Death and Destruction

What an eventful few days I've had. Full of delicious kills. It started with an invitation to go on a nullsec roam with the Tuskers. I was informed that this was, near as dammit, a suicide run to scout it out and see what we could come up with. It sounded like a right laugh and I immediately signed up. I had just taken a new pilot under my wing by the name of Katsutro and he was eager for some pirating experience so I thought I'd bring him along as well. As a Tusker pilot by the name of Joc colourfully described it we were going to "pop his pvp cherry". He was a friend that I had made on a station that I had kept in contact with, and he always wanted to hear about my latest kills. He'd finally had enough of merely hearing about them and filed for his pilot's license. Anyway I digress. We fitted out frigates for speed, and headed off. Quickly jumping through systems, not letting ourselves get distracted by potential targets, we quickly reached our destination. We jumped into nullsec and were instantly faced with a huge battleship gate camp. There were about eight or nine in total, but we were too quick and warped to the next gate. Where we met our first victim, a Hawk assault frigate. We outnumbered him eight to one, as we locked, scrambled, and destroyed him in mere seconds. He was too slow and his pod also bit the dust. As it turned out though, he was a scout for a much more fearsome gang than our paltry little frigates. The stargate we were next to begin to flash, warning or the imminent arrival of a group of ships. Before we could do anything, a group of heavy assault cruisers uncloaked from the gates protective field and attacked us. Losses were heavy. In a few minutes we lost four ships; me, Leo Solunar, Menthez, and Joc. We were out classed and massively outgunned. I managed to escape in my pod, but Joc wasn't so lucky. Leo Solunar also failed to escape.

I quickly fled out of nullsec to the (relative) safety of lowsec, and headed back to our home system of Hevrice. I later found out we took further losses; the same gang had followed the survivors and taken an even greater toll on us. Egrat's rather exspensive Claw was reduced to scrap, as well as Caster Rom's Incursus. Caster was also unfortunate and was podded. Sometime later Egrat had returned with another ship, this was also destroyed. It was not all bad news, though. Another kill was bagged in the shape of a Crow interceptor. Meanwhile, Katsutro, had somehow survived all of this. He had however, been seperated from the rest of group in the turmoil and was now desperatly trying to find his way out of the labyrinthine nullsec and back in lowsec. He pleas for help over the fleet communications network were hilarious. The terrified pleas for help turned into cries of terror as the roaming gang caught up with him and blew both his ship and his pod to smithereens. All I could manage was to nearly cry with laughter as I listened from the safety of a station. When we met up and had a drink afterwards, he too agreed it was one the funniest things he had ever heard when I played him a recording of it.

Things calmed down after that for a few days. I then went hunting on my own, still searching for that elusive final "above class" kill. I was in Adirain when the ideal target came up. While scanning I came across a Merlin and a Rupture ratting together. Quickly checking out the pilots, I discovered to my delight they were pretty new. The Rupture pilot, no doubt flying a ship he wasn't properly equipped to fly, would be an easy kill. The Merlin would also be easy but I didn't really care about him, he would probably flee the moment I landed on grid. I warped in and landed at the belt. I was a few kilometres out and unfortunately this gave the Rupture time to escape. The Merlin however made the rookie mistake of trying to fly between asteroids and had become stuck. Well at least I would get one kill. As his ship exploded, the Rupture pilot foolishly returned, perhaps in the vain hope of trying to rescue his friend. I pounced on him, and slowly began eating his shield away. His weapons were ineffective against me, doing barely any damage. I had him at about half armour and there was nothing he could do. Then I too made the rookie mistake of hitting an asteroid. My orbit around his ship had taken me into it. I lost vital speed. This allowed him, and the battleship rat also taking pot shots at me to land a few decent hits. They hurt. This unfortunate incident meant I had to warp out leaving the rupture to escape while I repaired. Curses.

Later that same evening I linked up with a few Tuskers to go after some likely looking targets, in the system. There was Alex Rudd, who did a truly spectacular job of scanning out targets for us, Caster Rom, and Rat Hick. We were all in frigates. The first target tracked down was a Vexor. Annoyingly I was on the other side of the system scanning for targets, and by the time I arrived the cruiser was already finished, as was its pilot. Our next target was somewhat larger. An Apocalypse battleship in a mission. Thanks to Alex we could locate the precise position of it and warped straight there. It didn't stand a chance. Our guns tore it apart. We were too small and too fast for it to bring its formidable weaponry to bear on us, and it was quickly reduced to structure. We held our fire and ransomed the pilot for his ship. We got a nice 60 million ISK from the pilot and allowed the ship to go on its way still intact. Just. Split four ways that 15 million each. A good start to the evening.

Next we managed to corner another known enemy in a Harbinger battle cruiser. Our samll ships avoided the fire for the Harbinger's guns as we blasted our way through the ships rather extensive armour. We eventually got through the armour and into structure. We attempted to ransom, but the pilot refused and we destroyed his ship. The quick witted pilot managed to escape, but there was a wealth of valuables left in the ships wreck that would fetch a pretty penny. This was turning out to be a rather profitable night.

A few solo frigate kills followed as we fanned out looking for targets. We jumped a group of known enemies at a belt but once again I stuffed up and missed the fight. We got two frigates and a pod in that encounter. Then Alex informed us that he had got a Myrmidon on scan so we warped to it and opened fire. Its drones caused us some headaches and we had to concentrate on taking them out for the first few minutes of the fight. Unfortunately we were too slow to save Rat Hick and his frigate exploded. This just left me and Caster to take him out. We beat him down into structure and again tried to ransom him. He wasn't having any of it though so we blew his ship to smithereens. We managed to lock and scramble his pod, and tried to ransom him for his life, but again he refused. We introduced his body to the cold vacuum of space. Alex then got a location for another battle cruiser, this time a Drake. We warped to it but it managed to escape. We chased it around for a few minutes before cornering it at a planet. We took care of its drones, and then began slowly powering our way through the Drake's formidable shields. It's missiles proved aggravatingly accurate, and I took a few good hits which forced me to withdraw or face destruction. Caster had to ramp up his speed in order to avoid the deadly warheads. Alex swapped his probing ship for a Stabber to supply the muscle to break through the Drake's shields. I warped back in to help break through, but the pilot targeted me again and took another uncomfortably accurate hit which forced me to once again withdraw. Alex got a hammering, but the giant finally fell. The pilot escaped but we got some nice loot from his wreck. After a successful days hunting, I retired to the nearest station for a good nights sleep.