On Exploding

That which does not kill you has made a tactical error,
Rule 35, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates"

So, it's been a dead couple of days really. I haven't been able to pin anyone down for the life of me, or them for that matter.

I learned how to scan down targets from reading Kane Rizzel's logs. The man knows piracy.

I caught up with him out in Eifer and saw he was in a battle with a couple of ships, figured I'd jump in and give him a hand. By the time I figured out where they were, the two other ships were down or gone and someone else was in the belt with him. I knew I'd be jammed before I could get out so I did what any self respecting pirate would do. I smacked the other ship with everything I had and warped my pod out. Not exactly a glorious meeting but hopefully enough to help him get a kill in.

Then I realized they weren't fighting. I found out later that he was actually backup. Oh well, I lost about 500k worth of ship and mods, but it was still fun. I was alot less bored at the end of it, so that's a positive.

So I warped to a safe scanning spot in Eifer and started looking around again. Nothing but Kane for long while. Then an Astarte jumped in. It's a command ship which means someone was looking for a fight, but not with me. Some other guys warped in and Kane drops me a line letting me know that one is the Astarte pilot's brother, and he likes to fly covert ops. Not wanting to be probed out, I got the heck out of dodge and docked up in Gusandall.

On my way back through the Gus gate, I noticed that there were wrecks, mods, and corpses strewn about the area. I grabbed a couple of tech two cargo mods out of the wrecks and docked up.

Never turn your back on an enemy.

Rule 37 "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates"

So, I was talking with my some old corpmates about perhaps getting back into some higher security mission running when I got an itch to go into combat again. I jumped back into Eifer and started a scan. I got a hit on a rupture and 2 drones. About 20 seconds later I had the guy narrowed to a specific belt. I warped to within 30 clicks. It began.

I targeted him and both his drones, and clicked on my warp scrambler. He was already deep into armor from the Angel Cartel Crusher's he was trying to kill. He kept shooting at the crusher but set his drones on me. Sometimes I imagine my Kestrals evoke a bit of laughter when I jump in on something. No matter, my Gremlins were tearing his armor up and suddenly he was in structure. He aligned to a planet, but my Microwarp drive kept me orbiting at roughly 1000 meters. Suddenly his structure buckled and his pod popped out of the wreck. I locked it down but my microwarp drive kept me going and I moved out of it's range before I could activate the scrambler. He didn't leave though and just sat there, so I popped the pod too. I scooped the ill gotten goods, his corpse, and a wreck he hadn't picked up yet and warped back to my safespot.

I saw the probing fellah in local so I began to traverse all of the safespots I'd set up insystem as my Global Criminal Countdown began to go down. It struck me odd that he never fired a shot at me, I know the crusher was hurting him but it made no sense not to take out the scrambler.

When I got back into the station it all became clear, he'd fitted a single warp stab. He didn't shoot me because he wanted the bounty off that crusher before he warped out. At least that's how he thought it would play out. Because I'm a bit of a novice, I had to use a warp scrambler instead of a disruptor, so the cruiser had two points on him instead of just one. He got his ass kicked by a novice pirate because he had already figured out how to outsmart the old ones.

Financially I more than paid for my lost ship, but today was a good day because I got a kill in.

I hope there are many more.