Category: EVE

Aboard the Kinetic Regret, Docked in E8-4

Captain Gobbins stood at the main holotable, fingers steepled, a faint smudge of blueprint toner still smeared across one knuckle from some earlier encounter with a stubborn industry hub. The map of nullsec hovered above the surface in flickering 3D, glowing with the aftershocks of recent upheaval.

“Delve and Querious,” he began, his voice echoing slightly in the command deck. “Officially evacuated about a week ago. The region’s been a bit like a nullsec garage sale ever since.”

Several crew members chuckled quietly. One of them—Ensign Brin, possibly regretting her transfer from Jita customs enforcement—tapped through ownership changes on a side console.

“So who’s moving in?” she asked.

Gobbins zoomed in with a flick of his fingers. “The biggest chunk’s gone to a new mid-sized coalition—XIX, Siege Green, OnlyFleets, SYN, and a few others. Not bloc-aligned, working together, and from what I can tell, not completely exploding yet. Promising start.”

He tapped again.

“Streamer Ahront—yes, that Ahront—and his crew took a decent slice too. Remember those guys that anchored the BWF Keepstar way back? Looks like they finally carved out a piece of Delve for themselves. Credit where credit’s due: they did it without bloc support and somehow didn’t implode. Yet.”

Another swipe.

“The rest? Sold off to Init. Classic Goonswarm move—sell the furniture before the house catches fire.”

A quiet ping sounded as Gallente Citizen 4586793463 entered the room, datapad in hand, taking notes silently from the corner. No one greeted them. They didn’t expect it.

“But here’s what isn’t being talked about,” Gobbins continued, walking slowly around the glowing map. “The way Goons pulled out. Or more specifically—how many neutral groups they shoved out the airlock on their way.”

“Wasn’t XIX neutral?” Brin asked.

“They were,” Gobbins said. “So were Siege Green. SL4GS. All of them made deals just to be left alone. Gave up space. Agreed to neutrality. Guess what it got them?”

“Nothing?”

“Eviction,” Gobbins said flatly. “Goons demanded they give up the rest. No more pretexts, no more lies about ‘Panfam pets’ or jump bridge fairy tales. Just straight-up ultimatums.”

A ripple of silence moved across the bridge.

“And yet,” Gobbins said, “compare that to what we did when we had the South. From the collapse of FireCo in early 2023 to late 2024, we held the strongest force down there. Did we evict neutrals? No. We protected them. SEA agreement. Even when it ended, we left them alone. When we pushed Catch, we didn’t demand space or bridges. We just flew smarter.”

Brin raised an eyebrow. “So what changed?”

“They overextended,” Gobbins replied. “And that gave us the opening. Their reach into Delve and Querious cost them everything they tried to hold. And now—neutral entities can thrive there again. Irony’s a lovely thing, when properly aged.”

He tapped the map off. The lights rose slightly. In the pause that followed, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 scribbled a single note:
“When Goons go full tyrant, the void grows fertile.”

“Oh, and before I forget,” Gobbins added, turning back to the room, “local notes: industry hub is now active in E8-. New ratting areas are going live around us. Our allies who lost ground are being resettled in Outer Passage—which also makes the region tougher to crack.”

He looked directly at the crew.

“Train Maelstroms. Buy Titans. And for the love of Bob, stop asking if MJ- is still safe.”

With that, he walked out, coat flaring slightly, trailed by a muted chorus of murmured “Yes, sir”s and one distant ping of someone trying to buy a Revelation off-contract.

The mess hall of the MBV Roidrunner’s Regret was abuzz with the slow-burning chaos that only a patch day could provide. The crew—miners, haulers, and opportunists alike—sat clustered around datapads, mugs of synth-coffee, and a running argument about Mordunium, stockpiles, and how many lies a patch note could legally contain.

“Just reduce the volume of the ore,” muttered Ragmar Ohu, dragging a finger across a half-empty spreadsheet like it owed him money. “They say they’re worried about buffing stockpiles. Then just make the rocks smaller.”

