Day 272

Entry: two hundred seventy-two.

"On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took all of four people breathing the same air to make the earth too crowded to stand."

I sat comfortably in my open capsule, lodged in the Hound I was flying. It had been a very long day for me: long, tense, and entirely too adrenaline filled how for completely uneventful the day had been. I reclined in my command chair reading the latest Harry Dresden novel. If not for the books I owned, the day would have been a total waste to that point.

When I had woken up from my slumber, I had kept the ship's stealth systems active, and everything else but the most basic of life support systems and internal lighting inactive. I'd groggily taken care of the basic necessities, such as using the facilities, cleaning up, and getting dressed. Once all of that was taken care of, I activated the ship from "Logged out" to "Logged in". Immediately, as was always the annoying case, there was a glitch in the software subroutines that forced every Covert Ops Cloaking Device to deactivate when the "Log" mode changed, and as always I immediately reactivated it, showing my ship to the rest of space for less than a second. 

That was more than enough time for some paranoid raider on D-scan to pick me up. Thankfully, it hadn't happened yet, and I felt my chances were nearly a hundred percent that I hadn't been detected for several reasons.

On top of being cloaked, I always made sure to change "Log" modes where no one else was about. Unlike most of my corporation, I was enjoying the secluded and stealthy life. I had several "safe spots" sprinkled throughout this W-Space system we occupied, and logged at the ones where absolutely nothing came up on D-scan. Not ships, planets, moon, celestials...anything. In combination with the cloaking field I employed for my ship, it was an almost absolute surety that I'd never be detected by raiders whenever I changed logging modes.

The unfortunate side effect of this, in W-Space no less, that fewer raids happened in W-Space than I had been lead to believe. Those were the benefits, but there were also the downsides.

Just as I was getting into the novel, some noise came in over the comm line. I kept it active in case of situations like this. "True, I'm on my way back to the hole."

I snapped back to attention as I lazily orbited the Hi-Sec exit from that system, cloaked of course, at 25km. I didn't particularly like or dislike guard duty, but it allowed me to do several other things while helping my corp and giving me the opportunity for combat. "Roger that Ranger, how many jumps out are you?"

"Three," replied Ranger. As usual, transmissions from Hi-Sec to W-space came in garbled and distorted, but usually intelligible thanks to some handy filters on the audio bands.

I settled back into my command chair, no need to get all fidgety just yet. Picking my book back up with a huff of annoyance that never made it out over the audio, I continued reading. My sensors kept attuned to the exit wormhole, configured to transmit visual and audio signals as a virtualizations of wormhole distortion via transit.

Naturally, just as I settled in, I heard the telltale signs of Wormhole activity. "Ranger, did you just enter the system?"

"Negative."

"Roger." I paused, watching the spatial distortion intently. After a few seconds, a Purifier appeared briefly, re-cloaking almost immediately, and undoubtedly warping away immediately as well. An evil smile crept onto my face.

"Purifier. Stealth Bomber. Cloaked immediately and warped out. Probably thinks he got in unnoticed," I transmitted.

"Gotcha, coming up to the hole." There was a pause as Ranger undoubtedly warped towards the system entrance. "Uhh, there's a manticore here...annnd he warped away."

"Roger that...come on in, no one is going to attack a Megathron sitting on the hole anyways, and they're not likely to come in on seeing it either."

"Will you be watching the hole?"

"Yeah, I will," I replied. "You going to close this hole?"

"Yeah."

***********************************

After an hour of watching Ranger jump back and through the hole with his Megathron, eventually the sheer transited mass collapsed the hole. Luckily, Ranger ended up on the W-space side.

"Guys, I have a proposition," I transmitted over my corp comms. "We have a Sleeper stronghold I picked up earlier today. Damn robots show up at the weirdest times, but regardless, we have it."

"That Purifier from earlier is still in here with us I think. I want you guys to run that Perimeter Hangar and I'll stay there with you, but cloaked. I want to set up an ambush."

General agreement followed over the comms.  After ten minutes, the fleet leader, 'Ghost', called out to me over the comms. "Ok True, we're here, warp to us."

