Death, with relish.

This is my entry to the Inspired By Images Of Eve Competition 3. More details and links to all entrants can be found at Starfleet Comms.

After camping the 4 gates into our systems for a few hours we had managed to kill a few cruisers and a BC, nothing shiny and the drops were your standard T1 junk, only good for recycling, life as a pirate can sometimes be a hard and frugal existence, so a kill is a kill, and you salvage what you can. We had all been hoping for that juicy prize, the expensive faction ship, with dead-space mods and a pilot with some good implants in his cranium who would pay us lots of ISK not to send him home on the podless express.

Excitement rose when a CNR (Caldari Navy Raven) appeared at our low sec entry point, our cloaky eyes alerting us with a squeak of tension in his voice, we primed our weapons and points, but the flashy warning on the gate from hi-sec obviously changed his mind, he sat there contemplating for a while and then turned his treasured carebear beauty around and warped away. We cursed on comms and settled back to waiting.

There had been a rifter on d-scan for some time, and the guy didn’t seem to be moving. I had gently suggested that I swap out to a probing boat, but the FC had decided against it, too much effort for such a small reward. He obviously wasn’t at an immediately obvious celestial such as a belt or planet, we knew he was either in a deep safe, mission or anomaly. The FC finally relented for lack of juicier targets, and I was given the go ahead. I docked, gave myself a quick once over in the mirror of my quarters, if this went well I may reward myself with monocle from the Nexus store.  I reshipped into my Buzzard covert ops probing ship, normally a Rifter is hard to probe down, but I had a good feeling about this one.

As my little frig was catapulted into space, I dropped sisters combat probes, set the four of them at 8AU scan range, in my usual diamond formation and warped them over to the area of space we knew him to be. I got a hit, but a weak one, lowering the scan range and setting my formation more precisely got him to 76%, one more shift of variables and pop….100%, there was my warp in point.

I warped to him at 10km, still cloaked, blood beginning to pump, to find him perfectly stationery, sitting just off some weird looking asteroid, home to a deserted landing pad. I manoeuvred my ship so the target was directly between me and planet 4, which was 30AU in the distance.  The FC gave orders to the interceptor pilot, "warp to planet 4 and then warp to Reli at 10". Perfect. I sat cloaked, observing, sometimes you have to take one for the corp, this was one killmail I wouldn’t be on.

In came the inty like lighting, landing directly on top of the rifter, within seconds he was locked, pointed and webbed. The Rifter’s only reaction was to start slow boating towards a distant planet, an unusual reaction under the circumstances, maybe he was hoping the lock would drop and he’d be able to warp out.

I’m still cloaked and just turn my ship and slowboat away from the scene, activating my camera; this would be something worth watching later. The FC warped in the boys and they quickly reduced his noble frigate to space dust, surprisingly they even caught his pod and the FC opened a comms line up to him. “Got implants buddy?” …..no response…..strange. Then WTF!

A Widow black ops battleship uncloaked 30km away and within seconds 30 stealth bombers appeared from the ether like bats out of hell. Shit, this was not good for the fleet, the FC popped the pod, “fuck him, the devious little bastard, why is it always a trap?”  The FC had done everything by the numbers, everything was perfect, “Christ, here comes another clusterfuck” he didn’t sound happy. The FC screaming on comms, “GTFO” A few of the guys were laughing, …’but they are only frigates boss”, they were still quite new at this and didn’t realise the damage 30 stealth-bombers loaded with torps could do.  “Lets just kill the black o….”

”Shut the fuck up…get the fuck out, or I’ll pod you myself” he screamed.

I sat cloaked, camera running as we lost one ship after another. The guys were pointed, and sensor dampened before they knew it, the Widow unleashing electronic warfare hell, disabling targeting systems rapidly. Unable to lock this little swarm of frigs orbiting at 30km, the torps raining down like righteous justice, such a beautiful but deadly light show. The BS went first, a maelstrom with large artillery is useless against this fleet and the widow already had 3 ships locked out with ECM.  Faster than we would have thought possible, the BCs then started melting, damage from 4 or 5 SBs each is a mighty amount of DPS, they quickly followed the BS. This was not a good day for the corp; only the interceptor pilot and I were still in our ships. The FC was raging in that completely silent, if I open my mouth only filth will come out, kind of way.

Most of the guys got their pods out and redocked, for some post match analysis, which would not be a courteous affair. I docked up, got out of my ship and stepped from my pod. Feeling the usual disorientation and that awful sense of being deaf and dumb, when one goes from god-like perception and neural-boosted reactions, to normal human being; I went for a beer. I needed a drink, my hands were shaking and I couldn’t talk on comms or look the other guys in the face right now, I knew I wouldn’t have the self control to not betray my feelings.

The beer tasted great as I looked out into the dark, eye-sucking infinite beyond, a small smirk starting to appear at the side of my lips, my hands slowly calming. Maybe one day…. Maybe…. when I’m about to quit the corp, I’ll tell them about my alt, and his sacrificial Rifter….but maybe not.  

Religiosa