The thrill of the hunt....

"Targets in Eifer. Get into your ship Flash. Fleet already formed."

Knocking off my latest, un-opened correspondence from the table and choking down a hot croissant (who said pirates don't have class?) - I raced towards my hangar and got my crew ready for the hurricane.

By the time I was out of space dock, I had updated my watch list, logged into the fleet voice chat and was switching to my combat overview GUI. The fleet included some pirates from The Bastards: General Coochie, Z0de, RoninData to name three. Viper Sam and Serenator was present too. We briefly exchanged pleasantries and got ready.

"I have two drakes and a sleipnir around the IV cluster," informed Sam. "They're jumping around though."

"Need any help?" I offered.

"Flash: you come in and bait."

"Roger that." I activated the gate and was inside Eifer in a flash. I could see nothing from the Gusandall entry point and I briefly recalled the last couple of times I was bait. It ended badly for me. However, as I moved towards my safe spot - two drake-class battle cruisers and a rapier appeared. I had them towards the 1-1 asteroid belt and headed towards there. Imaging my surprise when I landed 1000m behind the lead drake! I pointed it and yelled for the other ships to fly in and assist. I had tackled one of the two drakes. I opened fire and prepared to duke it out with both drakes. Sam called in the other ships in the fleet and they all warped towards me. The first drake warped out quickly followed by the second drake.

"Drakes are stabbed. Sorry, I had one point on me." I was very disappointed as the other ships finally came in. No matter, as under Sam's direction - all the ships scattered to the nearest planets and belts in an effort to catch the slippery customers. The two drakes however, left the system into a high-sec gate.

We decided to move on and we roamed towards Evati when zode or silvetrys had managed to locate a cyclone coming through into Todifrauan. He locked it but it fled. We gave chase. Moving like a pack of sharks. The cyclone pilot taunted us by saying we had lost the opportunity at grabbing some BPOs! The cheek!

"Over towards the two gates!"

We moved fast but not fast enough - just catching the tell tale signs of a successful gate activation. Twice we came close - decloaking just out of range of the fleeing cyclone. He stayed in low-sec and was moving between systems but one of The Bastards had more or less determined that this cyclone pilot was determined to get into Evati and we were making it difficult for him. Twice we came close, once when he warped to a planet and we chased but missed him - we had no ships smaller than a BC and the mark was warping out as soon as he arrived.

He then docked up and we waited along the route to Evati. He came out again, but in a probe - even faster and harder to catch.

Eventually, the mark left through a high-security gate.

However, no problem as General Coochie had scanned out a mission runner but we strongly suspected that there was a second party of pirates doing the same thing. We took a few minutes too long to organise ourselves, due to the fleet being spread out across five or six systems. Once we arrived, we snagged an expensively fit Arazu but failed to catch the other ships (dominix, hurricane etc) no matter; the thrill of the last hour or so was excellent.

This is what piracy is all about.

It is feast or famine most of the time and if I wanted guaranteed PvP - I might as well undock my pod and subscribe to 'Quake 2142' where I can always get opponents. No, piracy is about hunting those who don't want to be hunted, stealing and killing those who want to avoid confrontation and making life a misery for those too stupid, lazy or dumb to survive in New Eden.

Let's do it.