Demigodess with a Conscience

I’ve been knowing it for a long time, and now that it has happened, I don’t feel too bad about it. It’s always the same…if you undock, expect to explode. See, I was itching for some action and I passed the Torrinos gate in EC-P8R and saw two battleships and two battlecruisers on the gate. I figured I could handle that so I went to Torrinos, picked up the Asmodai and went back in. I was gone for 120-180 seconds at most, but when I landed in EC, a massive battle was taking place on the gate. Apparently Red Overlord decided this was a good time to take over the gate. Oh…hell.

I fought valiantly, but some really bad target calling on my part lead to only a single kill, and not a very good one at that. The Asmodai is now space dust, but I don’t feel bad. He served me really well during the year we were together. The Sansha AI saved me a bunch of crew as well, which meant that the human sacrifice was minimal.

Rest in peace, Asmodai!

The day that started out so well continued in the same manner through the evening. I took some well needed R&R in station before waking up to continue my adventures in the wormholes. As I signed on I found several of my corpmembers online and was greeted by several nasty grins. Apparently, they’d read my logs. Yeah, yeah, you wannabe bad guys.

I kept sifting through wormholes and found six (!) of them in Rephirib. After having looked through five of them with not a single piloted vessel in them, I started losing hope. Is wormhole space really this empty? As I entered the sixth and final wormhole, my sensors registered two vessels in the vicinity. A Hyperion and a Raven. After the previous wormholes where every ship I came across was safely parked at a POS, I wasn’t too excited, but I dropped my probes and got to work nonetheless.

My heart raced a bit as I narrowed them down. They were nowhere near a moon! This meant they were certainly piloted and active. I quickly recovered my probes as to not spook the pilots, and warped to 50 km off their position to observe. What met me was a glorious! Two enemy ships, marked red by our standings, were battling a Sleeper battleship and it’s frigate escort. I knew they would probably had killed the battleship and be off if I left now, so instead I observed, waited for them to move on.

And they did. Once the sleeper battleship exploded, the Hyperion aligned for warp out in the void, and I retreated to a planet, decloaked and redeployed my probes. After less than a minute, I had pinpointed his location, again nowhere near a moon. I opted for simply bookmarking the spot and hurried back to K-space.

As I entered Rephirib again I blared across the corpchannel for people to get ready. Reds were to be destroyed! Unfortunately, most of my valiant corpmates were in no position to join up as they were 30+ jumps out, but Isaac and Klown were ready and willing. Isaac mounted his Armageddon and Klown jumped into his newly acquired Onyx Heavy Interdictor. Sweet, a bubble!

I opted for firepower and jumped into the Asmodai. Those pesky reds would get a real surprise when this Sansha monstrosity warped in on them. We formed up on the Rephirib gate, I was given squad command and issued the interlinked gang-warp. We landed at the mouth of the wormhole and slid through into the class 3 system. Silently and quickly we aligned towards the Hyperion’s position and I again iniated gang-warp.

We landed almost right on top of them. The Raven were 15-18 Km out and I quickly put my warp disruptor on him. He wasn’t going anywhere. The Hyperion however, was 37 Km off, too far off for either of us to get a point on. Klown valiantly engaged his microwarp drive and sped towards the Hyperion, catching it with his infinitpoint. We opened fire on the Hyperion, but when I attempted to reload my guns with Scorch crystals for range, I recieved an error message.

Apparently,  I was out of cargospace and there was no room for the crystals to be moved back for the swap. Crap! I forgot to drop off the loot from HOPTOH earlier. Damnit, oh well. It didn’t matter much, since just as Klown got ready to deploy his bubble, the Hyperion somehow jammed him and warped off to a safespot only 300 Km away. Furious as we were, we turned to the Raven and Klown deployed his bubble around it. He was certainly not going anywhere now!

The Raven was well in range for mymultifrequency crystals and it didn’t take many volleys from me and Isaac for the Raven to evaporate. The pod was swiftly destroyed and it’s pilot sent home to the vats. The Hyperion glared at us from a distance, but there was no way we would catch it, so we returned home.

