The Itch

I hadn't been able or willing to itch the scratch until yesterday. Under-prepared and under-gunned I scratched and it nearly killed me.

Too short on skills to fly more than a frigate and unwilling to throw perfectly good ISK down a rathole, I took an old Condor I had lying about the hanger in for a refit. I pulled the missile launchers off, replacing them with two standard rocket launchers (packed with Thorns and Gremlins). Thinking on it a bit more I stripped the rest of the fittings and started from scratch. Next on was a 125MM Carbide Rail, then an afterburner, warp jammer (Integrated Harmonics) and some Energized Reflective Plating for good measure. I undocked her and headed up out of the station, kicking in the afterburner. She showed just under 1000 m/s, which made me feel a bit better. At least I could bug out if needed.

I layed in a course for Kubien, the closest system below 0.5.

Entering I immedately found the furthest cross-sytem target and warped, dropping a BM along the way in the midst of a big, open area of nothing. Upon arriving, I jumped back to the safe and starting paying attention to the scanner.

When I first got there the system had some real pirates active in it; not just unproven clowns like myself. There was at least one Crow lurking about with what I think was a Crusader. Definitely not friendly types, judging by their numbers. Red blinkers, both of them.

Finally after a bit of searching I spot a Caldarii Destroyer pilot solo in a belt. I pull up the bloke's resume and see that he's a little over two weeks old; barely enough time to fly the ship, much less train gunnery in any meaninful way. Taking a quick peek at Local not only are there none of his corpmates about, but Mr. Crow had left the system.

Perfect.

I jump into the belt and start rapidly approaching. He was in the middle heading toward the far side of the belt, probably 34,000m off. At first I didn't think he was going to react at all (I'm still a 0.0 by Concord standards, and flying a Condor, after all), but slowly he started moving away from me. With the limitations of the rockets and jammer I didn't want to lock until I was close--real close. I finally kicked in the targeting at an ungodly close 3400m.

I must have jammed him good, because he didn't go anywhere, though it looked as though he may have been trying to align as I approached. Instead he did something clever that I wouldn't have thought of: he ducked into the stones.

Off to my starboard as I had approached was a large nest of un-popped rocks. He made for them and weaved in between. The rocks were spaced to a point that I couldn't get a decent orbit going, much less keep up any sort of respectable trans velocity. The rockets were finding him, but he was slowly managing to increase the distance between us.

By the time he was deep in the rocks I had stripped off his shields and picked away half of his armor, but as he got deeper in my rockets became less useful. Their range is only around 5400m and it was all I could do to keep him at that. At this point it finally it dawned on him that he had a bit of an advantage, with only my rail tapping him every few seconds. He decided it was in his best interest to lock me and return fire, and quickly enough my ass was beginning to look more and more like ground chuck. He hadn't turned the tables, he flipped all of them. And then broke their legs.

Glancing at the HUD and checking my armor situation I quickly decided it was time for a strategic withdrawl.

The APB on the Concord channel only lasted about fifteen minutes. Once the heat died down I picked a station (any station) and repaired the Condor. You've got to love a ship that can be stripped down to only a quarter of her structure and pay under 3,000 ISK to have her fixed up like new.

Returning to space I noted that the Destroyer must have docked or left the system as I couldn't raise him on 360 or in Local. The Crow was back in-system then, so it was time to head on home. Empty handed, but alive.