It seems the Empires have now finally figured out that CONCORD just can’t secure low-sec territories. Welcome to reality, it only took you five years! So the cold war is heating up, with the various Empires creating covert militias to stick it to the other guy under CONCORD’s nose while leaving their own navies more or less out of it. That’s not too bad, it’s an escalation, but it’s more or less business as usual. I’ve been taking covert assignments from the Republic Fleet to gank Imperial ships more or less since I left the service of those racist slaver theocrats myself. It’s not like the Empire doesn’t know it either. They don’t like me much, but they wouldn’t dare touch me because they’ve had their own “agents” targeting their own mercenaries on the Matari, and they haven’t wanted to go public. Either side hitting the other side’s capsuleer mercs would pretty much blow the whole thing wide open.

So now they’ve got these “militias” operating with their hush-hush approval to actually carry out territorial raids. You’d think I’d be the first one in line sticking it to the slaver bastards. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. The thing is, I’m not allowed in the line Apparently the Empire Militias have decided that the members of capsuleer Alliances (hey, that’s me!) have grown too powerful for them to control (well, duh!) Apparently they think we’d have trouble following orders if we were to enlist in one of their dirty little militias. Maybe they think we’d start taking the systems for ourselves, deploying our own stations, and defending the territory just as we have in the territory CONCORD doesn’t patrol.

Well, you know what? I don’t care if the damn Matari don’t feel they need me. Because they’re right. We are too powerful. Ethereal Dawn and Black Lotus Heavy Industries have set up our own home out here in the Drone Regions, and we don’t need Amarr bigotry, Caldari corruption, Gallente arrogance, or backwards Matari tribalism. We make our own ships. We make our own guns. We make our own jumpgates. We make our own damn stations. So you know what, Empires? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I hope all you bastards kill each other off. I mean it.

Not that, if I happen to be in empire space, I won’t still kill impies here and there for a buck. At least the damn impies won’t be shooting at me. Not that they could hit me.