Round One - Drunk Roam
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| The store... |
"F*ck your subaru, I have a horse outside!"
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| My tea |
Flash re-scrolled through the ships logs and shook his head gingerly. The alcohol hadn't quite left his system from the night before and jump cloning to a different clone would be counter-productive. The statement, this proclamation was repeated, with some variation throughout the log files. He was a bit perturbed as to what it meant and who started it. Macy, Flashfresh's ever efficient personal assistant, strode in with a hot beverage balanced professionally on a silver tray.
"Sir, your tea as requested."
Flashfresh grunted a thanks and reached over for it. Taking a sip, he relaxed back into his worn leather chair.
"Macy, you are a life saver. Pity it feels like someone took a pee in my mouth. Bleurghh." Flashfresh grimaced and took another deep slurp of some fine Dragon Pearl green tea.
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| Dragon Pearl Tea |
"Some people pay money for that." Muttered Macy under her breath. Flashfresh didn't catch what she said and instead concentrated on the monitor before gesturing at the screen with the cup of tea. Some of the tea sloshing out.
"You see, what I don't understand is - what the hell is this?" Flashfresh played a segment of the voice chat from the roam he was reviewing. It sounded like a bunch of wild hyenas high on some sort of laughter inducing drug. Or a bunch of drunk ass pirates. Then, booming from the multiple speakers:
"F*ck your mitsuibishi, I have a horse outside!"
Flashfresh replayed the last segment twice more to Macy who merely shrugged her indifference. She's been working for The Bastards and Flashfresh for the last five years and frankly, nothing surprised her.
"I suggest sir, that you go back and review all the ship, combat, medical and communication logs from the pilots who were present to build up a more accurate picture? Use the new AI software that was uploaded last week."
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| I gotta go... |
Macy then reached over and her fingers danced across the keyboard. A program booted up and before Flashfresh could say anything, the entire roam was re-assembled into a coherent stream complete with time-line and animation.
"I hope that helps sir. Will that be all?" Enquired Macy, quite clearly on her way out and onto more important things. Flashfresh stared at the new programme in wonder and realised that he could almost re-insert himself into the roam, like a fly on the wall. Superb.
Macy excused herself while Flashfresh sat back slurping his tea.
Flashfresh replayed the mission log, following the fleet as it jumped (or lurched) from one system to another. Flashfresh was apparently, the fleet commander, though he had trouble remembering the exact details.
"F*ck your mitsuibishi, I have a horse outside!"
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| This is the horse? |
There it was again, being broadcasted to everyone in local....
Anyway, after a few hours of combing through log files and fleet manifests and replaying from multiple view points the picture of the beginnings of the drunk roam became clear.
The composite fleet composed of the following brave and so-to-be drunk pilots:
Flashfresh
Dil'e Mahn
Eloha Lightbane
Peaster
Harlon Mathuin
Max Ursa
Shizraak
Marco Drack
Greygor Butenstein
Sophtia (not drinking)
Leroxee
...and others?
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Dil'e Mahn's
weapon of
choice |
It appears that Dil'e Mahn thought it would be good for everyone to have at least one smart bomb and with some alarm, Flashfresh realised that he had managed to fit a large smartbomb onto his rupture! Everyone else also fitted some form of area effect weapon. He also decided that we would be going into null-sec too to ensure that we could use said AOE weapons without sentry guns shooting the fleet. So the group, already inebriated slammed into Syndicate space and raced around looking for trouble.
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| The Hapless Shizraak |
Shizraak apparently maintained his reputation of dying first to a non-capsuleer. Last time, he died to some adventurous Serpentis pirates in a belt (he got killed by rats!) but this time he got Concorded. The voice logs was full of laughter and insults as Shizraak raced onwards to grab another ship. Meanwhile, the fleet approached the PF-346, pausing one jump away at FD-MLJ. There was a dramiel buzzing around the FD-MLJ gate in PF-346 so some people thought it would be good to jump and scare them! Marco, took drunk to care apparently dived in with his bellicose. Flashfresh rewound the log and checked again, Marco was indeed in a bellicose hull. Unusual for Marco, who was more at ease in either a dramiel or a hurricane hull.
