One of those days
01 Jan 2016James Hussar
So, yesterday was exciting. After a few weeks of running around in an Asp, feeling like I just couldn't pull together credits at a fast enough rate, I decided to spring for a Vulture and to fully deck it out into a killing machine. And it is. Almost too much so, it turns out. I am thoroughly impressed with how quickly this thing can chew up a small with the two large gimballed beam lasers - Eagles and Sidewinders are typically gone in a single pass. One capacitor and they're toast. Cobras and Vipers fall over after three to four passes and I can take on a wing of them without even losing shields. FDLs, Clippers and even Pythons are a lot less threatening in the Vulture than in the Asp Explorer. Targeting their reactors seems to the the best way to make quick work of them. They still manage to grind down my shields, unlike just about everyone else, but with a good reactor, a few boosts away and keeping distance while the shields regen is all that's needed. And that's the problem, this ship is so good it made me careless. As I was marauding in a RES, looking for spoils and getting familiar with the Vulture, I got jumped by a Viper, or maybe it was a DBX. He shot me, I targeted him, flipped around and unloaded on him. I jerked my finger off the trigger as soon as I saw the 400 CR bounty warning flash on my screen, and started to boost away, as one does, before the swarm of Police took notice. But, it was too late. I was a few clicks away already when the 6,000 CR bounty for murder flashed on the HUD. Dammit! He shot first! Why did he do that? Why did that not register?!
So, here I am, WANTED in CD-34 9020 - for a week - and it just so happens that this is where I left my Asp. Now that I've got the Vulture, I was looking to redress the Asp into a proper explorer, but now that might have to wait a week while the bounty times out and converts into a fine. It's almost worth it to buy a Sidewinder, just so I can get blown to bits to clear the bounty - I can make back the cost of a burner Sidewinder in 10 minutes, in a combat zone.
Or so I thought - cocky, yet again; pride goeth before the fall.
I spent a few hours, HOURS, in a CZ in Diso. Racked up a few million in bonds. And then ran into an Anaconda. And when I say "ran into it", that's exactly what happened. He had me stripped of shields, as I had him. I had his reactor down to maybe 10% so it would not be a long fight, but his hull was still in good shape. My hull had taken a pounding already, I was somewhere in the 60% integrity range and this was going to be the last big kill of the night. Then he opened up on me with frag cannons, at close range. It was going to be brutal - so I turned and burned, and he did the same - we boosted into each other and that was all she wrote.
I woke up in the infirmary on Bao Station, "Eject! Eject!" still ringing in my ears. A few million in combat bonds, gone. A few more million in bounties across several systems, half a mill in Empire, three quarters in Federation space, gone. Several hundred thousand credits in exploration data, lost. And 1.2 MCR in insurance to top it off.
So, lesson learned there - just because I'm in a potent death machine, does not make me death-proof. Now off to clear that bounty.
Supplemental: Looks like getting shot down in a Sidewinder didn't clear the bounty on my head. That's, well, that's just disappointing.