A return of the itty of doom.

I'm in empire for a while, quite possibly a long while due to helping a few friends of mine, which involves an awful lot of down time unfortunately. And what does an IEEE agent do when faced with nothing else to do? He goes out and looks for miners mining against the book.

The iteron is just as I remembered it being the last time I took it out. Stately and slow. Still loaded and waiting for the return of its pilot. They have an incredible cpu capacity, greater than most battleships, but nothing on the hull usually requires anything even remotely that powerful. The current iteration is an armor tanker. Ever since webs stopped working very well and nosferatu changed, the shield versions have become interesting but ultimately less capable.

Unfortunately everyone mining is doing so in approved manners. Orca pilots riding herd or solo miners flying off when their holds were filled. But then I ran across some wreckage. Some unfortunate pilot has been ganked. His retreiver wreck sitting full next to a thrasher wreck colored blue. Putting two and two together, I picture what happened. A low skilled pilot toiling away with his barge, and someone just wandered up and suicide ganked him.

I light up the burner and see what is left in the wreck. Taking everything as another retreiver wanders in. Oh goodness it is the unfortunate pilot who just lost his retreiver. And a thrasher shows up. The same pilot who ganked him. And I'm waiting for the flash and desperately trying to target both of them. While the cpu is great in an iteron, the sensors are unmitigated pieces of crap.

But the thrasher yellow boxes me, and the retreiver flies off. How odd... I hear the tell-tale sound of a scanner go off...I think the thrasher might be scratching his head when the retreiver pilot shows back up. In a thorax. I take a look, and see at least three different gun types, at least two rails, and one thing that isn't a hybrid at all and decide that it should be do-able. Willing the sensors to lock faster, I start looking like I'm running away.

I'm waiting for the thorax to lock me up, and it isn't happening. No yellow box. I almost give up on him when the love taps arrive. Ungrouped 200mm rails and a light 250mm artillery pieces? And way out of range neutron blasters. I turn the itty around, mash the burners, he's out of tackle range but I can charge him..at a stately 350m/sec. Damage signals going off as the thin shields on the iteron evaporate and the deck twitches as the blasters get their range. But now he's in my range and targetting actually comes online. Cranking up the blaster I flip a couple small armor repairers on and the secret weapon against all hybrid boats, the energy neutralizer. I can smell smoke from the iterons electronics. Duct taped modifications on the hull making the reppers work extra hard, and the capacitor feed lines have that arcid smell of over use. Especially when the small cap boosters are pumping out twice their normal output to keep things going. The navy boosters are great but play hell with everything. Prayer is involved when shunting this much power through every system in what is essentially a converted hauler, but things seem to be holding together. The trip through the shield is taking forever because it is hardened and boosting? Everything is quiet in local. Just the gentle noise of my blaster, and the larger noises of his blasters and rails and projectiles and drones. Until all but one of his guns goes silent. Capped out. The pilot disconnects, helpless. The crackling ozone smell that the energy neutralizer always sends streaming through the access ways adding further strain to the capacitor feeds. I start playing games staggering my reps to try and stop swallowing the navy cap boosters.

Finally...http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=17153320 (Or, just for EnderCapitalG: http://ieee.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=14246280)

The pod e-warps off. The thrasher having stayed the whole time to watch. And suddenly the thrasher goes red as he tries to volley the iteron of doom. It hurt worse than anything the thorax came up with and being unsure of possible friends I kick all three reppers up, slamming the overheat and dump both cap boosters at once. Going from half armor to full in practically no time. Willing the lock to come through before concord arrives to at least get on the kill report. But no dice.

I collect everything and wander off. The station nearby offering expensive repairs for all the overheated and damaged modules. There being no point in offering assistance in local or a pointer to the IEEE sites for a disconnected pilot. And somewhat pleased with the iteron again. It has been a very long time since I pulled it out of the hangar. And as I pulled it in, I knew it would sit there waiting for me again to take it on a crusade against the stupid.