Flashfresh continued to play the log and amid the yelling and jeering, Marco said that there were one-, no, two-, no,
three Machariel class battleships appearing 200+ km away. All snipe fit no doubt. They started to target the drunken pirate who was trying to get back to the gate. Then Marco did something that took Flashfresh utterly by surprise. The pirate lit a cynosural field.
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| Marco, he go BOOM. |
Flashfresh replayed the log file and scrutinized the telemetry. Indeed, Marco Drack had dropped a cyno and the three Macherials (plus Dramiel) immediately dropped their locks and sped out of range, fearing for their lives. Unfortunately, the cyno was fitted for laughs only. There would be no capital class ships racing to Marco's rescue and soon the three, initially alarmed Macherial pilots came back and realizing that it was a false alarm, volleyed
Marco's bellicose to scrap. Flashfresh grimaced at the last second's worth of telemetry from the battered Bellicose. He also grimaced at the cost of the fuel.
Oddly, the event galvanized the drunken fleet into more acts of bravado. Minutes later, the drunk fleet was engaged one jump away by elements of the same Macherial gang. No doubt, they realised that this fleet was piloted by Captains and crew who were completely drunk and incapable of anything remotely threatening, unless it was crashing into stargates or something.
It was at this time that Flashfresh realised he was reviewing his own combat logs. He was also listening to his own voice, albeit a bit more ragged and slurred but it was his voice. He heard himself call the harbinger primary but went after it with his lone large smart bomb. Flashfresh then saw from the churning combat logs that he was jammed and jammed again. In fact, the enemy brought three falcons into the fray just to even things up.
JManza (was he drunk?) managed to tank most of them in his ferox but
unable to fire back, he died. It pained Flashfresh greatly to see that on JManza's killmail, there were alliance mates on it. Such is the danger of the smart bomb. Not very smart when the Captains firing these area effect weapons were drunk. At least people sounded like they were having a blast.
Round Two - My Gun is bigger than yours!
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| Some of the lads? |
After a break and refit - the drunk fleet went out again. This time, Flashfresh discovered that his drunken self had opted for the infamous 'Oversized clip and carbine' roaming theme. This is where one tries to fit a massive weapon onto the hull of your ship. Fitting cruiser sized weapons onto frigate hulls or battle ship weapons onto cruiser hulls for example. Only crazy, drunken Bastards would even contemplate such a fit. However, it looked like part two of the drunk roam was well attended.
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My gun is bigger than
yours.... |
Flashfresh scruntinised the log files and discovered that he had managed to bolt on a dual 180mm auto canon quite easily, which he found very surprising. In fact, Flashfresh managed to cram all sorts of goodies on the destroyer but failed at the almost obligatory smart bomb. With the oversize, weaponised destroyers the fleet undocked - this time, in a very drunken haze.
With scouts racing ahead (a rifter with a large auto canon?) the fleet went North and through Ostingele, a local hot-spot. There were targets for sure and things looked promising. Medical telemetry data that was available told Flashfresh that all the pilots were probably operating at 50% combat efficiency. However, their courage knew no bounds and tried to goad some of the locals into a fight. Sitting in a flashy destroyer on the gate looked like bait but in fact, was some Captain too drunk to bother jumping. The locals appeared to be spooked as their scanners no doubt picked up a fleet of frigates and destroyers, stationary for most of the time. Surely a trap?
The covert scout (also a bit tipsy) managed to get close to a drake a few times but the the fleet just couldn't get round to warping in. All this chasing was interrupting the drinking it would appear. Eventually, Flashfresh gave the order to jump into the top belt and wait.
Soon enough, an assault frigate warped into the belt at 100km and spied the ships. He then took off. Apparently, at the same time - the pod pilots all tried to moon the pilot. How this was possible inside a capsule remains to be debated. Violence was imminent however as the remote medical telemetry detected an increase in adrenaline and endomorphic drugs. The Bastards were ready as can be.
