Life in a Wormhole: Bad Influence #eveonline

A day has gone by, and I'm still terrorizing the enemies of the Minmatar Republic in my Ishkur assault frigate, which is easily enough to deal with any of the level 3 missions I'm given. The evening is quiet; all of our Red Frog hauling contracts have come in, everyone's belongings have been returned to the right hangars at our corporate offices, and most have taken the night off. It's just me on our shared comms until CB logs in.

"Evening, evil slave trader."

"Yo. How's that Minmatar standing looking?"

"Die in a fire. What're you doing?"

"Nada. Looking at that ship fit you sent over for running around a wolf-rayet system."

"Doable?"

"Yep. You think we're going to do it? I'll put it together if we are."

"Yeah, it's really starting to look like it. I can't decide if people like it because it's crazy, or because we only have to commit a couple ships, there's nothing else to move in, and if we don't like it we can leave easily."

"Probably both."

"Probably." My email flashes, and I open it and read while dodging Angel pirate cruisers and letting my drones chew through the enemy ships. "Oh, this is hilarious."

"What is?"

I forward the email to him. "Taggarts just listed a wormhole for sale. Pretty much exactly the one we've been saying for six months that we wanted to move into." I scan the stats for the system on Wormnav. "Jesus. Perfect set up for planetary interactions. You can make everything in there. Hell, if you did nothing else but that, you'd still basically be printing money. And those static wormhole exits..." I shake my head. "That's going to go for a lot."

"How much?"

I tell him.

"I'll throw in 400 million," he says. "Right now. Bid on it."

"Nah..." I shake my head. "Everyone's gung-ho for the c6 insanity. Em and I have talked about a new system, but he doesn't think we have enough people for a solo wormhole setup if more than a few of us take the night off. Logoffs breed logoffs."

"We did just fine with just you and me and Gor," CB counters, echoing my own thoughts on the matter. "And if someone wants us blowed up good, we're gonna blow up good, no matter how many people we have."

"True."

"Bid on it, you know you want to," he says. "We'll set up PI and couple towers, and if everything else falls through, we have a cool backup plan."

"Eh."

"Biiiiid on it," he repeats. "Don't make me start hiding slaves in your cargo bays again."

"What do you mean, 'again'?" I look at the email, check my bank balance, and decide I have too much money laying around. I shoot a quick email off to the broker (who I've worked with before on other sales), putting in a bid a bit below what I think the hole is really worth, but still a big chunk of change. I expect I'll be outbid quickly, and have no intention of going any higher. If I get outbid, this is all harmless, and if it isn't, I got a pretty good deal.

"It's in."

"What is?" asks CB.

"The bid."

He laughs. "Holy shit, you actually put a bid in?" There's a pause. "I mean... cool."

I rub at my temples. "So much hate."

"You love it and you know it."

"So. Much. Hate."