So who was trying to cyno into Auren then?

A nice day today but significantly, I took out two kestrels that were creating cynosural fields. The first one popped but only after a Moros class dreadnaught had appeared while the second one, I killed within ten seconds of the cyno-field registering on the scanner and overview. There must be a pissed off capital ship pilot out there. Auren is a quiet place, relatively speaking but not safe enough.

It dropped a cyno-generator and a cargo hold of ozone while the pilot was podded and added to my collection of discarded protein. A minute later, a rifter appeared in local and I thought - why not? Chasing him down was fun but he could get into warp pretty damn quick. When I finally caught up with him after landing four times too far in as many occasions! He gave me these immortal lines after I asked for a 500K ransom:

>> FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FROM RUSSIA!!!!

He dropped ok loot for a rifter and after my flag had ended I traveled some more. In Gultratren, I jumped in and was not too surprised to see lots and lots of mindless haulers; poor pod pilots controlled by this one mastermind it would seem. My scanner gave a little bleep. It was a contact and not a shuttle or an industrial.

Looking closer, I saw it was OriasV! Yes, an old adversary who went from CEO to -10.0 pirate and now with a new corp and working his sec status up, it would seem. I tracked his movements on the scanner and locked on. My heart thumping hard as I anticipated another kill. OriasV was in a wolf, identical class as mine so it would be most interesting in finding out who pops first. He was also still a blinkie so it mattered little about a timer. My warp engines engaged and away it went, the distance to the destination counting down rapidly. With another wolf, suitably configured, it will be an armour tanker so i needed to switch to some armour-piercing rounds as soon as his shields went. Some hail and phased plasma would do it I think.

My wolf came out of warp and I saw OriasV with his ship blinking red in my overview. Beautiful I thought. Just beautiful. My 150mm T2 opened up and soon reduced OriasV into dust. It was only then that I noticed a blinking, minimised conversation window.

I opened up the small message packet and it was OriasV offering surrender terms. SHITE. I missed his conversation and it appears that the offer to accept the conversation never came up; so I didn't see it. The red-mist of combat clouds and hides everything. Then I realised that OriasV was in my address book.

Oh well.

His loot was ok and yes, I pod-killed him too.

2007.11.23 23:06

Victim: OriasV
Alliance: United Intergalactic Nations
Corp: EveCorp
Destroyed: Wolf
System: Gultratren
Security: 0.3

Involved parties:
Name: flashfresh (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.0
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Independent Pilots
Ship: Wolf
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II

Destroyed items:
Carbonized Lead S, Qty: 600 (Cargo)
Proton S, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Fusion S, Qty: 322 (Cargo)
Fusion S, Qty: 93
Phased Plasma S, Qty: 83
Small Shield Extender I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
1MN MicroWarpdrive I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Small Hull Repairer I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Small Energy Transfer Array I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Ballistic Deflection Field I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Qty: 3
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I, Qty: 1
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters, Qty: 1
200mm Light Prototype I Automatic Cannon, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Small 'Notos' Explosive Charge I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Rocket Launcher I, Qty: 3 (Cargo)
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I, Qty: 1
'Limos' Rocket Launcher I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Angel Electrum Tag, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Domination Silver Tag, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Partial Weapon Navigation, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Arch Angel Depleted Uranium S, Qty: 1000 (Cargo)
Smashed Trigger Unit, Qty: 7 (Cargo)
Fried Interface Circuit, Qty: 3 (Cargo)
Trigger Unit, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Salvager I, Qty: 1


Coming back into my home area, I was asked by one of the newly minted BL4CK FL4G players to help him. He was in his punisher and it was Mochur. There was a harpy around, piloted by SNURA who I was chasing for a while but never caught. It appeared that he was hunting Mochur which in turn meant that I was now hunting him.

After a few minutes of setting up in position, I was summoned by Mochur - already in mid-warp; I discovered that the harpy had pounced on Mochur and was busy smashing into him. Speed was of the essence and I warped to my gang-mate as quickly as possible. Arriving, i was dismayed to see that I had landed outside of the 20KM range and had to hit the afterburner to close the distance. This I did and locked onto the harpy, it was close to Mochur's punisher so it was a blaster harpy; not the usual run-of-the-mill; missile and railgun jobs. Most likely it would be T2 fitted with lethal void-class ammunition. Mochur's punisher managed to tank for a few seconds longer before it exploded. I was in lock range and opened up with the x4 200mm and x1 rocket launcher. A salvo that hit the harpy full on, knocking it's shields down to 50% in the first burst. However, the harpy was tough and like all Caldari ships, had a super-efficient shield boosting system and was soon running at 75% shield. I had to be quick and get the damage to bleed into it's comparatively thin armour.