As we were about to dock in our home station, a red undocked a Drake straight into us. We couldn’t believe our eyes! Klown quickly locked it down while me, Isaac and some LEGIO guys opened up on the Drake. It buckled in less than 10 seconds. It was completely obliterated and it’s pilot sat dimbwitted in his pod looking at the smoldering mess of metal that used to be his ship. Tydcrims made short work of his pod, further killing his security status. Tyd has gone from 5.0 to 1.33 in one day. Well done there Tyd…

A few hours later, we spotted a red gang of two Abaddons, two Guardians, an Absolution and some other escort rabble. We formed a fleet together with some other guys and got hunting, but by the time we caught up with the red gang, they had been joined by a Megathron, a Golem and carrier support in their staging system. There was no way we’d be able to break that, so grudingly we returned towards Hoshoun. As we landed on the Hoshoun gate in Mamet, we saw a red Drake in tackle range! Points were issued, weapons were fired and the Drake was beginning to buckle.

But he was already 20 or so Km off when we started, and we had no really fast ships, save for Klown’s Onyx. As the Drake was speeding out of my overloaded disruptor range, I feared he might escape, but Klown was on his tail and kept his infinipoint on it, and eventually the massive shielding on the Drake dissipated and it was short work from there on in. (The killmail went to someone else who has yet to share it)

In short, this day has seen more pewpew than I have had in the last month. In spite of the obscene amounts of lives lost in all this, I can’t help but feel absolutely fantastic!

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.

A couple of days ago I was on my way up the Kheram pipe and recieved a report that Catrina was somewhere along the pipe as well. I saw this as a perfect moment to teach my sister a lesson, so  I parked my Armageddon on the Unefsih gate in Kheram and waited. Sure enough, there she was! She didn’t say hello, nor did she make any effort to run. I locked her Omen up, and willed my laser batteries to fire! The disruptor shut her warp core down, the web hampered her sublight engines, and the neutralizer crushed her capacitor.

She wasn’t going anywhere, she wasn’t doing any thing and most importantly, she was going down! I’m not even sure if she shot back at all, but in a few seconds, her Omen was reduced to a smoldering wreck. She quickly got her pod out, and I actually received a sneering remark over local chat.

Seeing as I was now under sentry fire due to crimes, I decided to warp my Armageddon to a safespot in empty space and wait out the aggression timer. I felt rather pleased with myself as I told the tale of my victory to my corpmates, but noticed that Catrina was back in system. I couldn’t really help myself, so I made a teasing remark how she was back for more, but she didn’t reply to that. Rather strange, seeing as she usually always have a snide reply.

Only a minute or two after her entering the system, she decloaks right beside me in a Pilgrim! I didn’t know she could use probes, so I wasn’t even looking! I was locked up, neuted and tracking disrupted in no time. I didn’t even have drones to defend myself with as they were left behind at the gate and destroyed by the sentries. I yelled out to my corpmates to come help, but most of them were far off. In the Citadel, noone lifted a finger to help.

I couldn’t touch her! It was so frustrating. I fired and fired, but the lasers kept missing, and my capacitor was going down fast, in spite of my cap booster. As my corpmates scrambled to get a combat ship ready and fly to my position, I ran out of cap booster charges and Aura’s dreaded voice hit me: “Your capacitor is empty.” My repper turned off, as did most of my other systems. Catrina’s drones were still eating away slowly at my armor, and finally breached the plating, attacking my unprotected hull.

I screamed for my corpmates for help, and apparently, two of them were en route. I kept thinking that they can’t go fast enough, just as the local beacon recognized Isaac entering system. I yelled at him to warp to me, but it was too late. Only a second after him landing on the grid, my proud Armageddon exploded. I quickly got my pod out, in case Cat was in a really bad mood, but apparently she was only interested in Isaac’s Harbinger, and was soon locked in combat with him. I saw Isaac’s desperate cries for help in the Citadel as I limped back home.

Thankfully, Catrina made a mistake and Isaac could get away before being destroyed, but I felt quite humiliated. I traded a battleship for a cheaply fitted cruiser which wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Not only that, I traded thousands of lives for a cheaply fitted cruiser with NO crew.

You will pay for this, dear sister…

My last peak into W-space left me thirsty for more. There was something alluring about W-space. So virgin, unknown and unexplored. So empty, yet could be filled with people and you just wouldn’t know. The lack of subspace beacons to announce your precence made W-space something of an adventure in itself, and I was itching to go back.

