Bringing the War to Them

This weekend has definitely been interesting for me.

As suspected, so far I haven't been a real part or active participant in fighting this war we're in. Not for lack of want but more for lack of skill really. All of the members that are a part of this corporation who have war dec'd us are roughly around a year to two years old. There is 5 of them in their corp, though a second, one man corp, who we know to be friends with them, submitted a war dec yesterday also. Guess they realized they were going to need a bit of help. We've done the research on them through various channels and have learned they're pretty much your standard griefers. High sec goons (not a part of the infamous Goonswarm mind you) who just like to bully other corps. They seem to have a particular fetish towards attacking mostly defenseless ships. In the one engagement we've had so far, we tracked them to their HQ and we ended up camping it outside the station while they hid in their docking bays. We were able to down one of their Megathrons but also lost a Drake. Blasted space trash kept playing docking games! I say y'all started it, now you bring it! (so ends my one moment of cockiness)

Well that engagement I believe was either Thursday or Friday. On Saturday we decided to go on a little roam through low sec in a fleet of about 10 or 12 of us. I'm really impressed by our senior staff's efficiency and skill. They definitely know what they are doing and do it with a skill that truly shows their experience level.

This roam was quite a bit different from what I'm used to. Generally with the old alliance, we would move into a system and keeping to safespots, trying to hunt down or probe out enemy combatants. If the system was dead, we would move elsewhere and hunt around there instead. With these guys, we were almost constantly moving from system to system. We had one or two covert ops scouts staying a system or two ahead of the bulk of the fleet. We had a few near engagements but for the most part, people seemed to flee at first site of us. If we came across another group assessed to be too strong for us, we would move on, keep to a safe spot or retreat back. Most of the time though, the groups we saw were simply passing through.

When we'd reached nearly the end of the roam with no real contact, we then decided to hold short and see if we could bait a few pirates our scouts had spotted. We placed one battleship on the side of the gate in the system where the pirate forces were lurking, while we hugged the gate on the other. Sure enough, it didn't take long before a pirate Megathron class battleship moved in to have a go at our Dominix class battleship. As hard as it was for us all, we held short and glad we did. Only moments after the two battleships were engaged, the rest of the pirate fleet moved in to assist their friend. That was when we activated the jump gate.

At this point, things got a little crazy. Forgive me if I don't get the details right but I believe the Megathron was backed by two more battleships, a couple Falcons, a Rifter, and a Blackbird. For security purposes, given we're currently at war, I won't write at this time what all we had or how exactly we operated, but lets just say in the end, we didn't lose a single ship while the Megathron was destroyed and the remaining pirate forces retreated, another of their battleships deep into armor. For my part, given i was in a light and fast frigate, I went after the blackbird about a 100km out, closing the distance quickly and engaging him more in the hope of driving at least one of their ECM ships out of the fray. The DPS on that little frigate was actually quite impressive. I'll definitely be using it more often. Unfortunately, with his mates pulling out, he was able to get a weapons scramble on me, thus breaking my warp disruptor and was able to flee.

After that, we docked up at a station to calm our nerves from such a large engagement. I think our Dominix pilot, Promephius, had to clean his drawers as well after coming so close to losing his battleship. Though it was rather impressive that he came out alive after having been engaged by I believe the three battleships at the same time.

From that point, I had to withdraw from the fleet and headed back to high sec where I docked up for the evening. I only intended to lay down until the drugs kicked in as a monster of a headache was starting to get to me but ended up passing out for the rest of the night.

The next day, though not quite as exciting was still a bit entertaining to me.

A few of the members in my corp own carriers and were transporting ships for the new corp members, such as myself, to our main base of operations. Again, I won't say where at the moment because of the war, but I will say by all means, I would love to just see these fools try and get to us. Most likely they'll be dead before they make it half way. I loaded up my Mammoth with the few ships I intended to bring to the HQ and headed to the rendezvous point. From there, I handed everything, including the Mammoth over to our carrier pilot's crew they quickly loaded it all on the ship.

I have to say, that was my first time ever seeing a carrier in person rather than just seeing pictures of em. But yesterday I had the luck of seeing not just one carrier but two different types as they undocked from the station. And yet another first (wish I'd had my camera ready), I got to observe them both using jump drives at the same time to jump out of the system to the drop off point. After I get the hulk, I intend to turn my training towards covert ops. As I understand it, with that I'll be able to tag along with another pilot in the corp who is able to use a covert ops jump drive. I'd be REALLY interested to see that.

So anyways, I made the long journey in a frigate to the new base of operations, picked up my ships and gear from the carriers drop off point and went and did a little bit of looking around the area of this new home. I can already see it really is an excellent place to set up operations at. Lots of good mining, quiet, and plenty of places for my protege to hunt in or do assignments for the local agents. Yeah, it's definitely a good place to be.

-ML-