“Yeah,” replied NWABroseidon, tapping rapidly into a price index, “but the only way people actually dump their hoards is if the market’s worth it. You want movement? You gotta make mining and selling not feel like self-harm.”

He glanced around, daring someone to argue. No one did. He added flatly, “GG no re.”

From across the room, Aykira Sl4ker chuckled. “At least that panic dump in Jita helped me buy enough pyerite to build an entire Orca family. Thanks, hysteria.”

“Yeah, well now that everyone’s realized the buff was a nothing burger,” NWABroseidon muttered, “prices are crawling back up again. Like roaches. Disappointed roaches.”

“Hey,” someone said, “what’s this bit in the patch notes? ‘Empowering highsec miners to act on the pyerite shortage’?”

“‘Empower them to f*** off,’ more like,” NWABroseidon replied, without missing a beat.

“Is this the third time this happened?” asked aegeahg, flipping through old market charts.

“Ya.”

A notification pinged on someone’s pad.

“5% mord, man.” NWABroseidon groaned. “That’s it. I’m going to bed.”

“It’s 08:40.”

“Exactly.”

Meanwhile, over at the newbie end of the table, RupKilla was having a revelation.

“Yo,” he asked, “can a covert ops Venture mine while cloaked?”

A slow, sympathetic silence followed.

“No,” said Erika Akiga, gently. “Can’t lock targets while cloaked. Goes for all ships.”

“So I just… cloak when someone shows up, then?”

“Exactly,” Munyi Mishi added. “Cloak, hide, don’t die. Basic survival.”

Epice RuinedEpice nodded. “Also lets you dodge gate camps, be sneaky in wormholes—real handy.”

RupKilla blinked. “That’s a pretty cool mechanic.”

“Yup,” said bogusman Aideron. “Warp to a ping, cloak mid-warp, just don’t try to dock while cloaked or touch anything. Cloaking is like introvert mode—you want to not interact with the world.”

Later, as the caffeine wore off and the pyerite market continued its dramatic impression of a rollercoaster on fire, Munyi Mishi checked her index again.

“Seems folks really did offload their pyerite stocks,” she said. “Price is tanking.”

Cube Collider grunted. “Mordunium buff. Wow.”

Dariisa Asiirad looked up from her mining laser calibration manual. “Stop. Get help.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Cube snapped. “WTF.”

Across the room, Macuna Hatata shook their head silently, staring at a market window like it had betrayed them personally.

A final message pinged.

aegeahg: “Scordite got a 10% buff if anyone wants to make a trip to HS.”

No one moved.

Captain Gobbins was staring at the same question for the fourth time that week.

Not the exact same question, of course. That would be too easy. No, this one had been lovingly rephrased, reformatted, and resubmitted by a half-dozen different capsuleers with subtle variations, as if the magic of bureaucracy might change physics or unanchor a Keepstar by sheer repetition.

This time it came from Caldemeyn, who’d at least had the decency to ask in full sentences.

“ ‘Might be unanchored’ means there will be an official announcement before that’s going to happen? I think the consequences for the market will be… impactful.”

Gobbins read it aloud, slowly. Then again. Then once more, just to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating from jump fatigue.

Golthune Aideron didn’t look up from her comms console. “Another one?”

“Another one,” Gobbins said, voice dangerously flat. “They want to know if there’ll be an official announcement before we unanchor the MJ- Keepstar.”

Gilthune blinked. “Didn’t we already make an announcement?”

“We did. You were there. We all clapped.” Gobbins rubbed his face like it might soothe the rising headache. “It said, and I quote: ‘E8- is our new staging. Move out of the MJ- Keepstar.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Think about it, maybe.’ It doesn’t say, ‘Wait for MJ- to personally write you a goodbye letter.’ It says: Move. Out.”

Gilthune leaned back in her chair. “Should we write it bigger next time?”

“I don’t think font size is the issue,” Gobbins muttered. “I think people are asking, ‘Do I really have to move?’ And hoping that if they phrase it differently enough times, someone will say no.”

He tapped his datapad and dictated loudly:

“Yes. You really have to move out of MJ-. Not theoretically. Not hypothetically. Not on some long-term maybe-we-won’t schedule. Pack your ships, sell your junk, and move.”

