I woke up and lifted my head way too fast. The dizzying rush I got went well with the shot of pain that ran down my spine like a hot needle. I took a moment to collect myself and sighed as I realized that yet again I was in a stasis chamber.  The class enclosure was steamy with condensation from the mineral vapors pumped into the hermetically sealed enclosure to wake me. Apparently it wasn’t going to be a good day after all.
   After a few minutes of testing my new muscles and rubbing the stasis gel from the corners of my eyes, I palmed the seal button and the glass slid back with a hiss of hidden electronics. The light in the room outside was like staring into a sun without the reflective shielding on the windows of my ship. Blinded as I was, that memory hit me and I was instantly overcome with a wave of regret. I knew that my hormones were overcompensating but it didn’t help the fact that I was still reeling from the fact that I had died a few hours ago.
   After a few more numb hours of nurses and steamy showers, I found myself laying in a small alcove with cushions in it for recently activated clones to rest in. It takes a while for the last few minutes before dying to fully come back to you once you’ve died, and I was trying to remember it when the call came in. I waited out a moment of confusion as the incoming call signal resounded in my head, forgetting completely the basic implants included in the clone I had purchased. The sound was shrill, and for someone who had just woken up from the longest sleep of their life, it was nothing short of ear splitting, even though it made no audible noise inside the room.
   Witha thought I activated the link and was immediately greeted with a torrent of data. CallSignsfrom no less than ten people were incoming on the same connection. Wonderful, I thought, I can’t be dealing with people right now, not while I’m still trying to figure out how I got here. I activated the voice comms link and the first person to speak was Khaos.
   ”How are you feeling?” he said. I felt my mind sag a little at the thought, but all that I could manage was a “Ok, hanging in there.”
   ”I don’t believe that for a second”, he said, “you took a hell of a hit out there, that Vagabond tore through your hull like paper.”
   Suddenly the fight surged back into my mind like a flood. We were moving through nullsec in a small, fast fleet, trying to sneak through space we had no business being in. It happened so damn fast we couldn’t do anything about it, but someone must’ve spotted us and tipped off the locals. We jumped at the gate and found mobile warp disruptors set up all over the gate, and no less than 10 cruisers waiting for us at the gate.
    Attempting to cloak was pointless as there were drones everywhere, and the pathetic fields we had at our disposal couldn’t fool the sensors even a lowly drone employs, and we’d be found right away. We slammed on the microwarp drives, and hauled ass off the gate, watching the sensor clusters light up like the night sky itself as everyone was targeted in less than a second. Completely taken back, we realized only too late that they were all sensor boosting.
   ”Enemy ships targeting using advanced sensor arrays!” Screamed over the comms from Jarad, while ‘Gaj confirmed carrier support inbound as soon as we could deploy the cynofield generators. I slammed my fist into the all channels button and screamed for the pilots with cynogenerators to deploy immediately, only to find that bothof them were down already. I stared at the fleet indicator icons on my screen witha detached sense of dread, and immediately opened a private channel with Khaos.
   ”We can’t handle this any longer, we need to get the hell out or we’re dead.” I said, with a little more panic in my voice than I wanted to admit.
   ”I know,” he replied ” I can’t guarantee I’m gonna make it out myself, I’m tackled and this frigate is going down too fast, I think these bastards actually fitted small guns…”
   The channel was silent for a moment as he let the news sink in. I checked my damage reports, and the numbers added up. For a horrifying second I lost focus, trying to figure out how this op had gone so wrong. We’d taken all the precautions, flying covert ops only, and making sure we had capital support waiting nearby, and yet somehow here we were. I was wrenched back from my reverie as the right engine was torn from my manticore in a flash of detonations. Suddenly everything was a rush as the hull was breached and space reached in to swallow my silently screaming crew. The last thing I remember was seeing a piece of wrecked bulkhead flying at me.
   Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything but the crew. All operations into enemy territory were fielded with skeleton crews, who were paid many times their normal amount, but even so, I couldn’t handle it. Those people had families and friends. My senior crew all had clones, much like myself, but the rest couldn’t afford such extravagances, and spent the last few seconds of their lives screaming as fire engulfed them, or trying to breathe as the cold of space ravaged their bodies. I was about to completely lose it when I heard Khaos on the comms again.
   ”Are you ok man?” he said, slowly, concern obvious in his voice.
   ”I’m ok, just feeling a bit of dislocation from this whole clone thing.” I lied. I wiped the tears from my eyes, and hardened myself, pushing the thoughts into a pile in the center of my mind, forming a hot coal of anger towards the bastards who’d done this. “When are we going back out?” I said, anger apparent in my tone.
   ”Not just yet, we need to find out who did this first. Not to mention, we still don’t know how they did it.”
   ”Well, what is the status of the rest of the fleet?” I asked, opening my long term notation banks witha thought, and preparing a database with the incoming stream of data. Damage reports, cargo losses, Iskfigures, and finally pilot and crew names downloaded directly into the database, and I began to pore over the data. All 6 ships had been destroyed in the engagement, witha single enemy cruiser taking damage, although only minor structural damage, with minimal crew losses. “This is insane,” I said, “how could anyone have been so thoroughly prepared for us?”
   ”I don’t know, but if you look at the damage reports in further detail, you’ll notice that they did in fact use small guns, and that the warp disruptors were anchored within seconds of our arrival”
   ”Could it have been some privateer in a previous system? Someone out to make some money?” I asked, knowing the answer already.
