Titan’s Lament (Video Parody)

The long awaited music video is finally here! Don’t worry, I’m sure I will get back to writing soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this parody video produced by the excellent Pietro Vitale.

Titan’s Lament (Recording!)

Perhaps some of you remember Titan’s Lament. Well please now enjoy this recording voiced by the generous Pietro Vitale.

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Please only use with permission.

A Daring New Fit

Cara was in Black Rise again, looking for targets. Over the last few weeks she had received several nasty form letters from CONCORD, advising her to stop shooting the locals, but she wasn’t about to heel to those pretentious phonies.

Jumping through the stargate, she entered Reitsato to find Aaril from Aideron Robotics in system. Hoping to entice her into a fight, Cara warped her trusty Breacher to one of the military complexes in the system. Upon exiting warp she activated the acceleration gate, throwing her ship forward into a quiet piece of space, occupied by a single Gallente Federation frigate doing it’s rounds. Scanning her ship ID, it determined she wasn’t a Caldari supporter and left her alone.

Noticing her Breacher in system, Aaril broadcasted a message, telling Cara she wasn’t in a combat ship and didn’t intend to fight anyone. Noticing the Helios on scan, Cara could see why. Ah well. Sometimes you have to make ISK if you want to be a combat pilot.

She was in the midst of typing a reply for the computer to encrypt and broadcast when a Daredevil suddenly dropped out of warp right next to her ship. Curse her slow typing skills! She had been distracted and did not notice the warning alarms her directional scanner was making.

Hurriedly dashing across the cockpit to the controls, she gunned the afterburner and started heading toward the ship, releasing her hobgoblins and activating her rocket launchers as she went. The Daredevil was already tearing into her shields with it’s railguns. Fortunately, your typical Breacher was designed to take a bit of a beating.

This was not a typical Breacher, however. Cara had a few tricks up her sleeve, and was just hoping it would be enough to save her from the expensive Serpentis spaceship laying into her shields. Unfortunately, she wasn’t making any headway toward the Daredevil and its railguns were having no problem tracking her ship at 5 km distance. Already she had used several of the booster charges in the ancillary shield booster module, while her rockets were doing rather meager damage to the Daredevil.

Time for the surprise. Activating her energy neutralizer, she dangerously overloaded the afterburner to push a bit more speed out of the ship. Despite the Daredevil’s incredibly powerful stasis webifier, she managed to pull within 3 km, then 2.5 km. Starting to orbit, the railguns finally started to show signs of imperfect tracking, occasionally missing her ship completely. Checking her shield booster, she found only two charges left.

They were quickly used up. The Daredevil managed to land two powerful hits that wiped out the rest of her shields and penetrated the Breacher’s armor. It wasn’t looking good for her ship. However, just then a bell sounded, indicating her warp drive system had come back online – the Daredevil must have deactivated its warp scrambler. This was her chance to escape.

Aligning to a distant planet, she prepared to warp, but suddenly realized an eerie silence had fallen over her ship. It had been shuddering and twisting in orbit as the rounds of antimatter crashed into it, but now, nothing. The Daredevil had stopped firing.

Then it hit her. Its capacitor had run dry. That’s why it had deactivated its warp scrambler, and its hybrid turrets could not function without power. It was now just drifting, unable to run its afterburner or stasis webifier to control its range.

Quickly pulling her ship back into orbit she refocused her weapons on the Daredevil and watched its armor quickly disintegrate without the ability to repair itself. Her rockets began to pound through the hull itself and finally, it exploded.

Daredevil Kill

The capsule warped off as soon as the ship blew, but Cara was too excited to care. Approaching the wreck she found an assortment of extremely valuable items which would fetch a wonderful price in Dodixie. Looting everything she could carry, she said goodbye to Aaril and set a course for the market.

On the way home she assessed the damages to her ship. Many of the modules were still hot to the touch, and some had melted around the edges. Upon checking her rocket launchers, she came to a startling realization. One of them was still fully loaded, indicating that her weapon control system had malfunctioned and fired only a single launcher during the fight. No wonder her damage application had been poor.

Oh well. She had still come out on top. No one expects a neut Breacher.

