… about three years … later … suddenly silence. I wake up, wearing my shoes and clothes, my pad still holding in my hands. I hold the breath for a few seconds and wait if the sound of  hundreds of Scourge Heavy Missiles hitting the stations cloning and fitting services will return.

I quickly risk a look at my pad. Only 67 pilots are reported to be in system – that can’t be the hostile fleet anymore who has been sieging the system and especially this station for more than eight hours now. Outside of my apartment I hear people running and hectically speaking.

Pilots getting back to their hangars to report for duty. The last remaining civilist trying to catch one of the escorted shuttles evacuating the station down to a minimum of staff which is  needed to run this place.

I activate my window and can see a shield maintenance bot flying by – our carrier fleet seems to be undocking already to repair the damage once again. I stand up to take a look what was happening outside. I already see the first bunch of Thanatos class carriers moving around the station to get into position to repair the services. The first Drakes undocking and directly warping to a new secure assembly point.

I make me my daily amarrian tea, sign into the security system of the alliance I am helping here fighting a bunch of angry pilots who not only claim to have ancestors on this steeped in legends planet “earth” who lived in Russia but also claim that this is their space and their station.

Intel channels are reporting what I was already afraid of: The fitting service has taken that much damage, that it can’t operate anymore. That are really bad news, as my Harbinger really needs a few more modules, which I couldn’t aquire on the market yet.

The market is dying. The last days of fighting, the siege of the station and therefore the high risk for traders and industrialist to resupply, have let to the situation that stores are shrinking and two very important shield modules for my ship havn’t been available anymore.

While drinking my tea I try to find out what happened the last eight hours while I was sleeping and taking a break as I couldn’t do anything. The station has been bubbled and sieged by a fleet of about 150 pilots, fast tacklers and bombers just waiting outside to get easy (stupid) targets and we only had about 40 pilots availabe to counter this attack – no chances to do anything then.

We could only wait for them to leave or to clone-jump out of this station. But there is no reason to give up this space. Well – not yet. But for now I have to take care of my problem how to get into a ship again, which can fight those “angry russians”. I will continue this diary later on – I am sure there will be plenty of time to do so, when I am back in fleet again and waiting for an opportunity to arise to fight back.

Just a short notice: Yeaha – today was a awesome day! I was on my way back to my apartment, after my theory lesson in the afternoon was over and suddenly my pad started to blink. Three new mails in my inbox. I opened the door to my apartment, connected my pad to my home-system, jumped on my bed an activated the lovely voice of my ‘personal digital assistance’.

I listened to the voice, which was reading the mails and I was pleased with this good news. My corporation announced three upcoming big fleet operations within the next week. Let’s get ready to rumble …

After I had decided to leave Amarr, I connected to the stations mainframe and sent out the order to get my shuttle ready for undocking. After that I changed my passwords for all the hangars we have rented for our business, canceled all my outstanding contracts, deleted my buy-orders from the market and then went over to the cabins at the docking bay, where you get yourself ready for the pod.

I got my pod-suite dressed and took my emergency-bag out of my personal locker. In this bag I have everything needed for an emergency escape – Barachan forced me to pack this bag before he left to low-sec. When he told me to do that, I thought this was an silly and paranoidal idea – because I am not in war with anybody – I don’t kill people and I am not a threat to anybody …. so I don’t have any real enemies … but maybe I underestimated the situation.

Leaving Amarr

My pod connected to my shuttle, the berth crane has done it’s job and in this moment my camera-drones launched and I was able to see again. The docking-bay was packed with ships and a lot of ships were still coming in. I thought that one of the ships have already been assigned for my position in the bay and then I left the station behind me, aligned for the outgoing stargate and warped out.

I haven’t had left the station for more than about three months and – even if I don’t like to be in the pod – I was a kind of happy to be back in space. I arrived at this first jump-gate, which was packed with freighters and industrials, applied for a jump and got my position in queue. Number 23 … well, it’s still faster then getting out of Jita.