"Just popped." Said Mochur in our Independence channel chat and I was alone to avenge my gang mate. Mochur got his pod out but wished me luck.

My T2 auto-canons had a high rate of fire and the extra gyrostabiliser that I had installed allowed my wolf to kick out an extra 15% extra in terms of damage and rate of fire. However, even without these mods, the wolf was more than enough and soon the Harpy was on fire as it's hull was breached in numerous places. Its precious fuel and life support systems leaking out. Then it burst. The pilot had a big bounty on him and I tried to clamp onto it but experience and a bit of luck was on his side and he got away.

The loot was good and would pay for several new Punishers for Mochur.

2007.11.23 23:29

Victim: Snura
Alliance: SMASH Alliance
Corp: The Funkalistic
Destroyed: Harpy
System: Gusandall
Security: 0.4

Involved parties:
Name: flashfresh (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.0
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Independent Pilots
Ship: Wolf
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II

Name: Mochur Villus
Security: -2.9
Alliance: NONE
Corp: BLACK-FLAG
Ship: Capsule
Weapon: Warp Disruptor I

Destroyed items:
Corpse, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Phased Plasma S, Qty: 1060 (Cargo)
EMP S, Qty: 862 (Cargo)
Hobgoblin II, Qty: 3 (Cargo)
Gremlin Rocket, Qty: 1083 (Cargo)
200mm AutoCannon II, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Light Neutron Blaster II, Qty: 3
Sigma-Nought Tracking Mode I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
'Malkuth' Standard Missile Launcher I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Beta Reactor Control: Diagnostic System I, Qty: 1
Spirits, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II, Qty: 1
Energized Reactive Membrane I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Pax Amarria, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Triple-sheathed Reactive Plating I, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher, Qty: 1 (Cargo)

After a quick change over, Mochur was back out in his new punisher and once more was engaged by yet another Harpy class assault frigate. What was it with this punisher? This one however, hit a lot harder than the last one and Mochur's punisher soon disappeared in a ball of flame, just as I arrived and got a precious point on the new Harpy.

"That ship hits a lot harder than the previous Harpy. Watch out Flash!" Warned Mochur, his pod now warping away. I locked horns with the second harpy and by God this Caldari AF could hit hard. I lost all my shields and some armour before I had the sense to kick the armour repairer to life. However, my Wolf was no slouch either and had torn a sizeable chunk out of the shields, I could imagine his capacitor struggling to feed the shield boosters thirst as it bled of the excessive kinetic energy imparted by my auto-canon shells.

However, the power of the wolf is in hitting harder than most other frigate-class ships and let armour be damned. This tilted the balance to me, even though I was tanking it mattered not and soon the Harpy was blowing out fire and atmosphere. It was dying but the pod pilot bravely held on and fought.

Hats off to him.

As his ship blew, the pod-pilot's capsule instantly warped out leaving his wreck and his crew's rescue launches in space.

2007.11.24 0:20

Victim: Cerui Tarshiel
Alliance: Apoapsis Multiversal Consortium
Corp: Fabulous Soulcatchers
Destroyed: Harpy
System: Gusandall
Security: 0.4

Involved parties:
Name: flashfresh (laid the final blow)
Security: -10.0
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Independent Pilots
Ship: Wolf
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II

Name: Mochur Villus
Security: -2.9
Alliance: NONE
Corp: BLACK-FLAG
Ship: Capsule
Weapon: 150mm Light AutoCannon I

Destroyed items:
Hammerhead I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Light Neutron Blaster II, Qty: 1
Medium Shield Extender II, Qty: 1
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator, Qty: 1
Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters, Qty: 1
Void S, Qty: 55
Metal Scraps, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Smashed Trigger Unit, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Artificial Neural Network, Qty: 1 (Cargo)
Salvager I, Qty: 1

Not a bad night. Nice loot too for me and Mochur to share.

Love them isk!