Pietro Saves the Day

Pietro was not a skilled combat pilot like the Forelli cousins. Since his early days at the academy he had idolized them. Cara was several years older, and to Pietro’s knowledge, unaware of his existence. Yooch had always been kinder, answering his countless questions as a fresh young capsuleer in training. They still kept in touch, though Yooch was a hard man to reach, with his penchant for exploring the unknown. Cara though, had just joined Green Skull LLC. Pietro couldn’t believe his ears when he heard the news. Cara Forelli, leading combat operations in his humble corporation. He was determined to catch her attention.

He was floating inside the forcefield, processing applications, when the first reports of war targets reached him. They had been sighted a few systems away. Scanning the corporation activity log he saw a mining operation taking place in that system. Well, they knew the risks of mining during a war. Scanning the list of ships involved he didn’t see anything too expensive, and the evacuation order had been made.

Then on comms: “The Orca has been tackled. I repeat, the Orca is warp disrupted”.

Orca? Fury flared in him. He had been very specific. There would be no Orcas at the mining sites during the war. Nevertheless he gunned his engine and aligned his blackbird toward the gate. A few mining barges were one thing, but that Orca was like a giant beached whale, probably costing more than it’s volume in ISK. They were going to need all hands on deck.

As he raced through the systems more details trickled through comms. It seemed the aggressors had a Federation Navy Comet, a Dramiel, and an Astero. Checking his systems, he had equipped two magnetometric jammers, one gravimetric jammer, and a LADAR jammer. It was a decent spread and it would have to do; there was no time to refit his ship.

The first system he passed through had been camped by pirates all morning. They were nowhere to be seen, but the wreckage surrounding the gates hinted that they were quite successful. Jumping into the next system, he asked for a status update; the Orca was taking heavy fire which was beginning to pierce its armor plating. He was just one system out now. Maybe, just maybe, he would make it there in time.

Under Pietro’s instruction Willie warped a Griffin to the asteroid belt in an attempt to slow down the attackers. Taking advantage of its short range, the enemy frigates quickly reduced it to space dust with their small swarm of drones. However, it had bought Pietro time to arrive, and he instructed his ship to warp at range to the Orca. Landing 50 kilometers away from it, he immediately began targeting each of the enemy ships.

All three ships were jamming the Orca’s warp drive. Pietro had just four sensor jammers. He activated the first magnetometric sensor jammer on the Comet and it failed. A nervous sweat breaking out, he activated the backup jamming system and successfully broke the Comet’s target lock.

Announcing his success on comms, he looked up in time to see a large chunk of the Orca break off and ricochet from a nearby asteroid. It was still operational, but taking heavy structure damage. Quickly returning his attention to the computer, Pietro activated his LADAR jammer on the Dramiel. It succeeded as well. Two down, one to go….

The Astero was a unique ship. It used a magnetometric sensor like Comet. Unfortunately, it had taken both of his magnetometric jammers to break the Comet’s lock. Pietro activated his only remaining jammer, which was designed for gravimetric systems, and prayed for a lucky cross-jam.

Success! He couldn’t believe it; all three enemy ships were jammed, but the jammer cycles would soon need to renew. He screamed into the microphone at the Orca pilot to enter warp. Just as the magnetometric jammer renewed its cycle and failed to jam the Comet, he saw the Orca slip away into the void. Cheers arose on comms when the announcement was made.

He was still a little giddy, but snapped out of it very quickly. Now three very angry frigate pilots were bearing down on him. The Dramiel arrived first of course, quickly followed by a horde of warrior drones controlled by the Astero. The LADAR system had failed to jam the Dramiel on this cycle and Pietro quickly found himself warp scrambled. His shields sparked and hissed as the warriors arrived and encircled his ship like flies on a rotten Fedo.

He activated his missile launchers, ripping into the shields of the Dramiel, but knowing it would not save him. He deactivated all the jamming systems on the Comet, which was still far away, and used them instead on the Dramiel, but failed to jam its LADAR targeting system with the magnetometric jammers.

As the last of his armor was blasted off the LADAR jammer recycled and succeeded in breaking the Dramiel’s lock. Suddenly finding himself able to warp, Pietro yanked the throttle and bashed through the warriors, leaving them scattered in his wake as his ship warped to a nearby customs office.

Checking his system integrity, the computer reported the hull to be about 30% intact. He bounced from planet to planet as he ran about the cockpit dousing fires, finally setting a course for the station where he could repair his ship.