   ”I’d say yes, but we didn’t see anyone on scans, or even local communication channels for several systems, and the timing wouldn’t fit otherwise.”
   That left one other possibility, and we both knew it. Finally, someone else activated their comms, reminding me that we weren’t alone in the comm channel. Saaren spoke hesitantly, not wanting to voice what we all knew, but coming to the same realization that we all were. “So, if it wasn’t someone in another system, and the attack was definitely a response to our fleet, then doesn’t that mean that they’re either psychic, or..”
   ”No, we can’t assume that yet,” Khaos interjected. ” We don’t need to start pointing fingers at each other right now. we’ll look at the facts, and come to a decision shortly, ok?”
   Everyone agreed numbly and I noticed a quieter tone ringing, it was a private communication, incoming, heavily encrypted. I opened it, and found just 1 name, Kaelen. Kaelen was a new member, and also the 6th person in our group. Kaelen was the person carrying the salvaged goods from the sansha officer we had found in a backend system, off the radar, two days ago. I found it odd that upon seeing his ident codes, my database still running, isk losses and further information appeared on my corneal displays.
   Kaelen was killed as well, but I noticed his clone was fully prepared, with expensive implants, and that his ship was totaled, but his walled received a donation from an unknown source just before the fight, for roughly the same amount as the ship, plus the clone and the implants together. If I hadn’t had access to the corporate information databases, and preferred to view my data in this way, I never would’ve noticed the deposit, and would never have assumed anything out of place, as they looked completely legitimate. It was the timing and the cross references in the databases that linked it all.
   Shocked though I was, I had to confront him myself first. I enabled the data logging feature of the implant, and opened a voice comms channel. ” Hey man, how are ya doing?” I asked.
   ”Not so great, but I’ll find a way to recover somehow” He said a little too easily for my liking.
   ”Sorry to hear that man, I think we’re all in that boat withya. How come I didn’t see you in the channel before with Khaos?” I said, a cold sense of foreboding creeping down my neck, raising the hairs, making me check the locks on the doors of my recovery room.
   ”Oh, well I went and flew back to one of my home systems. I needed to collect my thoughts, you understand.” he responded, his voice taking on a rat like quality that I’m not entirely sure wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me.
   ”That’s cool man, I’ve been there myself. I’m trying to figure out how we could’ve gotten attacked like that.” I said, carefully leveling my voice, trying to keep the building feeling of rage out of it. All the pieces were making sense, and if the words he was about to say, were what I thought they were, that was going to be very, very hard to do. Then it happened.
   ”Listen man, I don’t know if this is right for me, you guys seem a little beyond my skills, and I don’t want to drag anyone down.” He said, the words sliding off his forked tongue like toxic slime.
   ”Well, dude if one battle is enough to make you scared to fly with us, you might need some more training.” I said, feeling more than a little upset, and letting it slip into my answer perhaps a bit more than I would’ve had the circumstances been different.
   ”Well, it’s not just that one fight, but I just don’t think I can keep up pace with you guys. Besides, some of my old friends have been begging me to come fly with them for a while now.”
   I let the link hang for a minute, mulling over this revelation. It was exactly what I knew was coming, and it was complete bullshit, the little bastard had only been with the corp for less than a month, so even if the rest was all bunk, his “old friends” couldn’t have been bothering him that long. I decided that it was time to play my hand, and opened the comm channel.
   ”So, your old friends huh? Well, I understand that flying with familiar faces is always hard to leave behind. Is it anyone I would know?”
   ”I doubt it,” he said ” they’re a small corp, with just a few members.”
   ”Oh, I see, well that’s cool man.” I said, my senses now sharp, my mind picking up even minute inflections in his tone and breathing, noticing he was slightly erratic, and knowing that if he was going to make a mistake, it was now. ” Out of curiosity, how long have they been asking you? I know we’ve had a rough past few weeks, and you came in right before hand so you may have had the brunt of it, I would hate for you to think poorly of us, and possibly leave on a bad footing.” There. The trap was set, his answer would be his saving grace, or his damning confession.
   ”Well, I wouldn’t worry about that man, they’ve only been contacting me for the past few days really. In fact, maybe we could come and join you guys in a few days, once we get all of our assets settled in the area. What would you think of that?” He said, the confidence returning to his tone. What a fool. Not only had I been recording this entire conversation, but I ran a background check on his employment history, and put a tracking agent on the bastard to see where he was at the moment.
   ”Sure,” I said, ” Sounds like a plan, how many people are you thinking of bringing back?” I asked, noticing the son of a bitch was 3 systems from where we got attacked. In an outpost held by an un-identified alliance, which wasn’t broadcasting any ident codes of its own, and was rejected any incoming transmissions from the agent, while trying to contact a representative. I thanked the man, and asked that he send me the CONCORD details of his license activity for the next few days. I signed off on the bill, and waited for the scumbag to answer.
   ”Well, there will be about 12 people in the corp once I rejoin.” he said, completely secure in his next scheme at this point, totally unaware of what I was planning.
   ”Ok, let me know when you’re ready to come back, ok?”
   ”Sure thing, I’ll contact you in the next day or two” he said, closing the link, and ending the comms session.
   I immediately processed the data, sorted it all, and sent a data burst to Khaos, Jarad, Flakko, Saaren, Nick, and Gajin. Within moments, a comm channel was open and the chatter was flying. I wasn’t even paying attention, I was too busy interfacing with the fitment agents and market brokers while I pounded across the station to the hanger bays. I guess this bad day might not turn out so bad after all…