"Roger, warping at 30." I settled back as I sent the warp command via my implants to the ship AI. There was a brief gravitational shift as the ship aligned, accelerated, and began compressing the space in front of it to travel faster than light. A few short seconds later, I emerged back into normal space-flight mode, hovering 30km above my colleagues. I carefully maneuvered my Hound to where I thought my compatriots would eventually arrive while dealing with the newly awakened Sleepers, and then set myself to be above them by 10 kilometers so that their proximity wouldn't interfere with the cloak, a field roughly spherical and 2500 meters in diameter.
I watched rather intently for any signs of enemy activity while they completed the site. Eventually, they did.

"Leaving for salvager," called Ranger. Inside of a minute, he returned with the salvage Catalyst we had set up for corp use, and quickly salvaged anything and everything possible from the shattered Sleeper hulls.

With only a few wrecks left to go, the suspected ambushers revealed themselves. A Manticore and a Purifier decloaked, lobbing bombs towards the salvage catalyst.

As the bombs sped towards their target, Ranger had already begun warping out, leaving the area of effect as the bombs exploded.

Unfortunately, Ghost was hit with the full force of two EM bombs, one from a Purifier and one from a Manticore. The Purifier and Manticore turned to warp out as Ghost starting warping away. Before either Stealth Bomber had managed to warp out, however, a third Stealth Bomber uncloaked, also an enemy, who targeted Moph and began launching torpedoes at the last remaining Drake on the field.

I brought my ship around towards the new Hound, de-cloaked, and warp disrupted him in an instant. I maneuvered closer, making sure remote sensor dampeners wouldn't disrupt my lock, and launched two sets of Bane torpedoes at our catch. Moph, when he finally managed to lock onto the Hound, began hitting him with seven sets of Heavy Missiles.

The target was down within twenty seconds. I was too close to be sensor-damped, no matter how much the enemy tried to squirm away. When the ship blew up, I immediately targeted and warp disrupted the enemy pilot's pod. "Moph, we need to hurry and kill him, my cap is almost gone," I called out. I jammed the launch buttons as often as possible, trying to get the torpedoes to fire faster as I saw my capacitor reservoir dwindle to nothing.

Eventually the cap ran out, and the warp disruptor deactivated. The enemy escaped immediately, pod damaged, but intact.


"Ranger, come on back. We blew up his ship. We didn't manage to get his pod, but I don't think they're coming back," I transmitted. 

With that, I moved away from the wreckage and re-cloaked, secretly hoping that the enemy would come back so that I could blow up all their remaining ships.

They did not return however. 

Computer: terminate recording.

Day 123

Entry: one hundred twenty-three.

We're currently holed up in POS right now. Things somehow went south all of a sudden. I'm terrified right now, to be honest. I didn't expect it to be this bad.

Location: Unknown
Locus Signature: J133557
Classification: Wolf-Rayet, class two.
Nearest: J133557 II
Active W-Space Link: exit to Hi-Sec
Active W-Space Link: exit to a class four

Two months ago, I and a few others in corp decided that we wanted to move into a wormhole system. The riches of uncharted space vastly outweighed the potential dangers we had factored into the move. For the last week, we've scanned down every system within fifteen jumps to find a good wormhole system to occupy. We hadn't, however, until today.

The link from the wormhole system and Teonusude was dissipating when Adorol had discovered it. This was the only viable wormhole we had discovered in the entire week, so we jumped at the chance. Riddick piloted the Orca from Hek to Teonusude, Ranger Omega in tow with his Occator. Our link to this system had less than four hours of life before it vanished. It took almost an entire hour to get the Orca into Teonusude.

Everything went wrong once the Ranger onlined the tower.
 
A neutral entered system in a Buzzard, a covert ops probing vessel. This person wasted no time telling everyone in Teonusude that we were there. There was no way we could stop anyone from going in, with CONCORD rules preventing us from destroying anyone who would enter. This same pilot then vanished through the link, and we never saw her come out.

We were committed at this point. Anchoring and then onlining the Large Minmatar Tower we had scraped the funds together for had taken an over an hour, and unanchoring it would take another hour at the least. Our link wouldn't last that long. We safed up under the forcefield while Ranger went about anchoring and onlining other parts of the POS that we would need active.

