Some success at last!

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated. IF there were any rumours, that is. I know it's been a little while since I last wrote, but I've been busy.

Rebuilding a corp that's been scarred by war has been an interesting journey, so to speak. I learnt who the traitor was, and to say I was shocked is putting it mildly. To find that one of your most trusted members has betrayed you to the enemy....

Well, I can only now understand the depth of Ceasar's impassioned and gasping, "Et tu, Brutus?" And then he collapsed, dead. Luckily for me, it wasn't quite as dramatic.

Needless to say, the traitors of the corp are no longer with us, and their names shall forever shine in red wherever they be met. Along with the blood that befouls their hands.

But I must move on, before I get too caught up in the feelings of anguish over lost friends and betrayals.

Alinana was her name, and piratin' was her game. I know, it's an overused cliche, but if I avoid the cliches, what is there left to write about?

We met in a dark system, so dark that I almost didn't see her. But a pirate and a pirate hunter in the same system... we did the only things we could - we came together in battle.

Using my scanner I found her in a Blackbird, orbiting one of the planets. Warping in on her, we engaged in battle. It was my first time against a Blackbird, and I had heard of their ECM capabilities. I thought to myself, how bad can it be?

It was bad.

For about 2 minutes I simply was unable to get a lock on the Blackbird. I got a momentary lock at one point, for about 2 seconds before the lock was broken again. In that time, I was able to see that she was down to about 60% armour.

That was when I smiled. It was a big smile too. My own armour was about 95%, but it was being held at that point by my armour repairer. In the past, my ships have been vapourised around me before I can say 'holy cow!', so it was a really nice feeling to sit back and know that my armour was holding while hers was being disintegrated. My drones were the only things hitting her, and they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do.

However, she warped away before her ship could be destroyed. This was fine by me, as I didn't have a warp scrambler fitted. My setup was not designed to hold a pirate, but just to see if I could actually defeat them. I could, and I was happy.

However, Alinana, being the pirate that she was, was NOT happy. As you'd expect, under the circumstances. So she got herself another ship and came back for another fight. This time it was a Stabber.

After a short period of time for her to set it up and for me to replace a drone that her Blackbird had destroyed, we engaged again, dancing around each other like small darts in the vastness of space. This time I was able to get a lock on her ship, and it was on!

And just as quickly, it was over. Again she warped away, my armour at 90% and her hull at around 70%.

We bowed to each other within the comm link, with each of us thankful we had survived. It was a good fight.

Tomorrow I'll fit a warp scrambler and try again. Now that I've achieved some success at combat and damage dealing, I'll now see about replacing the cap recharger with the warp scrambler and testing how that works for me.

I'd like to thank Marshal Kaenon Steel, my SpecOps CO, for suggesting the skills that I should be training. It seems to be working, thankfully. I feel that my long period of time encountering only failure is at an end.

More soon.