Docking in the ship bay, cheers arose as he stepped from his ship. Everyone had been watching the fight on the system surveillance monitors and rushed to carry him back to the barracks for a well deserved drink. Finally shaking off his comrades, Pietro located Valhe and casually asked where Cara was during the fight.

She was asleep, resting up for the evenings’ combat roam. Wow.

Don’t take out the Orca I said,
But you decided to use it instead.
I know mining’s a bore,
But we are at war.
You’re lucky your ship isn’t dead.

Justice and the Whale

Yooch had been scanning for hours. He had mapped out several wormhole chains, carefully scanning each system and saving the location of any wormhole he found. It was fruitless. Each system was emptier than the last; each deserted starbase mocked his efforts.

Starting yet again from high security space, Yooch entered the unknown once more, feeling he would soon need to give up and get some rest. Indeed the new chain of systems was completely devoid of life. He had just one more wormhole to investigate. Warping to it he entered and almost hoped to find it empty so he could call it a night.

Strange, a few screens on his locator systems had lit up. Upon closer inspection it seemed he already had recorded wormhole locations in this sector. He must have traveled through a new wormhole into one of his older system chains. In fact he recognized the bright pulsing star in the system. He hadn’t been here since the morning.

Well this would save any more scanning at least. He began to travel from system to system, using the locations he had recorded hours earlier. As he entered one of the old class 2 systems a soft alarm rang on his directional scanner. Resolving the signal, he determined an Orca class industrial ship was within a few AU of his bomber.

An Orca wasn’t a threat. They rarely engaged in combat. However Yooch would need to see it’s cargo to determine if it was engaging in any illegal activites. He checked his system map again. Aside from the one his ship was floating next to, he had only bookmarked two other wormholes in the system. His logs indicated that one of them led to high-security space and the other to a class 4 deep-space system. Making a quick judement, Yooch warped to the latter under cover of his cloaking device. If the Orca was headed to high-sec he wouldn’t be able to screen it anyway. His views on justice were not always shared by CONCORD.

He wouldn’t have to worry about that, however. As he landed near the wormhole the Orca glided into view. It was enormous. Yooch knew that though it wasn’t a combat ship it was capable of fielding a formidable flight of drones. Formidable against his fragile ship at least. Still, justice needed to be enforced.

As the Orca entered the wormhole, Yooch decloaked and followed it through. It sat unmoving on the other side, unaware of his presence. Yooch quickly rectified that, in the form of a warp jamming signal and a volley of torpedos, custom designed by the Caldari Navy to maximize explosion intensity. Aware of his presence now, the Orca began to turn; the giant ship spun surprisingly fast and reentered the wormhole.

Guiltless capsuleers don’t run, so Yooch knew something was amiss. He immediately followed the Orca through the hole once more, knowing neither ship would be able to return until the polarity of their shields had dissipated. On the other side of the portal he jammed the Orca again, steeling himself for the torrent of drones that was sure to descend upon him at any moment.

Instead, he received a radio transmission. The Orca pilot wanted a ransom. How strange; he must not have had any drones. Yooch replied in kind with an offer: five hundred million interstellar kredits and a mandatory ship screening. Meanwhile his torpedos tore into the Orca’s shields, causing them to quiver and spark rapidly.

The pilot didn’t have five hundred million interstellar kredits. He wanted to contract an item to Yooch instead, in exchange for safe passage. Yooch considered the offer, but only briefly. He had already spent too long shooting at the ship. Soon it would be able to reenter the wormhole, and it may have contacted other pilots. Yooch wasn’t about to have anyone deter justice.

Orca Kill

He checked the wreck for contraband, but it only contained tritanium. That happens sometimes, and it was unfortunate. But if you act like a criminal, people will treat you like a criminal. You can’t have little things like doubt obstructing justice.

He let the Orca pilot leave in his capsule and wished him well. Soon he received a transmission that turned out to be from the same capsuleer. They chatted for a while and the Orca pilot wired Yooch 50 million ISK for helping to enforce space justice. It was nice to get some gratitude, and it turned out he was a nice guy. Yooch docked up in the station and got some much needed rest, content with his day’s work.

You took it quite well, I must say,
Though twasn’t for you the best day.
So thanks for the ISK,
With the next ship you risk,
Remember the drones in your bay.

