The Black Monolith

Raphael woke up with a rush, sitting straight up in his bed, his heart fast pounding inside his chest while he noticed he and all his clothes were soaking wet.

Docked in the Sarum Family Assembly Plant station orbiting Sharhelund VIII, Raphael found himself in his familiar private suite he was provided by the Imperial Navy, taking a break from all the missions, all the killings, all the destruction that occured in his everyday life. He must have fallen asleep, and had a bad dream, he thought.
Pushing away any other explanation, Raphael slowly walked to his bathroom, washed his face and looked into the mirror. With each new clone, he imagined something was altered. A thought he often pushed away immediately in an attempt to remain sane.
Touching himself on his surgical scar on the left side of his scalp, he briefly thought of the new amarrian neural cybernetics he had implemented inside his brain, that were to enhance his neural activity and block out disturbances – further enhancing his combat ability. The implant itself was so big and powerful that it usually interfered with his vision on his left side, thus each clone had the left eye socket replaced with an artificial eye. Further down his neck, right below his atlas, he felt the characteristic capsuleer sockets.
Fully augmented, he had now gone from weighing 84 Kg to 116 Kg.
He stared at his own mirror image for a while. Although the age of his clones remained at 46 years old, Raphel felt as if he were over a hundred. He had already died many times. Was this really his true self looking back at him from the other side of the mirror?

•

Just a regular job, he thought. Accepting yet another mission from the Court Chamberlain and the Sarum Family, Ordo set out to deal with a special set of rouge drones in an old military complex in the system of Irmalin, deep into the low security systems of Khanid space. As he entered the system, he gazed at the Irmalin star, taking in the beauty of it as it came into view. He activated his warp drive with a single thought and headed towards his mission objectives.
Upon entering the dreaded site, Ordo saw and focused his camera drones on the drone hive. He willed his Coercer-class destroyer, “The Ouroboros” towards the waves of malicious drones heading his way, closing in even further as he activated his afterburner systems. Upon reaching his optimal range, he focused his thoughts to his lasers and fired beams of white multifrequency, destroying every drone in his wake. He was just about to burn towards the last remnants of drones and his main objective; the drone hive, when he saw it..
In the middle of the nothingness, it stood. Majestic as anything he’d ever seen. A rectangular prism of some sort. A monolith if anything. Blackness incarnate, still reflecting the darkness of the space around it with unmatched perfection.
Puzzled and hypnotized, Ordo decreased the distance between him and the giant monolith, as if drawn to it. As he closes in, just a few kilometers away, the huge object infront of him engulfs all of his vision. He eagerly tries to get any sort of information from his sensory relays, trying to identify the object without success. Ordo remained transfixed as the stars that was reflected on the surface of the magnificent structure starts to collaborate, move and gather in a form of center right infront of his eyes. He and hardly notice, or even care, that he is being targeted by the remaining drones who are defending their motherly hive.
As he was lost in the translation of what stood before him, the last thing he percieved was the faint sound of alarm that his ships armor and structure was in critical states, before peering into a white light with the deepest part of his mind and going into a state of cataclysmic blissfulness..
Milliseconds later, Ordo opened his eyes, and is greated by a familiar looking servant of his as he realized his ‘old’ body was long gone, somewhere in the cosmic expanse, and that a clone of Raphael Ordo had been activated.

•

Meanwhile in the Genesis region, Dead End system, a lone Heron-class frigate has taken refuge near one of the system planets and launched its probes into space.
– “Captain, we’ve been out here for days now, and the only salvage we’ve found isn’t worth a dime in Empire space. Where is the millions of ISK we were promised?”
The Captain of the Heron “Peria II” remained quite as he repeatedly hits the scanning and survey buttons on the main console of the starship.
– “Captain! We need better results! Otherwise we risk mutiny being in these parts of space. The crew is already talking of wierd things they’ve seen and going crazy about this region being haunted!” one of the crewmembers pledged.
– “We will go nowhere until we find what we are looking for..” said the Captain in a harsh voice, “My sources tells me that we shall find valuable things here.“.
– “With all do respect, Captain, do you even know what we are looking for? And may I ask the reliability of this source of yours?”
– “No, not directly.. And no, you may not ask.” the Captain answered his crewman.
A moment later he uttered “But I do know now… And could you be so kind and go tell the boys it looks like we need a bigger cargohold..“, he said with a grin while peering at the screen with the probing results, revealing a Coercer-class destroyer on scan.