Ego: The fallacy whereby a goose thinks he's a swan

Until an unfortunate axe incident, Gloria had been captain of the school basketball team.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

Sometimes ego is a good thing and others it's a downward spiral.

Last night Kenny was doing some stuff with the POS when he reported a Stabber Fleet Issue on scan in Gusandall, I quickly boarded what I thought would be appropriate for such prey, an Ishkur.

This particular Ishkur has been with me for a very long time, a veteran of some truly spectacular fights such as this and this. I was confident in my abilities and quickly warped to the Eifer gate, where Kenny had just reported the Stabber jumping through. I activated the gate and was launched into Eifer.

Once there, I spotted the Stabber decloaking, I broke my own jump cloak and moved towards it, initiated targeting systems and watched the Fleet Stabber warp to a cluster of belts. I followed to the planet at the centre of the cluster and quickly narrowed the Stabber down, I warped into belt 4-4.

The Stabber was a good 40 clicks off the centre of the belt, I had quite a distance to close and this was my downfall. I hit the afterburners, they glowed bright, the distance slowly closing, I activated targeting systems and the Stabber did the same, he deployed a flight of Warrior IIs, the Stabber's guns hitting me quite hard. My little Ishkur was not up to this and my ego landed me in my escape pod. I warped out rather quickly and shared a "good fight" in local but in truth it wasn't a good fight, I bit off more than I could chew and choked.

C'est la vie

An expensive loss and maybe the humility will temper my ego somewhat... We can only hope :D

I should know better, piloting the Stabber Fleet Issue myself to great effect and know full well its capabilities.