Adorol had found the class four link and notified us that the occupants were active. Unsettled by this, Riddick and I had decided to disperse the link via multiple transits. The occupants were not happy.

Riddick was the first one destroyed. He had been entirely incautious and had left command in his Maelstrom to visit the mess, apparently feeling the need for a beer. Not at command, the enemies in two Tengus caught him on the class four side of the link and destroyed him.

Not at command, he was unable to notify me what happened. I jumped through and encountered the Tengus on the other side. Panicky, I wasn't able to do anything until thirty seconds had passed, at which point I approached the link and jumped through again.

I was followed. I attempted to warp out to the POS for safety, but the Tengu pilots caught my Hurricane. Shields were but a thin veil before the savage fury of their missiles, and my armor wasn't long for life after that either. With my fate written on the wall, I ejected, and at least got away in my pod.

Since then, those occupants have been terrorizing us at our POS. Hit and run tactics, attacking modules and warping away before they could be targeted. They'd been at it for an hour before they left. Ranger crawled out in his Occator to anchor and online a Warp Disruption Battery quite literally the solution to our problems.

Or rather, it would have been. Our neighbors hadn't actually left.
 
They decloaked and pointed Ranger, keeping him from warping out. He attempted to crawl back under the safety of the forcefield, but just a few thousand meters away from salvation they destroyed his ship. They wasted no time in catching his pod and crushing it.

Ranger woke up somewhere in hi-sec. I don't know how his transmissions can get to us, but they apparently can. Maybe through the hi-sec link...
 

Computer: terminate recording.

Day 118

Entry: one hundred eighteen.

I've been missioning pretty much straight for the last two weeks. It's all very unexciting. I needed the money though, and apparently an endless number of Damsels in Distress needed rescuing, so there it is.

I needed a break today. I made clear over corp comms that I was headed into Ebodold to kill something. The CEO decided to join me. I was already headed to the target system in a Rifter from Balginia. The CEO said he would meet me there in a Thrasher.

The trip was uneventful.

I landed, and Wolf landed shortly after me. We jumped in, and started bouncing around the belts, trying to find the Stabber on directional scan. After five minutes of bouncing around, he stopped bouncing and waited for us. We got a good idea of his location with d-scan, and made best speed.

We found him forty off. He approached, released his drone, and engaged Wolf. I microwarped at the Stabber, scrambling him while orbiting close with my microwarp on.

The adrenaline rush was intense. It was difficult for me to do much beyond the activate the guns and wait. True spray and pray style there.

It's hard to remember what happened. While I orbited, I unleashed the full fury of my autocannons, as did Wolf. Wolf's Thrasher was destroyed, and it was left to me to destroy the Stabber. My shields vaporized in an instant, my armor was taking a little longer to go as he hit structure. I overloaded, praying that that would do the trick.

I entered hull.

I prayed while I continued to orbit, spraying bullets.

The Stabber exploded, leaving me with approximately half of my structure. I was stunned, unable to move as TriggerTruls warped away in his pod, Wolf long gone and offgrid in his own pod. Eventually, meaning a few seconds later that really felt like an eternity later, I got enough of myself together to loot the Stabber wreck and exit Ebodold.

God, did that just happen? I'm still in shock, with a grin that won't come off my face.

After all the despair and failure I've experienced, I'm finally succeeding. It's...an amazing feeling. I'm no longer a loser, no longer a carebear, no longer a failure.

Computer: terminate recording.

Day 104

Entry: one hundred four.

Today I got my first killmail, followed shortly by my second killmail! It's difficult to express how excited I am, how proud I am, how lucky I feel!

Some of my corpmates and I have been planning to move our residence into w-space, not only for the ISK opportunities, but also the adventure, the possible combat opportunities, and in large part for a change in pace. In preparation for this move, we've been running wormhole ops once or twice a week depending on attendance. I discovered some time ago that Eystur regularly spawns an entrance into class one space, so I felt that checking it might be a good idea, just in case.

In my Probe I quickly located a wormhole signature, scanned it down, and warped to it. The transit was mildly unsettling, but quickly over with.

