Lesson in Greed

Let's just say I'm new to the pirating game. I've never really done a lot of pirating, or even combat for that matter outside of a few strokes of luck. Finally, about a week ago, I decided that camping gates in Deklein and chasing the elusive through my previous alliance's home systems wasn't doing it for me anymore.

So I set out to become a pirate... in a sense. All I really want to do is destroy hardware... act as a 'Darwin catalyst' if you will... forcing Eve's capsuleers to learn from their lost ships, clones, and mistakes. The loot is just one of the fringe benefits.

In any case, my new corporation had an operation going on this evening when I woke up. Naturally, I joined the gang and met up with them in my Ferox. We were just hanging out by a gate, waiting for something lucrative to jump through when we got word of a large-scale mining operation in a nearby system. It didn't take long for us to get there, and we had a blast raiding their little party.

We were on our way back, satisfied with our work, when I remembered that I had other affairs to attend to. I excused myself and set destination to our home system.

I was just about to dock for the day when I heard that there was an incoming Caracal. I decided to go to one of the two gates in our system to see if I could get in just [i]one more kill[/i]. Sure enough, the pilot showed up at the gate I was waiting at, and burned his Micro Warp Drive, getting to the gate before I could lock him.

Frustrated, I followed through the gate - a gate that I had passed through not an hour before. Once on the other side however, things turned for the worse.

I was sent a message from the Caldari Navy, saying something to the effect that they didn't allow criminals in their space. This was new to me, and have never before been denied passage. Then it dawned on me... my security status had dropped from the recent raid, and I could no longer enter a system with a 0.8 security status.

Time was ticking away toward the point when the star gate would no longer be cloaking me. I called for help from my corporation, stating my whereabouts and asking for advice.

"Gun it!" one said, "Get back to the gate."

So I did, and was promptly locked by four Navy ships. I kept a close eye on my shields, expecting them to simply vanish from the onslaught that was sure to ensue. Strangely enough, only one of the four started firing on me. [i]"Piece of cake,"[/i] I thought to myself. My extra large shield booster can handle that in the time it takes me to get back to the gate and jump.

So I waited as my slow battlecruiser approached the gate, activated my shield booster whenever needed. My cap was waning, yet I didn't seem to be any closer to the gate. My glance dropped an inch to my speedometer, and I finally realized that I had been webbed. I fired one of my two cap charge 800's, and my capacitor's meter shot up. I did some quick math, and realized that I simply wasn't going to get to the gate in time.

Again, I called out to my corp. "I need anyone with a sec status above -3.0 to bring me some cap charge 800's... I'm not going to make it otherwise." Almost immediately, a corp mate showed up, and jettisoned 7 of the much-needed charges. I had to jettison my ammunition in order to hold the charges, but it was worth the risk.

"I'm going to ram you," he told me. He got a good distance behind me and fired his MWD and plowed into the back of my ship. I lurched forward at about 100 m/s. This was going to take a while...

Finally, several minutes and a bunch of cap charges later, I was in jump range of the gate. If the Navy had X-Ray vision, they would have seen me sticking my tongue out at them from inside my pod.

Afterward, I expressed my gratitude and gave him back the remaining charges. I couldn't have asked to be in a better corp. Pirates they may be, but MD-K look after their own.

Lesson learned: The [i]'just one more'[/i] mentality can be fatal.

Cleared for publication by: Ander