A Beacon Too Far

Starwalker undocked in Egbinger in his Vengeance and there was another cynosural beacon. The temptation was too much and seeing that it was just an Impairor it was soon a wreck. The cyno ship pilot, Elektormonter, however was completely undeterred and soon he had a second cyno ship lighting up.

Of course, the temptation was still far too much and Starwalker went in again and killed the second Impairor and just for good measure he stayed to kill the pod too. He didn't have time to scoop the corpse and warped away with his ship on fire.

Starwalker wandered off around Molden Heath and couldn't believe his luck when he returned to Egbinger to find Elektormonter had yet another cyno ship lighting up a beacon. That Impairor went the way of the others and also became a wreck.

Starwalker decided to test his flags and warped to a gate and then a station - no sentry gun fire. Cool, he could leave system whenever he wanted without fear of sentry fire destroying his ship. He was just about to dock up when yet another cynosural beacon lit up. It was Elektormonter again! But this time in a Pilgrim - he was tempting Starwalker but this was a very different proposition.

At first, Starwalker decided that the Pilgrim was too tough to kill but then he changed his mind on the assumption that he wasn't completely sure and he would risk his Vengeance trying for the kill. He went in, locked it up and started firing the rockets with overheat on. Some enemy drones were launched to supplement the sentry fire but most importantly his capacitor was instantly drained. That was bad news straight away.

As he switched targets to the drones he realised that his rockets were getting seriously burnt and he hit the shift to turn off the overheat. However, he didn't wait for the cycle to complete and seeing the overheat still on he hit the shift again, which had the undesired effect of keeping the overheat on until his rockets were burnt out. With no firepower, no capacitor and too close to run it was inevitable that this shiny Vengeance would join the space wreckage.

Starwalker left in the mistaken belief that if he hadn't burnt out his rockets he could have killed the drones and then the Pilgrim, completely overlooking the obvious problem with that. There was also sentry fire and he could not stay long enough to kill it. However, in the heat of the moment and completely fixated, he was not thinking straight and he came back with another Vengeance. This time it would be different.

It was no different. He did not burn out his rockets and he did kill some of the drones but the capacitor situation was dire even with the energy vampire running. Worse, the drones kept coming - he had not checked the fact that the Pilgrim had 150 cubic metre capacity for drones. After killing the first set of drones he had targeted the Pilgrim again and hadn't even noticed the next set of drones until he started taking more damage again. The trouble was - he was already in structure from round one and round two was simply too much.

It was inevitable what would happen next and Starwalker could only curse his own stupidty but he spent too long cursing his stupidity and compounded the loss of his Vengeance with the loss of his pod too. This really was a beacon too far and hopefully he had learnt from it.

A New HQ for R1FTA

Starwalker had a modest stockpile of ships and equipment in Heild as the Rebel HQ and he heard from the leadership that Heild would become the HQ for the Black Dragon Fighting Society and R1FTA would move to Egbinger.

It was easy enough to move a few ships and one load of ammunition and consumables - and Starwalker had moved from Heild to Egbinger over the course of 24 hours. He had one lucky escape when he was caught on both sides of a gate by Gunpoint Diplomacy.

They had around 7 or 8 pilots sitting on the gate as Starwalker came through in his Caracal and he held his cloak hoping that they were on the move. They weren't but three did jump through and Starwalker had the feeling that they were now camping both sides of the gate. The cloak faded and Starwalker made a run for the gate as lots of incoming fire decimated his shield.

The XL ancillary shield booster cycled and managed to keep the Caracal alive long enough to jump back through where a Lachesis, Brutix and Hurricane waited. Starwalker decided that there was no point in holding his cloak this time and simply warped for the sun. Whether it was surprise or not the Caracal entered warp and he was almost free.

However, Starwalker did not hang around and warped to a random planet just as the three gang members arrived at the sun. The chase was on but Starwalker was confident that he could get away and he warped from there to an out gate just as the three arrived again at the planet. Starwalker gave a confident wave and smile and left system.

Whilst Starwalker escaped that gate camp his Drake was destroyed in Syndicate by another gate camp, split over the gate, when he was doing a security ratting run. Kaeda Maxwell was right - it was much simpler and easier to simply kill one battleship in system and move on. Despite that, Starwalker had lost enthusiasm for ratting his security status up or perhaps the right word was too lazy.