The first: the wormhole is occupied by one of the corporations in our own alliance, though no one we've interacted with before (one of the problems with an alliance this size and so spread out is that the vast majority of its members are folks we've never met or spoken to).
The second: they've apparently just had a couple of their ships blown up by the same pilots who had lurked in our own system a few weeks previous.
"Can we help them?"
"We've tried coordinating with them, but they're not answering any of Tweed's messages, and then they logged out."
"Wow. That's super useful. How many of those t3 pilots are there?"
"Looks like just two. The guys in the other hole were running a mining op. Tweed didn't know who they were, so he scanned them down and snuck up on the asteroid belt, saw that they were blue to us, tried to talk to them through Alliance comms when he couldn't raise any of them directly, and then two of our old buddies decloaked and blew them up."
"So... bad guys around, and good guys logged off? We should --"
"We should close this connection asap, before they scan and figure out it's here."
"Yeah. On my way. Let's get this done fast."
"What have we got?"
"Shan's in a hole-crashing Typhoon. I've got my Orca. Can Berke bring his too?"
"Of course," I say. Berke is many thing's but he's never been squeamish about risking his big ship when it's important -- both of the Orca's he's lost have been while performing hole-closing maneuvers in dangerous situations, and even so his record of successful hole crashes while under fire has far more checks in the plus column. "I'll bring the Cynabal for cover fire -- might be the only thing I have besides the claw that can keep up with those over-propped lokis they fly."
"I've got my Onyx," adds Ichi, "and Kat's in the Falcon."
I nod, frowning a little. The ecm-fit Falcon force recon cruiser is a good choice for these kinds of ops -- although fragile, I can sit over 70 klicks from the wormhole and jam the targeting on enemy ships, allowing the lumbering hulks to escape. The onyx makes less sense, since its main claim to fame is the ability to generate a large warp disruption bubble around itself, which many cloak-fit strategic cruisers are immune to. Still, it's not my ship, and I'm honestly not sure what else he could fly that would be any better -- he's more often in a mining ship or a sleeper-shooting drake than a PvP ship.
"Okay," says Em, "let's do this."
Berke lands on the wormhole next to Shan's Typhoon while I circle the wormhole in the Cynabal cruiser, and the two waste no time jumping through to join Em on the far side of the wormhole, where's she's been waiting for several minutes.
"Ready to jump back?" Em asks.
"Sure."
All three of the big ships slip through the wormhole and reappear in the home system.
That's when all hell breaks loose.
[The following transmission was taken from the combat logs of the attacking pilots. Additional notes were added by one of the participating pilots, who sent the logs over in the first place. EvE is weird, sometimes.]
"You're decloaked," Brehm said, as we sat on the static C2, watching the Typhoon and Cynabal. There was a cloaked Onyx hiding nearby, and we knew the Orcas were about to decloak as well, but we're waiting until their guard is down, right after the hole collapses.
"No I'm not," I began to say, searching my overview for anything within range to decloak me. I looked down at my Cloak to see the green pulse of activation was absent.
Well, shit.
"Here we go!" I yelled on Comms. "Cynabal is primary, log in guys here we go; log in and warp to me!" I called, adrenaline beginning to pump.
The pilots already cloaked on the wormhole decloaked, locking the Cynabal and opening fire.
"Need a scram on the Cyna, confirm point!" I commanded.
"Got a point!" yelled Shocks, burning his Loki toward the Cynabal.
Yellow boxes on the HUD turned red as the Cynabal opened fire on me. The Onyx and both Orcas decloaked, and my warp drive became unavailable as the heavy interdictor's warp disruption field coalesced around us.
"One of the Orca's just jumped back here!" called Winter from his location on the far side of the static. "Orca cloaked."
The Cynabal's shields start dropping under the combined fire of half a dozen Tier 3 Cruisers, but it was already pulling away from us. "Cyna's dual-propped." I called as my battleship-rated afterburner flared to life and I took chase. "Winter, get back over here."
My point lock on the Cynabal fell, as it first managed to use its afterburners to outrun the warp scrambler my fleetmate had on it, then switched to a microwarpdrive, putting a hundred kilometers between us in seconds.
