Indirect Pirating FTW!

The days patrols had paid off with some decent kills. While flying my myrmidon I came across a covetor and his (ineffective) escort in a drake. The covetor dropped all his T2 strip miners, and along with the rest of the drakes loot it was enough to pay for the 3 armor rigs my myrmidon deserved.

Next I found a stabber while flying my celestis. He was quickly damped, disrupted and webbed, and died after hitting me with only 2 scourge heavy missiles. Unfortunately the loot was as exciting as the fight.

Next I found a myrmidon to 1v1. It turns out that we were fit almost identically, but I had Ogre IIs versus his Ogre Is. Needless to say he died as I was in very low armor, then proceeded to try and recruit me.

At this point it began to get quiet. People kept docking as I flew around, so I climbed into my Helios to see if I could learn anything else about the nearby residents. I found a Rokh obviously not in a belt in a very quiet 0.1 system. I tried scanning him out, but quickly realized I had the wrong probe launcher installed. After a 4 jump return trip, the Rokh was still in his mysterious location. 60 seconds later a snoop revealed a warp to zero, and I chose 20km while cloaked in my helios.

While in warp, the Rokh disappeared but I arrived to a scene like I have never seen before. It appeared to be some secret research complex. I decided to get my Myrmidon in hopes that the Rokh would return to finish destroying the Serpentis pirates and their research complex.

I returned, and there was no Rokh so I decided to kill the pirates myself. In an instant, my myrmidon was under heavy fire and both repairers couldnt keep up. I was warp scrambled, and only had heavy drones as I was pvp fit. I hit the afterburner and aligned to a celestial, hoping to out range most of the ships. By the time I was out of range of the heavy hitters, I had completely run out of boosters and only had enough cap to tap my repairer and use the afterburner. I released the heavy drones and after an agonizing several minutes I killed the warp scrambling frigates. I warped out with damage to my myrmidons structure.

Angered, I returned in a ship specialized for killing serpentis. A faction fitted ishtar, with dual sentry damage rigs and bay full of t2 drones. I had adjusted my fitment with a sensor booster to compensate for the heavy sensor damping I was experiencing from the Serpentis HACs. I mowed throught the spawn that had nearly killed my Myrmidon, then another wave appeared. Of course, they all died very quickly to my Garde IIs also. At this point, I began to fire at the station in the complex. It began smartbombing me, and I could just barely keep up with the damage. When it exploded, an angry researcher named Marin Matola sprang forth and began shooting me. My Ishtar shrugged off the blasters from his deimos, as I have 96%/94% damage to kinetic and thermic damage respectively.

At this point, the Rokh returened. I targeted him and began firing with my gardes from 50km, their optimal range with several omnidirectional tracking links. He immediately warped out and hailed me, complaining that he had been working on this expedition for a full week. I explained he was lucky I had not caught him in there, and simply wanted to kill the rats and he could come in later.

I released a swarm of Ogre IIs to deal with Marin. He was crippled quickly, and concord rewarded me the 800k bounty. I quickly checked his can and was pleasantly surprised to find a vigilant blueprint, which made up for the fact I was not lucky enough to catch the Rokh with his pants down.

The Rokh pilot was very concered about his expedition, so I sent him the message explaining that it had been finished. I told him no can had dropped from the station (it didn't) but he was welcome to go take a look and see what he could find :)

Indirect pirating FTW!

Cleared for publication by: Ander