Jita was my final destination for this flight … I must admit, that after my talk with this stranger I really panicked and maybe my decision to leave the station immediately was an overreaction. But – to see it positive. I haven’t been to Jita for a long time now, and I thought that maybe it’s a good idea to go there to compare prices anyway. And maybe I would get in touch with new haulers, which are planning to operate from Amarr too.

And … that’s the most important aspect of my decision: I have one very very good old friend in Jita – and I wanted to speak with him, because I guessed he could help me how I have to handle the whole situation.

But the situation escalated on my way to Jita a lot

I had done about three or four jumps and of course a lot of people are flying the pipe between Amarr and Jita every day – but one ship got my attention, because it behaved conspicuous: at one gate (can’t remember which one exactly) I didn’t applied for the jump instantly, because I was checking the mail from Barachan, and therefore I jumped through the gate about 10 minutes later.

And on the other side of the gate, the name of the ship I had seen before on my overview was still there and it seemed to wait for me. I aligned for the next gate and could see that it did the same. I warped to the next gate and then decided to change my destination. I didn’t jumped through and instead I aligned for a different stargate.

Only two jumps away there is a system, in which Barachan and I have been training to create safespots in our early days as pilots and I had the plan that maybe I could use that grid of safespots to get rid of that guy. I honestly got pretty nervous and asked my self, if that guy is maybe this scout from the station, I have been talking to – and even before I reached the next stargate and I had him on my scanners again, and knew that he was still following me.

The ship was an assault frigate – a Hawk. In the moment I entered the final system, in which I have numerous safespots, I warped directly to the first one and activated my directional-scanner again.

Now the paper chase had begun.

If he really wants to follow me he first would try to find me on a stargate or a station with his scanner. But he soon will notice, that I am not at any, but that I am still in local. After this he will start looking at the planets, moons and belts … and in this system there are a lot of them. So I thought that it was a great place to hide.

I estimated that I have about five to ten minutes until he would have noticed, that he can’t find me, because I am jumping between safespots. I will have to wait, until I am sure, that he will be scanning the belts and then I have to move very quickly. I wanted to use one of the five stargates, without that he notice which I use. The plan was good, but than happened something totally unexpected.

A Manticore uncloacked only about 15 kilometers away from me and started to target me – 10 seconds later the Hawk warped in. I was shocked – he wasn’t alone but had a covert-ops with him and they found me with a probe – I zoomed to the Manticore and could see the fitted probe launcher – this tiny nasty probe had destroyed my plans.

But why the hell they targeted me? We were in high-sec (0.7) and they would be idiots if they try to attack me, because then Concord would show up within seconds and will blow them up. I was sure, the wouldn’t attack me at all and came to the conclusion, that they only wanted make me afraid …

I aligned for the next safespot and thought, that they can’t carry enough probes to find me over the next hours and so I will jump from safespot to safespot until they run out of probes and have to dock or maybe they just give up.

But then it happened: The Manticore scrambled me and the Hawk opened fire on me. What the hell were they doing? I panicked again and when I realized that they could easily kill a shuttle BEFORE Concord will show up in 0.7, I suddenly came up with the idea, that they maybe knew, that my clone was in Amarr (that I wear implants worth a few hundret million ISK) and maybe there only goal was to kill me, because they knew, that I would wake up in my clone in Amarr.

They wanted to detain me to leave Amarr and to achieve they goal the accept to get podded from concord as well. Then everything went pretty quickly. My shuttle exploded within seconds, my pod got targeted and in the moment Concord showed up, they killed me. That was they very first time, that I have ever been killed and had to use my clone.

I am sitting in a trap. I am again in Amarr and somebody wants, that I don’t go anywhere …

This station makes me sick. I am in Fihrneh now for more than two days without undocking – and not to be in space is pretty unfamiliar for me, since I am here in low-sec. Sometimes I even presume that it has physical effects to my body, if I haven’t seen my capsule from the inside for longer than 48 hours.

