Fun with Capital Ships

'IAC and ex-Etheral Dawn in here? Man, we're gonna have to scrub the system down.'

I was semi-afk working on an art commission and doing my standard semi-afk thing of listening to comms and checking out the neutrals in Local. My bio contains the line 'While you're reading my bio, I'm checking out your standings and employment history', and it's true. I'd spotted the aforementioned characters at a glance - I have friends who left IAC, and my earliest encounter with other players was being insulted by Yal XianKun, ceo of AIAA. Not that I would need an excuse to shoot someone, but the ex-ED guy would have been the icing.

It was a slowish night, after the excitement of the previous night's run. I'd logged in just as the guys had decided to surprise a freighter friend with their carriers, then scored a tasty kill as a Fleet Issue Mega jumped through after the hauler (there's some debate about whether it had been intending to try for the freighter, or just happened to be coming through at the same time). The ex-ED guy disappeared from the system, and the IAC pilot docked up in something small and logged as well. The guys were goofing around outside the station shooting each other.

'Hey Shae, undock! Bring your hyperion out!'

'Whyyyyyyyyyy?'

'I wanna test my damage.'

'What are you flying?'

'I'm flying a Phoenix. ...It's an interceptor.'

'You lie like a rug.'

I went back to my artwork, grumbling about nu-metallers who couldn't appreciate Courtney Love references in advertising. The silliness outside continued until I saw the IAC pilot log in, then leave the station.

'Oceandragon's undocked, guys, he's undocked.'

'Ohhh, come on, baby... YES!! Oh my god, he's in a Nidhoggur! Get it!'

'He's still under invuln. Come on, come on, come onnn... Point!'

'Point!'

'Ohhh, baby!'

Vent flooded with laughter and comments about how seriously, seriously bad the guy's timing had been. I dropped my graphics tablet, brought Uninvited Ghost online and skipped outside to join the party. The carrier was still in line from the undock as I locked him up, spun up the blasters and dropped my own point. I glanced at the sentry guns, then thought, Fuck it, and released the drones, too.

'Bump him, Shae!'

Hurr, hurr, hurr, kinkeh. The Hyperion's drive chugged up with agonising deliberation as I aimed for the carrier's broad side; it smacked against the Nidhoggur's hull at just shy of top speed, bouncing the larger ship further out of dock-range. I slapped a web on the target and watched as the carrier's armour and then hull melted in little more than a minute.

We missed the pod - not for lack of trying - and he wasn't actually carrying much, but the whole thing had been Darwinian Law in action. He couldn't have missed that most of the people in the system were undocked; we speculated that he must have been kicking himself for not having an instawarp point, or maybe he'd just frozen in shock when he'd seen what was outside the station. Who knows?

Nothing personal, Oceandragon, but you just happen to look good on our killboards ^_^

Oh, yeah: I didn't lose a single drone to sentry fire, either.