Sure enough, the enemy came in and in force too: hurricanes, drakes, stabbers - it was a good fleet and a right dust up. With some alarm, Flashfresh realised that his drunken self was not paying attention at all to the battle and activated a salvager on a stabber!
I died.
Taking a deep sip of tea he replayed the horribly one-sided fight as the Bastards, cackling manically tried to do, well
something. It was unclear what worked but the only thing they definitely achieved was bemusing the attackers. A 'good fight' was exchanged in local and it was then that Prophet started to yell out in local:
"F*ck your subaru, I have a horse outside!" - much to the bemusement to all of the attackers.
A link was posted in the fleet chat to clarify and Flashfresh, through the log files followed the hyperlink (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8) and watched the video.
After a few minutes, Flashfresh couldn't help but laugh, other fleet members continued with what looked like the motto of the night's fleet.
"F*ck your drake, I have a horse outside."
It was funnier (apparently) on the night.
Roam three - hiding behind that hi-sec pocket
Amazingly, the fleet still thought that they could continue to roam. Flashfresh checked the logs and indeed, the fleet was largely intact but the level of alcohol in his blood stream was eye-watering high. Flashfresh was sure that this was true for this fleet mates too.
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Shhh, we're hunting
er, wabits! |
This time, the drunk fleet decided to sneak into a low-sec pocket near Iges. It had a single high-sec system as a buffer and then there was an eight low-sec system ring. Obviously, only fast aligning ships could be used so frigates and cruisers were selected and with barely enough time to refuel the ships, the fleet was back out and jumping into high security space. As was now customary someone shouted out in local:
"F*uck your missions, I have a horse outside!"
Racing through high security space is always interesting as it is a race to see whether the local faction navies can grab you before you align and get out. With only a single jump it was quite easy. Within 30 seconds, the drunk fleet had assembled in the low-sec pocket and started to hunt.
The locals, enjoying the safety of having a high-sec pocket in front as a buffer were slow to react to the presence of the pirates in their midst it would appear....however, the drunk fleet was criminally slow to react too.
It was decided that probing and scanning was hurting the fleet's collective heads so Flashfresh gave the order to sit on a gate and grab 'something'. A cyclone came through and the frigates and destroyers all lit up. Of course, the sentry guns went off too but apparently the fleet assumed that the beer blanket they had would protect them.
How wrong they were. The cyclone pilot had a shock but survived the feeble assault. He even quipped in local.
[23:56:50] X Gallentius: I hope sombody mentions something about going gcc on a gate with a dessie!!
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| Undocking... |
Followed by blagging in local how fail the pirates were in attempting to tackle him on the gate. If only he knew the truth and that it was the alcohol that was directing the fleet and not common sense.
Flashfresh then grimaced as he read his own ship log and he vaguely remembered that he had a cunning plan. He replayed the conversation and heard himself speak to his fleet.
"Chaps, I will get this fool of the gate. I will warp to the gate at 100 km and blow myself up. He will come over and inspect the wreck and boom! We kill him!" Everyone in the fleet failed to acknowledge this plan as either being good or bad. Most apparently were too caught up in whatever they were doing. However, Flashfresh discovered that he went right ahead. Shaking his head at the memory of this, most dumb move ever - Flashfresh replayed the scene from the ship logs. How the rifter landed 100 km from the gate, while still under a global criminal countdown. How the sentry guns reached out and pulverized his ship in about two salvoes and how, well - it was just a stupid idea.
Amazingly, Flashfresh managed to get his pod back into Iges and docked up. He doesn't actually remember leaving his pod but quite clearly he did: he woke up a couple of hours ago in his own bed. He had vague recollections of emerging from his pod, armed and spoiling for a fight. Flashfresh hoped he didn't actually discharge his weapon.
There was a flashing new message notification and Flashfresh clicked on the icon and read the message. It was sent by Flashfresh, last night to everyone. It was rambling:
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Who is this asleep on
my table? |
"Pointed the door as it refused to open. No idea why my ship died. Who stole my drink. Did you kill it? Asshole. Need another roam. Tomorrow! Asshole!"
Good times indeed.
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