Chapter Five

Not Quite the North

Sixty-one jumps. I know others have trekked further, but this is my personal best - or worst, depending on how you look at it - for trip length. I could have darted straight upwards, but crosschecking the map filters for pain, death and misery showed me that a detour through Venal would significantly increase my chances of reaching EVE's northernmost point - QYZM-W - with Kabbalah intact.

I cast a critical eye towards the Stabber's three lowslots, and deemed them unfit for this bone-wearying journey. Their current configuration gave a significant extra kick to my engines and guns, but that edge would only come into play if I were caught by a gate camp. Hoping to avoid that scenario, I opted for three named Inertial Stabilizers, figuring that cutting down on aligning would give me a greater overall edge. That decision will either be the life or death of me - I just need to figure out which.

A player named Tuea sent me an EVE-mail saying he wanted into my corporation - something I'm more than happy to oblige - but that he was denied because of his Gallente blood. Never one to stand for discrimination, I set about purging the racism from my corporation's bureaucracy by training up Ethnic Relations.

After some general fooling around with bumping people off of stations and warping about to test my new low slot configuration, I decided to spend some time cutting off the high security fat from my hearty helping of jumps, and made my way to the gate that would lead me once again into low security, and then the treacherous no security space beyond. After hanging out at the gate with an Eos and admiring the organic curvature of his ship, I logged, planning to return once peak time had passed.