YC114-12-28

As a Minmatar pilot I love the Rifter hull, its sleek aggressive look coupled with speed and agility that no other frigate can match. The new tech from Thukker and the Brutor research labs has made the Jaguar and Wolf variants of the Rifter. This has added far more speed, firepower and defensive capabilities to the Rifter hull. So when the certificates became available to fly these new assault frigates I had to sign up to get the skills injected into my implants. I have trained long and hard to fly these machines of deadly beauty and in my last engagement that training paid off.

It was nearing the end of a routine patrol of FV-SE8 our home system in Stain. I set the computer calculating the warp back to station, when the fleet coms crackled into life.
"Rupture just jumped into system, hostile target." CatTBE reported the contact in his usual calm voice. "I have point".
I spun my camera drones around and saw his ship approaching the Rupture he was 30km away from my position. I silently cursed to myself knowing I had to act quickly to help him out or we was going to loose a ship and quite possibly two.

"I have no cap lost point." CatTBE's voice crackled over coms again the Rupture had a energy neutraliser as part of its weapon payload. My afterburners kicked in and I called for more power to be routed into the burn chambers. At 10km away I cut power to the afterburners so I did not overshoot the bogie which allowed them to cool down.
"I have long range point." Johnny's voice crackled into life. "He isn't going anywhere."
"Too late ships shields are gone, I am going down." The Crusader that CatTBE had been flying exploded, his capsule sped off to a safe spot deep in system.
"I am on target, have point." I replied to let my fleet know I was aggressing. This bastard was not going anywhere. My Jaguar turned into a tight 500m orbit. The hull of the ship pulsed into a rhythmic life as the auto cannon spun up and started to spit out their deadly payload of EMP charges.

"Ship capacitor empty."AURA  the ships computer responded as the enemy Rupture drained my energy reserves. A good tactic against any ship, but this time he had made a mistake. Draining energy reserves from a Minmatar ship will only destroy its defensive capabilities not its offensive ones so all he had done was shut down my warp scrambler which would stop him from using his micro warp drive, Johnny had a long range point on him anyway which would stop him from warping away to safety. As for my ships guns and rocket launcher they do not need ships capacitor to fire unlike the other races who seem to think they have superior weapon systems. My ship was travelling to fast for his ships guns to track me so each time he fired all he hit was empty space, it was when he was into armour he released his drones, now these could of given me problems, if I couldn't kill his cruiser before my shields were whittled away by the drones rapid fire.

"Shields now at peak recharge." AURA told me via the neural uplink. This meant my shields were recharging at a the fastest rate they were capable of and I was now flying on a knifes edge if this fight didn't end soon I would be eating space dust. I needed to buy myself some time even if it was a few seconds. The choice was made to switch overview to the drones and target them as my computer did this I turned off the rocket launcher to let it cool down. With the firing solutions calculated on the enemy drones I turned the rocket launcher onto them, while my main guns stayed on the Rupture.
Two drones down and AURA tells me that shields were now holding at 75%, the enemy cruiser was heavily damaged and ship sensors told me he had 40% of armour left. With no local armour repairer on his ship it was now just a matter of time to its destruction.

A few seconds latter and the enemy bogie exploded in a bright yellow bloom of light. To console himself the enemy captain made his one and only comment. " I would trade a Rupture for a Crusader any day of the week."
Looking at the battle report of the ISK lost his Rupture cost only 7 million ISK more than the Crusader. Often is the case though capsuleers forget the cost of life, one capsuleer can fly a ship with a lot less crew than a ship without, but still your basic cruiser has well over 100 crew members to run subsystems and to carry out running repairs. I just pray to the Elders they all got to their escape pods.