100th kill, and no, I’m not on Autopilot

Last night I made a career milestone. I claimed my 100th kill. It just so happens there is a pretty funny story to go along with it too.

It started out like every other night, meeting up with some friends for bullshitting before going out and looking for trouble. Mori and I were itching for some fun so we headed out. Mori was in a Hurricane and I took my trusty Drake. We were just planning on a short, few jump jaunt to see if anyone was in our local area.

A couple of jumps away in P-NUWP we saw a neutral in system. Initial scans indicated nothing. Mori headed for one gate, I energized the warp engines and started accelerating towards the other. As I was accelerating a Hawk appeared on scan. I quickly cancelled warp, just in time. Mori was already warping away. I turned and started to approach the gate and waited for the Hawk to appear. I didn’t expect to catch him, but it’s worth a shot.

He came out of warp on the gate, I paused to see what he was going to do. He did not jump right away. Then the computer indicated he was locking me. Laughing, I reported this to Mori who was already turning around and heading back. I returned the lock and then he engaged.

At this point, I’m thinking to myself, what is this guy thinking? There is no way his Hawk has a chance to even dent my shields. It didn’t seem to bother him, he was approaching me quickly. Mori kept asking for reports on his distance, he was closing on me fast. In no time he had established a 3k orbit around me.

I quickly charged up my warp disruptor and got a point on him. Next came a full salvo of Caldari Scourge Heavy Missiles. They mercilessly smashed his shield, just about taking all of it out. I guess is was about now that the Hawk pilot realized his mistake, as the second volley was leaving the launchers he started to turn around. Lucky for me, and unlucky for him he didn’t have enough time to get back to the gate, or get out of range of my warp disruptor before the final salvo landed on him. At about 18k away his ship popped in a glorious yellow explosion. Mori landed from his warp just in time to see the pop.

The pilot quickly warped away in his pod before I could establish a lock on it. In local channels he announced that he thought I was running on auto-pilot and not paying attention. This was not the case. I can understand why he thought this. I was heading towards the gate. The timing of my lock on him looked like it might have been an autolock back. No self respecting pilot would consider using this common feature of ships computers.

My 100th kill came with some loot which Mori picked up for me in his far faster Hurricane. Although the most useful stuff, 1500ish T2 missiles were destroyed in the explosion. Loot is loot, I’ll take that back to my hanger with a smile on my face.

Here is the Concord report on the incident:
http://www.eve-syndicate.com/kb/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=2959

Mori and I continued our tour on for a few jumps where we ran into an Onyx scouting for a 14 man gang. Far too much for us to engage we set course for home.

All in all, a good night, and a nice 100th kill. And no, I’m not on autopilot.