Finding It

I will go down with this ship,
And I won't put my hands up and surrender,
There will be no white flag above my door,
I'm in love and always will be.
Dido - White Flag

The Rifter is as many will tell you, the perfect combat frigate. Four high slots, which provides the damage, a slot in the mids for a speed mod, web, and warp disruption, and three low slots to set up an armor tank. The ship aligns quickly and moves quickly even under the power of an afterburner.

It's small signature radius means that anything bigger than heavy assault missiles will not hurt you. It means that tracking you can be a pain in the ass, especially if you're moving. I have over a hundred Rifters left in my Hangar, and have lost almost fifty since joining the Bastards three and a half months ago. Each one of them called the Jokers Wild.

I consider each new incarnation a continuance of the previous one. The AI stays the same, the fit stays the same. Pod goes in, ship undocks, autocannons spin.

I love my ship.

Today started like alot of days. I got up, headed into space and found nothing. I checked into voice comms to find Hera Darkthorn and Mynxee along with a few others playing out in Resbroko. I decided to head out to where the action was. They'd already killed a guy in a Vexor, who came back for revenge in an Enyo.

By the time I arrived, things had calmed down a bit. We were waiting for a few GCC's to countdown as Hera called out a Raven in a belt. There was some talk about jumping it or not. I engaged my warp drive and let everyone know I was already on the way. It's just a Raven.

My Rifter came out of warp on top of the thing and Hera's Taranis had it down to seventy five percent shields already. I found that odd. I orbited and started to lay on my own brand of pain. He started to die, quickly. The rest of the fleet landed, and we didn't even have time to decide on ransoming him or not before he exploded. The pod met a similar fate very quickly. We all stared at the killmail in awe. He hadn't fit anything. His ship was devoid of modules.

Everyone decided to head back to Evati. As we arrived I got into a scanning position and very quickly narrowed down a Myrmidon. I warped in it's direction and was disappointing as it went offscan before I landed. False positive are annoying in scanning. You know you screwed up, but sometimes it's not clear how. I kicked it up to a three hundred and sixty degree scan, and he didn't show up either. Just at that moment, my ship interface sounded the tell-tale decloaking noise. Myrmidon off the bow, fifteen hundred meters away.

I called my friends who were in various states of disarray at this point. I orbited him, scrambled the Myrm, and waited. I didn't even turn my guns on. I hoped he didn't think I was a threat. He didn't target me.

Eventually Hera said he was in warp, and about that time the Myrm decided to release drones and start firing. I aligned to get away, but I failed, and got my pod out instead. The Myrm quickly followed though. He had a pretty expensive fit, alot of which survived the explosion.

Happy with that, I docked up. A few folks went to the Hub, but Hera was on voice comms before I could get a chance to leave. He had a Wolf and Thrasher clearing a drone infestation.

We both went inside and began to look around. Eventually we found a thrasher, and I orbited him. The pilot was non-responsive, but by the time Hera went through the next gate, the Wolf had left. Hera went back to the station as I killed the Thrasher. Just as I managed to get the Pilot's pod nailed and hammered, Hera engaged the Wolf at the station. He was also sucessful, and we were happy with our teamwork.

It wasn't until later that I discovered this pilot had earlier killed and podded Flashfresh. We were happy to send both of these guys back to the clonevats.

So Hera decided to check the Hub out himself, leaving me alone to patrol the space lanes. I decided to head to Eifer, and give my old haunt a look.

I was very quickly rewarded with a Rifter kill and a five million ransom for the pod. I followed that very shortly with a Kestral kill. I scooped the loot, smiled and went back to Evati to drop things off.

I took off in the other direction and found a bit of action in Klogori, killing a Rifter in a belt there. He died fast and refused a ransom on his pod. I was happy to oblige in murdering him.

With one one battleship, one battlecruiser, a destroyer, three frigates, and two pods dead, my day was complete.

Happy Hunting.