Rifter Drifter

One of the things I plan to do more of is nullsec roaming. There are lots of rich, foolish people out there and its my duty as a pirate to separate them from their ships. I decided that Friday night would be the ideal time to go out and do some exploring. I mentioned this to Joc and he wanted to come along too. When I logged in on Friday night there was a whole host of Tuskers kicking their heels around Hevrice. I told them about our plans and all of a sudden the corporate chat channel was full of eagerly typed ‘x’s. Amongst those who signed up was a friend of a friend who had only graduated from the academy three days ago. He’d never faced combat and definitely not the certain death that was ahead of us.

I hadn’t really prepared for such a large scale operation so told everyone to bring cheap ships and implantless clones. There was only a slim chance that we were going to make it out in one piece. Ships were fitted up and without too much delay we set off for Cloud Ring. The fleet was instructed that we wouldn’t stop to hunt for targets along the way and we made quick progress to Alsavoinon. After a quick pause to allow stragglers to catch up we made the leap of faith and the fleet jumped into F7C-H0 without scouts. A battleship gatecamp waited on the other side and I quickly warped the fleet to our next waypoint. As we passed through we were greeted cheerfully in local. The campers admired our style running a frigate fleet through without checking our way. They informed us of a large Triumvirate gang further into the region and we thanked them accordingly.

On the O-ZXUV gate we landed on a Hawk. Without a moment’s thought I gave the order to attack and the fleet opened up on the lone assault frigate. Only it wasn’t so alone. As the Hawk exploded and we began to loot the wreck the stargate began to flash. A fleet was incoming. The Hawk was scouting for a gang and they were coming to his rescue. I called for the fleet to jump out but we couldn’t use the stargate right away because our weapon’s systems were interfering with the subspace systems. We lost several members of the gang but half of us got out okay. The remaining fleet regrouped on the FD53-H where a Crow jumped into the system. I fired up my microwarp drive and burnt for the Crow. He must have been shocked to see a frigate coming for him at such great speed and I easily scrambled his warp systems. With his microwarp drive shut off the rest of the gang caught up and we blew him away.

With limited resources I turned the fleet around and we returned to Alsavoinon while those who had been killed went back to Hevrice to fetch new ships. With fresh ships we made a second foray into nullsec. This time we chose Syndicate. This time we were unable to make any kills and once again suffered heavy losses. Despite the fact that we didn’t cover the killboard in glory the operation was a huge success in that all involved had massive amounts of fun. As well as having a good giggle I also learnt that commanding fleets in nullsec takes far more preparation and organisation than lowsec fleets. Joc has also written about our adventures and I recommend you read his account.

After a brief rest from the excitement of getting everyone killed I decided it was time to come up with another way of losing ships in a fun way. The obvious answer was a suicide gank. I told the remaining Tuskers what I was considering and once again they all signed up without a moment’s hesitation. Organising the gank took a while. I ran out to Alentene to buy a range of cheap fittings and brought them back to Hevrice. The next challenge was finding a target. I saw some Hulks in Ranielles as I passed through and told the guys what I’d seen. At this point one of our friends began to get anxious. It seems that the Hulks were those of his CEO and his alts. To keep our friend happy I sent my alt off to find other targets. It didn’t take long to find a Retriever in Vey and I quickly pulled up alongside it in my mining Vexor. The trap was set. The Tuskers leapt into action and we flew through high security space laughing at the Gallente police’s threats. Upon landing in Vey I warped the squad to Tigre. Or so I thought. It seems that I left everyone else behind. They quickly caught up and we landed alongside our happless victim. Each of our four destroyers (and one Reaper) got off a single volley before CONCORD came to destroy us. It wasn’t much but it was enough. The Retriever was destroyed. It was brilliant. We will be doing this again before too long.

So there you have it. A night of dying in horribly fun ways! How are you going to have fun dying next?

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3. Divine Intervention
4. I’m Covered In Bees
5. Keeping Up With The Jonses