He paused. “And yes. The market will be impacted. In the sense that it will cease to exist. Like a building that’s being demolished—don’t argue about the furniture, just get out.”

From the corner of the room, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 glanced up from where they were disassembling an NBI-issued Algos with a crowbar, then quietly returned to their task.

Gilthune gave a small shrug. “Should we make a new announcement that says the same thing but with more emojis?”

“No. We’re not putting emojis in a Keepstar evacuation order. This isn’t a daycare center.”

At that moment, another message blinked onto the screen.

“Hi, I heard MJ- might be unanchoring. Does this mean—”

Gobbins closed the console with one swipe, stood up, and walked out of the room without saying a word.

Somewhere, another Keepstar groaned under the weight of abandoned ships, market modules, and the eternal burden of people who only read the subject line.

“Are we sure this is the right titan?”

Captain Gobbins stood on the observation deck of the Kinetic Regret, watching as hundreds of ships awkwardly orbited a Leviathan named Lunch Detected, which belonged to a corp called Banished Braindead Zombies.

It looked like a moving day for the galaxy’s most confused parade.

“ALC-JM is lit, MJ-5 is hot, and suFFbruder says we’re good to go,” Gilthune reported, holding her datapad with the weary determination of someone tracking jump fatigue and morale decay at the same time.

“SuFFbruder,” Gobbins repeated. “That’s the FC?”

Gilthune nodded. “The Move is under his command.”

“The Move,” Gobbins echoed. “As in, that’s the op name?”

“Yes.”

“Just… ‘The Move’?”

“Yes.”

Gobbins sighed and took a sip from his emergency thermos. “At least it’s honest.”

Down in the hangar, ships were aligning with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for tax audits. The comms were chaos.

“WAIT DID HE SAY BRIDGE UP OR BRIDGE SOON—”
“WHY AM I IN THERA—”
“WHO JUST FLEW THEIR FREIGHTER THROUGH THE BRIDGE?”

And then, calmly, from an unmuted mic:

“Hi, this is Banished Braindead Zombies public service announcement. Please stop bumping the titan. Thank you.”

Meanwhile, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 stood next to their ship—a fully insured, entirely useless NBI-issued Cormorant, which was currently rigged for passive shield tanking and public shame.

They quietly moved it toward the cyno field.

“Are they… actually moving that?” Gilthune Aideron asked, squinting at the Cormorant.

“Yes,” Gobbins replied, not breaking eye contact. “They’ve also brought a Catalyst fit for PvE. And a Vexor. With no drones.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I’m horrified.”

As the bridge lit, the fleet surged forward in a glorious, lag-drenched blaze of movement. Ships vanished into the void, some straight, others spinning, one Gila just sort of imploding mid-jump due to “unusual hull integrity patterns.”

They emerged in ALC-JM, blinking and disoriented, like children just waking up from a space nap.

Gobbins’ comms lit up again. It was suFFbruder himself, voice as calm as a vacuum.

“Bridge is up. Go now. E8-4 next. The Move continues.”

“Right,” Gobbins muttered. “E8-4. Home sweet hell.”

The second bridge flared, more organized now, the fleet flowing better, like a broken faucet finally catching pressure. Gallente Citizen 4586793463 jumped through last, carrying what could only be described as the ghost of poor doctrine fits and NPC-issued trauma.

The entire ship rattled slightly as they landed in E8-4.

“We made it,” Gilthune said, blinking at the local overview.

“Against all odds,” Gobbins muttered. “Tell suFFbruder thank you. And tell Banished Braindead Zombies I never want to see their Leviathan again unless it’s on fire and at least one hull is broadcasting jazz.”

Gilthune snorted. “What about Gallente Citizen 4586793463?”

Gobbins looked at the Cormorant, now floating politely next to the tether.

“Let them have this win,” he said. “They’ll probably write three paragraphs about it.”

At the far end of the hangar, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 opened their notepad and wrote a single line:
“Today, I bridged with history.”

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.”