, spacelane alpha. Proceed at 150 m/s to next marker before engaging warp.”
“Roger Station Control. Proceeding to next marker at 150 m/s prior to Warp. Orizuru out.”
Reiko keyed the controls of her frigate to autopilot before settling back in her seat. She gazed out the window as her frigate eased out of the massive space station orbiting Motsu VII – the seventh planet in the system. She never got tired of the looking out at the vastness of the station as compared to her ship. And she let her mind wander, comparing that to the vastness of the current system, the distance to the stargate which would take her to yet other systems, and the massive expanse that was all of Empire controlled space.

That it was called Empire was somewhat of a misnomer. No single faction controlled all of EVE space, but after years of war they had negotiated an uneasy peace, to be controlled in most systems by a jointly run police force known as Concord. Wherever Concord had a sizeable presence was known as Empire space. Where Concord had less control was called low-sec space. Then there was zero-zero space, or null space, where there was no Concord presence at all. It was in null space that a person or a corporation stood to make the most ISK, the common currency traded between all the factions. It was also in null space where ships could get blown up by pirates or gankers – ships that prowled null space looking for easy prey to practice their fighting skills on.

The ship’s AI chimed in on the bridge intercom. “Where to now, Rei?” Reiko was initially put off by the casual emotigrams of the ship AI when she bought it, thinking that it also led to a casual attitude toward flying and preserving the safety of the ship and her. But the AI had been more than capable of plotting safe routes around low-sec systems and she eventually grew to like the banter between herself and ORI, her nickname for the ship AI. It certainly helped take her mind off the boring mining missions.
“ORI, plot course for New Caldari. We have to make another courier run. Deliver medical supplies to the colonists via the Supply Station on Caldari III.”
“When it absolutely positively has to get there, they send us, eh? Warp bubble coming online. Three, two, one, warp.”

With that, the quantum bubble generated by the ship’s warp engines catapulted the ship into warp space and hurtled it towards the Ikao stargate. From there the ship would jump into the Ikao system where the ship would then warp to the next stargate for the jump to the next system. That was how most ships conducted travel throughout EVE space. Warp engines simply did not have the capacitor power needed to create warp bubbles strong enough to travel from system to system. And while warp travel was fast, it still took a finite amount of time to warp from place to place. Inter-system jumps using stargates on the other hand were almost instantaneous.

Reiko checked the mission details for the courier run again. The agent she was working with promised 28000 ISK for completion of the delivery, with another 28000 ISK if she delivered in the next hour. She brought up the market interface, browsing the latest prices for railgun turrets. A smile crossed her face as she spotted a cheap one just one system jump away from New Caldari. “Hey ORI,” she called out,” we’re going shopping after this run. How does a 75mm railgun sound?”

Reiko Yutani stared at the holoscreen for a few minutes before being aware of a numb feeling in her fingers. Looking down she noticed that her hands had been balled into tight fists and relaxed them to let the blood flow to her fingers. An idea floated into her head while she waited for her hands to regain their feeling. The idea, like the previous good ones she had, blossomed into a plan, which was revised and checked for possible repercussions and drawbacks. When she was done contemplating her plan, and the fate which would befall her on its execution, she started typing on her keyboard.

———————————————————————————–

Vice Admiral Takeji Sinclair was sitting at his desk when his aide walked in the door.
“Vice Admiral,” the aide started, “I have news concerning the missing officer, Reiko Yutani. Internal affairs has determined the reasoning behind her actions.”
“Well? Spit it out man!” the Admiral snapped.
“Sir, it seems to have all started when Ms. Yutani found out about her heritage. Her father was a Caldari diplomat and was assigned to the Gallente and later the Minmater Relations Corp. During his tenure at the embassy in Minmatar space he had dalliances with one of the Minmatar public relations people assigned to him. It was later discovered that she was with child.”
“Let me guess, their secret union was about to be exposed by the local planetary press and it was in the interests of both governments to cover up the incident?”
“Exactly, Vice Admiral. He was reassigned to an agency here in Caldari space and encouraged to settle down with a proper Caldari woman. The report mentioned that mind-wiping was also implemented.”
“Mind wiping? The elder Yutani must have spent too much time in the company of the Minmater and their allies, the Gallente Federation. He was probably corrupted with their ideals of freedom and meaningless creativity.”
“Quite. Still, it appears that Ambassador Yutani had managed to preserve that part of his history before having his mind wiped of the incident. There were financial records stored in his account that would have been opened only upon his death and presented to his next of kin. In those records were encrypted files which contained records of his time in Minmatar space.”
“So, when he died, Ensign Specialist Yutani gained possession of those records and now she knows she has a sister.”
“Yes sir. It still begs the question of how the Ambassador learned of his impending mind wipe. The target is never notified beforehand to avoid the risk of conflict issues.”
“I believe you mean, so the victim never has a chance to run; because no one likes the idea of losing his memory, even parts of it.”
“Yes sir.”