Stepping out of my Norm

So as the title suggests, that's what I spent a good bit of this weekend doing. I'm a miner. Pure and simple. I recently finished training for the skill to fly a Retriever, a beautiful mining ship built to handle strip miners. And let me tell you it kicks some butt. Generally, with my Osprey and it's 3 t2 mining lasers, I was pulling in about1.5 to 2mil per hour of mining. Probably would be more if it wasn't for the occasional trips I have to make back to station, come out in my hauler, a Hoarder that can carry just a little over 12,000 m3, haul back what I've mined and get back out there in my Osprey again. But with the Retriever, I can pull in roughly about 4.5mil worth of material in only a half hour. Stack on top of that me finishing the skill training for the Mammoth. So now I can mine more, for a longer time, and well.....yeah, it's definitly filling the pocket book a lot faster and making me more capable of expanding my abilities to support my entertainment and the corporation.

But that's not what this entry is about. This is about me stepping out my that normality for me and into the so-called unknown for this simple little miner.

This weekend I received an invitation from a member of our alliance's military division. They had a small fleet already building up and we're looking for anybody and everybody willing to mount some guns and head into low-sec to hunt pirates. At first I was a little hesitant. When you spend most of your time training skills for mining, the aspect of turning killer can be a bit daunting. Yes, I know. I've assisted in the killing of can tippers in the past but to me that still seems....different. And yes, I've been on that mission op into low sec but again, fighting rogue drones versus living breathing...thinking...pirates, is a bit more nerve racking for me. But what the hell. I didn't buy two jump clones for nothing. So with that in mind, i threw together a Griffon frigate and headed out to meet them. By the time I caught up, they were already in low sec. Though there is always a risk of gate camps, I figured in my frigate I should be okay as I can generally go into warp before they even start a targeting sequence. Fortunately I ran into nothing of the sort and was soon caught up with the fleet in a safespot.

I always heard hunting in low sec could get boring, with waits that can sometimes take hours before catching any prey but I guess it never really sank in until this weekend. After a few hours of not really finding anything noteworthy or chasing dead ends, we finally decided that our best tanker, and I guess hardest hitter, would set up in an asteroid belt pretending to be killing rats. Surprisingly it seems we should have done that sooner. He was sitting in the belt for no more than perhaps 5 mins when suddenly a ship, a force recon, decloaked a short distance from his position. Both ships quickly locked onto each other and the order was given for us to move in. What we hadn't quite prepared for was the distance we were from his location. Our pilot was nearly freaking out as it appeared the recon ship was going to destroy him before we could get there. But it seems just in the nik of time, we dropped out of warp, right on top of the recon. Immediantly, we all locked onto him, scrammed and webbed him and layed into him with every available weapon we had. It was only a short time before his ship went up in a pretty red ball of fire. I think our pilot who had acted as bait couldn't breathe a heavier sigh of relief. We let the pod go as we're not full blooded killers and see no purpose in podding. Unless of course he's got a decent bounty on his head.

After that, things got a good bit busier as we took down 3 other ships, a caracal, an arbitrator, and another caracal and on the following day a hulk, but that was only cuz we got bored and tired looking for something to kill and he just happened to be the first we came across before we intended to disband and head home.

But something is bothering me just slightly. Why is it that i don't feel the least bit bad about the kills. I mean, reality is that not all of those were pirates. Especially the hulk. He was there to mine and in that way was no different than me. But yet, i feel no ounce of regret in helping to destroying his ship. In fact, I almost wanted to scream "Yarr!" over the local comms as we warped in for the kill. Just call it pent up frustration perhaps?

Anyways, I know my dps was certainly not much in helping to take down any of these kills. But I'm not a combat pilot and instead prefer using ECM's to assist those who are. I can't confirm it but perhaps me breaking the recon's lock is what saved my fleet mate. And that to me is just as important as laying down dps. Actually, truth be known... after warping in, I'd at first forgotten to even activate my guns as i was focused on getting my ecm's up and running....oops. Just don't tell that to my fleet mates. hehe.

-ML-