My decision to learn how to fly an interceptor cost me a lot of time right now and therefore keeps me so busy, that I can’t join any gang or corp operation right now. I am really sorry for that and hope, that I can support my corp again on the weekend, where I will have a bit more time and don’t need to attend my classes in the afternoon.

It’s not only about flying a ship

Everyday I stand up in the early morning hours, I first connect my pad for a short time to the stations mainframe to check the market and then I rush down to the “pilot training center”, which is located next to the docking bay, to start with my practice lessons.

We are a group of about twenty people right now, who wanna reach the highest level in flying gallentean frigates. Most of them want to go for stealth bombers after it, because they see there a big damage (and therefore fun) potential – one guy wants to learn how to fly one of this new ew-frigates and only two pilots – including myself – are interested in interceptors in the next steps.

Everyone of us has a lot of experience with flying frigates and therefore practice lessons in the moment doesn’t mean to undock and train to fly these ships – its much more about understanding every detail of them – in terms of electronics, engineering and mechanics – and I have to admit, that these three fields are my big strengths. I love to think how everything works and can spend hours with making plans of how to improve thinks by modifying them manually.

All of this high-advanced T2 frigates are pretty complicated in the way they work and they are build upon existing T1 versions. So we really need to know every detail of the basic frigates (at the moment I would guess I could even build one) and need to have the knowledge why our frigate does what, which detail is what good for, what would happen, if you modify this and that and how all the modules available on the market affect this – and it can get pretty complicated and I agree on my mates who claim that you don’t really need to know this details essentially … but you never know …

My daily routine in the moment look something like this: in the afternoon, we learn the theory in our classroom – in the evening we all go through the stuff we’ve heard again on our own and have holograms of the different gallentean frigates with us to better understand about what we have talked in the afternoon – and in the next morning we visit the schools ship hangar and look at the frigates in real. We fit different modules, get our hands dirty and really experience what the theory mean to us.

Today was pretty exciting to me, because we talked about propulsion modules. I have fitted different kind of named overdrive injectors and stabilizers and it was pretty amazing to see, how that all works together and why it is important to find the right mix between speed, agility and mass modifications.

But there are still eight days of learning left and I am really happy if that will be over – not why it don’t interest me … it’s more that I miss to be in space within my capsule, scanning and engaging hostiles.

And I honestly can’t await to be able to fly my first Ares.

It really has been stressful the last 48 hours. I couldn’t sleep due to the fact, that the market has been very volatile the last days and I am to ambitious to miss low prices. So I have been buying and adjusting buy-orders all the time between my appointments with haulers, industrialists and directors of corporations who are interested in our services.

I am kind of old fashioned when it comes to business. I could sit all day in my office, or could fly around in a nice ship and do everything I need to do via the market and contract system. but I like to meet people with whom I do business and I’ve programmed me a alert-system, that notices me if any of my business partners enter the Amarr system.

A suspect appointment

I then convo them and ask if there have time for a small chat. Most of them agree and so I have full schedule all the day. But it pays off. Face to face communication is a rare form of communication these days and it helps a lot to strengthen business relationship and increase the reliability of my contractors. And for me it’s a really nice deviation to be with other people.

In the early morning hours I have received a request of a professionel scout, who offered me his services. He told me that he has watched the market and contract system thoroughly and noticed, that I trade a lot of expense stuff down to low-sec. Well – our business starts to draw attention. Not only a good news …

We make an appointment at my hangar and in the moment I arrived there I immediately thought, that it maybe was a bad idea to meet him here, where a lot of people can see us. I don’t know who he is, what reputation he has and if he is known for his services. Maybe others who will see me with him, well guess I am in trouble or something … Amarr is like a small village, in terms of gossip and intrigues. And a good reputation is essential when you are in our business.

I noticed that he is a Caldari at the moment I came closer – what surprised me, cause on this profile picture he looked much more than a Amarr … maybe a confusion – but anyway: honestly he looked awful – he hided his face under a big hood and seemed to be nervous. But why?

