Long Point

My Incursus sauntered into the docking array at the academy in Couster, it had been a long night moving assets out of Caldari space in preparations for my sabbatical, but everything was now in order. I stepped out into the hangar and gave the order to have the laughably small stock of minerals I had in system contracted to the corporation. Several of our newer pilots were now stepping up into Dominix and every little bit helped.

I took one last look around, jacked back into my pod and gave the command to initiate undock. Moments later I was one dot in the cloud of rookie pilots that typically swarmed around academy stations. New pilots, just having earned their wings, stepping out into the vastness for the first time. Pushing back the nostalgia I visually scanned the scene, and immediately spotted a cargo container.

“Risk Free Ammunition,” it advertised. I sighed deeply.

“Aura who is the owner of that can?”

A Catalyst, sitting 10km off the can flashed in my attention buffer.

“Scan the local area for corp mates,” I said and set my frigate to approach the container.

“Search returned no results,” Aura replied. He was alone, in a destroyer, and looking for a fight.

“Fair enough,” I said to no one in particular as I gave the command for the mover drones to transfer the 100 units of Antimatter Small into my hold. Seconds later my warning systems lit up as the destroyer initiated target lock.

I returned the lock, fired up my afterburner and set the nimble ship on a spiraling approach vector. Win or lose it would be a good test run. I had been flying the tiny ship obsessively for the past few days and it had not failed to impress. Something about it had caught my interest.

It was odd flying a Gallente hull. The flight controls were components of the capsule, not the ship, so aside from the energy weapon hardwiring modifications I’d made, which had no systems to link into on the Gallente ship, they were no different. It just felt different. The ship felt lighter, more agile… and certainly a hell of a lot more fragile, than my stock Punisher. It was an entirely new experience, and I was enjoying it thoroughly.

I leapt across the several kilometer gap rapidly, and at 5k the Catalyst had resolved it’s target lock and unleashed a volley of plasma striping my shields to 50%. Web and scra…

“God Damnit,” I grimaced in my pod. I had been testing the systems out on the local Serpentis population of late, and had regretfully neglected to fit a warp scrambler. I shrugged, I wasn’t looking for a kill anyway, it’d still be a good test. I activated the tracking disruptor for good measure and felt a jolt as my my warp systems went offline and the destroyer’s webbifier came online. It felt like flying through molasses, but I was still maintaing a good pace.

I settled in to a tight 500m orbit and opened up with my blasters. At this range and speed, even with the webbification, the destroyer was struggling to land a hit. Meanwhile my Antimatter rounds were biting heavily into his armor. I pulsed my armor repair unit for good measure and waited. His armor was falling fast.

As his last shred of armor melted away I set my ship to approach and set my guns to overload. He was going to warp out any second, and with no scram I just had to hope the sudden damage spike and a potential bump would suffice. Three volleys later my guns shut down, as his ship entered warp.

“Nice,” came the reply over local com.

“Good fight. Good luck, I hope you find some decent fights,” I replied as my directional scanner came online, but he was already gone.

I waited the mandatory few seconds for the system services monitor to verify that I was not, in fact, a threat, and then set a course for Charmerout to dock up and get some sleep for the night. When I arrived I was greeted by the night shift deck crew.

“We patched up the guns on the Vengeance Madame,” the head tech said as I left my pod, “Focusing matrix was nearly fused to the photonic condenser!”

I nodded like I knew what he was talking about.

“How you liking her madame? She’s a tough little boat.”

“Yeah, she is,” I smiled, “I think I might get her an Ishkur to keep her company.”

My punisher hung in space over Aice I, 15km from the thorax, as we had agreed. I had been called away from my new day to day duties, overseeing production security at the Carthum factory to demonstrate frigate vs cruiser tactics to some of our new recruits. If it had been a real fight I wouldn’t have been concerned, but I had agreed not to shoot at my opponent’s drones, a dire mistake in these sorts of fights. I double checked my systems.

“Okay, we fight to the hull,” I said over corp com, “remember to pull your drones off of me after it’s over.” It would be exciting in any case.

“3… 2… 1… Engage!”

I pushed my punisher to full speed and began to spiral in toward the cruiser as it launched a flight of hammerheads and sent them speeding toward me. I gave a sigh of relief, I could handle hammerheads for a while. I hoped they’d have trouble tracking my speedy ship.

At 9km I pushed for a direct approach, and realized my mistake as his railguns sheared off the majority of my shields. “Damnit, too soon.” Hesitation would get you killed, and impatience was no less serious an error, but the mistake had been made and moments later my punisher had settled into a tight 1500m orbit. My medium pulse lasers already tearing through his shields.

The fight was now between me and the drones swarming about my ship, the thorax’s railguns completely useless against my fast orbiting ship. I activated my scrambler for good measure, just incase he had a microwarp drive, and sat back, monitoring my my ship’s armor.

It was a long fight, owed largely to my opponent’s armor repair skills. I hadn’t bothered to mount a repair unit, forgoing it for my usual armor resistance plating and a healthy amount of extra plate. After a few minutes my pulse lasers hit hull and I disengaged, my ship at 15% armor.

“See what I mean about tracking problems? But wow, those hammerheads did a lot better than I thought they would. Good fight,” I said over com. We had all learned valuable lessons.

Several spars later I retired to the corporate headquarters to park my frigate and head back to Amarr space. The exercise was welcome, though, and great fun all around. As my pod mounted in my travel executioner I smiled, pleased at the quality and willingness to learn of our new recruits.

I had picked a good time to come back to the sky.