See Like Me

I guess what I be saying is there ain't no better reason
To rid yourself of vanities and just go with the seasons
It's what we aim to do, our name is our virtue
But I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait, I'm yours
Come on and open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you're free
Look into your heart and you'll find that the sky is yours
Jason Mraz - I'm Yours

I took an opportunity to fly with my corpmates and Mynxee today. I took over fleet command for a bit. I suggested we all get in basic frigates like I always do, so a crew of two Rifters an Incursus headed in the direction of Vitrauze. We got out to Dal, and picked up another bastard, he headed in our direction in a Punisher.

We decided to wait for him, so we spread out in system and started looking for targets. We didn't find anything, but along the way we heard about some activity in Arzad, so we headed to the Ezzara-Arzad gate. We waited on the other side but eventually the activity died down. We passed through, and caught a Blackbird warping to the bunker in the middle of the system. We obligingly followed, me saying "This is probably a trap but, you know," over voice comms as we entered warp. We came in on the Blackbird, and immediately pointed it. A Rifter came as the Blackbird was around half armor, so we finished him off and then picked up the Rifter as a new target. At this point a Merlin and two more Rifters dropped on us.

The first Rifter exploded fairly quickly, but all the frigates decided to primary me. I died, and then I got my pod out. The rest of the fleet dropped the Merlin, then another Rifter, then another Rifter. A Slasher and Moa showed up and they started to hit them just as two Vagabonds came down on them.

Mynxee lost a ship, and so did one of the other bastards. Another got out and we took stock of our losses. As it turned out, the Blackbird had been rigged, and was expensively fitted. We cursed that we hadn't held the field to get the loot. Then the surviving Bastard let us know something funny. The other guys had left us the loot. So we got back into Evati with the loot and started getting everyone reshipped.

Good day.

Money Is The Root

I will buy you a garden,
Where your flowers can bloom.

I will buy you a new car,
Perfect shiny and new.

I will buy you that big house,
Way up in the west hills.

I will buy you a new life,
Yes I will.
Everclear - I Will Buy You A New Life

I was hanging out in a Boundless Creations station yesterday here in Evati. I happened through the promenade and grabbed a snack at one of the stores there. A guy there asked me if I could spare some change and long story short: We won the lottery.

There's a whole interesting story in there, but I ain't taking the time to tell it, needless to say I'm six-hundred million richer today. I contacted a ship builder and put in an order for five Caracels and three drakes.

Boy did karma make a mistake.

I went out today to celebrate with Sarge, Mynxee, and a few other bastards. We caught a Cyclone ratting in a belt. I don't understand why, and I didn't care. He went down, despite being quite experianced. We nailed the pod down and asked for a very reasonable ransom. He balked and ended up in the clone vats.

We then chased a Hurricane around Evati for about a half hour before finally nailing him down while salvaging. He died as well, and we also got his pod.

For some reason people can't figure out how to pay a ransom, have blank clones, don't like their ships, or just feel like being defiant, but I'm six-hundred million richer anyhow.

Good Day.

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.

It Ain't Suicide If You Live

Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
Orison Swett Marden

Hallan Turrek > Rifter, Cyclone, Cyclone, Crow, Muninn, Thorax, Omen, Vagabond, and Two Nighthawks on scan.
A Bastard > Wow, that's a pretty big fleet.
Hallan Turrek > I think we can take 'em if anyone else wants to come along.
Another Bastard > What makes you so optimistic?
Hallan Turrek > 'cause I'm already in warp.

One Rifter later... well at least I had fun. I managed to get the rifter pilot to half armor before the rest of the fleet took me down.

Then I used my scanning skills to find a Thorax and Arbitrator. It was a good scan, nice and quick. Apparently though, and don't ask me how, I got to the belt before they did. They dropped out of warp on top of me and I started targeting the Thorax. The rest of our fleet warped my way and it was on. I couldn't understand why I was dying so quickly, and soon it didn't matter.

Luckily the rest of the fleet came in right after I died and started pounding on them. As it turned out the Angel Cartel goons hanging out in the belt realized why the don't like me, and started shooting me down. If not for that I'd have likely survived long enough for the rest of the fleet to come in. Eventually they both died. They even managed to nail down one of the pods.

I had fun even if I lost a couple of cheap ships. We did 20 million in damages and took maybe 250k in hurt. That's what some drones cost.

Good day.

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.

An Illegitimate Person

I fly a starship, across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again.
Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash - Highwayman

Piracy is in my blood. It permeates my being. I am the personification of fear on the space lanes. When people see my ship on scan, they run. If they're in larger ships, they still avoid me. If they're older than me, they still back off.

Idiots.

I can't lose a ship in a stupid jump as easily anymore. I had a drake scurry along in a belt in Eifer. That was annoying. I knew he could beat me, but I still wanted a fight.

So I'm sitting in my central scan spot in Eifer, looking around for anything. It takes an hour but I finally get a hit. A rifter. I warp in on him and he explodes very quickly. I lock down his pod and ask for a five million ransom. I get no response so I down the pod. I pick up his stuff and move back to the central scan.

I catch two rifters on scan almost immediately and narrow one of them down to a planet/belt system. I position my scanner behind my ship as I'm warping and narrow the scan to ninety degrees, as the belts move out of the scan range, I watch to see if the ship is still showing on my scanner. I notice as two belts fall behind my ship I lose the ship off scan. I turn and scan the right hand asteroid belt of the two. I get a hit and wait to come out of warp. As soon as I come to a stop I head back into warp.

I warp in thirteen clicks from him. I head in his direction with my afterburner on full blast. I learned a long time ago that it does no good to target someone before you're in scram range. Once I hit eight thousand meters I begin to target. It resolves and the scram and my guns go online. I kick on the webifier for good measure and pull into a close orbit. He cut through my shields long before his evaporated, but he couldn't touch my armor, and what little damage he did do, my repairer kept up with. He blew up as well. Then I nailed the pod down. I did a quick check on his age. Less than a week old. That means he probably won't pay a ransom. I downed the pod.

I'm such a Bastard.

I hope to see alot of fun times with my new corp in the future. So far I've killed a Thorax, Fleet Issue Stabber, Falcon, and Armageddon with them. There were more kills, but Concord didn't see fit to include me on the criminal report since I didn't actually shoot at some of them.

Yesterday we stole a Hulk, looted a PoS and ransomed a missioning Drake for 40 million.

Good days.