I welcomed him, he looked in my eyes, gave me something in my hands and said that I should be very careful with what I do – that I draw to much attention to me, that I violate the rules and if I would need any help, I should just read what he has given to me. He mumbled that this wouldn’t be a good place to talk longer and he suddenly went away hectically.

Everything happened pretty fast and I haven’t had the chance to reply to what he said before he disappeared. While I was watching in the direction he has left to see if I can indicate where he is going, my pad starting blinking. A new mail from Barachan. I scanned his mail and it seemed to be urgent.

This “scout” scared me a lot and I decided to leave this station – now – to think about what he said and to read what he has given me. I went to my shuttle and set my destination to Jita. I decided to visit somebody I haven’t seen for a long time now …

I am on a boring and more or less safe courier mission right now for The Scope. Always a good time to write a view sentences for my diary between warping from one stargate to another one.

I programmed my board computer in a way, that during warp I can sit in the back part of my cockpit to do some research on the market, to check some mails and transactions, watch the newest Scope shows or even, as I do it right now, write in my personal blog.

*ah – there is a stargate – damn I can’t reach the control panel from here to jump*

In my sight I’ve always my security pad, which shows a condensed view of my overview, local and scanner. Suddenly appearing pilots in local get always my attention. Checking the special “travel”-overview and – depending on the situation – using my scanners as well are a pretty good habit, which I have trained the first weeks of my Low-Sec Adventure.

During my first days in low-sec I felt pretty insecure. I lost bout 5 ships within 5 days and if somebody would have wanted to find a hostile gate-camp, he would only have had to follow me … I was so lucky to “find” them all – but then – a few weeks later I realized what I needed, to be much more secure.

I needed more speed. Let me say it this way: “I am a speed junky now”. After I’ve graduated the University of Caille I wanted to follow the tradition of my family and started hauling for money and learned to fly industrial ships. And as any industrial pilot know: while you align for warp to a stargate you can easily make yourself a coffee, smoke a cigarette and look outside the window and start counting the asteroid-betls, while everybody else is warping out more or less instantly.

*oh wait a minute – I reached the stargate – jump and align to next stargate … warp*

In high-sec it’s not a big deal to be slowly and it can be a nice way to travel if you have the time or need something to do on the market or whatever. But in low-sec it’s anything else than nice: it will bring you directly into your pod. I’ve made the mistake twice in the past and jumped during my early days in a low-sec system with my industrial – “ok – only one jump” – to increase my profit I could make with a cargohold full of minerals. But this two ” only one jump” cost me a few hundred million ISK.

About one week ago I was sitting next to a pilot I haven’t seen before in the casino of the Yiratal station. He was a bragger and told everybody what a great pilot he is and how many battleships he has blown up so far and that his homesystem is down in 0.0 and that he’s only here to visit some good old friends in Balas. And then he started telling us, that a really good pilot needs no tank – that he can fly faster than 10.000 m/s and that he can escape every gatecamp. I haven’t believed him anything …

*oh – just a second – need to jump again*

And he talked about “Balas” – that was and is still a no-go-system for us in Ombil, cause it’s the homesystem of a corp which is still not blue to our alliance and tries to gank our pilots as often as possible. I couldn’t continue to listen to his unbelievable stories and decided to go over to the ship hangars.

It was one of these days where again two carrier pilots and a pretty fast tackler from Balas camped the Yiratal station so that everybody who wanted to leave will wake up in his clone or – if he’s lucky – can dock again (in his pod). We couldn’t go anywhere these day … in the background I could see my Myrmidon and all over the giant hangar there have been a lot of other ships.

I still don’t know them all and always need to check my information system, what kind of ships they are, what strength and weaknisses they have, what weapon systems they will fit and so on. That’s the reason why I like to go to the ships hangars: I still need to learn a lot about other ship-types to become a better combat pilot.