So, seeing as I had a lot of CPU to spare on the Phantasm, I tossed on a Core Launcher and went looking for wormholes. I soon found that probing one down was much harder with the Phantasm than with my Anathema. I had to actually make an effort in order to find these elusive little buggers. Not that I was overly surprised. The Anathema was bristling with electronics and had state of the art sensory systems, while the Phantasm was more focused on strong shields (that tend to wreak havoc with sensitive sensor equipment) and heavy laser banks.

I eventually came across 6 different wormholes in just under an hour, and after having looked them all through I found nothing of interest except for the one in Misaba. It had another wormhole inside, leading even further into unknown realms of space. I was tempted, I have to admit. Most wormholes I’d found in W-space inevitably lead back to K-space. Probable due to the Seyllin incident, which in some way seem to have linked W-space and K-space together in mysterious ways.

I chose to toss carefullness out the window and willed the Sansha monstrosity towards the pulsating wormhole and passed through the event horizon. In a very strange sensation very different from gate travel, everything sort of remained the same. My sensory systems registered that unknown radiation in the new system caused some rather strange things to happen to my ship, but other than that it was no different than travelling from one point in a system to another. No nasuea, no disorientation, no sensor recalibration. Just…nothing. Yet my camera drones were blinded by a massive pulsar, and a new nebula covered the “sky”. I was clearly not in the same system anymore.

I quickly got to work and launched my probes, while watching my directional scanner. Several Sleeper complexes showed up on my first scan. Not hidden by any means at all, but I also had a lot of faint signatures that I turned my attention to. It was, to say the least, very frustrating working with a vessel not designed for this kind of work. The Phantasm’s readings were blurry, inaccurate and apparently had a lot of deviation which made my job a lot harder than I was used to.

In the end though I managed to find a massive asteroid belt, dotted with asteroids the size of small moons. It was remarkable to witness, but I didn’t have time to stay for too long before the Sleepers that were roaming the belt decided I’d overstayed my welcome.

Another signature was yet more elusive and I decided to focus on that one. I was rewarded with a slight “pling” sound when the sensors, finally, identified the signature as a possible wormhole and an approximate location. I warped to the location only to find the wormhole convulsing at a rather unsettling pace. It definately didn’t look safe, and indeed, some more close range scans verified that the wormhole was in the final stages of it’s lifetime and would collapse within the hour. I wasn’t too keen on getting stuck somewhere in unknown space, and therefor set out to find another wormhole.

I have now been through five wormholes deeper into W-space and back again, and in spite of not finding anything but the eerie Sleepers to shoot, I’m quite satisfied. This is something I’m sure to be doing more often.

I’ve been having the worst of times, and best of times lately. I’ve had lots of stuff to do and never had a dull moment in the last few days, which is actually excellent.

It all started with me cloning to a nearly blank clone without implants for an upcoming roam into 0.0. I may be nuts, but I’m not crazy. There’s no way I’d take a frigate on a deep 0.0 roam with the risk of getting caught in a bubble and losing 2b when my POD pops. The inconvenience of dying is, in this case, far less than the liquid ISK lost.

In a turn of spontaneousness, we had a little talk in the corporation chat on how we should go roaming soon. It all really started with me talking about a roam that me and Tydcrims did a few days ago, just after I had blown up the Drake in W-space. Him and I jumped in to our stealth bombers in order to harass the two Caldari Navy Ravens that showed up to avenge their dead comrade. When we finally managed to get together and head into the wormhole, they were already long gone, but the idea sparked something in the corporation.

So what happened was that we got a small gang together and headed for Providence to find something to pewpew.

• Jade Blossoms – Incursus
• Tydcrims – Purifier
• Me – Purifier
• 4 LOM – Manticore
• McGowd – Malediction

With this little gang of frigates, we roamed all the way down to Paxton space, went up via 2-TEG and came back the “back route” up to R3-K7K without seeing many reds. We caught glimpse of a red that we didn’t know was a red that jumped into R3 just as we sat on the gate. He was in a Pilgrim, and we could’ve easily tackled him if we’d only known he was a red.

Slightly angered over this, we opened fire on a red Hurricane that had been chased from Mamet down to R3. He was shield tanked and with two bombers launching Mjolnirs at him, and several painters on him, his shields were down in no time, and his armor flew off in large chunks. Unfortunately, we had no webbers along with us, so it ended up with him reaching the gate just in time, and jumping back into Misaba. He didn’t make it out alive though, since half of the lower Domain citizens were sitting on that gate, but we felt slightly robbed of proof of our work. The other guys simply reaped the goodies of our hard work.

