Blood Bank

Oh Imperial Navy Slicer, aren't you so wonderful!

After the aforementioned isk injection mentioned in my previous post, I took it upon myself to at least stock my hangar a little... Fortunately I had a second Firetail hull, the one won from the painting contest sat in Jita. I decided it would be best to own 1 Firetail and 1 Slicer, rather than 2 Firetails and thus threw the 2nd up on the contracts market at a slightly higher price than the Slicer I purchased!

With all the necessary modules already sat in the hangar from times long ago, I was able to quickly fit it up to specification and get out there. What I ended up with was nothing short of magical...

After some uneventful flying around Verge Vendor I was parked firmly in Ladistier chatting away to my fleet member Taek'li about various things. My spirits couldn't have been higher as it had been snowing in the UK and I hadn't long been back at the helm after some epic snowball fights, with that under my belt I was ready to take on death itself!

Instead a Dramiel decided to try it's luck, rather I should say, he was being a fool and cycling through belts. I awaited him with a warm welcome and opened fire on his vessel. I had a faint idea of his fit based upon his speed and killboard record, the intelligence I gathered didn't disappoint and I soon realize I was fighting a Dual-MSE Dramiel. Whilst that benefited me in some regards due to a lower speed and turret DPS, the extra tank only gave more time for a potential error on my behalf as the fight went on.

Did I mention there was a boat load of asteroids? Trying my best to keep range on a ship who's afterburner alone was allowing him to clip at my heels was bad enough, let alone with drones swarming me and having to manually dodge the roids. After some tense 13km moments and my tank beginning to strain under sustained drone and turret fire... He gave up the ghost.

Glorious! My first solo Dramiel kill to date, even filled with a nice little bit of faction loot to boot. But wait, the pod's lockable! POINT. I quickly began to ransom the fellow, first attempting to gain liquid isk (which he allegedly had none of) and secondly trying to get a ship contracted to me after he foolishly divulged that he was sporting +4 implants. He was proving difficult but I wanted to try and get a Dramiel contracted to me so I persisted. What I hadn't realized was that during the engagement we'd burned 120km off the belt and there was his warpable wreck right next to me. At the same point, a Brutix landed at 0km to the belt, spotting me and my hostage. He began burning away to put himself 150km away from the wreck and I called in Taek'li to go kill him for me!

After some tense moments I told Taek to warp to me as the Brutix had now reached the 140km marker, 'Already in warp to the belt at 30km' he told me. Panicking I targeted the now looted Dramiel wreck and popped it just in time, destroying the warp-in just as the Brutix hit 150km from me. I began burning to over 150km from Taek and popped my prisoner for his lack of cooperation.

Unfortunately his warp in had coincided poorly with the burn path of the Brutix and Taek was scrammed and webbed by the time I'd concreted my place on the field. We took him to low armour but Taek's shield cane could not hold and he was destroyed...

Determined to revenge my corpie I proceeded to work on his remaining tank whilst still avoiding asteroids and drones, fully aware of his scram/web combination. Here, however, is the kicker to this story. The Brutix was sporting a flight of Hammerhead II's, inadequate at hurting me and occupying his full drone bay. What I hadn't bargained on, however, was for him to utilize the Hornet EC-300's left scattered on the field by Taek during his attempt at an escape against me!

I believe my reaction was 'Wait... what the?' As I locked up the drones and worked as fast as I could. With only 1 drone left it hero-jammed me and the Brutix fled the scene in structure. We exchanged the 'gf' and had a short, pleasant chat. He even asked if he could collect his old drones, I of course obliged after seeing that awesome display of ingénue!

I zipped back to Hevrice to deposit the Dramiel loot and in doing so, got better acquainted with  new corp members Pippin Slimjim and Tansyaster. Together we brought down a Myrm and I logged off with a smile on my face.

It's absolutely great to see those superb use of game mechanics to pull the impossible out of the bag. Part of me is sore over losing the kill in vengeance for my fellow corpie, yet the other part applauds the Brutix pilot for exercising his right to be tricksy! Another one escapes the blood bank...