And then I saw this pilot again, who has been in the casino before, boarding his ship. And it was a small ship – a really small ship.It looked like a frigate, but something was different … it looked much more advanced. I immediately did a search on that ship and find out, that it was an Interceptor.

I have heard about that kind of ship before, but haven’t payed any attention to it … because it was so small. To this time I still believed: “Bigger is Better” and the ship class I liked the most have been of course: Battleships.

*ah – approach stargate – one second – and jump*

While I was reading all the details about an interceptor I suddenly recognized that the pilot started to undock in his interceptor. I thought that he was crazy and that he will die or come back in about two minutes. And therefore I waited – watched how he undocked and was sure, that I will see him coming in again in few minutes. And I hoped he will be in his pod this – bragger

But he didn’t came back. I was sure he has been blown up and podded and therefore will now be dozens of jump back again in 0.0 “Haha – you friends in Balas will have to wait”. I stopped thinking about him and went back to my Myrmidon to get some office work done.

I checked the market and then went through my transactions. I had sold goods worth a few hundred million ISK again and then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. To promote the new business, Charlotte and I have started, I send a mail to every new customer who buys something from us on the market in Fihrneh, to say “thank you” and to promote our new service. I’ve done it to the first three new names on the transactions list – and then the fourth … it was the name of the Interceptor pilot. He bought something in Fihrneh – just five minutes ago.

*damn – jump and warp to next stargate within 0*

I couldn’t believe it – he has made his way out of the station. Has the camping stopped? I activated all the intel channels I have access to and even the “Concord Warning System” I have subscribed told me, that there have been ten pilots podded within the last hour in Yiratal.

What has he said? Above 10.000 m/s? When this was true I can understand how he could make it out of the station … I checked again the description of the Interceptor in which I have seen him in. 475 m/s … how could he go 10.000 m/s? What kind of modules did he use, that he can reach such a high speed? What skills has he trained to fly this ship that fast?

I stopped my work and started some research on the market. If there is something, what makes him such fast, I will find it here. And after a few hours of reading module descriptions I knew a lot more. Microwarpdrive, Overdrive Injector Systems, Stabilizers, Acceleration Control, Navigation … man there are a lot of possibilities to increase speed of every ship in general.

This new knowledge really was a blast for me and changed how I see the world of spaceships. I leaved my ship, went over to the “Traders Coffee Shop”, orderd me a extra strong coffee and started readign articles about Interceptors. I was awake for about 48 hours to read everything I could find about speed, interceptors and why you don’t need a tank if you are fast enough … the pilot was right – he hasn’t told us fairytales in the casino. He told us the truth.

That’s now about one week ago. And now I am sitting here in the back part of my T1 frigates cockpit, which is already able to fly above 3.000 m/sec.

*oh – just a second – need to jump and warp again*

Before this event in Yiratal I have been training all kinds of skills to become a better Battlecruiser pilot. I trained Drones, different kind of tank skills and I planned to go for my gunnery education next. My corp told me that I would need at least a BC down in Aridia and that the best thing is, that I train first every skill in a way, that I can fly my Myrmidon properly and that I can do about 300-400 DPS with it and can fit all the T2 tanking stuff.

But I was so impressed and addicted by this whole speed thing, that I stopped training gunneries and I started to invest my spare training time in everything which brings me speed. I can now use T2 MWDs, have every speed increasing skill to at least IV and at the end of next week I can fly an Ares – one of the two Gallente Interceptors.

Charlotte has already bought me a few Ares in Amarr and send them down to Fihrneh yesterday. I put a few on them on the market and two of them are still packaged and wait for me to get assembled. I reall can’t await to sit in one of those.

*oh – just a second – need to jump again. oh WTF … a gatecamp. Stay calm Bara … now it’s time for the Autpilot-Stargate-Reapproach-Trick – that should even work with 3.000 m/s*

Barachan went down to Aridia now about five weeks ago … I used the first week, to get comfortable with the situation and even with this huge and lively station full of haulers, traders and all kinds of other pilots – and I’ve now got me a nice apartment in this second largest trade-hub after Jita, because I assume I will stay here for a longer period of time. I really love my apartment and it helps me to get comfortable with my overall situation – not only because it is quite comfortable and spacious, but even more because its windows.

