Run Into The Fire

Every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless.

Josiah Bartlet - The West Wing

We had a bit of fun yesterday in the Bastards. We've had alot of fun recently period, but anytime I get to play a role in success, I'm happy with it.

Last night I woke up with an alarm blaring. My corp was killing people again, and I wasn't getting to take part.

I fitted out a rifter. You know, I've got sixty rifter's boxed up in my hangar. Whenever I lose one, another is usually being assembled before I even get back. Today would see the hangar techs and their automated helpers being put to the test.

Voice comms were active as I undocked, my sleek rifter cruising out of the hangar. I admired it's beauty from the camera drones. It is amazing that a ship that large can be operated by just one pilot, but I've proven time and time again it can be done. Automation and robotics has just progressed so much in the last few centuries, it's astounding what can be done today without people.

Regardless, I oriented my ship quickly towards the Arnher gate. Which brings me to a very important bit of information when you're operating out of Evati. There are quite a few gates in Evati, but one oddity, there is a gate called Arnher, and a gate called Anher. The very important thing to remember is that while Arnher is standard low-sec space(as are all of the other gates except one), Anher is a concord protected system. This can make it complicated when new folks are on voice comms, and a few people have lost some fairly nice ships due to a mistake here. One fellow even lost a clone with the best implants he could buy. Remember the arrrrr people.

As I came out of warp on the Arnher gate, I double checked to make sure I wasn't making that mistake, and contacted the gate control crew for a jump out.

The gate fired, and I was hurtled through space. Some people don't care for jump gate travel. The truth of the matter is, being throw into some connecting wormhole and shunted across lightyears in mere moments is indeed a harrowing experiance. It's also the only way to get somewhere in a hurry, and I was in a hurry. I came through and began to orbit the gate along with the rest of the crew.

There was a battle ongoing, and I caught a hound with my warp disruptor, I attempted to get into range and throw on some damage, but he exploded first. A good start.

At some point there was a call to go through to the other side, and I saw a thrasher come out of warp at that very moment. He flashed red, so I engaged, and offered the rest of the folks to take a shot. We dueled for a few moments before my rifter exploded. I was happy with the fact that his rifter met the same fate later that night.

That's one.

He was obviously well fit, and I warped the pod out. He got out too. I went back to the gate, warped into Evati, and grabbed another rifter. I undocked, warped to my undock point and then back to the Arnher gate.

As I did, there was another fight, this time a typhoon on the gate. He'd engaged already, but wasn't a criminal. Deciding to throw caution to the wind, I fired on him. The sentry guns gave me a disapproving look. The typhoon did not last. One bittersweet bit to the battle was a fellow fleet member's ship malfunction that cost him his Dominix.

However, that's two.

Back to the station, another rifter, and out again. I waited out my Global Criminal Countdown, which is among the oddest inventions of Concord. Out in the lawlessness of space, apparently fifteen minutes is as long as they'll wait to kill you, live through that and you're homefree. I'm sure some guy somewhere is trying to rush back to the Concord Assembly and change the statute of limitation for star ship crime to something a bit longer, but I like it as it is.

While sitting on the gate a bit later, an industrial came roaring in. I eyeballed it warily and quite suddenly we decided to give it hell. He actually had some sort of shield tank on it. It didn't go down immediately, and it was recharging it's shields as we fired. Soon it died, and for some reason the feds decided it didn't warrant a killmail. The sentry guns at that point had been firing at some of my compatriots rather than myself, but as I gave the pod a bit of love, they decided to take me down. I warped my own pod out, and midwarp got a message from Concord saying they disapproved of my actions against the escape pod. Good to hear.

That's three.

Back to base, another rifter, another fit, another undock, another warp to safe. The criminal timer went away shortly, and I was back on the gate.

At this point we had an audience. A Rupture was watching us from two hundred kilometers away. I noticed that from my vantage point he was roughly in line with a celestial object, so without prompting, I warped away and back in at a hundred clicks. Bam, one hundred and four away. I kicked my microwarp drive on and headed his way. He gave no indication that he even noticed my approach, and once I hit twenty three clicks I started to resolve a lock. He returned the favor and I kicked my warp disruptor on just before the lock resolved. It came on and he began to fire at me. The damage he was doing was minimal, as I was coming at an angle, I got in my scrammer range and dropped the disruptor. The talk on comms was jovial and on other topics as I literally yelled "CHECK-CHECK, WARP TO HALLAN TURREK, RUPTURE TACKLED," They obliged the request and the fellow began to align to warp as they approached. His ship was scrammed, and he honestly shouldn't have bothered.

Sometimes someone throws a curve at you out in the cold. This was one of those times. He'd warped in pretty far away, and had fit a warp stabilizer. Under normal circumstances that meant he could afford to spend a little bit of time with the tackler before warping away. I put my point on at twenty clicks, and he knew it was a disruptor, just as you'd imagine would be on any tackling ship.

So he played around a bit, and I closed the rest of the distance. I switched the disruptor for a scrammer, and his stabilizer was just a wasted slot. I can only imagine the horror he experienced as his ship melted around him and his ship refused to warp away.

I was pretty happy with myself at that point. The rest of the fleet managed another rupture on it's own, and we settled in again.

After a bit, I saw another rupture at only a hundred clicks out. He would be more alert, I imagined, but I kicked into tackle mode as I heard a few others saying they were burning in his direction. He was tackled in short order, and I waited for support to make it.

They were considerably slower than I was though, and eventually the rifter gave up the ghost and the rupture warped away. The rupture we'd killed was hanging out nearby in another one and gave him some support as well.

Oh, and four.

I don't half ass some thing, I half ass everything. I was back into a rifter and out the door before you could say "never ending rifters". As I was getting things together, the rupture decided to come back for more and the Bastards took him out which made me a bit happy. Better yet I showed up on the Concord sanctioned criminal report.

The night ended on a high note, and another rupture for rifter trade. A fellow came through and began to engage. I ended up dying, but we took him out a few minutes later.

With five, I was done for the night.

I docked up, chuckled at myself and the universe and went back to bed.

Good day.