Pearls Before Swine.

After having crossed 51 systems through the wartorn frontier rim between Molden Heath and Black Rise, I only just think to check my NeoCom for current security conditions. Concord's warning overlay answered my inquiry quite clearly: "Criminals will not be tolerated in Caldari Space..."

I realize that my association with the Caldari Navy still doesn't give me carte blanche to dock anywhere within the Samanuni star system (excuse the Gallente phrase but the Caldari have no term for such things), much less to retrieve my Typhoon-class explorer One-Armed Bandit, and now find that I have no alternative but to call in a docking request at Okkamon VII and consider my next move.

My local sweetheart in level 4 security divisional post 0956.45.3 was still finishing up some debriefing and this gave me a few hours to arrange some space in my secondary cargo holds. And yes, I am fully aware that recon vessels do not come fit with secondary cargoholds... usually. This one I had fit within the subflooring while rehousing the main engines and replacing all of the interior structuring with nanofiber components.

Anyhow, being that I wasn't going to be delivering any contraband to Samanuni any time real soon I felt it was a good time to perhaps see what was on these long-forgotten holoreels that were taking up space in a forgotten crate since looting some Gallente industrial wreckage weeks earlier. Much to my relief, they were not more copies of the latest Intaki soft-core "Green Manalishi-something-or-another" (the last three scrapheaps that I sorted through all had a partial copy of this popular interactive holo-sim), but rather they were seemingly archival records from the State War Academy. From the title "Spitfire-Ace" I could discern very little, as I really had no recollection of ever having encountered a Spitfire-class interceptor, but as I activated the vector projection table to a random timestamp a narration figure appeared and spoke.

"Air warfare, particularly between two fighters, is not about two equals dueling. Its not like a couple of knights running against eachother, being equally armed. Its about ambushing someone. Its about creeping up unseen and shooting someone in the back. Its more like hunting, and you sought out prey that were defenseless if you possibly could. So, umm... it wasnt very romantic at all, in fact..."

I knew that this was important, and although it seemed to deal with atmospheric engagements only (and rather distinctly avoided any suggestion of zero-G physics whatsoever!) it captured my attention in a primordial way. Archival records, indeed! Hell... If the cadets only absorbed 0.01% of what was contained within these reels then they would have a fighting chance.

... Wait, what am I saying. Perhaps I should be thankful that the rookies out there aren't familiar with these reels. Otherwise it would be like a cat arming the mice. I'll just put these away in my hangar bay and finish looking for those long-armed roes and tobacco.