Sunday, April 3, 2011

Crumbling Cane, Ripping Rifter

Old Man Star. My career as a low life scumbag started here. I did not know at the time about the reputation this system has for death and destruction. Lately, it has however been either empty, or filled with large packs of ships way beyond my target range. So I have not spent much time there lately.

This night, I did however decide to spend some time at my old central safe spot, even though the system was almost empty and only a Hurricane, apart from the local POS-junk, showed up on 360 scan. The Hurricane was in one of the belts. Or at a planet. Four in local. One of them a fresh recruit of the Federal Defence Union. A couple of more experienced pilots also in system. The lust for destruction convinced me and I warped in at 50km off the belt, giving me the opportunity to run if the Hurricane turned out to be piloted one of the more skilled pilots. When I landed I was greeted by the promising sight of the youngster happily looting Serpentis wrecks.

The youngster decided my small Rifter was no threat and continued looting while i burned towards him. Ah, the deceptive power of size!

He was engaging me once I was in range and I tried to keep the transversal high as I manually spiraled towards a close orbit. My shields held and the few Valkyrie-drones did not bother me much at all. But then, suddenly ECM! He did not run, but I kept loosing lock over and over again - not getting much damage done. And after a while my once impressive shields had to give up and I had to dock up for massive repairs of smoking hot guns and some dents in my armour.

The youngster opened up direct communication and bravely greeted me with a good fight. I saluted. But scumbags never give up on a perfect target for ransom. Once the mechanics were done, I undocked. The Hurricane had uninterrupted moved to another belt. Old Man Star certainly was quiet this night. My Rifter was going to change that.

This time I had no intention of running, so I warped in at 0km and landed on top of him - and a Serpentis Battleship! I once shot at those to keep my relations with CONCORD at a decent level. Now I consider them my closest allies. We are all red.

The shields never dipped below 50 percent, the Hurricanes ECM did not work and my overheated autocannons cooperated with the Serpentis Baron and slowly we worked our way through the shield and armour tanked Hurricane. Local spiked with approximately 20 ships and I cursed my luck but was committed to finish what I had started. Luckily they were just passing through and Old Man Star was quiet yet again - except from one particular asteroid belt.

The Hurricanes hull started to show serious structural weakness and the youngster was invited to Saftsuze's ISK Transfer Service communication channel. I wanted to kill it, but I could live with 50 million ISK as well. The pilot only had three. Old Man Star was no longer quiet as an enormous ball of fire exploded in Asteroid Belt 1 at Planet VII.

The Rifter shall from now on be known as Hurricanes Bane.

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