Good times, bad times

I woke up this morning in my berth in Torrinos. I found out that only a few hours previously, our Titan had seen it's first usage in combat. Due to "smacktalk holding up your jump", the cyno creator Broadsword had taken a little too much damage to survive the DD as well, and popped. Tjakka then got his pod out, got a Claymore from the now safespotted Titan, and came back to kill a Rifter who was cheekily taking loot.

After breakfast, got into my pod, and was placed in my Rapier. It was configured for scanning down ships, and therefore it's damage output wasn't as good as it could've been. Still, I had found recently I was enjoying scanning down ships in supposed safespots, and as KIA don't have many people who scan, I was helping the cause.

I broadcasted on the alliance channels if anyone was interested in joining a gang for a roam, but didn't get a reply- people were busy, and there weren't that many on. I jumped into EC-, holding my breath- I was reasonably safe, due to the Rapier's cloak, but bad luck or a mistake, and i'd lose it. The gate wasn't camped, just a lonely small bubble left by Goonswarm was on the gate. I moved, cloaking back up and watched some traffic flow to the gate. The bubble was poorly placed to catch any traffic, but I saw it was probably to catch traffic from the station in system, not the other gates.

Anyway, there was no-one on scan in EC- so I went next door to EWOK. Sure enough, I picked up an Omen immediately. There was only one pilot in local, Zirush. I weighed the odds of being able to take an Omen on my own, he was a young-ish character. I figured I'd try and probe him out to start off with, then decide. He was predictably safespotted, and I narrowed him down to about 8au away. I dropped a Fathom probe, which had a 10au radius and the 60 second timer ticked away as the probe scanned. It seemed like such a long time- my directional scanner showed he hadn't moved. With a click, the result flashed up on my HUD. The probe had pinpointed him to with 250km. I sighed, and entered warp. Not a bad result for a 10au probe I guess.

I exited warp, and sure enough, there he was, but 240km away, and seemed to be heading toward me. I accelerated toward him, still cloaked, and the distance closed slooowwly. I thought I'd call out again to the rest of the alliance, most of would be 2 jumps away in Torrinos. This time, got 3 people who were interested. They were en-route. By the time they arrived at EWOK gate in EC-, I was 170km away, and not closing any more as he'd changed direction. I warped out to change to a more accurate Snoop probe with a 5au range, when the guys in EWOK engaged a ship, and jumped through to chase it. This spooked my Omen, who left system.

The other guys went back into EC- and the Omen had returned. Again, I narrowed him down to what appeared to be another safe, again about 7au away. So, i changed back to the 10au probe and 60 seconds later... got a 50km accuracy hit. But also on a Thorax. I warped to the Omen, contacted the others to give them a heads up, and came out of warp....50km away was an Omen, and a Thorax. Both dead still and next to an anchored container. This was probably an ammo or loot cache. I smiled to myself, closing the distance. At 20km, I told the others to jump in- we had Jay Deah in a Hictor, so that was good.

I decloaked, put my Warp Disruptor on the Omen, and double Webifier on the Thorax- they would interfere with his engine, and slow him down- hopefully he would panic and not try to warp out yet. I fired at the Omen, and put drones on the Thorax to distract him. They both picked up speed, and then the other guys arrived. The end was inevitable, with the Omen's armour melting, and the ship disintegrating before the massive explosion of the reactors. The Thorax went shortly after.

We then went back and camped EC- for a while at Torrinos gate, and the only interesting fight we had was a Taranis interceptor who jumped through, decloaked, and made a run for it to get out of the bubble. Elias West gave chase in his Inty. Either the Taranis didn't try, or was scrambled, and in a flash, they were both 150+km off the gate. I remained cloaked and warped to Elias....but they were already 90k away again. Damn they were fast. Again, I waited till they were 150km away, and warped. This time, they had stopped going in a straight line, and were orbitting each other. I landed at 50km distant. Elias was calling that he was going into structure, so I decloaked and engaged my MWD. Locked the Taranis, and webbed him while scrambling him, and opened up with my artillery. A blue flash, and Elias blew up... a second before I got the final blow on the Taranis, and it blew into a million pieces.

Collected Elias's loot, dropped it off in Torrinos for him, and then we decided to fly up the pipe to RQ. We had quite a few more people in gang now. Nothing very exciting, but we followed a Raven into a dead end system- we did it in a hurry, so jumped in unscouted...and there was a Myrmidon, Malediction and another cruiser on the gate. They engaged, and I was primaried....I burned away from the gate as the others jumped through. The Myrm was doing oddly small damage to me, I wondered what he had fitted, but I warped away as I wasn't scrambled.

I heard the FC say "get away, everyone run", but I was already in warp back at this point, cloaked. I had opted to warp back at 10km.. which saved me as I landed in front of a 30ish strong gang of DeStInY Alliance. Ah. I was 3000m from the nearest ship when I panicked and thrust the ship straight down, saving my bacon. Another 500m... and I'd have been toast.

About 30 seconds later, an odd thing happened. Ships appeared to warp away from the gate, but in doing so, accelerated past me and decloaked me (I assume), even though they had started going into warp 20km away. Anyway, I decloaked, and they locked me before I could recloak. I MWD'd away, but the result was going to be messy. Shield warning buzzers went off in my ear as my shields melted, then my armour started going, but much more slowly. I told the crew to abandon ship, and waited for the coldness of vacuum to envelope my pod. I was killed, with only 5 or so of the ships in their fleet doing most of the damage.

We regrouped in a safe, and when the gate was clear, very shortly afterwards, we got out. Not sure why they didn't want to camp us in, but after some light smack in local from one of them, they showed us no further interest. Such a big fleet in a dead-end system- maybe something else was going on. Who knows.

Anyway, made our way back to Mantenault where I left the gang and went to purchase another ship from Orvolle.