Ensign Yooch Springs a Trap

It was his first solo roam since joining Sky Syndicate. Yooch hadn’t scanned much of late and was feeling rusty. However it felt good to get out on his own in search of miscreants and he quickly slipped back into his old routine, carefully scanning down and bookmarking the location of wormhole after wormhole before investigating the unknown systems to which they led.

A few hours in, he discovered a control tower in a class 4 system, surrounded by an impenetrable forcefield. It was heavily defended by enormous laser turrets and signal jamming batteries. Floating inside, a Prowler was moving about between laboratories. Upon closer inspection, Yooch could see several drug silos. He had stumbled upon an illegal production facitily, nestled in the deep unknown.

Knowing that the system was connected via wormhole to a class 2 system which in turn had a route to high-security space, Yooch assumed the Prowler pilot would take advantage of the opportunity to hawk his wares, and set about creating tactical bookmarks. Staking out the forcefield from a distance, Yooch watched the prowler go about his business. It would be difficult to catch a Prowler with his Nemesis, but he had to try. There was no telling what hands the drugs would fall into if he was allowed to reach high-security space.

Sure enough, the Prowler soon aligned toward the wormhole and began to accelerate. Already pre-aligned, Yooch put his ship into warp, landing just off the wormhole. He watched under the cover of his ships cloaking device as the Prowler suddenly appeared and entered the wormhole. Decloaking immediately, Yooch followed him through the portal.

A few seconds later his ship was ejected from the dark tunnel into the class 2 system. He immediately decloaked his ship as the Prowler appeared in front of him and locked onto it. The Prowler seemed to be unabled to activate his cloaking device. Perhaps the nearby wormhole was interfering with his electronic systems, or maybe he was just panicking.

Or maybe he knew it would make no difference. Yooch immediately activated his warp disruption system when the computer had finished locking onto the Prowler, but it slipped away in to darkness. It must have had reinforced systems to stabilize its warp core. Yooch cursed loudly and reactivated his cloaking device.

Now what? It was pointless to chase the Prowler, and likely it had alerted its corporation to the hostile attempt. Yooch turned his ship around and headed back for the wormhole. He needed to get back to the forcefield and get some intel before they could respond in force.

Upon exiting the portal, he immediately cloaked his ship again and burned away from the cosmic anomaly. Seconds later a Heretic pulled out of warp nearby and entered the wormhole. Yooch watched it disappear and whispered silent thanks to Bob; he had just barely evaded its notice.

Next his ship sensors caught an Oracle on scan. Presently it appeared nearby, slowly pulling out of warp some distance from the wormhole. Yooch was shocked when it suddenly disappeared from his scanner without warning. He rushed to the window but could not see anything in the dark void. A cloaking device on an Orcale? This was very strange.

Hoping to get a better vantage point, Yooch returned to the forcefield and checked his scanner, but no other ships were anywhere to be seen. Warping back to the wormhole he landed at range from it, near to where the Oracle had disappeared. If the Prowler returned immediately after depositing goods in high-sec, he would not have to wait long.

Sure enough, less than a quarter hour passed before the Heretic reappeared. Yooch assumed the Prowler would follow shortly and prepped his systems for combat. Presently the Heretic launched a giant warp disruption sphere which encompassed the entire wormhole as well as space around it. Anyone ship caught in that would have its warp core completely jammed out. Yooch was well outside the bubble, but watched carefully.

The Heretic pilot must have assumed Yooch was still in the class 2 system, because after launching the disruption sphere he immediately rentered the wormhole, presumable to apply the same treatment on the other side. For a brief moment all was quiet. Then the Oracle decloaked.

Yooch laughed out loud. The Oracle was a good 15 kilometers away from the wormhole and a bit further from Yooch himself. The warp disruption sphere surrounded him completely, making him a sitting target. Yooch immediately decloaked his Nemesis and fired up all his systems, painting a target on the large battlecruiser and unleashing a volley of torpedos. The Oracle pilot was surely panicking now, but he would receive no assistance. The Heretic had recently passed through the wormhole twice and it would be several minutes before his shield polarity disappated enough to allow another trip.

