Our Man Dagan
Genesis region — Ekrin constellation
Sosh System — Adani Yusev’s Raven
22 October YC 127
Caldari sent Security Agent Adani Yusev on a Raven-class battleship to supervise this mission. I got the ship’s coordinates from Sister Alitura and warped to its location.
“Greetings, Captain Korff,” said Adani as his dour face appeared on the comms screen.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Yusev,” I replied. I had an impression that he wasn’t one for small talk so I jumped straight to business, “What’s the plan?”
The agent grunted approvingly and said, “You need to wait until my forces disarm the station. Once it’s done, you’ll warp there and engage Dagan. When he is defeated, bring him back to me. Questions?”
“Yeah. I can’t help noticing that you are flying a battleship while I am flying a destroyer. Why do you need me to defeat Dagan?”
Adani winced, “This Raven has been refitted as a command centre in fleet operations. It can withstand a lot of punishment but relies on other ships to deal damage.”
“Okay, and what about your forces disarming the station? To beat the station’s defences they must have a lot of firepower.”
“When I said ‘disarm’, I did not mean ‘destroy’. It’s a remote hacking job. We’ll use malware to wipe the weapon controller code and block updates. They will have to physically replace controllers with new ones which will give you about six hours to deal with Dagan.”
“And when will those six hours begin?” I asked.
The agent looked at his datapad and said, “Warm up you warp drive, Captain. It starts in eight… seven…”
I cursed and gave the ship a mental command to align to the Dagan’s station.
“Six… five…” Adani continued the countdown.
Kaukokärki started accelerating.
“Four… three…”
My ship reached 75% of its maximum velocity and a warp bubble shimmered around us.
“Two… One… Zero. Good luck, Captain Korff,” were the last words I heard from Agent Yusev before Kaukokärki was sucked into the warp tunnel.
Genesis region — Ekrin constellation
Sosh System — Mission location
First thing I checked when we arrived on grid was the station icon. It appeared grey on the Overview which meant it did not represent an active threat. That was positive. In the debit column were four escort frigates and Dagan’s Gnosis, about 100 klicks away.
“So, Captain, how do we go about it?” asked Aura. “Shall we pick off the escorts first?”
“Dunno. When I hunted Omnipresence, Sister Alitura asked me to spare the escort ships.”
“She hasn’t asked you this time. For that matter, this isn’t her mission.”
That was true but for some reason I didn’t want to get on Alitura’s wrong side. I imagined a reproachful look she would give me if I killed more bastards than was needed to accomplish the mission…
I shook my head, “No, let’s try to take out Dagan first. If the escorts cause trouble, we’ll deal with them.”
I willed my destroyer into an 80-km orbit around Dagan, targeted him and opened fire. I expected some response to my aggression — pirates liked to mouth off — but Dagan kept his silence. His reaction was non-verbal and to the point — he turned his Gnosis and accelerated in my direction. Although I was out of Dagan’s weapon range, he prepared to hit me hard by lighting up Kaukokärki with a target painter and increasing my signature radius by 25%.
“That’s stupid,” said Aura. “He knows he can’t catch us on a battlecruiser. Why didn’t he send the escorts after us?”
She was right — Dagan was the only one actively engaging us while the frigates continued to orbit the station.
“I think it’s personal,” I said. “No doubt he knows that I’ve killed Mizara Nefra, his lover, and wants to avenge her death himself.”
Aura snorted, “Good luck with that. He won’t be able to reach us before we pulp him into tritanium paste.”
“I don’t know,” I said pensively.
My rails kept hitting the Gnosis but I could not get through its shield. As I was firing each ammo load, the damage steadily increased until it reached 30-50%. Then I had to reload and the battlecruiser managed to recoup all the losses during that time. Apparently, Dagan had some insanely efficient shield restoration modules installed on his ship.
“If it goes like this, we shall have to change the ammunition.” I said, “Spike has the longest range but the lowest damage among all T2 ammo types. Increasing the ammo damage will naturally bring us closer to Dagan, maybe even within his weapon range. I guess, this is what he is betting on.”
We spent, or rather wasted, another two loads of Spike after which I shook my head and said, “We need Javelin. Please check where we can buy it in Genesis.”
Aura downloaded the market information and reported, “We can buy Javelin S at Sisters of EVE Bureau in Apanake for 34 ISK per charge. It’s actually cheaper than in Jita.”
“Great!” I replied. “Let’s do it.”
“What if we can’t kill Dagan even with Javelin?” asked Aura.
I smiled grimly, “Then we shall have to fit the blasters and get real close and personal with the bastard.”
I disengaged from Dagan, aligned to Sheroo star gate and warped to it. I jumped to Sheroo, then to Apanake and docked at SOE station. There I bought 5,000 Javelin charges and headed back to Sosh. En route, I loaded the railguns with Javelin and saw that the damage increased from 44 to 77 hit points but the optimal range fell from 87 to 12 kilometres.
While we were warping through Sheroo, Aura said, “Um, Cap. We shall have to get close to Dagan, right?”
“Yep,” I answered the obviously rhetorical question.
“And we shall probably be in the range of his weapons?”
“We shall.”
“And it would be a good idea to have a solid defence against his weapons?”
I frowned, “Of course, it would. What are you getting at?”
“Well, given 12 klicks is pretty much a point-blank range for our rails, I have just one question: why do we have Signal Amplifiers in our low slots instead of Damage Control?”
It was a good question, even an excellent one.
“Aura,” I said, “you are a genius!”
Aura beamed, “Am I?”
“You are. Where can we buy Tech II Damage Control?”
After a brief pause, Aura said, “The same place where we bough Javelin ammo — Apanake.”
I sighed, “I wish you were a quicker genius. Now we have to travel back to the Sisters’ station.”
Aura shrugged, “It’s just one jump, and we still have five hours before the station defences are repaired.”
And so we did. I had to remove both Signal Amplifiers before installing Damage Control II module. The amplifiers were CPU-hungry but not as demanding as the Damage Control. I ended up with one empty low-power slot which could probably have been put to a good use but I decided not to waste time on the research. The 30% EHP boost provided by the DC module was good enough for now.
When I returned to the mission location, I landed on the grid about 60 kilometres away from Dagan’s battlecruiser. Dagan immediately targeted me and resumed his pursuit.
I took a deep breath of pod goo and said, “Here goes nothing,” before willing Kaukokärki into a 10-km orbit around the Gnosis.