It Sure Is Smokey In Here

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'
We gonna do what they say can't be done
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
I'm east bound just watch ol' Bandit run
Jerry Reed - East Bound and Down

OOC: I'd like to congratulate The Bastards on a convincing win against KIA in the Sixth Alliance Tournament.

I'd be lying if I said this was unexpected. This is the Bastards.

IC: The first round of the Alliance tournament was held today. The majority of the Bastards were in the Hub drinking and celebrating. I stopped in to offer my congratulations and noticed a decided lack of Hellcats. I brought up Mynxee on corp comms and she let me know she was out on a roam with Venom, one of her new recruits. I offered my Rifter as support and she accepted. I went down to my hangar and happily undocked.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself as I warped from gate to gate, quickly making up the fourteen jumps between me and them. By the time I arrived they'd only moved on one system, so I followed them and joined their fleet.

We were a motely crew, two rifters and a republic fleet firetail. Agile and quick, we roamed from system to system, looking for targets.

Most of the systems were rather devoid of life, but I managed to scan down a Drake. I warped in on him a hundred kilometers away, and signaled to Mynxee that if she warped to the gate, and then to me at a hundred, she'd be on top of him. She followed the directions, but as she came out of warp, we discovered the Drake was aligned. He disappeared into a warp bubble before anyone could get a lock.

Disappointed, we moved into the next system. The Drake followed us oddly, and I managed to scan him down again. Mynxee warped in first this time, and I followed quickly afterwards. She pointed him and Venom came in guns firing. The Drake pilot was a bit smarter this time and his friends came to his aid. We were suddenly set upon by quite a few ships. I was already taking heavy damage from the Drake, and I died rather quickly. Everyone else got out, fortunately.

So I began to trek back to Evati, telling the girls to continue on. I'd catch up.

It seems the whole world of Eve is abuzz with love for the Bastards today though, as more than a couple of people offered a congratulations to me for our teams win today along the way. I wish I could've been a part of it.

It wasn't too long that I got back out there, covering the thirty-two jumps in no time. One thing can be said about the power of the small squad, it doesn't take much time to get back into the fight.

We began to warp from gate to gate checking for targets. I had a rough location on a Thrasher, who happened to be in line with an Amarr military complex. A Phobos showed up on scan too, but I wagered he was in one of the belts behind the complex. Turns out I was wrong, and I went completely silent on comms as I emerged from warp on a Phobos.

Heavy Interdictors are always an annoying pain in the ass, moreso when you don't have a gate cloak to give time to figure your situation out. In hindsight I could've tried to activate the gate, but in practice I started to warp to a safe I had just set up. This required me to come to a full stop, turn around, and then gain enough speed to enter warp.

A Phobos has a hell of a locking time, let me tell you. So I was pointed rather quickly. I engaged my damage control, armor repair, and afterburner. He was only seven thousand meters away, and I made a decision to head towards the Phobos to buy myself the time to figure out my situation.

As I passed under five thousand kilometers his medium autocannons found me impossible to track, and I looked ahead of me to see a planet. I aligned and waited. As I passed back into his gun's range, I began to take some heavy damage. I was not optimistic about my chances. He was following, however slowly, and I wasn't making the ground that I needed too.

Around twenty kilometers, the Thrasher came out of warp. He may've been neutral as it seemed he engaged the gate into the Amarr plex. Shortly thereafter though, two Huggins came out of warp. I was now twenty eight kilometers away, and I'd passed out the range of the Phobos's guns. I hit twenty nine kilometers and two Ishtars came out of warp.

The warm glow of webification surrounded my ship, as the Huggins began their work. I cursed loudly but though my speed was decreasing, I had enough momentum to coast out of the Phobos's warp disruption range. As the point fell off my ship, I hit the warp button, seeing ten sentry drones deploy just as my afterburner deactivated for warp.

I broke through comms at this point, screaming almost unintelligibly "Eleven Percent Structure!".

I've always heard, "You don't want to see your own obituary". I've always said "Yes you do, cause if you see it, you're not dead,". Next time your ship is on fire, remember that.

After a quick repair, I was back in space, no worse for wear. We wandered for a couple more system, finding a fan along the way. Venom did a fairly good write up of that encounter, so I suggest you go check out her commnet logs.

Good Day