The perfect view

When I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is to activate my windows and then I see it: the in- and outgoing traffic of industrials, transports, freighters and carriers. Never ending Interon Mark Vs, from the war heavily afflicted Bustards and from time to time I see a elegant and noble Providence – It’s amazing to watch them approaching the station and how the undocked ships appear under my window, aligning for a stargate and then warp out for a uncertain journey.

Every ship has its own story, his own role, his hidden cargo and their pilots are most of the time the experienced pilots the universe has to offer – and this stream of goods and money never stops and is always there – 24/7 – and this stream is the heartbeat on which the business Barachan and I started relies on: Trading

The daily routine

The first thing I need to do – usually in the early morning hours about 4am – is to check how the prices have developed in the last 4 hours, while I was sleeping. During the day I adjust my buy and sell orders every hour and especially every time before I go to bed. I am always on the run to get the best price available on the market and sometimes this hunting for prices has aspects of a war, how it takes place down there in 0.0 – on the markets you are also against others, and you use all the ‘weapons’ you can afford.

You engage them, with decreasing or increasing your prices. You get them under pressure, when you throw tons of stuff for a cheap price on the market and you can take them totally out of business if you get intel about their haulers – to headhunt them, or to contract a pirate corp, which will disturb they trading route and blow up everything they have.

At the moment we are researching the market again. After we have grown our wealth quite a lot with trading and hauling minerals, we decided to leave that high risk and volatile market to invest in something new … and maybe in something even more profitable. In the early beginning – during our time at the university, where we’ve first met us – Barachan got a credit from a good friend to get started. Now, a few months later, we paid all that money back and increased our reputation and creditworthiness a lot, so that we are now able to invest billions of ISK in the market.

And that billions need to be invested reasonably – and like in a big campaign on the battlefield you have to do your homework on investing money as well – and sometimes it needs months of preparation to get a new traderoute going or a big deal taking place.

Allright – enough diary for today. I will now have to check my contracts … at the moment we have a lot to do for ambitious haulers … and Amarr is a place, where they are looking for opportunities and ISKs.

I have joined SCE a few weeks ago and at the moment I am doing nothing else than improving my combat pilot abilities. And this morning it was time again to make another step further in this direction: A fleet commander from our mother corporation SCI organized once again a training cruiser OP for us combat pilot rookies.

The morning started better, than the night before ended

While Charlotte is down in Amarr to handle our trading business and to learn how to become a capital ship pilot, I try to get a better combat pilot down here in Aridia – the Low-Sec region where we recently secured the Ombil constellation for us SCE pilots.

Why I went down here far away from my lovely wife? I wanna develop new trade routes for our small business – I wanna learn how to defend Charlotte and me against pirates … that and a lot of other issues brought us a few months ago to the decision, that we have to live for awhile apart from each other and that I join SCE to go down to Low-Sec. But the story of my wife Charlotte and me will be told another day.

Today I waked up in my small dirty room in Fihrneh’s “Royal Amarr Institute” station, looked out the window in the direction of the Kemih stargate and the first thing, which came back into my mind was: “Damn idiot – you lost a Myrmidon, a Celestis and implants worth 50m ISK seven hours ago, due to not properly listening on Battle-Comms” … we have been roaming around in a small gang yesterday to kill two Command Ships within our systems. I died in my Celestis, after we had a little “coordination problem” at a jump gate and after I flew back to the station, to get my Myrmidon out to support my stayed behind mates, I missed on Battle-Comms that they already died as well pretty quickly and so I warped directly into two Command Ships … totally alone – shit happens – that was the first time I was happy that the clone technology has arisen.

Maybe that was one of the reasons why I had this massive headache in the early morning ours – being without implants feels kind a strange – everything feels so slowly and foggy … I got me a coffee, jumped into my shuttle and went out to get some new Dampener Scrips for the todays OP from a station just 3 jumps away. The flight was pretty calm – nothing on scan and no trace of any recent engagements.

