Bizness as usual

After logging in Thursday evening, I spied Biz Quick in my home system looking for a fight. In a region as small as Molden Heath, it's little wonder that pirates such as ourselves run into each other frequently when roaming: it isn't difficult to cover the entire lowsec of the region in less than an hour. He was flying a Sacrilege HAC, and as his roam had been bone dry up until finding me, he asked for a 1v1.

Engaging a Sacrilege is a tricky proposition for even the deadliest of ships: it's fast, deals decent damage with Heavy Assault Missiles, and is capable of sustaining a tremendous armor tank. Not wanting to ruin the small tradition of lopsided engagements we've had in the past, I took out my Harbinger to oblige him. I had fit a Warp Scrambler to keep him close, and an Afterburner to mitigate missile damage. Other than that, it was my vanilla Harbinger fit.

We warped to a safe, and the fireworks commenced on contact. My hope was to overwhelm his tank immediately, resting all my faith in the massive damage potential of my battlecruiser versus the EM and THM holes of my opponent's cruiser. I was able to evaporate his shields and burn through half his armor in two volleys before his tank stabilized and matched my DPS. Without any form of EWAR it was only a matter of Biz bleeding my ship's buffer before I exploded.

Perhaps he wanted to acknowledge my sportsmanship, or maybe he just wanted to save me the trouble of fitting another ship, but regardless Biz deactivated his missile launchers when I reached hull, and allowed me to nurse my battered ship in a station. Some light banter about fits passed between pilots, and a short time later we were roaming lowsec together looking for a fight. I had traded ships in station for a Devoter HIC, and was quite smug with the sexiness of two pirates cruising around in T2 Maller hulls.

Roughly an hour of roaming yielded little in the way of targets. In fact, it seems the two of us together begets nothing but trouble for ourselves, and we were forced out of several systems by large groups of pilots with large(r) cannon and an intent to kill. I suggested we try Great Wildlands, and he agreed as our combined luck in lowsec had been poor that day.

Once in Egbinger, I swapped ships for a Broadsword, and we hit B-VIP looking for ganks. A lucky drake evaded us there, and moving deeper into nullsec, we decided to grace L1S-G1 with our presence. Biz scouted the system, and balked at the dozen pilots staring at him from local.

It took quick convincing and jumping into system personally to start him scanning out ratters, and we mutually spotted a Harbinger in a belt. With a 1600mm plate, the battlecruiser was incapable of aligning out in time, and extinguished under a hail of Barrage and Rage HAMs. Biz informed me he had to AFK shortly after the kill and safed up in system. I continued to patrol the L1S-G1, and kept eyes on SL-YBS with an alt scout.

Allies of the Harbinger pilot weren't long in organizing a small gang to oust me from L1S-G1. Aside from a blob of battlecruisers and a Tempest battleship, they had scrounged up two Rifters with warp scramblers. The frigates ironically were the greatest danger to Biz and myself, as if they caught us off a gate or at a celestial, there was little we could do to the agile ships as their larger counterparts moved in for the kill. I had managed to string out the hostile gang in UNJ-GX by the time Biz returned from his AFK, however trouble was brewing in our route home. My alt scout in SL-YBS was reporting massive gate activations. Foundati0n was coming.

It was a few seconds in explaining the situation to my companion, and we were soon making haste away from L1S-G1, back up the pipe towards B-VIP. While scouting B-VIP, Biz came upon the Drake we had passed up earlier in a belt. He manages a tackle, and the ratting battlecruiser lights up in sapphire flame under our combined firepower. The Drake destroyed, we warp to the gate and jump out into Egbinger, back into lowsec.

With two kills under our belts and another two dozen angry pilots evaded, we decided to call it a night.