OOC: Amelia asked me to write this after I kinda told her maybe she should give people a little heads up as to the fact she was leaving. Considering all her friends and guild work still in-game. So here goes.

-New entry-

I looked down once again at the small message on my data pad, still not believing it I re-read it over and over again.

Borb The Second of the Itani Alliance,

We regret to inform you that Lydia was killed in an incident while on duty for the Intergalactic Peace Keepers. We invite you to attend her memorial service at Dau today at 1800 galactic standard time.

Orus must have pulled some strings to make sure I got an invite. I’d have to thank him one day, I thought as I numbly got into my Valk and headed to Dau.

And hour later I sat down with 2 hours time till the funeral started. In the time I made a trip down to a small bank in lower K 10. I had stored kits all over known space never knowing when I would need good equipment, this bank was my storage spot on Dau.

She had known me all her life as a pirate and a merc, it would not be right for me to show up at her funeral in my IA uni. I thought as I pulled on the black combat boots, BDU bottoms, tight fitting long sleeved shirt, and knee length light synth-leather jacket I had become famed for wearing.

From what I cold tell it was an open casket which was surprising seeing as from what my people tell me she died when a mining beam over heated and blew up in the front of her ship sending shrapnel into her cockpit before she could react.

I arrived at the funeral home about and hour before it started so I just sat in the “borrowed” hovercraft out in the parking lot.

So many thoughts crossed though my mind, revenge, suicide, war, finding a new life, if she was really dead… The thoughts poured in like a torrential rain.

She had come at a time when I had no purpose. I had taken it upon my self to train her, to look out for her to take care of her. She became like a little sister to me.

My thoughts were finally disturbed when I heard other vehicles pulling into the parking lot. It was time.

I walked into the lobby, it was a vary nice place, becoming of a rich trader, and of my friend. She would have liked it.

“Take your coat sir?”

I looked at the man with a hallow can vacant stare.

“Why not.” I finally said, slipping out of my jacket. I watched his face as it came off reviling a SMG strapped to my chest, a small backup blaster on my back right hip, and 1911 .45 over my left thigh.

“Um sir?” He mumbled.

“If any one has a problem they can talk to me.” I shot back knowing what he was getting at.

My Intel told me that even with my LT status in IA many people still had said they would kill me no matter, it would have been well known that I would show up here, and no one or nothing was going to stop me.

I walked into the viewing area, and saw her wooden casket sitting on top of a velvet-covered pedestal. Looking around and seeing the masses I realized I was not the only person who she touched in her life.

There were hundreds packed into the small room, she had truly been loved in her life.

Fortunately my guns parted the many mourners so I did not have to wait in a long line to view the casket. It was well known that she was also Amelia of BLAK, so I don’t think any one was really surprised to see me there, though they still where wary.

I walked up to the casket unchallenged. Leaning over I glanced down at her body, she still looked so alive, her beautiful green eyes were shut, and her perfect face was motionless. Like she had just fallen asleep.

I wanted to scream at her to wake up, to look around at how many people she was leaving behind, how many people still wanted her to live.

I had always been there for her, no matter what. If she needed me I was there, if I needed her she was there. We were partners. And the one time I had not been there…

My thoughts trailed off as I slammed my open hands down on the lip of the casket swearing out loud.

The many mourners looked up from their conversations, as I turned away from her body and took a deep breath.

She was dead, and I needed to move on. It’s how she would have wanted things, no I would not take revenge on any one, she would not want bloodshed to mark her name.

She would want every one to be happy and live on. She was always so full of life, that is how she would want us to live. I thought as I set my jaw and walked out of the building, leaving the man with my jacket flustered as he wondered if he should run after and return the jacket or not.

I got in the hover craft and drove off.

Life will not stop for one death, and neither should I. It’s not how she would want things.

-End of entry-

OOC: She said her reasons for leaving where that as on dial up and with her massive amounts of online time she had run out of things to do, and did not want to start forcing people to fight a laggy player. Her reasons for leaving with so little heads up where as she did not want any one talking her outta it like so many of us had in the past. She also said thanks to the many people of VO that showed her such a good time in her short stay with us.

So here is to you Amelia, hope you come back again one day.

Broma-Ba Slick hung towards the back of the crowd. He hated funerals. They were too damn serious and too damn final. But Lydia had been his best customer and one of his best friends.

He started toward her casket to pay his respects. A large hand gripped his shoulder from behind, and he turned to stare into the grief-stricken eyes of Borb The Second. Lydia had told Broma of her long and close friendship with Borb, and he knew how her death must have hurt him. He stared into Borb's eyes, gave him a brief nod, and stepped aside.

He watched Borb approach the casket, stare into it, and then stride from the room with grim determination. He tried to catch Borb's eye again as he left, but Borb's gaze was locked on the door toward which he strode.

