Weapons In Hand As We Start To Ride

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
T.S. Elliot - The Hollow Men

It doesn't haunt me, and that bothers me. I've got about forty bodies in a station container in Evati. There's five to ten more scattered about the galaxy. I took a stroll through that container yesterday before I launched my Rifter back into the black. I know these people had their consciousness copied and sent to a clone before they died. I shivered anyhow, from the cold.

I almost had my first out of body experience in my first trip to nullsec. That's getting a bit ahead of myself though.

____________

I rolled over and looked at the clock on the wall. 23:30 Galactic Time. I closed my eyes again, then stood up. I looked down from my room onto my hangar. The Boundless Creations folk had sprung for a very nice hangar, but I'm a pod pilot, and at this point I'm used to that kind of treatment. As I looked down at the Rifter that's sitting there, I noticed a single man polishing the side of the ship.

I reached over, flipped a switch, and the glass window began to shimmer. I leaned through it and yelled down to him, "It's just going to get blown up anyhow, you're wasting your time,".

The man looked up at me and then went back to his polishing.

____________

My brain searched through the sub-system checklist. I've grown so familiar with these Rifters that I know where everything is. It's just habitual to check everything as I undock. After a quick checkoff I warped from the undocking bay straight to my predetermined safespot. The Bastards voice comms were alive with chatter. They were roaming. I got a location out of them, near Vitrauze, and began the long trip. By the time I caught up with them they'd already begun on a path to a new system.

It got interesting once we jumped into 0.0 and set up a warp bubble. Once I arrived I set up an orbit around the gate and waited. Before long our first target showed up. A Malediction. I was set up for tackling, so I did my best to get a hold of him for everyone else. I succeeded in catching him in a web and scram, and pretty soon it was over for him. The pod couldn't warp out because of the bubble and we got that too. I scooped the body. I imagined it would add some flavor to the already macabre collection I had back in Evati.

It wasn't too long after that that a Navitas showed up in local. He came to our waiting hands and was removed from his ship. The pod followed soon after. As this was happening we had a pod show up at our gate. He wasn't long for this world either.

Then the real fun began. A Falcon showed up at our bubble, cloaked and began to burn away from the gate. San Rintu began heading in his direction as the rest of us groaned, and were suprised to hear him say "Tackled" on voice comms as he approached and decloaked him. It wasn't much longer before the Falcon died too. That fellah's corpse found a nice home in my holds as well after we killed him.

The Falcon was almost certainly part of a larger force, and we were just waiting to see what they'd bring at that point.

We were engaged a few minutes later by a Maelstrom, Vindicator, Damnation and Pilgrim. A command ship targeted me early, and I died quickly. It was at this point I had my brush with death. A number of pilots had traveled back into low-sec to dock up for some much needed sleep, and what was left of the fleet was fairing poorly against the new ships. We lost the battle. A bubble was maintained for much of that however, and I could not warp my pod out. I began to slowly head towards the gate. Then the bubble went down too, and just as it did, I warped out. I came back right on the gate and passed through.

I lost the bodies in the explosion of my ship. That bothered me.

____________

The fun for that night was not yet over however. I headed back to Evati and reshipped. I had told the hangar crew to have a ship prepped as I left, and they did not disappoint. I headed out to my old stomping grounds: Eifer. The first scan brought back a Vexor on scan. I looked about the system and could not find out where it was. I decided to check above me, and that's where it was.

A corpmate told me about using my onboard scanner to look for anomalies and after doing so, I discovered the Vexor was at a fairly definable location.

I knew I couldn't take the ship, that ship's full compliment of drones would kill me effectively. I began to harass him by killing his drones off two at a time. I noticed a Bellicose along for the ride with the Vexor. After noting that they were in the same corp, I then got a warning to stay away from them or face death. Of course I had plans of my own.

During this time I'd recruited some help of my own, two Vexors were heading my way. One piloted by a Bastards applicant and another by Spectre who's piracy logs are a fun read. I jumped in once more, killed a drone and left. The other guys told me they were one jump over and I went ahead and tackled the Vexor. He was actually almost to half structure already, and I started to pound him. Both allied Vexors landed and I began to burn towards the Bellicose. He was already shooting me down and was using a warp disruptor on me. I hoped to fly under his guns in time. The Vexor died almost immediately and fire focus turned to the Bellicose. He shot me out of the sky just as he exploded. We thought about spending a bit more time in Eifer, but that's a Mean Corp hangout, and I try to keep out of their hair these days.

Spectre, myself, and the new recruit made our way back to Evati. We almost immediately picked up a Python Cartel member Spectre knows and found a Rupture in a belt. He didn't last very long at all. It always amazes me how often people let themselves get podded. If you go into low sec, you need to be better prepared. Trust me, I know: I'm why you should be prepared.

A corpmate by the name of Ard UnjiiGo joined up at this point just as we saw a Vexor who didn't appear to be in any conventional locations. Ard's Cheetah found him fairly quickly and we warped in on top of him. The Vexor died. We locked down the pod this time, but offered a ten million ransom. He didn't answer us, so we asked a corpmate of his who'd escaped if he felt like paying for it.

"I'm not with him," came the reply. Ahh, denied three times. He made a delightful squish. We weren't quite done yet though.

We took a trip to Amamake shortly thereafter, where there's always a fight. Ard managed to scout out a Myrm and a Drake fighting a Myrm and a Brutix in a belt. We waited a bit and engaged the much weakened ships. One Myrm escaped, one died to the others guns and we snagged the Brutix and got on the killmail for the Drake. All the ships were extremly well fitted and I imagine that little encounter will probably pay for a lot more Rifters.

I docked my Rifter that night and took the elevator up to my room. I laid down and looked back at the clock. 5:30 Galactic time. A nice long killing spree.

And a good day.