The Mining Hurricane

The tiny Rifter landed right on top of the huge hull of the battlecruiser and I couldn't quite believe my eyes as the orange glow of a single mining laser lit up the darkness. I landed a scrambler right onto the beast as my autocannons began to spool up before spitting hot shells of EMP projectiles at its shields. The fight was on.

Just a few moments earlier I was just another passing traffic statistic, making my way down to somewhere else, always in a hurry, you know how it works. The Hurricane flashed up as I blipped my 360 degree scanner across the solar system mid-warp. The pilot hadn't renamed his ship and that triggered the alarm bells. However, further checks revealed this pilot was well over two years into his role as a capsuleer and surely must know a thing or two about fitting up his ships by now? As I aligned to his belt I started to sow a seed of doubt in my thought process, this must be a trap! Time seemed to pause as I dawdled for a moment, should I carry on with my journey or investigate?

Ahh what the hell! WARP DRIVE ACTIVE.


Back to the action . . . .


The Hurricane crew seemed to be oblivious to the fact that I was orbiting their ship and hitting its shields with the finest ammunition the Republic Fleet has ever produced, maybe they were all busy in the cargohold sorting out the huge chunks of Kernite that were being loaded into the ship, maybe the Captain was sleeping? Ratatat tat, boom, chuk chuk boom. My autocannons were singing as my Rifter nimbly danced a merry jig through the asteroid field. At this point I realised the Hurricane was fighting with a belt rat that had become angry with the theft of local ores. Then the gunnery crews sprung into life and a myriad of different projectile fire and missiles came my way . . . and went straight by and fizzled away in the distance. Perhaps the crew were merry on wine I thought to myself.

Red Alert - All crews to Gunnery posts - Hostile Rifter engaged.

Hornet drones now began to chase me down as the Hurricane's armour plating began to strip away from the hull. At first I ignored the drones and injected some heat to my afterburner and set for a wider orbit in the hope of evading the pesky little biters, before again switching back to a tighter orbit. I didn't return any fire to the drones because to be honest the damage from them was minimal at best. However, things were about to get ugly.

COLLISION IMMINENT - DIVERT COURSE NOW.

I had managed to slam my Rifter right into one of the asteroids, the whole ship shook and the hull rattled as the drones set upon my shields like an angry pack of hungry dogs. Manoeuvring away from the lump of rock and re-establishing my orbit I began to lock up and take aim at the drones, all the time keeping point on the battlecruiser. One by one they began to pop like flies being drawn to a zapping blue light. Unfortunately at this exact moment in time a stray mining beam laser ripped right through the core of my ship turning the console into a black darkness, alarms began to ring as fragments of rock destined for the cargohold of the bigger ship smashed into my frigate hull. I had to bail and bail I did, warping away with my structure barely still in one piece. I dropped out of warp at a nearby planet as huge plumes of smoke and fire could be seen trailing my ship, I then docked at the station to patch up, the fight seemingly over now.


Upon undocking I took a broadside from the station's gun batteries as I entered warp back to the belt with GCC in the vain hope that the mining nuisance was still there. My shields were okay and my ship was now fully repaired and stable. Dropping out of warp I landed some 30km off of the Hurricane and made my way to the lumbering giant with overheated afterburner to make up the distance all the time hoping that he didn't enter warp and make for his safety. The mining lasers were still ripping up the rocks as I landed my scrambler for round two, my enemy was now down to a single drone but oddly enough he didn't choose to sic it upon me this time around. The end of the gloriously kitted out Hurricane was now inevitable but for one moment of madness where somehow I accidentally managed to let him out of scrambler range and he started to align some 16km off of me, I once again overheated my afterburner as I closed range and with a sigh of relief landed the scram once again. At the same time I noticed that I had completely fried the throttle on the afterburner, as the Hurricane entered structure my ship slowed and I did my best to keep as close to the battlecruiser hull as possible until it eventually succumbed to the blitz of fire that was upon it.

The killmail made me smile.

:)

MB.