Nevertheless, we knew in our hearts that we had won. With no killmail to show for it, who cares?

So I had been scanning down some wormholes in Hoshoun and figured I’d take a look. The first one I enter, Class 3 system, has a Drake and a Buzzard in it. Kinky. I bookmark the site, the wormhole and go take a look. They are apparently cleaning the field. Nice opportunity.

I head home, switch to the Phantasm, go back and enter the site. The Drake is 35 Km away. Damnit! He’s totally going to get away. But no, he’s not. He doesn’t notice as I come screaming at 1200 m/s towards him. Point, web, lasers!

In about 10 seconds the Drake is reduced to rubble and I loot the field and leave, just as quickly as I got there. Just as I left, however, I noticed two juicy Raven class battleships on scan. Navy issue, no less. I quickly went to station and got out my trusty Armageddon and went right back.

Hey there! Right where I left you guys. This is where I learned that Devastator cruise missile volleys from two CNRs hurt a lot more than I thought. I had barely scratched the shields on one of the Ravens before I was in half structure screaming at my ship to EFFING WARP!!!

Limping home in an Armageddon venting atmosphere put a large dent in my pride. At least I got their failfit salvager Drake.

Just 30 km away they were. A small gang of cruisers and an assault frigate; A Maller, two Thoraxes, a Vexor and an Enyo. They’d been flying around the entry area of Providence looking for easy kills and even found some. Apparently they heavily utilized ECM drones which allowed them to overwhelm the sensors of any target due to their numbers. One of my friends, who hides behind the amusing nickname of “Brittanic Lord”, apparently got caught by them and lost his Legion to them. A hefty loss.

I took it upon myself to locate those bastards and hopped into my trusty stealth bomber; the Dysnomia, a Purifier class Amarrian bomber. As a single pilot vessel when outfitted with a POD interface, I felt unusually alone when I was granted undocking clearance and set my course towards the Providence entry system: R3-K7K.

The pirates were last reported in a neighboring system X-R3, and I set course towards it. Just as my ship rematerialized on the other side and my sensor kicked back in I found them. They were sitting there right next to my friend’s frozen corpse. Apparently his pod didn’t make it out either. I shadowed them for several jumps, always reporting their position and heading in the intel channel, and just as I noticed they were heading back for empire space I caught word of a gatecamp building in R3. I quickly made way to get there before the pirates, a feat rather easy when you are flying a stealth vessel designed for covert ops duty.

As I released my gate cloak a Vexor had already been pointed while his friends turned and ran. I willed my targeting systems to lock his vessel and unleashed a volley of torpedoes towards the rocking Vexor. It didn’t take long before it exploded under our assault and someone caught his pod and made short work of it.

While the pirates surely made it out victorious ISK-wise, I couldn’t help but feel rather pleased with myself for exacting a small revenge.

So there I was: Half asleep in the Zoar & Sons station in Mamet, droning through market orders and listening to the chatter on the intel channels. Suddenly, I hear a lot of requests for a fleet in Ziriert, and I’m thinking…you really need that many people to hunt 10-15 reds? Because just a few minutes earlier a pirate gang consisted mostly of HACs and battlecruisers flew straight through Mamet towards Ziriert. Then Isaac told me some moron had ran a mission in a CARRIER and got himself tackled by a red fleet that was growing fast.

Mkay. That’s dumb. And I’m not referring to the tackled part.

Anyways, we jumped into combat ships and headed over to save the hapless pilot screaming for help, but apparently, they did not want our help, since we had to wait over 10 minutes to get a fleet invite, and when we finally got there, it was a fight of rather large proportions. There were around 20-40 reds (I didn’t count them to be honest) and god knows how many on our side. We had at least 4 carriers though, including the tackled one. The reds stayed away from our optimals and held at about 100-120 km away, but we managed to get a few of them that wandered into range.

Personally, I got shots off at an Ares, a Drake and a Huginn before they died, but pretty much everything else ran off when we managed to get a warp-in spot on their fleet. All in all, it was a pretty nice fight and we did manage to save the carrier, which is always a plus.

Slightly drowsy, I eyed the numbers that flowed past my eyes and tried to find some sense in it all. Trading was really not my thing. I had made lots of ISK on it, but I simply didn’t have the patience for it, or the concentration to keep up with it all.

