Its Oh So Quiet

15Mar09

It’s oh so quiet.
It’s oh so still.
You’re all alone
and so peaceful until…

It seems that since New Eden has become littered with wormholes low security space has been deserted. Everyone has gone to hunt for the riches that these new worlds surely contain. Which is all well and good but doesn’t really help us pirates. Verge Vendor was empty. Even my contacts in the alliances of 0.0 space were reporting a drop in activity as everyone dusted off their scan probes.

I performed my regular patrol several times and the only targets I found were a couple of frigates that I despatched without ceremony. Its not glorious but it is cathartic. Even Old Man Star was devoid of targets. What is the world coming to? Maybe it is related to regular tales of pilots ending up trapped in unknown systems after the wormhole collapses or, in at least one Tusker’s case, forgetting to bookmark the wormhole’s location.

Hevrice in particular was dead. Scurvey Rickett was performing his usual trick of sitting on the undock point of the station at Hevrice V and then complaining when we wouldn’t engage his Wolf. At one point I undocked Fezzik but the second the Hurricane engaged him he dived back into the safety of the station. I wasn’t going to engage him in anything that couldn’t take sentry fire and there was no way I was going to let him have the iniative in a fight so I, and the rest of The Tuskers, just ignored him.

Eventually the call went up that there was an Eagle class heavy assault ship in the system. After several attempts to pin him down it was reported that he had support from an Ishkur and Hawk. A plan was quickly formed and I undocked 99 Problems (who is now sporting her full name) and aligned for warp. The Eagle was pinned down and I leapt into the fray. My guns were quickly set onto the Ishkur while I directed my ECM drones to attempt to lock down the Eagle. Using my stasis webifier I was able to keep the Ishkur at range and with the help of Icarus Flame in his Malediction we destroyed the pesky drone boat. While others kept the Eagle locked down I shifted my attention to the Hawk. I fired up my microwarp drive to close the distance and then settled into orbit using my webs to keep range on my side. Again with support from Icarus and Jonah Karr, the Hawk’s shields were melted and its hull breached. The final piece of the puzzle was the Eagle. By now support was arriving thick and fast and I closed in on the HAC until I was just outside of blaster range. My rounds of RF EMP tore into his shields supported by the firepower of a Harbinger and Deimos. Despite its strong tank the Eagle just couldn’t keep up and, like his fleetmates, exploded.

It was a good fight. My Stabber did top damage against all targets and was able to deal with the pair of assault frigates with minimum support. She was even comfortably the top damage dealer against the Eagle despite the Harbinger’s lasers being ideal for taking down shield tankers. The engagement has definitely boosted my confidence in the Stabber and I would be comfortable engaging multiple targets in her probably even without support. In this case the extra tackle was appreciated in keeping all the targets pinned down but I do wonder whether or not I’d have been able to take down all three ships alone. It was only the drones of the Ishkur that did me any damage. I kept out of range of the blasters of all three ships without issue.

Oh, and we also got some fantastic loot as well as destroying some very expensive ships. Both assault frigates were fitted with rigs that cost more than the ship itself and the Hawk dropped both a deadspace shield booster and rare ballistic control unit.

Again things went quiet and Ronan and I spent a bit of time clearing out the first room of a Serpentis complex in Meutralle while the others scanned for targets.

It wasn’t until very late that night that I got my final bit of action. Gimliilmig had scanned down a wormhole in Hevrice and found a Dominix belonging to a member of Black Nova Corp (part of the former Band of Brothers alliance and now part of KenZoku). We were unable to catch the battleship but he was then seen undocking a Sigil and heading back to the wormhole. The gang were chomping at the bit for a kill but I suggested caution while we let the hauler collect whatever goodies its pilot had been able to obtain in the unknown system. It would be much better for us to capture the hauler on its way out. The gang agreed and the trap was set. A few minutes after it disappeared into the wormhole the hauler reappeared but the presence of 99 Problems and Icarus’ Rifter spooked the pilot and he jumped back into wormhole. Sadly for him, we know how to camp gates properly and a gleeful cry of “point” echoed through our communications systems. The hauler was destroyed and its cargo of the mysterious Fullerene-32 liberated for the greater good. Sadly our record systems haven’t been recalibrated for this unknown compound so we are unable to display the full details of the kill at this moment. Hopefully things will be updated soon.

So, although the day started uncomfortably quietly it ended with a flurry of good activity and some good kills. For the record, running combat complexes in a Wolf is only mildly more entertaining than sitting in a safespot scanning Old Man Star. On the plus side you do get a gentle stream of ISK. On the down side it really is only a gentle stream and I’d much rather have a fight no matter how poor.

Oh, this is the second time I’ve used this title. Maybe I need to get more creative.

Filed under: Rifter, Stabber Fleet Issue   |  10 Comments