Ombeve

Yesterday I was conducting some stealthy U’K business in my trusty Hound CovOps. It was stuffed to the gills with equipment to make it as flexible as possible- a single peashooter 150mm Autocannon to aggress with should I need to on a scanned down ship, CovOps cloak, Scan Probe Launcher, MWD, Disruptor and Sensor Booster for that quick lock.

Anyway, I was in Sylph country, in Catch region, when passing through TA3T-T, I noticed a Sylph in local. As usual, threw out a quick scan, and it returned a Dominix and 5 Praetor Heavy Drones, T1. My curiosity piqued, I scanned down the belts- not present. Yet his drones were still out.. so he hadn’t scooped them and warped off. I called to see if any U’K were in the area, preferably in something with more armament than I had. A couple were, and one suggested checking for Cosmic Anomalies. I could’ve kicked myself, as I always forget about these phenomena. They are pockets of space that pirates usually move into while the anomalies are around- no-one really knows why, but that’s how it is.

From the recesses of my memory I heard these areas could be scanned with the normal ship scanner, and as the system was very small, didn’t have to move to each planet to scan from there. 30 seconds later, I had a return, and warped to it cautiously. BINGO!

As I exited warp, space debris, wrecks and gas clouds swam into view… as did a Dominix, his five heavy drones and four Sansha pirate ships. The Sanshas weren’t making much headway, their brethren’s wrecks were numerous. The Dominix was about 20km from me, but he was scooping his drones and warped off. I checked to see I was still cloaked. Maybe he had finally noticed me on the local channel and gone.

Nope, he had probably just gone to repair, and he warped back in, spat his drones out, Warrior IIs this time, and got back on with the job at hand. Meanwhile I was relaying this intel to the U’K intelligence channel- Bothrops in an Arazu, and Conlin in an Ishtar (as usual) were responding. Conlin had someway to go, and told us not to wait. I waited till Bothrops was in position, and as I had been positioning myself carefully to keep me 20km from the Domi (keeping a wary eye on wrecks), was also ready to go. B jumped in, I decloaked and then found I had trouble locking the Domi. What the hell? The Domi pilot showing remarkable reactions for someone so blasè about who’s in local with him, shot off, leaving his drones behind. B appeared out of warp. Damn.

We both cloaked, watched the drones get chewed up by the Sanshas in their anger, and scanned around. He wasn’t on scan, so we concluded he had a cloak. After about 10 minutes, he disappeared from local channel, but we picked him up on scan briefly- I assumed he’d shut off his ships systems, but they take a minute or so to power off completely and render himself invisible in space and in local channel. Conlin finally arrived on the scene also- extra firepower was good.

I quickly launched a probe, and said a little prayer to the God of probing. 30 long seconds later, I got a 0m return and quickly warped. As I was dropping our of warp I heard Conlin say he’d disappeared from scan, dammit dammit. Sure enough, space was empty. Maybe I got him in mid-warp, maybe he was around here somewhere. Ships were very hard to spot with the external cameras without them appearing on an overview- even a BS. And it was a dark constellation.

So, we’d wait- he’d power his ship back up soon enough- he’d want to finish the pirates in the anomaly and collect their wrecks/ loot before the harsh rigours of space decayed them. The three of us sat primed in the safespot, waiting.

Then my ship let me down. Losing all power bar life support, it became visible again. Comms were down, even comms to my crew. This was very weird. I just sat there in my pod, feeling helpless. Some interfaces still worked, and my crew managed to get a text message to me via a diagnostics window telling me they were on it, estimating 60 mins repair time.

64 minutes later, full power returned, I congratulated the crew (bonus time when we get back), and noticed I was alone in the safespot. Radio’ing out to Conlin and Bothrops, I asked excitedly if they had him. Apparently, my scan had caught him in warp, and he’d actually re-appeared at a planet nearby. Then, amazingly, despite 3 very hostiles in the local channel, he warped back to the Anomaly to resume his private battle!! An opportunity like that wasn’t going to be passed by and he died at Conlin and Bothrop’s hand. Sure enough, he had a cloak, and a lot of T1 equipment.

Annoyed I missed the end result, I was happy enough that we had got a kill.

[OOC- in reality, I had to go and pick up my car from the garage before it shut. They took their sweet time about getting it off the ramps and back to me and blah blah, so I missed the kill AND had to RP around my absence. Bah!!]

~ by Ombey on November 27, 2008.