“There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.”
The remarkable thing thing about being cast out of the war (albeit temporarily) was the amount of activity it roused out of the alliance. Fleets departed from our stations on an hourly basis, and those that weren't shooting piles of bullets at the enemy were busy shipping piles into the local market to keep everyone flying and firing. It was really something, and although I think everyone would have been happier if we hadn't had to deal with the all the red-tape and technicalities that caused the problem in the first place, it was gratifying to see how well we pulled together.
But with all that going on, there hadn't been much time for broad strategies and big-picture thinking. Once things were sorted out and we were back on the side of the angels, we took a look around to see how things stood.
It wasn't pretty.
We'd managed to defend our home system reasonably well even though we hadn't had any official means of working directly with the militia, but beyond that our home constellation looked like the bottom of a bomb crater. The Amarr hadn't managed to capture any of the local systems, but several were dangerously destabilized, and the big push to hold our ground when we'd been at a severe disadvantage left our pilots tapped out and exhausted now that it was time to rebuild.
Adding to the fun: the attacking forces kept on coming, which kept us distracted and disorganized -- it was hard work to get stable again, and easy to go out on a simple roam around the war zone, looking for a brawl. The result was predictable: lots of fights that got us nothing, and not much done to get our house in order.
"Death is the only god that comes when you call."
Our corp, with a slightly higher number of "seasoned" pilots per-capita, were (I'm proud to say) one of those groups who stayed in Eugidi to rebuild and shore up defenses while the big exciting fleets rolled out into the rest of the war zone. No regrets, here: it was our decision to stick to home defense, and I'm happy to say it paid off in its own way; as our pack of ex-wormholers figured out the ins and outs of our new home, we started winning a few fights of our own... then a few dozen. Then more. No grand melees, true, but hard-fought brawls that determined who would take control of complexes in the constellation -- which way the scales would tip.
Small fights? Maybe. We'll still cost the enemy billions, but we'll do it by destroying a couple hundred ships, rather than one, and that's fine by me. New/old ships... New/old tactics...
It's a hell of a good time to be flying.
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