Just as was nodding off, a message across the corporation channel startled me. Apparently my corpmate, Whistle, had been tricked into a duel with another pilot under the false pretense that the fight would be to structure only. In spite of this, the pilot destroyed Whistle’s Omen.

I felt something inside. This transgression was against my family. It could just as well had been me that was destroyed. No, this was worse…this was a brother in arms. I had to do something about his, so I quickly got up and paged my XO.

“Get the Warthog prepped for launch, we’re going hunting!”

“You got it, mam. Same fit?”

“That very one, hurry up, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Ayeaye!”

I got dressed, since I’d been sitting in my undewear browsing the market, and tried to straighten out my, now blonde, hair as best as I could. Not that it would matter once I was submerged in ectogoo in the pod, but there was a fair bit to walk to the hangar elevator, and I couldn’t let people see me with a bad hair, now could I?

As I arrived in the hangar, the Ferox class battlecruiser “Warthog” was already suspended on the docking clamps, prepped for launch and the crew already on their merry way on board. Ah, it was a glorious piece of machinery!

I got on board, got undressed and stepped inside the pod. The hatch sealed shut and the interface arm connected with the back of my head, and the pod started filling with that green goo I hated so much. Once I was safely suspended in the ectoplasm, I willed the comms system online.

“Allright, people. Saddle up, strap up and get ready! We’re about to head up to high security space to avenge a fallen comrade. I’ll expect your utmost on this journey, just as I always do.”

I shut the channel, and asked docking control for clearance, which was swiftly granted. As I glided out through the docking chamber, I couldn’t help but again become amazed by the sheer immensity of the station.

I shook my head violently in the pod. This was no time to get light headed, there was combat ahead! I set course for the Mista gate in Kheram, a mere five jumps through low security space before I would be in high security, and have another nine jumps before I would reach Youl, where Whistle was waiting.

The whole journey was massively uneventful, and as I entered Youl, Whistle informed me that our friend, Captain Boomstick, had left a can hanging in the belt where Whistle now was. I warped over there and took the contents, knowing that this would register as a minor offense towards our friend, leaving me open to attack to him without CONCORD involvement.

I then willed the ship into warp towards the station, where I knew he was holed up, and there he was. A Harbinger class battlecruiser, hanging motionless just a few kilometers off the undock ramp of the station. I approached him and got into a stable 1 km orbit, waiting. Soon enough, he started moving off, trying to put some distance between us, and then…laser fire struck my shields.

Blasters returned fire, the warp scrambler shut his warp core down, and in addition to that killed his microwarpdrive. He wasn’t going anywhere. My hobgoblin drones started chewing on his hammerheads, and after that, it was cat and mouse as I pulsed my microwarpdrive to keep up with him. He had me webbed, so even without his MWD, he had the speed advantage. So I had to pulse it to keep up, but I was filled with adrenaline now.

Deep into combat, not caring for anything but the fight. Not caring that I had hundreds of people under me, working the collective butts off to keep the ship together, and that they would die while I lived on if the ship blew up. But I didn’t think of that in that moment. All I did in that moment was focus my energy, my will and my concentration on winning this fight.

His armor was literally melting under the onslaught of my blasters, while his lasers couldn’t seem to get my shields below 50%. My shield booster was working full time, pushing many hundred gigajoules of energy into the shield generator, and the shield hardener was overloaded to provide the most possible hardening for the shields. But I was doing okay, he was going down, and I wasn’t. He apparently came to the same conclusion, for suddenly, his remaining two drones were recalled, his guns fell silent and he slowly started to approach the station in an attempt to dock.

I was furious, he was not going to get away with this! I knew I had 60 seconds before his aggressions were cleared with the docking manager and he’d be allowed to dock. I pushed my guns to their limit, overcharging every antimatter slug with more energy, trying to munch through his massive armor buffer before he reached safety. Just as he reached the docking perimeter and asked for clearance, my volley of supercharged antimatter breached his armor plating and slammed into his unprotected hull. His ship started venting atmosphere and I yelled, albeit silently in my pod:

“Die you BASTARD!!!”

I sputtered as my mouth filled with ectoplasm, but I wasn’t going to give up yet, and with glee I watched his ship explode with a brilliant blue flash and debris flying everywhere. He had forgot to deactivate his stasis webifier, causing the docking manager to deny his docking request since he was still technically in combat.

Vengeance is sweet!