It only took four vollies to destroy the Oracle. Its pilot had reached the edge of the warp disruption field, but Yooch quickly closed the space between them and activated his own warp disruptor, easily avoiding damage from its large laser turrets.The pilot escaped in his pod as Yooch chuckled over the sensor boosters he could see floating among the flaming wreck.

Oracle Kill

Yooch recloaked his ship and disappeared among the stars. He was sure the Heretic would continue to camp the wormhole entrance but he wasn’t concerned. Enforcing space justice had instilled in him many times the patience of a normal man. Let them try to smuggle drugs without a security detail again. He would be ready.

Your cloaking will come at a price,
Your ship shouldn’t fit that device.
Inside your own bubble,
You’re headed for trouble,
You cannot have things which are nice.

Titan’s Lament

This was a Titan,
I’m making a note here, huge success.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

Nullsec Alliance
We drop what we must,
because we can.
For the good of all of us,
Except the ones in the dreads.

But there’s no sense crying over ever deep safe.
You just keep on flying till you run out of Quafe.
And timers get done,
And you loot a neat gun,
For the people who are still alive.

I’m not even angry.
I’m being so, sincere, right now.
Even through, you broke my reps, and killed me.
And salvaged the pieces.
And blew up the slaves, inside, my pod.
As I cloned, it hurt because, I was so happy for you.

Now these Titan bridges make a beautiful line,
And we’re out of Provi
We’re retreating on time.
So I’m glad I got shot,
Think of all the things you bought,
For the people who are still alive.

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer, to stay, docked up.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Legion.
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this Quafe is great.
It’s so delicious and moist.

Look at me still spinning
when there’s combat to do.
When I look out there, it makes me wish I was you.
I’ve a coffin to refund,
There’s logistics to be done.
For the people who are still alive.

And believe me I am still alive.
I’m in hiding and I’m still alive.
When you’re fighting I’ll be still alive.
And when you’ve fled I will be still alive.
Still alive,
Still alive.

He Promised A Carrier Kill

It all began a week earlier as he wandered the depths of unknown space in his trusty stealth bomber Classy Party VII. He was light years away from civilization and cut off from his new corporation, but Yooch didn’t mind. It was Cara that thrived on all that. She loved bossing around fleet members and bragging about her combat record. Yooch didn’t need to be in the spotlight. He would rather shine it on the darkest corners of space to discover what lurked there…

This time it was a Drake. Actually a pair of Drakes. Yooch had discovered them in the process of assaulting a sleeper compound. They weren’t fairing well. A steady barrage of missiles rained down on the two battlecruisers and their shields crackled ominously. Yooch approached slowly under the cover of his cloak, wondering if he should engage. He had taken down a single Drake before, but two might be a challenge.

His deliberation was interrupted when one of the pilots suddenly activated his warp drive and disappeared from sight. The second was quick to follow. Intrigued, Yooch followed their signatures back to the force-field where their ships were stored. One of the pilots had switched in to a Raven, and both were accelerating into warp again. Apparently the Drake wasn’t strong enough to take on the sleeper drones and the pilot was hoping a battleship would fair better.

Yooch followed them back to the compound and began to creep forward again. He wasn’t really sure what to do about the battleship, but maybe he would be able to destroy the Drake before the Raven was able to lock onto his ship’s signature. However, it wasn’t long before they both aligned and activated their warp drives, disappearing once more into the vacuum. How peculiar.

He was sure they would return, and waited at the edge of the compound. Sure enough the Drake reappeared on his directional scan within a few minutes, accompanied by….a Chimera!

A Chimera? For this little compound? This was a blatant breach of the articles of the Yulai Convention concerning “excessive force”. Yooch immediately drafted an urgent memo alerting Rall and Storm to the violation. However, in the time it took for the light-distance broadcast to transmit the Chimera obliterated the compound and returned to safety behind the force-field.

Yooch wasn’t about to let it lie. This Chimera needed to die.

For the next several days he scanned the system every few hours, bookmarking the location of every anomaly his electronics could locate. He reprogrammed his ship’s signature each day to remain inconspicuous. Many unstable wormholes appeared and collapsed, occasionally bringing company with them. Yooch let nothing distract him from the goal, however. He needed to know exactly where the Chimera would appear next, and he needed to have backup ready when the time came.

