Fight Night - 2

Last night, after a couple of weeks of finding myself too busy or too far away, I took part in another of those fight nights Gerrard has been organising. They have so far been a success. Even the new recruits have been curious and enthusiastic about it. It's frankly good to see those many Dragonstar pilots in one place again and it bodes well for the corp. I think we're finally growing once more.

But as for the event itself, well at least I did a little better. I took part in four or five matches, won one convincingly enough, and gave quite a bit of a fight in another one (until my cap ran out, Batuka got a little too close and once that web got me two volleys stripped me of all my armour.)

I'm still bad. Very bad. But at least I think I'm making some progress, which is encouraging. It was annoying to not be able to touch Jikomanzoku and his Breacher from hell; I usually pride myself in being fast, but he was certainly faster than me in my Incursus, last night. A good thing he was once part of Dragonstar Racing as it saves face a little for me, but still.. I'll catch you yet, Jiko!

No Luck

Sometimes the universe just hates you. As she docked back in Dantan, Kayleigh couldn't help the feeling that it was her turn to be hated by the universe in general.

First, only a few days ago, she'd lost her Ishtar. Then on Sunday night the party at Daredevil's had been less than she had expected. Nakatre had not made it there after all and neither had anyone else from the Scuderia - except for Quin, of course, who was there more as part of the organisation PR. It had been nice meeting some new faces and seeing Takashi again after so long, but truth be told the event had felt more like a pre-season briefing than a party proper.

She'd left Sinq after that, hoping to spend some quality time with Nakatre out in Kador, exploring or just doing anything at all, really. But probing today had yielded absolutely nothing. They'd visited just short of twenty star systems; all they got was nothing, more nothing and a few Unknowns in which they were not interested anyway. By the time they did find an uncharted asteroid belt it was so far from base and so poor in quality that they'd left it there for others to find.

She'd pretty much run out of Multispectral probes and had nothing to show for it. What a waste. Except...

... Except she found she wasn't as annoyed and frustrated as she used to get around Ney. She missed flying with Nakatre and she'd barely noticed time go by in her company. They couldn't find what they wanted? So be it. They'd simply park themselves near some rocks and talk while the lasers worked. And later.. maybe later they could try that quaint little restaurant she'd walked past just the other day on station.

Overconfidence

Don't die on me, Verdigris. Come on, warp, warp, warp!

Explosion.

"Warp Drive Active" - Aura's cool, mechanic voice.

Sonic boom.

This time, however, the shivering wouldn't stop so soon. She kept her eyes closed, shaken to her core. The jolt to her senses, the sting of a milisecond of feedback on her mind, told her all she needed to know without pulling up her instruments. She knew that when she opened her eyes she wouldn't find the Verdigris around her anymore.

Stupidity was never forgiving in space. Add overconfidence to that, and the results were universally disastrous. She had just proven that.

Somewhere in Ainaille she had butted heads with Caldari and Amarrian navies, infiltrated in Federation territory. Right now she couldn't even recall the particulars of the mission. Something about a secret slave complex?

Why couldn't she remember it? Was she really so selfish, so self-absorbed, so overconfident that she didn't even listen anymore? The agent had told her to go somewhere and she had. That's how it worked, day in, day out. See agent, board ship, warp somewhere, shoot the evil people who tried to kill you, save whatever innocents were left in the wrecks, hand in proof to agent, get reward, go back for the salvage and to make sure no stranded people were left to die a slow death in space.

Not this time.

She swore, hit by a wave of rage. She cried out her frustration, her pain, her anger - not at the little amarrian bastards who had webbed, jammed and shot her, but at herself for being so stupid, so blind, so... incompetent.

She wanted to go back to station, tell the agent she'd failed miserably and couldn't do this anymore. The Dragonstar guys were rallying forces, though. They managed to push through her wall of anger and frustration by coaxing and good-naturedly bullying her into staying in space, going back for the Sweet MacKenzie III, her salvage-fitted Catalyst hull.

By the time she got back to the site, it was all over. Feu and Gerrard had done her work for her, avenged her loss. It warmed her heart a little bit that they'd rally like that to her aid. It seemed the Dragonstar spirit was still alive.

With a heavy heart she approached the twisted mass of metal that had once been an Ishtar-class hull and started looking for survivors.

Alliance Tournament - Finals

Ah well, Electus Matari got eliminated by Star Fraction on their very first elimination round, which was such a shame. It left me with no one to root for from then on.

However, EM put up a hell of a fight. Good to see some racers out there - hi Teo and KillJoy! - and even refusing to die *grin* That was the first time I heard the term 'Hero Tanking' and to me it'll always be associated with EM. Way to go, guys.

As for the rest, I was left without favourites so congratulations to Pandemic Legion for pulling some surprises out of the box when they really were needed. I'll still be there to watch whatever happens in the next Alliance tournament.

Happy

I was with Nakatre last night, after being apart for so long. Our duties keep us apart so often!

Anyway, I'm happy.

Happy, happy.

A Narrow Escape

It was the dead of night, at least according to the official New Eden time. Tired after a long day of work, Kayleigh finally made the last jump into the solar system that was her destination, following on coordinates she'd picked up just the night before from some drones that had escaped her fire.

While still cloaked at the gate she checked her intruments: all systems go, drone bays full and ready to deploy, coordinates loaded... She sighed and warped the Ishtar hull.

As soon as she came out of warp the adrenaline kicked in: she'd landed right in the middle of a swarm of little drones, which usually meant trouble, and they had bigger friends right beside them. Immediately she willed the ship to turn and burn toward an exit point; as it aligned she heard the lock alarm, and in the same second released a flight of drones.