A look back

While I was flying back, I remind myself what I have learned in the last cruiser op. It was my first training op within SCE ever and I was pretty excited in the moment I noticed that we will fly into 0.0 – there we jumped into a gate camp to engage a mid-sized gang of T2 ships and of course we knew, that we will all get blown up – but what I haven’t knew before is that I wouldn’t be part of the fight.

First I couldn’t lock my targets, because I haven’t uncloaked after jumping. Than I had a misconfiguration of my overview settings and couldn’t find any of the called targets quick enough to lock them anyway. And a few seconds later my coffee fall over my control unit and in all that hecticness I have forgotten to activate my Damge Control Modul – what a painful debut in being a combat pilot. Conclusion: never fly without a drink holder – but what do you wanna expect from a French spaceship?

I don’t need to tell you, that I was faster in structure than I could clean up my ships cockpit from the coffee and that my way home alone in a pod was an adventure itself. Man I was lucky that could escape this bubble with my pod and saved my implants.

Another OP, another chance

So that wouldn’t happen again. I made me a few penciled reminders on paper and placed them in my cockpit next to my overview screen. One hour later we have been a 20+ fleet ready to die for another lesson in warfare. The fleet commander broadcast the final destination and we aligned for the first gate. A few jumps later our scout detected a Drake in one of the first 0.0 systems we reached.

The scout tackled the Drake and prompt we received the order to warp directly to our mate to engage the Drake. And yeaha – I was one of the first who arrived there, could lock him, activate my RSD’s, launch my drones and approached him to get in NOS range. That was fun – I have played a helpful role and have dealt damage to him. I was proud and immediately send Charlotte a short notice to Amarr, while the rest of the fleet was talking about how to proceed now. “Darling – I am killer”

But that was not enough – we continued our 0.0 T1 cruiser adventure and on our way we have found another victim: a Vagabond at a stargate – but he was out of targeting range when we jumped into the system (119km for me) and therefore the FC send out two interceptors to tackle him. And then I made the only mistake of the day. I approached him instead of waiting that he gets in warp range. So I followed him very slowly and after a few seconds I saw on my right hand side everybody warping directly to him.

So that fight I missed – but due to missing webs on him he could escape anyway and nothing really important happened. After he escaped our FC decided to give out the order, that everybody warps to a nearby station within optimal range. That means 30kms for me – then I have the RSDs in optimal range, my drones can attack and I am in a more or less safe position to the battlefield and have a few seconds to decide what to do next.

First time engaging a carrier

To my surprise what we have found there hasn’t been only battleships and T2 cruiser – but there also has been a carrier. Whow – that was the first time I engage one and after a few seconds I’ve heard the order on Battle-Comms “Dampeners on Thanatos – Dampeners on Thanatos” – ah – that order was for me. I locked the Thanatos, orbited him in 30km and put my four RSD’s loaded with script on him. I waited a few seconds, if anything unexpected will happen and then released my drones to attack the called primaries.

That was really fun for me. I could make use of my special abilities (I trained signal suppression to be an effective Celestis pilot before) and could even engage other targets. But two or three minutes later it was clear, that we wouldn’t win any fight here and that a few fighters from the carrier will be our only victims. Every of the hostile ship was in docking range of the station and suddenly the numbers in local increased dramatically and a lot of ships undocked from that station.

We tried to get at least one ship down and had him close before structure but then one T1 cruiser of us after another was popped out and I guess I was in my pod within two seconds after the first volley hit me. To protect myself I warped to a planet in my pod and then I suddenly remembered was has happend the night before … so I turned around, warp to the station and waited that someone blow me up.

Everything went pretty quickly and I suddenly waked up in Fihrneh – I don’t needed to protect anything – I have lost my implants a few hours before. Damn what a headache these cloning causes to me … I will get me another coffee …