Friday 12 March 2010

Pirates Ahoy! #1



Pirates Ahoy!

Thursday had been a good day for pirating, worthy of a post at least so here’s a quick rundown of events;

Kronos Kill
A late afternoon 0.0 roam with fellow Bastards; K Starwind, DanMart, Beta and Jabajools turned out to be a winner. After several jumps through empty space we where about to press on through a system with too many peeps in local.

K Star in warp to a ransom belt mid flight sputtered something on vent. All I heard was something like; ‘Er…about to...jump in warp to me, belt something something…’ He sounded pretty excited so I prepared for the worst; Starwind is a great pilot and gets himself into fights I can’t handle just yet.

On landing I targeted the only ship that wasn’t ours and heard K Star demanding full DPS. I was concentrating on the job at hand, getting required modules on, launching drones, watching D-scan and getting in range to fire my guns.

I glanced over at the enemy Battleship icon at the top of my screen and started to smile, sweet a BS kill for sure, he’s going down. The bright blue flash on screen illuminated my dark room. And we didn’t even get blobbed! Result!

I quickly prepared a safe spot and waited until the excitement died down a bit. Only then did I realise it wasn’t just any BS, we just killed a faction fit, Tech 2 Battleship!

(Danmart unfortunately got shot to pieces about 10 jumps later, holding the faction loot)


Drake Ransom
After logging of deep into 0.0 I returned later to try and run to Evati, K Starwind logged back in himself not long after. Together we set of the 18 jump trip home.

With a mere 8 jumps left Starwind paused for a moment to inform me of a Drake in a belt. On investigation he reported this was indeed the case and tried to get a point.

It smelled fishy to me but what the hell. On landing all modules activated we started chewing away at the Drakes tough outer shell. Both of us overheating in short spells, desperate to break his tank. I stopped overheating with my guns a mere 80% intact when the dreaded news came from Starwind; he burned out 3 of his guns.

Now unable to break the Drakes tank we decided to bail. Hold one minute I said, lets ransom him! Quickly inviting the Pilot into our Yarsom channel I requested 60 million for his life. He laughed politely, explaining that 60 would be to much. Righto, 40 million then please and you are free to go…

To our amazement his next response was simply; ‘who do I pay?’. With the money in my wallet we quickly moved on, laughing our asses of…

Faction Frigate Fight
After roaming with some Bastards around the local area I decided to go out on my own for a bit rather than flying with the grumpy FC.

I passed a small military outpost of some sort with a Crusader clearly within it on scan. I quickly made my way back to Evati and jumped into my Worm, undocked and sped back to Todi.

On entering system a Dramiel showed up on scan but I ignored it, warping straight to the military beacon. I activated the jump gate and much to my dismay my intended target was 300 clicks away.

I paused and weighed up my options when the Dramiel I had seen on scan earlier landed not far behind me. Running was not an option any longer and cold sweat formed on my forehead when my warpdrive shut down.

Ok lets tussle I figured, engaging my afterburner. Faction rockets spewed from their launchers, Warrior drones screamed out of their holds. The much faster Dramiel flew past at incredible speeds and ripped big chunks out of my shield. I was sure to die, or wasn’t I? The Warriors started to take a beating now and gave my shields a breather. Unable to retrieve two of the Drones quick enough I was forced to launch the slightly slower and less effective Hobgoblins I also carried.

At that moment I realized that this fight had started to swing in my favour with my shields recharged to 70% and the Dramiel’s armor stripped from around its hull. In a desperate attempt to hold point on him long enough to claim my well deserved killmail I overheated all racks and approached the aggressor.

A small tear ran down my cheek as right at moment my guns had to reload and I remembered that I was only able to fit a best named Disruptor due to the low CPU and Powergrid left after fitting two medium shield extenders.

That missing 4km now proved my undoing as the Dramiel managed to run just outside of point range and warped off.

I spoke briefly with the Dramiel Pilot and we congratulated each other on an exciting fight, 46% structure is what he managed to get away with…


Loki Ransom
I remained on vent whilst typing up a Help Desk post and heard the call to arms; a Loki in a neighbouring system.

One of the Bastard directors, z0de, had managed to convince a Harpy and a Loki into a fight near a planet. Being the pilot that he is z0de toyed with the Harpy long enough to get within scram range of the Loki. With point on, the request came for backup to help break his tank.

I would have happily settled for a Loki killmail but the unlucky/lucky pilot was offered a ransom of 600 million which he quickly accepted and paid, securing his freedom and ship.

The 120 million as my share shall be spend on hookers and booze.

For more pirating adventures watch this space…

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