The Point

I love the Vengeance, personally.  It's a beautiful ship.  How the black hull with the blue lighting, a distinguishing feature of Khanid made ships, just gives it a dominating presence over the battlefield for all to see.  With that said, it is a bit uncommon, for someone of pure blood to not only fly one, but prefer them over its counterpart, the Retribution.

Regardless, it is still one of the most capable ships I have had the chance to pilot.  You must admit, the Khanid know how to build very defensive ships.  Which is why I find myself in this beautiful ship, to be honest.  Practically nothing in the entire frigate sized world can take it down!  She is a beast!

One day it really surprised me.  I was flying around 9-F0B2, a system in the Providence region.  I was leisurely relaxing, chatting over the nets with members from my corporation and the alliance.  You know, having a good time.  All of a sudden, we got word of a hostile Dramiel spotted a few systems over, heading towards us.  After some preparation, I found myself in a small gang to take on this monster.  Dramiels are very dangerous if you are not careful.  They are quite murderous with the pure damage potential they can achieve.  It's never an easy fight, no matter your ship type is.

At the gate, you're just waiting, anxiety building up as you know he's on the other side, about to jump right to where you are.  It's painful.  Dreadful even. 

Then suddenly the gate chimes to life and his presence is detected in system.  After a brief few moments, he appears and it's a mad dash to him, but he warps out almost instantly.  "Damn, he has nanofibers fitted!"

A few faster ships fly after him, going into warp just as quickly as he did, heading off deeper into the system.  Myself?  I waited.  I had a hunch that he would be flying back to the gate.  Surly enough, he did, and right as he landed, I jumped through, seeing him jump as the same time I did.  My heart started beating insanely, on the other side of the gate it would be just the two of us.  I came out of the jump in the system, saw him uncloak and warp to the Assah stargate.  For some daft reason, I followed.

Being in a ship like the Vengeance does a few things to the pilot.  Most notably, the ability for it to armor tank gives the pilot a general enhanced feeling of invincibility.   I mean, engineering a setup for a ship as hardened as a Vengeance is no small feat, although there are literally hundreds of ways to do it.  Each one more effective than the last, and I finally found the best possible.  Or so I thought.

The enemy pilot was none other than El'tar as I found out upon jumping into the Assah system.  Almost instantly you just get the feeling that you have signed your death warrant.  No matter what ship you are in, upon hearing his name, and the fact that he was flying a Dramiel that day, you just automatically go to check to make sure your clone is updated.

Regardless however, I pressed on, mostly because I figured I had the best fit possible.  Boy I'll never make that mistake again.  I challenged him to a duel, a fight of honor, a challenge of everything that makes us combat pilots.

We warp to a planet and commence a duel there, instantly I am webbed and shields going down.  I ran my hands over the controls, activating the repair systems in staggered cycles, launching my rockets at full speed at his ship.  His drones deploy and begin their assault while my autocannons fire rounds after rounds at his hull.  All is well at first.  He tries different ranges, different tactics to get around and break my tank.  I counter with my own maneuvers, breaking his orbits, keeping out of his projected optimal ranges.  I attack him, then stop and concentrate on his drones, I force him to pull them back, firing upon his hull yet again.

"I want to see that ship dead."

We go on and on, reload cycles after reload cycles, slowly but surely, we're both losing our tanks.  I can obviously tell he is overheating his guns to put any sort of impact on to my tank as it slowly goes down.  I overheat to get his drone off me some more.  I start to panic a tad as I manage my modules, injecting the capacitor boosters, running the tracking disruptor. 

Needless to say, when it was all said and done, we both sat there, our ships unable to keep going.  Or at least mine was in no condition.  I had burnt out my guns, my rocket launcher, which only had 3 rockets left.  My capacitor was all but shot and my repair systems were overworked to the part where I could swear they were doing more damage to the ship than fixing.  Regardless though, for some reason, he had shown mercy and let me warp off.  We had a short discussion afterwards about the point of it.

I see dueling as an honorable way to test your very best of what you're able to bring, or the best way to test fits for any ship.  It is a courageous battle to the death, at least of the ship, as honor dictates the pod does not get shot.  I do not concern myself with modules such as Warp Disruptors into my fits, as I hope that my opponent stays and fights, even if they see that they are losing.  I mean, I do so, and I only hope that my opponent is as honorable.

While he was quite honorable disengaging, I still don't believe he sees the point and the true honor of it.  Oh well, next time it will be different, when we duel.  He will lose his ship, or I will lose mine trying.  So I swear it.