A Matter of Pride

My last exploration excursion brought my ship and crew to a expanse of deadspace labeled by the DED as once being occupied by rogue drones -- an "outgrowth" of a hive. Returning to station, I took a chance and brought Cake or Death? out to combat. As a Gallente combat pilot, I always feel a slight bit of dread when confronted by these new creatures in space.

Anyway, I jump through the acceleration gate to be confronted by the monstrosities. My ship's agility is suffcient to avoid most of the incoming drone fire, and my fire-linked blasters make short work of any drone foolish enough to allow me to draw near (read: all of them). Cleaning up all of the smaller drones (frigate and cruiser analogs), I come up to one of my worse nightmares: a Dominix, captured and twisted. I can't cry, not inside the pod goo, but I sidle up next to the aberration and let loose with everything I have. As my afterburner is on permanently, the cumbersome drone ex-ship cannot hit me! Unfortunately, after burning through the drone's shields, I find that I can't do enough damage to it to make the kill, to avenge whatever crew had lived and died on that vessel.

Time to face the facts: My guns aren't enough damage and the situation will swiftly become a stalemate. Time to either cut and run, go out and find a bigger combat vessel, or call for help. Choosing the third option, I request assistance from Karjan Amahel, who I've worked with before. He locks onto my homing beacon and arrives on the field in a fresh Vexor-class cruiser. With his added drones and firepower, we manage to bring the battleship down.

The two of us jump through the next set of acceleration gates, killing whatever the drones can muster against us. In the final room, a huge, bloated, Lesser Strain Mother floated in space, surounded by captured cruise missile launchers, point defense batteries, and more battleships, as well as a cruiser and frigate analogs. I flash a comm signal to Karjan, advising him to hang back and start performing salvage operations. I would do battle, alone, with this whore.

I start by cleaning up the smallest ships closest to me (no sense getting my warp drive shut down at an inoppurtune moment), and then head for the cruise missile batteries (damage I cannot evade completely). During this time, most of the cruiser and frigate analogs are hanging back near the immobile Strain Mother. My ship turns to start dealing with those analogs when I receive word that the ship had been mired in a stasis webifier effect... at 90% effectiveness too. CONCORD needs to have a word with these drones about the new regulations regarding webifier power output.

That's when the weapon ports on that bitch opened up. Tons of damage poured into my shields and then armor. I managed to escape before the hull damage became irreversible. Clearly, I could not evade that kind of damage. Nor could my poor ship soak it. The choice I had made earlier presented itself to me again, again I chose to call for help. Kerblammo of The Bastards answered in a Drake-class battlecruiser, a ship known for its ability to absorb punishment. However, he was ill-fit and could not take the heat.

At this point, it had become a matter of pride for myself. I knew of a ship on the other side of the universe that could take that firepower and laugh. I also had a clone nearby that I could transfer my consciousness into. Moving there, I picked another ship that I had there that I had wanted to move out of the station anyway (a simple cargo cruiser that I had used for salvaging) . Unfortunately, I ran into a nullsec fleet with interdiction bubbles. Trying again from a different start location, I retrieved this new ship, a specially equipped Ishtar-class Heavy Assault Ship, and safely guided her to the drone hive.

Once there, I initially took it slow and teased the rest of the drone aberrations out from under the protection of their Bitch Mother. Finally, I eased into the webifier range of the Mother (50 kilometers!) and launched drones. The shield regeneration on the whore was monstrous. Into the Breach's shields absorbed the pain without much issue. I noticed something curious, however: While I was inside of webifier range of that immobile slut, she repaired her armor damage rapidly. When I eased outside her range, she stopped repairing her armor damage.

Finally, my drones ended her in a firey explosion. I collected her remains and brought them back to the station to sell off to a DED-backed research firm, then bought a round of drinks for myself, my crew... and a fresh coat of paint for my drones.