After the crowd of mourners had thinned, Broma approached the casket. When he saw his friend's face, he finally understood that she was really gone. "Goodbye, friend," he whispered, and placed a small nugget of heliocene, shaped like a rose, into her coffin.

Back in his ship, he dialed into the TGFT database and called up the intelligence information on guilds. The name "Lydia" was already gone from the list of IGPK members. He tried BLAK. Amelia was still listed. Tears filled his eyes as the screen refreshed, and her name faded forever.

I sat quietly in the back, trying not to draw attention to my late arrival. When Borb had contacted me I had hastened to the funeral. But a Serco had gotten in my way, daring to stop me paying my final respects to Amelia. His death was more than he deserved.

I had only known Amelia briefly, but she had made my life richer. As my day became busier and busier I would only be able to fly at night, when most of IA was asleep. She had made me laugh countless times, and any time I found her laughing at one of my jokes I filled with happiness that I could return some of the joy she had brought to my life.

I looked around, glad to be wearing the thick make-up associating me with the notorious pirate I sometimes flew as. Most would find it hard to believe that the Commander of IA had not blasted Amelia the moment he first targeted her ship. Or perhaps not...anyone who knew Amelia would know that she was more than a pirate, and deserved to be treated as such.

I spotted Broma-Ba Slick, thinking of the order I had just placed with him. The order of Heliocine and Pentric...all of which I had mined with Amelia. She had showed me so many places, even lent me some money to help out. I had promised to repay her...and she had laughed, "With interest." Another pang of grief coursed through me.

As Borb walked past the coffin which I remained too cowardly to approach, he glanced up, and saw me through the make-up. He gave me a grin. Not the casual, cocky grin he would give as he called me a lazy commander and asked if I had the balls to expel him, but one visibly diminished. Yet I was surprised he could do that much. I had stopped smiling...laughing...hell, even talking, since the news of Amelia's death reached me.

He gave a slight inclination of his head, indicating that I should come up. I closed my eyes...wondering if I had it in me. But I owed her this much...and I slowly stood up and walked towards the coffin. The first thing I noticed was her smile. The warm smile I had first seen as I sat down in the bar of Sedina L-2, dropping a hot bag of Taco Bell onto the bar, specially for her. The bartender had been livid...but we made up for it with the amount of alcohol we each got down.

She had known more about me than most of my comrades I would die to save, but had always had the innocent curiosity for more information...which I would always wave away with a grin and a call for more liquor. She would never know how much I wanted to tell her, or how close I was.

She had enriched my life in a way few had ever succeeded in doing. I would tell her this virtually every time I started flying back to a station to get to bed, but I still didn't feel like my gratitude had been expressed. I pulled my gaze off her peaceful face and looked around....so many had come. How could a mere pirate have been so influential in the lives of all these people?

But I reminded myself, Amelia had always been more than just a pirate. A tear escaped, the first since I had first started my journey into space. She knew so much about me....but she would never know how much she had really meant.

LeberMac sat forlornly in the darkened room, staring at his dead terminal, unable to contact anyone, wondering if anything important was going on.

Shape tapped repeatedly on his desk. An annoying, persistent pattern, that the young serco could not ignore. It was, after all, exactly in sync with his pulse.

"Find him or her, or whomever..."
Shape waited a few beats, then elaborated,

"IGPK, SCAR, IA, VPR, IDF, SOR, TGFT, <(K)> I don't care whom..."
...and standing up and smashing his fingers through the table (an itani party trick) he yelled....

"WHOMEVER HAS THE PATENT ON THAT MINING BEAM SLEEPS WITH THE BOTS TONIGHT!"

I tried not to think of what could have, might have, or should have happened during Amelia's mining run as I sat quietly near the section of the proceedings heavily populated by Black Lance personnel, but it was becoming increasingly hard. I had not yet dealt with death in this manner--friends came and went and came back again to start the cycle all over again, but not a single one had ever gone and left on that "last grand adventure" before Amelia did--and it hurt.

Only having met Amelia in person a few times, mostly while running retrieval missions for her operations out of the Dau Senate, I recalled that it was she that embodied everything I looked for in a friend--a respectable, respectful, person that could be relied on in a time of need. She was what I saw in the Black Lance: a group of pilots, that despite their general reputation as pirates, were just people--and these people were nothing but the most respectable of those that I had ever met out in my time in space. She was the reason I looked to the Lance as a place to stay.

A tear rolled down my cheek as I felt the large star-shaped medallion in my pocket. Made from large pieces of the purest of rare ores, I had spent several hours using heavy equipment on the ores until I got an aesthetic effect that created the illusion of rings of light that moved out from the center like a soft shockwave.

