Merlin Finds Rifter in Plex

Starwalker's Merlin was cruising around in The Citadel and noticed a Rifter and Tristan come up on the scan. Time to find trouble. The scan narrowed down the Rifter to a plex and Starwalker jumped right in by warping to zero.

The acceleration gate invited activation but there was nothing else around so invitation accepted the Merlin launched itself deeper into the plex. Right into the Rifter that was waiting there. Starwalker proceeded to hit multiple buttons to lock the target, orbit, apply scramble and fire. However, as usual it seemed that too many orders too quickly confused things and the targeting order failed.

Starwalker had yet to find a reliable way to exit warp and lock up the target and point or scramble it fast. The operative word being fast. It seemed whether he used the keyboard, overview or click that something went wrong. At least one Rifter was able to get away because the point was not applied fast enough.

However, this Rifter, piloted by Milo Caman, wanted to fight and he locked the Merlin and proceeded with his acts of violence. Starwalker engaged and finally applied his scramble but it was hardly needed as this Rifter was not trying to run. Whilst the Merlin was soaking up the damage its return fire was also tearing away the Rifter defences.

It would be a fight to the death and the two frigates pummelled each other at close range. Starwalker originally wanted to orbit at 4km but the fight was happening at 1.5km. Despite the Merlin webbing the Rifter it was the Rifter that had established range control with its web and its armour repper was trying to keep up with the incoming damage but failing ever so slowly.

However, the Merlin's shields were also going down and it was not clear who would win. The two frigates were on fire but continued to try to deal the final death blow when a Tristan arrived. Starwalker assumed he was here to save the Rifter and decided that he would align out but stay to kill the Rifter or go down trying. As usual, the alignment out was not to save the ship but to save the pod.

The Tristan, piloted by Jev North, closed to within 7km of Starwalker and fired its rockets. The Merlin was engulfed in flames but finally destroyed the Rifter with just under 5% of structure left. It was the closest fight that Starwalker had ever had but the victory was short-lived. Less than a second later it too was destroyed as the final sliver of structure was ripped away by the Tristan's rocket. The flight time of the rocket had been enough of a delay for Starwalker to get the kill.