Between scouting and surveying the system, Yooch contacted several groups to enlist their help. His own corp-mates from End-of-Line promised their assistance should the Chimera reappear. Several of his old Darkstorm colleagues were readily available as well and promised to bring members of their new corps, Anomalous Existence and Empire Wars.

Using discrete wireless queries, Yooch was able to collect quite a bit of information on the Chimera pilot and his cohorts. They were part of the corporation Sons and Daughters of Mandalore, and as the days passed Yooch was able to identify several unique pilots. Watching their actions, he almost felt he knew them personally.

There was:

Gabriel Thanduil – An expert industrialist. He manages colonies on all the planets in the system. Although he doesn’t enjoy combat, he owns a Deimos and isn’t afraid to defend himself.

Misty Shadows – She’s the backbone of corporate intel. Fearlessly scouting the system every day in a Magnate she collects bookmarks and directs corporate operations. A few of her quirks include scanning in a Noctis and attempting to combat probe cloaked ships.

Cassuz Fett – His heart is in the right place, but he has a lot to learn. He follows Misty and Spacemarine in a Drake and imitates their actions carefully.

Spacemarine7212 Estemaire – The financial backer and director of the corporation, he flies the monolithic Chimera. The other corp members follow his direction without question.

On the seventh day, Yooch waited patiently outside the force-field as the Sons and Daughters of Mandalore readied their fleet. There had been many false alarms over the week, but he remained as alert as possible as two of their pilots boarded Tengus. Suddenly, Spacemarine warped into the force-field and boarded the Chimera.

Screaming into the microphone, Yooch broadcasted alerts to each of the reserve fleets. Bert7 responded quickly, bringing a Phobos to a nearby high-secuirty system. Gunner GzR and Anomalous Existence arrived soon after with a small armada. Trying to direct End-of-Line and communicate with the other corporations, Yooch employed excellent multitasking skills and located the Chimera. He had moved to another sleeper compound and was tearing through it with the support of the two Tengus.

As the fleet moved in to position, the last drone structure disintegrated in to dust. Yooch called for the Phobos to enter the system as he warped close to the Chimera. Just then the Tengus warped off grid and the Chimera slowly swung around and began to accelerate. Afraid that it would enter warp before the Phobos could jam it, Yooch decloaked his Nemesis and immediately jammed the giant ship. He orbited as fast possible and held the point until the Phobos appeared. The carrier’s drones were ripping through the last of his shields as Yooch finally pulled the bomber into warp and left the scene.

Turning the fleet over to Gunner GzR, Yooch warped back to the entrance wormhole to direct the rest of the fleet’s entrance. Cara passed him there on her way to the battle in a neuting Legion.

As the last members of End-of-Line reached the system, the Chimera was taking heavy damage. The excellent guardian pilots from NOMEX had ensured that it’s fighter drones were not able to destroy any friendly ships. Yooch was able to warp back to the field in time to see the hull of the giant ship catch fire before it exploded, spraying debris tens of kilometers in every direction.

Chimera Kill (Pod)

The fleets congratulated each other on punishing the breach of public policy and returned to high security space. Yooch docked up in the nearest station and took a much-needed shower while he though about where to head next. There was a bright future ahead of him in this corp – but for Spacemarine – this was the End-Of-The-Line.

—————————————

*Some artistic license employed

Ensign ‘The Bard’ Yooch (meta 1)

So we all know I don’t have much of a way with words, but I recently joined an Eve poetry parody contest. We’ll see if I get disqualified or not for my “poem”. Here’s my submission:

 

I want to have, max skill points,
Like no one ever has,
To queue them is my real test,
To train them is my cause.

I will jump across null-sec,
Searching far and wide,
For a freighter, that we can gank,
And blow up from inside

EVE Mon, it’s you and me.
You show me my destiny!
EVE Mon, oh, you’re my best friend,
In a POS we can’t defend!

EVE Mon, apart from you,
EFT will pull us through!
You shoot me and I’ll shoot you
E-V-E Mon, gotta skill ’em all!

Every wormhole, along the chain
With cov-ops, I will face.
Yes scanning, is such a pain,
But it puts you in your place.

Warp to me, the time is right;
There’s no better fleet.
Remote reps up, we’ll win the fight
We’ve always been e-l33t!

EVE Mon!

It’s you and me.
You show me my destiny!

EVE Mon!

Oh, you’re my best friend,
In a POS we can’t defend!

