Things have been quiet, and I like them that way.

I’ve been mostly crossing Venal back and forth, tracking and hacking into abandoned Gurista research locations. It’s not the safest, but thanks to the local fluid router communications system I’m pretty good at staying in one piece. I steer clear of the local Gurista patrols, and they seem to stay clear of me. If they care about these abandoned sites, they haven’t acted like it, so I’m happy with the status quo until it changes.

After a couple of months of crawling Venal, I had a couple of billion ISK saved up: not much to spend it on when you’re drifting in space in an interceptor, listening to the blips of scan probe results. But I had plans to enter Anoikis again soon and GhostSight is fragile, so I’ve got some Asteros on my shopping list. Trouble is, neither Venal nor Genesis are next door to a trade hub - I was going to need some help.

I knew a few capsuleers in Signal Cartel who would be willing to buy and ship materiel for me, but while I trust my corpmates implicitly, I wanted someone dedicated to my needs, someone with connections, and someone happy to stay close to Jita IV-IV. I needed to contact Toshiko.

Toshiko - Toshiko Keikira - is a former inventory and procurement officer with a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a Caldari megacorp. Her family has connections to some Intaki my family knew, and she helped my father aquire a variety of difficult-to-find items. Toshiko had recent medical issue that left her facing forced retirement from her corporate position, and she and I decided together that we could help each other. I pulled some strings at the Science and Trade Institute, and she became a capsuleer.

“Becoming immortal” - as baseliners will occasionally call the capsuleer cloning process - affects everyone who goes through it differently. For me it become a concretization of some of my Intaki beliefs, and a dissolution of others. For Toshiko, her innate shyness and insecurity fell away, and she… well, you wouldn’t mistake her quietness for shyness any more. Something more like scary quiet. But we get along just fine, and I trust her with all my “getting stuff” now.

I open my comms and started composing.

Toshiko,

I need some stuff.