Just like the old days.

"5...4....3...2....1....HIT!, warping to the Raven right now!" Golden Helmet called down the comms.

Golden Helmet was the old CEO of my old corporation, and had recently came back out of retirement to start pirating once again. Him, Spectre3353 and Inertial (he was also one of the directors of The Python Cartel) have both joined The Carebear Stare. And now The Carebear Stare is alot like The Python Cartel as many of its core members are all here. The past few days have been alot of fun.

My own probe finished its cycle 2 seconds later and I also got a hit. Dammit, I lost. Me and Golden Helmet have like a private competition when it comes to probing out mission runners. I'll never hear the end of it, I thought. But lets not worry about that for now, we got to Raven to kill.

This Raven had been flying around our home system for quite some time. It seemed like he was running a mission, but he had to keep warping out, as the Guristas kept kicking his ass. Every time our probe cycle was about to finish he moved spot, and after an hour of this, we were desperate to kill him.

We all landed right next to him and quickly locked and scrambled him. Our gang was relatively weak, consisting of 2 cruisers and 2 Cov ops ships. But the Raven pilot appeared to be clueless. And as we watched his shield melt in a few seconds,, WE KNEW he was clueless.

He exploded a few moments later, and wondered why we had spent so long hunting this guy down. The kill mail showed he had 4 warp stabs. 4?? No wonder the Guristas kept kicking his ass, by the time he had locked one of them his Shields were probably gone.

So, saddened by the anticlimax, we retreated to our safe spots to wait out our timers and dock up. When Spectre3353 alerted us that a friend of his, in a system reasonably far away, in a system called Vifrevaert, had a drake tackled. Apparently he was in a Punisher and couldn't break the Drakes tank. But the Drake couldn't kill him either.

"so how far away is this system Spec?" I asked gingerly.

"17.." he replied

17? by the time we got there he will of either got backup or someone else would have came in and killed him. Spectre wouldn't hear of it and told us he was going anyway. I sighed, and docked up my Buzzard to get my Stabber. And I headed off to Vifrevaert close behind Spectre, and with Golden Helmet close behind me in his Rupture.

We sped through the gates not bothering to check the scanner, while requesting updates from the Punisher pilot on any change of the situation.

About 15 minutes later we arrived in Vifrevaert, and the Punisher Pilot had still got the Drake tackled, and he had been joined by a Rifter. I warped to the Punisher to see Spectre already there attacking the Drake. Checking my watch list I saw Spectre was already half into armor, and I set about orbiting the drake and then firing my 220mm's and heavy missile launchers at it.

Spectre's armor was getting low, and I told him to warp out if he needs to.

"Nah I'm fine, I can take it a little while" he said, drunkenly.

A few moments later, watching his Vexor suddenly go into structure, he yells down the comms "What the hell? Why wont my ship warp?"

"Err maybe hes scrambling you?" I said in a matter-of-fact way.

"Oh shi-" Spectre said quietly. And I watched as another volley of missiles left the drake, hitting Spectre, completely destroying him in the process. I laughed at the situation and continued to fire at the Drake.

Golden Helmet landed and also began firing, the Drakes tank was very strong and now he had started to agress me. I watched as my shield slowly disappeared and I contemplated getting out before I left it to late like Spectre. I overloaded my guns a little more, and hoping he exploded before I did.

Luckily enough the combined DPS from both my Stabber, GH's Rupture, the Rifter and the Punisher, were hitting him pretty hard and soon after the Drake popped.

We gave the loot to the Punisher as thanks for holding the Drake in place for such a long time. The pilot was only a few months old too, and did very well to keep a Drake tackled for so long.

Afterwards, Spectre brought a new Vexor and scrapped together a ship fitting from his old wreck and from the stations in the nearby area, we went around Old Man Star and killed a few other ships including a Thorax, Enyo and a Kitsune . And it really was just like the old days, back in The Python Cartel. Its great to have those guys aboard The Carebear Stare bus!