The war room aboard the Kinetic Regret was abuzz—not with alarms or enemy fleets, but with what Gobbins could only describe as logistical existential dread. Half the holo-displays showed ship inventories. The other half showed spreadsheets that might’ve once been ships.
Gobbins, coffee already at maximum bitterness, stood at the center of the storm, projecting a calm that was roughly 70% practiced and 30% resignation.
“Alright,” he began, addressing the growing knot of crew, FCs, and random sig members who had wandered in looking for answers or possibly leftover rations. “Here’s the smartest move right now: start selling your excess assets. Slowly if you have to. Doesn’t matter if we’re staging now, next week, or next war—you’ve got too much junk in too many places.”
He paused, letting that settle in. No one argued. They all knew.
“Also, if you want Pankrab to cover your crab beacon, stick to the systems Dyno listed. If you crab somewhere dumb, you die somewhere dumb. That’s policy.”
From the side, Comms Officer Laski raised a hand without lifting his head from the holomap. “I might be brainfarting, but I saw an announcement about Malpais and then a list of systems that stretched into Etherium Reach. Are we talking about two different staging zones, or did I accidentally divide by regional borders again?”
Gobbins didn’t look up. “Ask Pankrab. I don’t know what they settled on. I’m not your regional crab life coach.”
Lieutenant TS13 chimed in next, typing with one hand while dragging a hauler fit from some forgotten war into an export queue. “Thanks for the heads-up, sir. I’m moving the leftovers from R1O to MJ- to get everything centralized. Selling off the doctrines we don’t use, the ships I don’t fly, and the excess hulls I don’t personally need. Idea is to be lighter, more agile. Like… logistics yoga.”
“Good,” Gobbins muttered. “If only the rest of the fleet knew the ancient practice of dealing with their hangars.”
A quiet moment passed, then Shan Sint leaned forward with a smile that made everyone nervous.
“Since no one’s asking,” Shan said, “is there anything we can do to help? Like, to help you, Captain. Do you need anything? Ideas? Money? Love? Understanding? Pizza?”
Gobbins blinked. “…I mean, if people need help moving stuff with Ship Maintenance Bays, offer that. There’s a lot of help available already, probably more than anyone’s actually using. Beyond that—defend cynos. It makes life easier. Cynos make the world go round.”
From engineering, Vilkko Okanata piped up, eyes half-buried in a local channel argument.
“Captain, there’s talk of the market module in MJ- being taken out. Any truth to that?”
Gobbins grimaced. “The Keepstar itself might be unanchored. If that happens, the market goes with it.”
Vilkko looked up. “Right, but I’m hearing that the module itself is being shut down. Not a maybe. A full ‘this-is-happening’ situation. Not even tied to the station unanchoring. One of the NBIs said it’s definitely going offline. Is that confirmed?”
Gobbins stared at the ceiling like the answer might be up there. It wasn’t.
“I’ll get back to you,” he said at last. “Until then, don’t treat MJ- like your personal vault. It might be a trade hub today, and a salvage site tomorrow.”
At the back of the room, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 silently jotted something down in their notepad, never speaking, never looking up.
“Great,” Gobbins said, running a hand through his hair. “We’re in a warzone, half the fleet’s hoarding Maelstroms like they’re rare NFTs, and no one knows if the station they’re in will exist next week. Logistics is a go.”
He downed the rest of his coffee and muttered, “God help us if someone actually asks about asset safety.”
A Pixel Nomad 