I strolled out of
the station in Auner in my Republic Fleet Firetail with little hope of
immediate death and destruction. The only possible target in the system
was in the same station - probably wasting his time playing video games or some
such nonsense. Loser.
A few asteroid
belts had nothing of interest and no one showed up in the meantime, so I jumped
to the next system to see if there was more activity.
In Resbroko I
often find pilots. It's a popular system for the faction warfare folks and there were a dozen in local. I
headed for a safe spot and checked the dscan. Yes. A victim!
There was a Tormentor in one of the faction warfare complexes. Just what
I was looking for.
I headed that way
and jumped through the gate, turning all the knobs up to 11. The
Tormentor was just a few km away when I landed so I immediately hit all the big
red buttons and set to orbiting the poor soul. My guns and rockets were
quickly taking massive chunks out of his shields. “This shouldn’t take
long,” I thought to myself…
Things went very well,
I was quickly through his shields and then halfway through his armor. He
tried to repair his armor, but I was sure it would be a losing battle. I
turned off the heat on my guns and rocket launcher so that they wouldn’t burn
out. I wouldn’t need the extra heat damage. “This shouldn’t take
long,” I thought to myself…
Then I heard the
message that I had run out of rockets. I forgot to reload them after
killing the hound stealth bomber the night before. No problem. I’ll
just use my autocannons. “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…
I noticed that he
seemed to be keeping up with my damage more than at the start of the
fight. While I was having little problem repairing my armor – he also
seemed to be doing OK. He was having massive swings – I’d have his armor
almost down to nothing then he’d pull almost all of it back. But the
trend was clear when he started to dip into his structure. He was
fighting a losing battle. “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought
to myself…
I turned up the
heat on my guns to give them the extra oomph to smash through the last of his
structure. He vainly tried to repair the damage to his armor and managed
to get half of his armor back. I, in the meantime, was losing a bit more
armor than I was repairing and also seemed to be getting close to my
structure. But I would prevail now that I had overheated guns and he was
often in structure. “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to
myself…
The bashing
continued – his ship was dipping seriously into structure and then recovering
big chunks of armor. My armor was being whittled away and I was into
structure too. But it was just a matter of hitting him at the right time
when his armor was gone and his structure low. One good shot and he’d be
history! “This shouldn’t take long,” I thought to myself…
My structure was
being depleted – almost half of it was gone. But he also was having some
serious struggles. His structure stood at just a sliver – maybe 10%
left. But he was pulling back big chunks of armor every few
seconds. Suddenly it didn’t look like as much of a sure thing as I had
thought. “I hope this doesn’t take much longer,” I thought to
myself…
I continued to
batter at the Tormentor and hoped for the best. I was clawing back armor
whenever I had the chance – but it was starting to look like a toss-up on who
would survive. Then it
happened. BOOM! The
Tormentor blew up! I survived.
GFs were
exchanged in local and I picked up the meager loot thinking to myself, “I’m
glad that didn’t take any longer…” I checked the killmail and discovered
that it was a dual rep Tormentor (which even with one armor repairer is a tough nut to crack) - that explained how he was able to
repair so much damage. Definitely a GF.
