The Rust is Showing

Last night for the first time in a month I got online to properly play Eve. Dear god it felt good to feel the rays of a multitude of suns on my face and the solar wind in my hair.

Ahem. Enough of the poetry then?

Eager to do something I scrounged around for a fleet but a Home Defence fleet was just standing down and a corp fleet was just coming back from a 8/10 complex. My timing, as usual, sucks. There was a hostile fleet causing problems down near a region entrance so I hopped in my trusty Rapier with Kla'strit and decided to mosey on that way to see what happened. At the very least it would get me out of the station.

As I reached my destination, a few other guys decided to rally up a fleet to engage them and I joined up as scout. While they formed up I found the enemy fleet and started scouting, seeing that they had 4-5 Drakes, a Hurricane, Scimitar logistics, and a Sabre interdictor. Another neutral Tengu and Loke were floating around and a Blackbird showed up later but I have no proof they were all working together as they were in different corps and such.

The enemy was in a pocket constellation so our fleet setup on the entrance gate while I kept eyes on the moving hostile force. A couple lone neuts were popped by our camp including a Blackbird, and then the enemy moved into the adjacent system.

I jumped after them to keep eyes on them but they popped a bubble on the gate and I was forced to gate crash which I did successfully. Filled with confidence I jumped through again a few minutes later to keep eyes on the enemy and even through I was not in the bubble this time I foolishly tried to gate crash again instead of warping off. Big mistake.

I got my pod out and made the several jumps back to station to reship to an interceptor, Claw class. I rushed back and was pleased to hear we got one of the Drakes. Back in gang, I was assigned to scouting again and followed the enemy with my blood up, hoping to catch another.

Nano-drakes. Fast at about 2500 m/s and hard to catch. The Hurricane was setup for anti-tackler duty. These guys knew what they were doing.

We engaged another time and I burned out to catch a Drake about 140-150 km off gate and the rest of the gang. FC knew I was vulnerable and told me to warp off but I thought I could get to 150 km with the point and allow my gang to warp to us. I didn't make it and as the Drake's buddies came in I fumbled and was smoked.

I saved my pod again and made the trip back to the station while apologizing to the FC for not listening. I didn't have time to go back but the fleet bagged the Hurricane as I left so there was some consolation.

Even though I lost a couple ships it was good to be out in space fighting the good fight. I hope to make it a more regular occurrence so I can shake off more rust.