I had intended the medallion as a gift to Yukinari, but I knew now that this was the person to give it to--someone who had spent her waking life among the dense asteroid belts of the stars, working with these ores--and that the ores giving something back to her would bring the cycle to a close.

I removed the medallion from my pocket, its soft glow calming my already built-up emotions, and walked up to the casket. As I neared it, a tune I had heard long ago as a child started in my head, and I felt myself starting to sing.

To my old brown earth,
And to my old blue sky,
I'll now give these last few molecules of "I,"
And you who sing,
And you who stand nearby,
I do charge you not to cry.
Guard well our human chain.
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun will shine.
And this our home,
Keep pure and sweet and green.
For now, I'm yours
And you are also mine.

A tear fell from my eye as I stopped, and I placed the medallion down in the casket, next to the heliocene rose from Broma.

I slowly retreated back to my seat and sat down. The chair creaked softly in protest as I did so.

I quietly looked around the room. There were members of various guilds--some Itani, some UIT, and some Serco. Everyone had the same expression. Everyone's eyes were red. Why did it take death to bring us all together like this? I glanced from Borb to Smittens to Broma. All of us had been touched in some way by Amelia. All of us were (and are) affected by her death.

In that, we are all the same.

In that, we are not three nations, but one.

NB: The song that is above in italics is To My Old Brown Earth by Pete Seeger.

Snapping off the video feed of the funeral playing on his viewer system, Dr. Lecter contemplated the moment.

He would have enjoyed attending in person; but considering how he and Lydia had gotten along, his presence would have raised far too many eyebrows. The video feed was enough to confirm what he needed to know: that the mining beam alterations had been, to say the least, sufficient. The irony of it, a seasoned miner riddled with shrapnel in the most noobish of "accidents," had simply been too delicious to pass up.

Switching the viewer to cockpit mode, Dr. Lecter turned away from the planet and steered the Void-gray Valkyrie out into space.

I am by no means as literate as my fellow pilots who have posted here, but in the short time that I knew Amelia I came to think of her as a friend.

You will be missed, Amelia.

Yarr. You will be missed. I am awaiting contact from you in our non-Vendetta methods, so do not leave me.

Wookin P'Nub would not be fooled.

He'd received news of Lydia's death through IGPK's communications network. As Lydia's many friends and guildmates plotted courses to Dau for her funeral, Wookin turned his ship the other way.

The message had said that Lydia was killed when her mining beam overheated, exploding. Wookin didn't buy it. Lydia always monitored her beams. Modern mining beams had numerous built-in safety measures. These mechanisms made it virtually impossible for a beam to overheat before its power was automatically cut.

Lydia had never trusted them.

Long ago she'd shown Wookin how she jury rigged heat sensors along the beam's components, feeding a read-out in her cockpit. As he remembered, he glanced over to his own display. She'd helped him install it.

Lydia had taught him many things; everything really. When they met he was eking out a meager living running trade goods for the various UIT corporations while he nervously watched his radar for hostiles. He'd hardly made enough to keep his ship fueled.

She befriended him and took him under her wing. She introduced him to the rocks that had become his livelihood. She taught him everything he knew of mining. Wookin's asteroid database contained dozens of heliocene, pentric, and denic rocks, worth millions. She'd guided him to them all. And when the time came, she'd introduced him to the Peace Keepers and sponsored his membership there.

He had tried to repay her as best he could. Whenever he found a new high percentage roid, he hailed her on her private channel...she already knew of it. If he found a great rate for helio, he called her...she'd already sold at a higher price. In the end he came to realize that good company was all the payment she really desired. A joke here, a smile there; they meant more to her than credits ever would.

And so he'd done his best to be a good friend. He was rewarded daily with her kindness and generosity of spirit. He'd always hoped that he'd given her enough in return.

In recent weeks, Wookin had gotten to know a new side of Lydia. She'd confided in him that she had been operating under an alias. She was better known as Amelia, of the infamous Black Lance. Wookin was shocked at first, but when she confessed that she was worried that it might change his good opinion of her, he had suddenly laughed aloud. "If you're a pirate, than you're the most polite one I've ever met!", he'd joked.

It was this knowledge that tugged at Wookin when he received the news of her death. It was for this reason that he was not grieving at her funeral.

No, Wookin would not be fooled. Lydia could not be dead. She had gone underground.

It was the only thing that made sense. She was talented, cautious, crafty, and as he'd come to find recently, could hold her own in any sort of combat. She was a seasoned miner; an accident was just too common a death for the likes of her. She was a Lady and a Lady simply didn't go out like that.

One day soon she'd look him up, and she'd tell him of her adventures as they boosted past the bots to an asteroid cluster rich with pentric. Like so many old times.