"Locus Signature: J152928
Sovereignty: Unkown
Constellation: Unknown
Region: Unknown
Security Status: 0.0"

The information flitted through my mind dutifully, as per every system change. Indicator lights showed that my ship was attempting to reach local but was unable to, a common occurrence as there are no Neocom beacons in w-space. Without further ado, I bookmarked the exit with the appropriate coordinates, and made a safe spot from which to scan the system. I noticed a cormorant wreck and a rifter wreck on directional scan, and two capsules floating somewhere in space as well. I wondered if perhaps I might find the wrecks and capsules.

Shortly after creating the safe spot, I deployed my combat probes and cloaked up, beginning my task in relative safety.

Within a few minutes, I had gotten the exact coordinates of the capsules. With trepidation, I engaged the warp sequence and slid through space to the coordinates, landing just shy by twenty kilometers.

Adrenaline spiked my system so hard that it was difficult to deploy the two hobgoblins I had onboard. I was shaking, almost violently, not out of fear, but plain bloodlust. An opportunity such as this had never presented itself, and there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to let it slip past.

Drones deployed, I engaged Tytaron's capsule, and destroyed it seconds later. I immediately deployed the drones to engage Lutschaer's capsule, and when his capsule had lost approximately half of its armor, Lutschaer warped off.

Frustration took hold. I recalled my drones, warped back to my safe spot, and began scanning for the pod again. I managed to find him, and warped to him again, at a different planet, and just as I landed, he warped away. Clearly he was still alive and kicking, although apparently trapped as he hadn't yet left system.

I couldn't be bothered with the situation. I warped back to the safe spot, scanned him down, and exited the wormhole. I switched into a Rifter, re-entered the wormhole, and warped to the last known location of his that I recorded.

I landed fairly close to him. Without thinking, I engaged the warp disruptor and held him down while the autocannons did their work. It didn't take long before his pod was broken enough to kill him, exposing his flesh to explosive decompression and space. Specks of red dented in the cockpit window, a mild revenge for his merciless slaughter.

It's taken nearly six months, but I've finally broken into the realm of those I've only previously dreamed about joining. I've become dangerous, a killer. This rush is so intoxicating, I don't know that I can ever go back to the life of a missioner.

Computer: terminate recording.

Day 76

Entry: seventy-six.

The pirate element of our corp asked for help again. They are trying to tame and claim a system known as Ebodold. It is quite literally a dead end backwater of a low-sec system. The only system connecting to it is a hi-sec system. I'm told that this system is not valuable because it is cordoned off low-sec, but rather because of staging capabilities related to capital class vessels, such as the one Sophias lost about a week ago in Otou.

Wolf, Vearde, Soph and I engaged another pirate corp, Bad Passion, off the station.

We primaried the Hyperion, Wolf jamming him out. The Myrmidon let loose drones on Wolf, and he screamed for someone to get the drones off of him as he didn't have any tank at all. I turned around, destroying drones as I set orbit around him.

Damage took the Hyperion down rather low in armor, and then it happened.

The Typhoon lit a cyno.

Two capitals jumped in on us. Deploying fighters and locking us, they also targeted and then repaired the Hyperion even under heavy fire. The Hyperion, Myrmidon, and Typhoon landed points on all of us, making sure we couldn't get away as the fighters tore us to shreds.

We lost a Falcon, Vagabond, Rokh, and my Rupture. They lost nothing.

While I admit to relishing the combat, I greatly dislike losing. In fact, I don't remember a time when we won.

I think I'm going to stop flying in combat with these guys. Quite honestly, we suck, and we don't win, and I'm pretty fucking dispirited at this shit.

...


I could deal with losing my ship if we actually won a goddamned battle. 


Computer: terminate recording.

Day 69

Entry: sixty-nine.

This is my first entry in just over a month. I've done almost nothing except mine and run missions. I've been mining with a corpmate I've recently become friends with named Ranger Omega. He's a pretty smart guy, interesting to talk with, and we make a good mining team. We're both using Retrievers, and for the moment it seems to do fine. In a given night of mining for a few hours we can pull about ten to fifteen million ISK each as a team.

Mining, however, doesn't make worthwhile memories. Neither does running repetitive missions.

Today, our corp was invited to join some pirates we are friends with. These pirates, they're part of our corporation as well, but geared completely towards combat whereas some of us, like Ranger and myself, are geared more towards just making ISK. Since the corp was mostly participating, we joined up as well.