The missiles hit her hard, nearly wiping all shields in the small ship on the first volley. She heard her own guns fire, having aquired target - funny, she didn't remember turning those on. The hum of her engines went down in pitch: webbed. Shitshitshit! Then a soft beep indicated one of them was jamming her warp drive. Oh, nonono!

With heart hammering in her chest, she overloaded everything: guns, engine, web, armour rep. She had to kill that jamming drone and do it now! Her armour was gone, then back one-third, then gone again and bleeding heavily into hull, then back one-quarter...

Come on, come on!! Kill the little bastard already! she willed at her drones, her wide grey eyes glued to the stargate dead ahead of her but oh so unattainable. Half hull. Stay with me Verdigris, don't you die on me, damn you. Thirty percent hull. She put all her willpower into getting the ship to warp, but kept getting again and again the error message. She shut her eyes and yelled within her mind, finally realising she was going to lose her beloved ship.

Explosion.

"Warp Drive Active" - Aura's cool, mechanic voice.

Sonic boom.

Shaking like a leaf she opened her eyes just in time to see the display go up to one-third armour. Everything else was very, very red. Unbelieving she looked up hull integrity. 8%. If anyone even sneezed, the Verdigris would disintegrate.

Not that there were probably many left to sneeze. At 8% structural integrity surely most of the inner compartments would have been exposed to space, to explosions... She wondered if she had any crew left at all. It had all happened so fast!

If her drones hadn't been tech 2, if her ammo hadn't been nicer than norm, if she hadn't overloaded so much that every single module was now showing damage in the reports she was getting, the Verdigris would be no more.

New Place

I got fed up with never finding anything in Ney anymore. I did something that I hate doing and in fact hadn't done since the end of racing Season VI: I clone-jumped.

I picked up an old rusty cruiser I'd had parked in Amarrian low-sec for well over a year, I moved some ships around, and now have made smaller quarters in what looks to be a promising place to do some exploration. The station itself is in high-sec, but it borders two small pockets of more dangerous space. Perhaps all the eager Caille students haven't yet made it this far?

The first sweep of the area with probes, however, yielded nothing at all in 6 different systems. So that wasn't much of a welcome. I was starting to think there might be something wrong with my probes or my instruments. Finally just as I was about to dock in utter despair, the probes picked up a signal. Radar. Lovely!

It was worth the uncomfortable feeling of clone-jumping. Let's hope I keep finding little hidden treasures.

Mining Op Fail

I've been feeling somewhat annoyed since Saturday. Dragonstar needed its mineral stock replenished somewhat so I called for a corp mining op. Since mining is - let's face it - incredibly boring and dull, and since we needed some less-common minerals as well, I thought mining in low-sec would do the trick.

So we got two of our more trigger-happy guys to be our cover, and I joined two of our miners. Off to a relatively quiet 0.4 we went. We got ourselves a nice little safe spot where we could unload as there was no station in system and warped to a belt.

We had quiet mining for all of.. oh I don't know, half an hour? Pirates came and went, we'd take precautions. The first group of hardened pirates came in and we made a strategic retreat back to high sec instead of engaging in cat and mouse games.

We listened to tournament commentaries, mined some high-sec until the pirates got bored and left, when we went back. We were there again for about half an hour until an apparently harmless pilot came in. Corp seemed neutral, his own security status seemed alright enough... in spite of his name sounding like a disease, we sort of ignored him. Until my scanner picked him up in a Scorpion. We got a bit suspicious..

.. and then he warped right on top of us and tried to scramble Feu's barge.

[ 2009.01.31 17:48:18 ] (notify) Ginger Itis [T0NE]'T.O.N.E Nebo'(Scorpion) has started trying to warp scramble "Feu dAstres [DS]'Ore Conveyor Belt'(Covetor)"

Needless to say, we scrambled to get our barges out of there in a hurry, but the damned Retriever is far from being either fast or agile. Luckily, he'd gone for one of the barges with warp stabs on. If he'd picked me first I'd have been dead. As it was, the barges all got out fine and our cover pilots distracted Ginger Itis (or whatever his name was) long enough and then broke off.

We hugged our safe spot, hoping he'd get bored of chasing our combat pilots around, but as it turned out he ended up in a staring match with one of us at the gate into high-sec.

Long story short, we called it a day. We hauled what little Jaspet we'd managed to get our hands on back to base and settled down at a high-sec belt, bringing out the Orca instead. I know I was sulking.

Definitely a bad choice of stage for my part. It wasn't a complete loss - all the ships came back intact, we did get some ore - but it was worlds below my expectations. Next time, I must plan things better.

Or bring a bigger support wing.

Alliance Tournament - Days 3 & 4

Meh, overall a rather disappointing weekend in the Tourney for me. All the Militias lost rather spectacularly, poor guys. I still haven't seen the final rankings to see who does make it through officially, but from browsing the forums shortly after the Sunday fights were over it doesn't seem likely even the Gallente might have pulled through. Damn and blast.

On the upside, EM did quite alright and have managed to assure a place in the elimination rounds. Well done, guys!

Ooh, and speaking of which, I noticed CCP has finally put really HD videos of Day 3 on YouTube, and I can finally read pilots' names when reviewing the fights! \o/ Nice indeed. I saw Teo Kiesh in the EM team out there. Go racers!! ;)

So.. assuming the militias are all eliminated, I'll be rooting for EM only from now on. *\o/*