Mayhem - Part II

So, fit complete, I headed out to test it. The first test wasn't anywhere near as eventful as I had hoped, but it was still a success. I went into Providence through HED- and moved up to D-G. This was a station system so I spent a while scouting it out and setting up bookmarks. I then settled down outside the station and waited for a target to undock. The very first thing that undocked was a Badger Mk II. A hauler that fell easily to my bomb run. The format for a bomb run is simple: sit cloaked until a viable target appears. Then move directly towards them, uncloak, launch the bomb and warp off. By the time the enemy knows what's going on, your long gone, and the bomb explodes. As you can see this first run was very successful, and this first act of violence towards the locals quickly got their attention. Several rather nasty ships undocked to protect any more undocking vessels and to deter me, scariest of all was a sensor boosted artillery Hurricane which was something that I really didn't want to mess with. A long range, fast locking ship is death incarnate for a ship like the stealth bomber. While the heat from my attack died down I moved into another station system and again set up my various safes and bomb spots. It seemed though that the owners of this station took immediate offense to my presence and a lot of ships undocked including several interceptors, a Dramiel, and some interdictors. Again all very fast, and quite capable if catching me if I attempted a bomb run. A collection of ships that is lethal to any stealth bomber. I backed out of there pretty quick as with that lot floating around I dare not uncloak. I moved back into D-G and set up ready to bomb again, but unfortunately I didn't get any kills. My continued presence though was starting to annoy them, and I received some intelligence telling me that they were forming a coherent gang to try and catch me. Before this could materialise I made my escape and headed home.

I took it out again the next day, still into Providence but a different area this time. The area I took it to was a dead end area where I knew there were several large industrial operations. I would try and bag myself some more kills or at the very least disrupt these operations. So I headed out and almost immediately jumped into a gate camp. No problem though, as soon as I left the protective cloaking field provided by the gate I turned my own on and was gone before they could even get a lock on me. I got to the first system that I had planned on searching for targets in. This too, was a station system, but before I set up shop I mapped out the jump bridges and set up safes and bomb spots. The activity around the JBs was limited at best so I moved into position outside of the station. Again a hapless hauler undocked and my bomb blew his ship apart. As I was warping away I inspected my read outs and realised that his cargo had survived. So I warped back at range to destroy the wreck to prevent them from recovering it. When I landed there was a Devoter sitting outside. I was out of its elongated point range so I uncloaked locked up both the wreck and him. Tracking disruptor on the heavy interdictor, and target painter and torpedoes on the wreck. The TD nicely nullified the Devoters weapons and I blew the wreck apart, denying them the cargo. A hauler undocked at this point, it was no doubt trying to save the cargo before I could destroy it. I targeted that as well and transferred my torps and TP to it before I could land the hit however, it warped off. I transferred my weapons to the Devoter and blasted through the shields and started working on the, sadly, much tougher armour. I didn't dare go into point range for fear of being pointed myself. This was definitely something I didn't want as I knew reinforcements would be on their way. Several of the aforementioned reinforcements landed on grid, including a Rapier and several T1 frigates, so I made a hasty get away.

Back at one of my scanning spots I detected a Cormorant along with a large quantity or wrecks. Assuming it was a salvage ship I scanned for anomalies and quickly located him. I warped in and landed about 50km away from the ship. Annoyingly he was moving around to quickly for me to accurately bomb, so I uncloaked, locked him up and put all my E-war on him. The ships relatively small signature radius protected him from a lot of the damage but even still by volley three he was in deep armour. The moment I appeared though he had signalled his friends and I soon detected a stream of inbound ships. This denied me the destroyers death but it did give me a great deal of intel on the ships that the rest of the pilots were flying. It was a very varied selection which included almost every ship class. I warped to gate and several of them had beaten me there. I had no intention of leaving though, I was having far too much fun messing with these people. Just as these thoughts were passing through my head, a stream of angry abuse came across on the local channel: demands to leave their system, and derogatory terms of abuse. Of course I found this extremely amusing and I told them so. The reaction was so child like I was practically crying with laughter: "Well we don't really care that your here anyway!". For a bunch of people who supposedly didn't care about my presence they sure put a lot of effort into catching me.

They set up several ill conceived and obvious traps. I sprung every single one and tried to catch several of them off guard. One of the worst traps was a slow aligning mining barge on one of the gates, guarded by a Brutix. I deduced that the moment I uncloaked to launch a bomb the barge would insta-warp and the Brutix would try and hold me there for the backup to arrive. I decided to go for the Brutix, from a basic inspection of the ship it looked as though it were fitted with T1 guns. I hoped the rest of the ship was as shoddily fit. I decloaked and launched by bomb. As I suspected the mining barge warped off, and the Brutix started targeting me. I responded in kind and launched torpedoes, and suppressed it's weapons with my tracking disruptor. My bomb had dealt it a serious blow; it's shields had been totally obliterated and a good chunk of its armour had been taken out. I hoped I could finish it before his friends arrived. The so far impotent Brutix didn't do anything to dispel this notion as it deployed T1 drones. Still nothing to fear from this ship. My torps were knocking chucks out of its armour and I reaching structure. I kept an eagle eye on my scanners and unfortunately a large number of ships showed up and were approaching at high warp. I stayed until they landed on grid, trying to finish off the battlecruiser, but it was not to be. I bailed before any ships could get a lock on me. I triggered several other "traps", but I didn't get any kills. More people piled into local, raising it to around forty. At this point I jumped through the gate into a massive gate camp. It consisted of at least thirty ships, but they couldn't catch me, ooooh no! "better luck next time guys!", I taunted in local. At which point I jumped into another gate camp and was promptly blown to smithereens, pod and all.

While the trip had a rather unsatisfactory ending, I felt that, as a whole, it was a success. The fit had faired very well and had foxed many an opponent. With it I had caused so much trouble I had pulled over one hundred pilots away from their regular duties in order to catch me. I had also significantly disrupted the industrial operations in the area, and I had gathered a lot of intel on the area. I had also mapped out many areas of interest such as POSs, jump bridges, and stations. I had set up many bomb spots and observation points. In actual combat this fit worked admirably and on more than one occasion I had been able to suppress one target with the TD, while attacking another. Bar a few scratches from some drones I had taken virtually no damage despite several small skirmishes. Seeing as I had mapped this area so thoroughly and the fit had been such a success I would definitely return, to harass the locals some more.