A tale of two Myrmidons

The black-hulled Heritage Two sat in my Oursulaert hangar, and the ISK Guillome had so recently transferred me was no longer in my account. I made sure everything was in order and undocked at twice the throttle as was allowed by the station crews. I was determined to get back to Intaki before the Myrmidon pilot left.

It seemed there was to be no luck. I returned to the system and the pilot was no longer registered on the local comms channel. But before the gate-induced cloaking field dissipated, his callsign appeared on my HUD. He had returned. The Myrmidon decloaked not ten klicks away, having even jumped through the same gate. I watched as he warped off towards a nearby asteroid belt, and as soon as he was gone, I punched in a course to follow him.

I arrived almost on top of him, and tried to think about what I had gone over in my head a thousand times. Turns out, it's a lot harder in the heat of battle with all the adrenaline in your system. Still, I managed to get it right: scramble his engines, kick on the microwarp drive, set the furthest orbit I could without losing the scrambler's lock, and then stop thinking about the Myrmidon. I began targeting his drones and loosing salvo after salvo of rockets into them. The high-tech drones stood up to the barrage better than their lower-tech cousins, but they still took heavy damage.

I had managed to take out three of his drones before I brought my attention back to my own ship. My amazing Khanid-made armor had repelled the drones well, but I was already taking structure damage. I gave the command to warp out, and managed to get away with 80% structural integrity left. Looking over the list of pilots currently registered on the local comms channel, I was satisfied that none would be too quick to scan down my location, so I set the ship to planetary orbit, and gave the command for all hands to focus on getting the Heritage Two repaired as soon as possible. Given her advanced armor systems, the armor was restored in short order.

I exchanged friendly words with the Myrmidon pilot, and he noted that my second attack had gone much better than my first. I thanked the pilot for a good fight, and told him I wouldn't harass him a third time that evening. I later regretted saying that, knowing I had worked through some of his drones, but I was true to my word; I may be a bandit, but I'm no liar. After waiting out the requisite time for my criminal actions to fade from high-alert status, I returned to a station in the system for some brief downtime.

I later took the Heritage Two over towards one of my favorite hunting grounds, Oueletta, which is usually a pretty crowded system. There seemed to be only a few pilots on the local comms this night, though. I began my usual run-down, scanning the system for potential targets. I get only one result: A Myrmidon. This Myrmidon also was only a few months out of the academy, so I decided to push my luck.

I warped in fairly far off from the Myrmidon's location - probably about 30 klicks. I held off from targeting him as to not alert him to my intentions until I was within fifteen. Once I had him warp-scrambled, I locked his Hammerhead drones and began working my way through them. Not being high-tech drones, I made pretty short work of them and turned my attention back to the battlecruiser. Salvo after salvo of Gremlin rockets slammed into his shields, but he had a shield recharger working in concert with the Myrmidon's already impressive defensive systems. I managed to work through his shields after nearly fifteen minutes, and he hailed me over the local comms. "Seems like this could go on forever."

I offered to leave him alone for the price of my ship. He replied with boasts that his ship was such a tank, that I'd run out of ammo before I could damage him. I told him I agreed, but pointed out that I still had him warp-scrambled, and was in no danger of running down my capacitor. He made numerous threats about what would happen once his alliance arrived. I, on the other hand, was asking for help on what few comms channels I know where I can find other pirates. Sadly, none were nearby.

What finally broke up the encounter was the arrival of a Rupture-class cruiser, flashing red in my overview. A quick database lookup showed that this was the very same pilot that destroyed the Heritage One. I debated briefly if I should convince him to help me because of his outlaw status, but thought better of it and left. The Rupture pilot later hailed me and invited me into a group to try trapping the Myrmidon. For all his boasting, however, the Myrmidon pilot decoded against taking my bait.

Lessons learned - take more firepower when trying to take down such a tough target.