The fleet formed up just outside of Otou. I admit, I was feeling fairly nervous, I still am. Low-sec has never been a place where I've succeeded, but I'm willing to keep plugging away at it until something clicks. Despite that, I picked up a Rupture I'd been able to purchase recently, mostly decently fitted.

We jumped in together as a fleet, and warped to a station. It was a strange Gallente station. We were sitting directly underneath the main body of it, the point which was called the undock. We waited there for someone to open fire on us for a while, maybe an hour, and no one did. JStar though, he played with us, toyed with us. He knew we wouldn't attack on a station. Eventually, this situation changed for the worse.

JStar warped to an asteroid belt. Vearde, feeling clever again, followed them and cloaked in his Vagabond. Being cloaked did not provide him safety, however, as the enemies at the belt approached the spot he landed, decloaking him and destroying his ship. He belatedly called for help, and after the Fleet Commander Wolf fleet warped us to the belt to save Vearde, he reported he was dead.
This was not our biggest problem however, as Sophias had the misfortune of being asleep at the command chair while we warped.

I arrived first. I was pointed by the Hurricane, and destroyed rather quickly before the rest of the fleet landed. I exited the system rather quickly in my pod and docked up in hi-sec, shaken.

Chatter over comms told me that our fleet was losing badly. An enemy guardian had warped in and repaired our enemies while we crumpled under their firepower. They had fewer numbers, but they had Logistics, easily overpowering us. Half way through the fight, Sophias woke up to find himself targeted, pinned, and unable to escape. We were fighting desperately to save his Carrier, worth well over a billion ISK.

I picked up the shards of my composure and reshipped into a Stabber, fitting the mid slots with ECM bursts in the hope of disrupting locks long enough to let Sophias escape. I reentered Otou, warped to the belt, and began firing ECM bursts. My firepower was non-existent though. I didn't last a full minute, losing my Stabber to enemy fleet. I exited Otou once more, being able to do nothing but sit back and listen as I remained docked in hi-sec.

We lost every ship. Every. Single. Ship.

This is fucking disgraceful.


Computer: terminate recording.

Day 31

Entry: thirty one.

I haven't been taking my previous losses well these last two weeks. I've only recently earned enough ISK to buy another Rupture, but I've been wary of using it.

Because of my last two deaths to frigate sized vessels, I've been scared to engage anything. I'm taking my first step out of the comfort zone today. I have a Thrasher fitted out.

I've done some research, and it seems that I knew nothing about how to properly fit out a ship. Looking back, I not only tried to do what is called dual-tanking, but I also tried to run both as active fits. The weapon slots were generally ok, although being tech one gear they were a far cry from being good. Using what I've learned, I've managed to fit out this Thrasher in a semi-respectable fashion, although the problem of tech one gear remains. I don't have the necessary skills use tech two gear yet though, so there's nothing I can do about it.

My destination is Hagilur, a zero point four system, low-sec. Let's see how it goes.

Computer: pause recording.

 *********

"Recording resumed."

My venture didn't go well, to say the least.

After venturing into Hagilur, I warped to an asteroid belt, attacking the pirates in the belt there. They weren't the capsuleer variety, so I was doing alright. Without warning, something called an Ishtar warped in on me and attacked.
I attempted to fight back, locking the Ishtar and afterburning towards him, but it was to no avail. He was at range, kept me farther away than my autocannons could hit him, and these little flying things called Hobogoblins attacked me, wrecking my ship. I tried to save myself by killing the drones, but my efforts didn't last long.

My ship exploded. Another loss. I warped my pod away into hi-sec asap and managed to prevent another migraine. Really, my fear of those is worse than my fear of losing my ship. I've also had to replace my implants every time I've been killed, a venture I don't enjoy doing. 

I had no idea that tech two ships existed, that drones existed, that there was another way of fighting instead of close range. I've learned something valuable, managed to save my life, and am now safe thanks to CONCORD. I'm still distressed at how impotent I seem to be in combat, but perhaps one day I'll be useful. I'm not entirely distraught though, as I've managed to glean some new vital information with this loss.

Still...that loss is going to take a few missions to recover from. Guess it's back to running missions.

Computer: terminate recording.