The second Orca -- the one that hadn't been sitting on the far side of the wormhole for awhile and which was obviously still polarized by passing through the anomaly twice in a few seconds -- was aligning to warp away from the wormhole, but was trapped by his own ally's warp disruption bubble.
Then the Onyx's bubble vanished.
"Orca is primary. Confirm point on the Orca! Need a 3-point! CAN ANYONE CONFIRM A THREE POINT?" I yelled on comms.
"Confirmed," Brehm said, cool and collected as he always is during a fight.
"Confirmed scram on the Orca!" yelled Winter at almost the exact same instant, burning clear of the wormhole he'd just jumped through.
"Falcon on grid," announced Prot, piloting his Jihad alt "Rabid", a bare-bones Bomber pilot with a few kills already under his belt.
"Bump the Orca! Orca is primary!" I ordered.
"Onyx is getting away!" shouted someone, their pilot ID lost in the confusion.
"Get a point on that Onyx, chase him; he's trying to make a break for it!" I yelled.
"I'm jammed, lost my point," said Winter, his Loki ramming into the Orca's shields to push the big ship out of alignment -- force works when technology fails.
"Got the Onyx!" shouted Shocks, chasing the heavy interdictor as it tried to clear the main body of the fight.
I chased after the Onyx while keeping guns on the Orca, whittling it into structure with my comrades, overheated my warp disruptor and caught him; I wasn't going to let any other ships get away from us.
"Falcon has me jammed," call Shocks as the Orca exploded, its wreck adorning the wormhole in a shower of light, the pod was gone in the blink of an eye.
We then turned our full attention to the Onyx and the Falcon.
"Bump the Onyx guys, don't let it get away. Rabid, you're the fastest align; warp out and come back in on top of that Falcon, now!" I said as I, also jammed, rammed my Loki into the limping Onyx. The falcon was delaying us, but he couldn't jam all our ships; a mixture of Stasis Webifiers and Energy Neutralizers played over the ship's hull, dragging it to a near halt and draining the capacitor dry.
"I'm gonna get that Falcon," Brehm called, his Tengu already turning away from the doomed Onyx, his heavy afterburner overheated, his warp disruptor overheated and at the ready.
We continued firing on the Onyx, its strong tank holding out for over a minute against the onslaught of our fleet, even drained of power.
"Falcon's gone. Warped out," Brehm called as the Onyx's one remaining fleet mate on the field made a hasty exit.
We continued pounding on the Onyx as Rabid reported in. "I've got three of them inside the shieds at their towers."
I watched the Onyx explode from meters away as my Loki rammed through the wreckage, setting the wormhole alight a second time. "Nice work."
"Wasn't there another ship around here somewhere?" Winter asked. "Besides that second Orca?"
"Oh shit, we forgot about the Typhoon!"
So, lessons learned:
- If you're worried they're going to find the wormhole that leads to your system, they've already found it.
- Don't use a heavy interdictor to cover your wormhole crashing operation. This kills the Orca.
- Cynabals are fast. They can't brawl it out with six tech 3s, but holy hell are they good at getting away when things go pear-shaped.
- Two warp core stabilizers don't help when your attacker has an expensive faction warp scrambler with extra disruption strength.
- Patience pays off. Rushing gets you killed.
And that's about it for now. Thanks to Pell for sending over the attacker's side of the fight -- it's interesting to see things from the side you weren't on.
6 comments:
I'm upset that Pell left me out of the story.
Sincerely,
A concerned Tengu pilot
I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for this post. Would love to have your side of the actual battle though. I look forward to future posts.
Tsai: I thought about changing it so that you were the one that said "the Onyx is getting away", but I tried to leave it mostly the same. Clearly, Pell is a villain.
It's all because I'm the only person who tries to keep comms clear. Good guy fleet-mate, I guess.
I was also looking forward to this post. It was definitely interesting to see the story from the opponents' side of view, something I was not expecting. :-)
Was an engagement we completely misread. Fog of war is a b sometimes. ;)
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