So far it’s been a rather pleasant day in spite of some initial boredom. After having flown around buying modules for my Rokh and the Nightmare, I decided to stop trying to look for a fight in low sec. Pirates were nowhere to be seen around southern Domain these days. The only ones that were there were either lonewolves on their way out into Providence or gangs of battlecruisers camping gates. Both were of no interest for me seeing as a battleship usually can’t catch a speedy lonewolf, and the gangs of late have been a tad too large to do any solo attempts.
So instead I jumped in my trusty Anathema and headed out looking for wormholes. Of course, this could just end up being another wild ghost chase but I had nothing better to do. Hoshoun was, of course, completely devoid of any wormholes so I moved on to Ziriert. After a couple of minutes of searching, I located a signature that could be one. After yet another minute of tedious work I found it. A wormhole with a sharp red nebula hinting on the other side of the event horizon. My database suggested this were to be a class 5 wormhole which was good news for me. Class 5s were more likely to contain people that the lower valued class 2-3.
I entered the wormhole and immediately picked a couple of ships up on my directional scanner. A Heron, no doubt the prober, a Retriever, a Covetor and an Iteron V. Looks like a mining gang and without escort. I quickly dropped my Sister’s combat scanner probes and got a fix on the Retriever. I saved the location in my databanks and turned back towards the wormhole. It was time to bring something that packed a punch.
I chose my Phantasm; the Belial. It was quick, agile and had a respectable shield buffer, while spitting out decent damage for a cruiser. More than a match for a couple of mining barges. As soon as I was granted clearance to undock, the Belial glided out of the hangar and into open space. As usual with the Sansha ships, it took a while to get used to the ship’s computer and yet some more time to adjust to the creepy sensor array. I willed the Belial towards the Ziriert stargate and once there, was swiftly granted departure clearance. After rematerialization in Ziriert, I immediately aimed for the wormhole, wishing to catch the miners before they finished their operation.
Once at the wormhole, I aimed the ship straight through the center and was, in a nearly magical way, transported across the vastness of the universe. Away from the safety of “Known Space” or K-space as we called it, and into the unknown of “Wormhole Space”.
As luck had it, the ships were still on the scanner once the Belial realigned it’s sensory equipment. I willed the ship into warp as soon as we cleared the wormhole and soon I landed in a massive asteroid field, only meters from a Covetor with mining lasers blazing across the void. I quickly moved away from the ship as to not collide with it, and I carefully maneuvered away from the mining lasers. While weak compared to my own laser banks, I still didn’t want them singeing my shields. After what felt like an eternity, the Belial’s targetting system had aquired the Covetor and I opened up with everything I had on the mining barge.
It was lightly shielded and folded quickly under the volleys of supercharged energy. Just as my final volley hit the side of the Covetor, turning it to spacedust, the Iteron landed right next to me. He must have been in warp already when I attacked. Or so I hoped, because noone would be foolish enough to warp to this situation in an industrial ship.
After another couple of seconds, the Belial had locked down and scrambled the Iteron as well, and as my first volley struck his shields (obliterating them in the process), a message was sent from the Iteron pilot.
“Stop it!”
I could hardly keep myself from laughing. What did he expect to accomplish by that? I fired another volley onto the Iteron and it lost structural integrity and exploded. Only then did I notice that the Covetor pilot had yet to escape. He was still just sitting there, right next to his wreckage, in his escape pod. I could hard believe it, but I started targetting the tiny little pod, and even after the 15 seconds it took to lock it, he was still there. Needless to say, he wasn’t around for long.
Quite pleased with myself, I scooped the now frozen corpes, whatever loot was left after the explosions and turned back home. What? Are you shocked? Did you think I was some defender of justice or something? No, I’m not. In case you didn’t know, I fire upon anything in my way, unless it’s friendly. Living in southern Domain just means that pretty much everything is friendly. Even neutrals. In wormhole space, however…there are only blues, and dead people.
Right as I returned to the safety of K-space, I recieved a report that HOPTOH, the infamous pirate, was roaming in Ziriert. I figured the Belial wouldn’t be quite enough to match up against his Hurricane, so I went back to Hoshoun and reshipped to the Asmodai, my Nightmare. After returning to Ziriert, I received a fleet invite from another blue. Apparently he was also looking for HOPTOH, and we worked together in pinning him down. Judging from the banter in local chat, HOPTOH had found a target and destroyed it. One less missionrunner ship around.
My friend soon located HOPTOH with his probes, and warped us in. As I landed in the safespot, my friend and another blue were already engaged with HOPTOH. A Curse and a Harbinger against the Hurricane, but it looked like the ‘cane had the upper hand. I didn’t waste time. I locked the Hurricane up and three volleys later, it was a smoldering piece of mangled metal. HOPTOH must’ve been in shock, because he didn’t warp his pod out in time, and Iat quickly popped it, sending HOPTOH back to his cloning vat.
All in all, a very good day so far.
Ancy Denaries