Wookin stirred from his reverie as his Behemoth completed its last jump. Entering the sector, he called up his asteroid database and looked for his notes on the rock. As Lydia had taught him, he used his notes of the station dimensions and asteroid positions to find his way.

He guided his ship up to the rock; the one where they'd met and first mined together. Where she'd taught him to survive. He targeted it.

It was still warm from her last visit.

Looking out his cockpit he clenched his teeth as he saw the debris floating around the asteroid. "That could be anything", he reassured himself. Standing, he put his hand to the vismetal of his cockpit window and stared out for long minutes.

He shook his head as he turned away, wiped quickly at his eyes, and got to work, picking up where his dear friend had left off.

Mystic was just about to dock to attend the funeral of her fallen comrade when she noticed it. A Valkyrie just sitting there, barely discernible because of its dark grey color.

After hearing of the supposed accident that had killed Amelia, she was on full alert. There weren't that many females accepted by the pirates as such, only 3 had been chosen to date by Blak. Amelia and her hadnt had time to get as close as she would have liked, "but we always had a good laugh at the boys expense" Mystic smiled at the thought.

"That valk is bothering me..." She said outloud to her console.

She punched out the code to reach Shape "Someone doesn't want to be seen here, maybe nothing but..." No response, ok will send off a message to Borb, just in case. Landing her ship Mystic went to give her respects, wondering at all the people.

Amelia had touched many lives, if something was amiss... Mystic just couldn't shake the feeling of seeing that ship just lurking. Could be just someone who couldn't bear to say goodbye, but she didn't think so.

Shaking it off for now, she walked into the funeral home.

Mecha walked into the funeral home completely unarmed. To try and not to disrupt the funeral he wore a black robe and a black mask to disguise himself. Mecha continued to walk into the room as people would give him a passing glance but nothing more.

Smittens turned and looked hard at mecha as if he knew who the cloaked figure was but couldn't remember. Mecha walked up to the casket and dropped a special rose that only grew on SOl 2 on the casket. Mecha walked out of the funeral home, He knew he had work to do. Mecha was angry, he became more enraged with every step back to his ship. Because of his status with most people he had to hide himself at her funeral.

"After this is over, I'm done.", He said grimly.

"This" meaning killing the Death Shrike and Infineon. Mecha ripped the mask and cloak off before he entered his ship and left. Smittens walked out to the hanger and saw the cloak and mask on the ground.

"Could that have been...nah nevermind", Smittens said.

Mecha headed to the end of the world...

While I appreciate the mentions MT and Miharu:

"I looked around, glad to be wearing the thick make-up associating me with the notorious pirate I sometimes flew as."

Aw, Smittens thinks I wouldn't recognize him anywhere he goes. ^^; how cute.

Seta walked into the parlor... early... *way* early... no one was around but the personnel readying the casket for the upcoming proceedings...

He was wearing his dress uniform, perfectly fitted... yet it buldged in two places - one at his side, and one on his right shoulder - by concealed bandages... his trousers were perfectly bloused over his flight boots (made proper by the use of "non-approved" retaining devices, that are frequently used, but not discussed)... they were shined to mirror . The creases were perfectly aligned... and he was not displaying the full "salad" on his chest - as was his way... he hated that stuff...

He walked to the attendant nearest the casket, and forcefully asked "can I have a moment?"

The attendant stepped back... rather in surprise - as with recognition... but backed away quietly, and motioned to the others to leave the area.

Silence was all that remained...

The parlor then echoed Seta's presence with the two steps he took forward... in perfect cadence... and then with the formal call to attention.

Seta stood motionless... rigid... aligned... eyes forward, as if not seeing anything... yet at that moment, he was seeing *everything*.

It was as if time stopped for those few moments...

"SA-LUTE", the air echoed... as Seta snapped a perfectly rigid and aligned salute...

It was as if the air pressure had changed in the room... yet nothing moved... and it was again quiet...

"rest", Seta spoke softly to himself... and he relaxed... assuming parade rest...

Several minutes went by as Seta reflected on Lydia... her achievements... the missions and duels that they had shared... and it was later when he had discovered Lydia was really Amelia... and several loose ends were completed when Borb made known his true identity... it all came together that the two were working together underground... yet the truth remained...

Lydia was a positive force... and garnered Seta's admiration.

Seta performed a timed about face... hesitated...

and left the parlor.

"with respect"... he muttered under his breath as he walked towards the airlock...

Words can't express the loss of a dear friend, not even if she was a BLAK. I miss the "Hello Nation" on channel 11. Those echos are gone now never to return. The private chats... all gone...

You'll be missed, but not forgotten.

I'm really impressed with the creative imagination of some ppl here and their ability to pass that on to "paper".

Congratulations
Moriel Gilman