Like a Phoenix From the Ashes…

The ship decelerated from warp with a soft whump sound. Urd Voiddaughter had just arrived at an ancient Angel mining facility. He glanced over the instruments in his cockpit nervously. The system was becoming active but it didn’t seem that anyone knew his little gem was here. He was convinced to make the most of his discovery. Scanning probes were blanketing the system, but there were over a dozen signatures in they system. It would take a significant amount of time for anyone to scan this particular one down. Still, he would have to work quickly to analyze the relics hidden within the complex before him. He targeted the nearest object that looked to be of value and moved in for a closer look. 

*Whump*

I looked up from my comms at that all too alluring sound. The sound of a carefully laid trap springing. The frigate-class ship that had just entered the area sat approximately 25 km away from my cloaked Nemesis stealth bomber. I double checked my cloaking device to ensure it was still functioning properly keeping me off of anyone’s scanners. I have a nasty habit of bumping into stray debris fields at the most inopportune times. The Probe began moving towards something that had caught its eye. He had no idea I was there. No idea that he was quickly closing on my exact position. I moved my hand over my console, and hovered the slightly shaking appendage over the target lock button.  It’s been too long, I thought too myself. Too long to be this worked up over a single Probe.

Urd locked onto a storage facility’s computer console and began decrypting the security systems contained within. One last check of the scanner. Still blank. He had run into another explorer about an hour ago. An experience that left him frazzled but not deterred. Most exploration ships in these parts were of little to no real threat. Their ships were calibrated to scan and hack valuable computer banks and focused little on offensive modules. Still, even a single turret, missile launcher, or drone would be a problem for his ship’s weak defenses. Speed was of the essence, time to break this mainframe’s…

My ship decloaked in a shimmering of light. The computer locked onto the Probe’s hull almost instantly. An array of rocket launchers were unsheathed from my hull as the warp disruptors immobilized the Probe’s engines. I hesitated a moment. My finger over the trigger button. I paused in a second of regret for the poor helpless ship caught in my cross-hairs. A quick smirk stitches its way across my face and I hammer the trigger button. “He should know better” I say to myself. “Too many people looking for easy money these days.”

I had just cleaned up the mess from the careless Probe’s demise when a second ship exits warp a few clicks from my position. “This is a popular stop tonight!” In an instant of intense deja vu the Helios rockets towards my position. “God, it’s like these guys have never flown in lo-sec before!” I chuckle to myself as rockets spill from my ship’s hull and obliterate the enemy’s frigate. “25 million isk in 15 minutes. I’ll take that.”

I re-engage my ship’s cloaking device. The ship phases out of existence as I point the bow towards home.

Hey all! So I’ve been on jury duty for the past month which has given me a good deal of downtime from work. And since the girlfriend was away for the holidays and all, well…I honestly didn’t have any excuses not to play. It’s been fun getting back into things in Eve. I haven’t played in a long time and a lot has changed. A LOT. But it seems to all be for the better. See y’all in the sandbox!

The Little Gang That Could(n’t)

Another day in w-space, and surprisingly another day with the whole corp on at the same time! We must have easily brought in over two billion isk this weekend. Way to go team! We quickly wrap up the few anomalies we have in the system and clear out our new radar site. I hate to say it, but I was feeling so productive I even hopped into the Hulk and mined a bit of the grav site we currently have in system!

It doesn’t last long though. Eventually everyone starts getting an itchy trigger finger, and with nothing left to do in the HQ system but break rocks, ideas for a lo-sec roam start to flow in comms.

I pull up dotlan and take a quick survey of where our static dumps us. We’re in Caldari space, somewhere near some factional warfare systems. That seems promising! Pilots looking for fights are bound to be zipping around the constellation right? We decide to bring nothing but frigates and destroyers since we know that the minor FW sites won’t let anything bigger through their acceleration gates. Once the crew is ready to go we head out.

I had forgotten how badass it feels to fleet warp through systems. Watching a whole fleet of ships fall out of warp on a gate at the same time usually sends locals running. We buzz around our static system for a while looking for some prey, but quickly realize our tech 2 frigates aren’t allowed through minor complex acceleration gates, which puts a real dampener on our party.

I move us a few systems over to an area I know will have some action. We find a couple of single frigates in minor complexes but never seem to get the timing right. They are just too far away by the time we get into the complex to point them. We will have to re-evaluate our strategy for the next time we’re around FW systems.

After a few hours of roaming we’re all getting pretty tired, and I have some planetside business to attend to shortly, so I start directly the fleet back to our static connection. On one of the gates we find a Stabber – Fleet Issue cruiser. The pilot locks me as we begin aligning to our next system. I’m more than happy to let her fire first if she wants to. Our tiny ships cannot aggress an enemy near the gate guns. We would be vaporized in short order. If she wants to take the guns on while engaging us, well I feel pretty confident that would end well for us.

Of course she doesn’t fire and neither do we. I punch the warp and our fleet heads to the next system. Interestingly enough our little cruiser friend is in tow. She follows us for a few jumps, so we begin to taunt her in the local comm channels. The fleet is giggling to ourselves. We know in a few more jumps there will be a lot of confusion on our tail’s end when we warp to a wormhole and disappear. A clever prank to be sure.

We end up in our static connection system and align to the wormhole waiting for our new friend to warp in so we can show off how clever we are. For a minute we think maybe she gave up, or perhaps was intimidated by the ‘surprise’ we said was waiting for her in this system. But then the gate fires and she manages to catch a glimpse of us fleet warping to a random point in space and vanish from the local channel.

It’s not a kill, but at least it was entertaining.