Out of the silent planet..

Dreams of desolation!

Listen to this!
[soundfile embedded into log: "Iron Maiden -Out of the Silent planet"]

Withered hands, withered bodies begging for salvation
Deserted by the hand of gods of their own creation
Nations cry underneath decaying skies above
You are guilty, the punishment is death for all who live
The punishment is death for all who live

It is an old earth-song I have begun using when jumping into battle.. gets me speeded, and also it helps with keeping a clear head and not having to hear Yar/Gok´s silly advice..

And talking about battle, I have just have had two AWESOME engagements!

Firstly, earlier on I was casually roaming around looking for sinners against my new spacerules..
(if it does not come up blue on scanner, it must die)
And having found a rifter and a stabber in a nearby system, i noticed that the rifter was friendly.

Very friendly infact.
He was "Kazaji" of the Python Cartel, and hailed me on a secure comm-channel, asking if I wanted to help take that stabber down.
Surely! Two Rifters should be able to if we can get in close and orbit!
Sadly he was sitting in a "safe" location in space, one that you cannot reach without proper scanning gear, but so determined was Kaz that he went to get such a scanning ship.

It was not long before the skilled scanner had found our victim and jumped to pin him down.
I quickly flew to his location and engaged, and it looked pretty well for starters, until a small display on my ship started blinking red.
I was running out of capacitor!

You see, this was my first venture out in a Rifter, and it seemed I had not the proper module setup nor skills in managing this ship, to keep all modules running.

So now and then one or more of my modules would shut down, wich made our victim almost escape or get a good shot in!

It took a while, i learned to "pulse" certain mods, and shut down others to keep him pinned down, but it was taking its toll.. and I was slowly loosing hull integrity!

I had to warp out, and a little bit after my gangmate did the same.

I am sure we could have taken him if I had better skills/fittings or my mate a better suited ship.
(he had no guns because the scanning-gear took so much power)

So I felt sad that I failed to kill the target, after Kaz was so nice to scan it down, but I am really happy with all the new knowledge I gained in the areas of fitting and controlling the Rifter.
Next time I will be victorious!

The second awesome fight of the night was to be had just a little while later.
I had returned to home station, and was repairing and refitting the rifter "Hunkajunk 1" when my fellow academy-bunnies were forming a fleet to go out and roam.
"Time for a kill" I thought and happily joined them, blazing out of the station with a fresh lust for blood and spacewrecks!

And, not long after, thanks to magnificent scouting from our esteemed C.E.O mr Lecter, we found a belt with some juicy targets in.
The call finally came, he had engaged and locked down a cruiser of some sort.. and another was nearby, so we hurried to his aid.
I landed on the asteroid belt and locked down the target when all hell broke loose.

It seems the cruiser had friends.
Lots of friends, in bigger ships then ours.

What happened after was chaos, organized chaos.
As more and more enemy ships warped there were targets all over, but our fleet commander held his cool.. "point arby, primary rupture"
Such clear and consice orders came through my voice-comms.. from his voice you could not make out the chaotic situation he was in, it could just as well have been a game of "poke the asteroid"

And it was exactly what was needed in that situation, but the actual fighting was nothing but chaos.
It was beautiful.
I charged a rupture, all my ships displays blinked angrily as I pushed the modules to their limits, scrambling that, web that.. activate that!
The autocannons sang their song of death, and the rupture exploded.
Next target arbitrator, change course!
Rifter turning as the rupture explosion sends bits and debris spraying over its hull, but already the autocannons are shooting at the arbitrator.
New target called, more ships have warped in!
Omen, stabber, rifter and a rupture!
We attack like a small cluster of drones, efficiently and without care that our opponents are bigger and better we zip around and take out one after the other.
Their clumsy attempts at rescuing their friends have them shooting wildly at us.. no concentrated fire, nor are they able to hit our small, fast ships.

We loose someone.. to something, it is hard to tell in the heat of battle, but suddenly battleships warp in and start giving off waves of searing heat, blinding light!

They had called in even further backup, this time in the form of smartbombing battleships!
Those of us too close did not make it, their ships instantly vaporized, but the rest of us made it away.. content in the knowledge that we managed to beat the better equipped and more experienced pilots that we engaged.

A great victory for the wabbit academy, and a massively valuable learning experience.

I am still speeded, having made it home to station again.. adrenaline rush not settled down still!!

I love this job.