EVE Mon!

Apart from you,
EFT will pull us through!
You shoot me and I’ll shoot you,

E-V-E MON!

Gotta skill ’em all,

EVE MON!

Yooch Brings Home The (Deadspace) Bacon

Ensign Yooch drifted idly. He had spent the last few hours scanning out wormhole systems, looking for a connection to high-security space. Darkstorm Corporation had businesses to attend to in null-security and needed a reliable route to the market in Amarr. It had been quite a lot of work to find one and the route took them through several class 5 systems with signs of recent activity.

However, there was no activity now. The only ship he had encountered was a Heron sitting inside a force field,  scanning cosmic signatures with combat scan probes. Why people would ever do that was beyond him; combat probes were so inefficient compared to the specialized core probes distributed by the Sisters of Eve.

The Heron was long gone though, and Yooch decided to warp through the system chain and check the wormhole connections for stability. Each one he passed through was empty, the directional scan on his Nemesis registering only space debris.

When he reached the last system, however, his directional scanner lit up like a  small bomb, flashing and blaring warnings. Hurriedly cloaking his ship, he stared dumbfounded at the screen. A Golem? He quickly warped to the force field where the Heron had been earlier, but it was empty. Perhaps it was at the wormhole connection to high-security space? He checked it as well, but no marauder was present.

He had heard of these ships, but never seen one outside a force field in unknown space before. He knew exactly what they were used for though – destroying ancient sleeper drones and salvaging their wrecks to recover ancient technologies, which could then be sold to the highest bidder. These profiteers didn’t care who the buyer was. They might even sell it to the Minmatar militia. Yooch shuddered at the thought of those trashy slaves using ancient secrets to annihilate upstanding capsuleers…

Clearly the Golem had to be stopped. Yooch fired up comms and started yelling orders at his superiors. They had been napping in the barracks, but came quickly came alive at the word Golem, even choosing to ignore his impertinence as they rushed to their ships. They were several systems away though, and would take some time to arrive. In the meantime, Yooch pinpointed the target. Sure enough, he was battling a swarm of sleeper drones and dragging their wrecks behind him with giant tractor beams.

As Yooch slipped nearer under his cloak he had to be very careful to avoid the horde of sleepers and hobgoblins zooming around at high speed. Any stray drone would decloak him by proximity and reveal him to the marauder. More waves of sleeper drones warped in and engaged the Golem as the team assembled in a nearby class 5 system. Yooch carefully checked his systems and got ready to decloak as he inched within 9 km of the monstrous ship. Curiously, the Golem launched some cheap core probes and started scanning. Did no one understand how much better the Sisters of Eve variety were?

With his backup in place, Yooch switched off his cloaking device and turned on everything else, activating two warp scramblers on the Golem and nailing it with a volley of torpedos. He knew that he would have about half a minute before the marauder was able to lock on to his small ship, which was plenty of time for his corp-mates to arrive. Unfortunately, the sleeper drones responded much faster. Sensing easy prey, they immediately locked on to his Nemesis and began firing.

Yooch held his ground, despite the huge damage inflicted on his shields and armor. He needed to keep the warp scrambler on the Golem until his team arrived. Just then however, he was blasted backward as the marauder activated it’s bastion module, going in to defensive mode. His scramblers were deactivated as heavy interference blared from the giant ship and made it impossible for them to function.

His corp-mates had arrived, but Yooch was still taking heavy fire from the sleeper drones. Realizing there was no reason to stay on field with the Golem immobilized by its bastion module, Yooch activated warp and started to align to a distant planet. Missiles and gunfire exploded on his vaccum-shield as he sped up and started warping. Reaching warp speed, he zoomed away from the field, but not before the last of his ship melted away, leaving only  his protective capsule to guard him from the sucking vacuum.

Yooch listened to the comms as he bounced from planet to planet in his capsule. The Golem was no match for the gang of strategic cruisers. Astrivia neutralized its capacitor instantly with his Legion and the other ships burned through it’s armor and shields easily.

Golem Kill (pod)

The marauder dropped extremely valuable deadspace modules, which were given to Yooch to help replace his Nemesis (and buy many more). Scouting is an expensive occupation, but hey, it has its rewards.

TLDR: Daytripping alone in a Golem is a bad idea.