My heart's beating, my hands are shaking!

An alert from my high sec contact woke me. Seems I had slept through a few episodes of my CONCORD marathon. Checked the mail and my shipment had arrived. Made my way down to the hangar to help the workers unload everything and set it up.

Few hours later, I stood back sipping Quafe, admiring the Wolf standing in front of me (insert Wolf photo). Can't wait to take you out for a ride! Soon! I slammed down the last of the Quafe (this stuff is awesome) and entered my Rifter.



Decided to head back to Gultratren via the "pipe" chain shortcut connecting the two constellations of Metropolis. I entered Gulmogorod and checked D-Scan and saw an unnamed Venture out in space. Why not? Now people may disagree with me, but nothing makes me feel like a pirate than killing a miner. I narrow him down to a nearby cluster, and shorten my range to 1 AU and begin scanning each belt. Now I know Ventures have an extra warp strength in their hull so 1 point won't do it, but I figure I can do enough damage to explode it before it warps off. I load Phased Plasma because I don't want to waste the good ammo, and land in the belt. Don't find a Venture, but man those asteroids are beautiful aren't they?



Oh Venture where art thou? 



I scan a couple more belts and  find him again. This time he's there, and does not get away.
Brave Low Sec Miner

Loaded the Miner II laser into my cargo hold as the asteroid debris was drifting into my Rifter. As I land on the out gate I see the same pilot out in space in a Firetail. Looks like someone wants revenge?? It was too late to stop the ship and I jump into the next system. I burn back to the gate and jump back into Gulmo. The Firetail is gone, but I see an unnamed Mammoth (belongs to him!) and a Condor on scan. I search for the Condor and scan him down to a plex but he's gone before I arrive. The Condor leaves the system, but the Mammoth is still on scan *evil smile* He's towards a planet with one belt, so I hit the Customs Office thinking he's doing some PI stuff. Exit warp and he's not there. No he can't be at a belt. No way! I land in the belt and through the debris I spot the Mammoth alone and unafraid. I burn towards it, scram and web and let the guns loose. The Mammoth begins to align, so I ram my Rifter right into it. After a few seconds, the Mammoth joins the debris in the asteroid. Along with his pod.

Really Brave Low Sec Pilot
And his pod.

Wreck was empty, I don't know what the guy's plan was but hey! Any explosion is a good explosion! I continue on and check out the rest of the triangle (Bosbogger, Lulm, and Gulmo). I enter Lulm and spot the Condor I was after earlier. First I have him towards a cluster of belts so I warp to one of the belts while scanning the other ones. It seems I miss him just as I land. The chase throughout the belts goes on for a bit, until the Condor lands on a small mission plex. As I warp I load EMP n Mjolnir rockets and overload everything and the Condor is sitting right there in the warp in. I spam target lock and fire away. He didn't return fire until he was in structure, and I didn't have to use any of my nanite paste which is always a win in itself. One of his volleys took out 3/4's of my shield so I can only imagine how close it would've been if he had fired sooner. Too little too late. I spam target lock on his pod and boom! As I'm sweeping the loot, and the corpse to add to my Crypt, I see a Rifter on short scan. Low shield, full cycle of nanite, smoldering guns, and it's a Rifter ... let's do this!

I overheat my scram and web but decide to wait to overheat my guns. He warps in about 20km away and I burn towards him. As I lock him I see he already has some damage in his armor. The barrels of my autocannons are spinning with eagerness, my rocket launcher waiting to go. He heads towards me as well with haste. This is gonna be a nice brawl. We enter each other's range and in an instant we scram and web each other, simultaneously exchanging volleys of projectiles and rockets. I immediately take a nice chunk of damage to my armor and activate the repper as his shield falls to 3/4's of it's strength. I fight off the urge to overheat my guns and wait for the right moment. I fall into half armor but my repper is keeping me in the fight as I bring him into armor. My armor does the back n forth dance of taking damage and repping, each time getting closer and closer to hull. The firefight continues with both of us holding a tight orbit and firing away. It was glorious. His Rifter enters hull first with mine right behind him. Overheat! His hull fills up with more damage as my guns hammer away. I enter structure but have a couple more reps of nanite that bring me to low armor but he relentlessly attacks. Now it's just my nanite-less repper trying to keep the ship together as it enters hull and takes damage. I got him, I got him, don't evade! With both of us in half hull, the Rifter took one last big volley. Woooo! R1FTA VICTOR! I exchange gf's as he warps off, loot 'n scoot.

Smoking Rifter Best Rifter.

Man my heart was racing at the end of that one, love close fights win or lose. The final few systems to Gultratren were uneventful, and I docked up, restocked my Rifter with ammo and nanite paste, leaned up against the handrail overlooking my Rifter, cracked open a Quafe and lit a smoke. Beautiful.