"Yea. I have... hyperion, drake, drake, ishtar, drake, drake, basilisk basilisk."
It takes only a moment for Nate to ask if they are active and at a site - I was already narrowing down my scan range and seeing if I could find them. "Ehyea. Fleet is active, at combat site ITT. Warping in to get a look."
"Oooh shit," is the gleeful answer. "Come on, guys, fleet up."
I kick in my Stratios' thrusters and burn away from the wormhole in order to engage my cloaking device, hoping that luck is with me and nobody glances my way on their directional scanner during those precious few seconds where my ship is visible. I grin as I enter warp and listen to the fleet assembling, and then land on grid and begin providing further intel.
I had landed a little over eighty kilometers from the basilisks; I could see their cap chain running, and the blue glow of a shield transfer centered on one of the drakes. The other ships were down in the thick of things, swarmed by drones, both theirs and the Sleepers that reside in w-space. After a moment to make sure I am not about to drift too close to anything, I relay further intel: a few pilot names from ship IFF transponders, their corporations, and then I see it: these aren't the people that live in this system.
They're from nullsec space. All of the pilots are members of the Mordus Angels alliance.
Us wormholers are a destructive sort of people. I will gladly spend a few hours chatting with a fellow capsuleer, getting to know them, making friends, and then cheerfully try to turn their ships into joyous explosions for the sake of the Pews. It is, for me at least, a friendly competition and I would expect to be shot down and podded if any of my fellow wormholers caught me as well, unless we had made prior arrangements. Many wormholers are blue to nobody, and feel as though they must shoot anyone that isn't blue.
With nullsec, the rivalry is a little more... sour. To them, we are either the backwoods holebillies with suboptimal lolfits an unproven tactics, or the elitist rich kids with a dozen strategic cruisers each and so much money that we throw it away out of boredom. To many of us, nullsec pilots are too chicken to fight without a hundred fleet members backing them up, trained monkies and programmed drones that do exactly what they are told and are lost without a strict corporate structure. I realize that things are not so starkly divided, but that is the background I have picked up on.
And here I was, getting a better perch to watch a small gang of nullsec pilots operating in our turf. However, they were nearly done, and my backup was just now leaving our home system. It was a long chain - two C5 systems and a few C4's. The one I was in was designated 'C4d' on my map. I eyed the status lights of the pilots in our fleet, listened to the FC quickly going over tactics. We didn't have a blob; that wasn't how we rolled. We had one less pilot, their logi ships were stronger than ours, and that hyperion could put out a lot of damage. If we executed properly, though, we would win handily - the advantage I presented, giving the fleet the optimal place on the field to engage from.
"Alright, jump through the wormhole, warp to C4d, C4d." The fleet was only a few jumps away.
"Uh, guys? Shit. They killed the last sleeper, no more spawns. They've finished the site. It looks like... yea, they're warping out." I tracked the location they were leaving to, but it was a deadzone in space - nothing near by I could use to keep eyes on them.
"Well, where did they go? Find them." "I'm looking, I'm looking."
They dropped off of my scanner, and I had to widen angel to the fleet again; they had warped to a new location. I began zeroing in on it, when half of the fleet vanished, and then the other half. Crap. "They're gone, guys."
I was already in warp to the other side of the system before the FC's command came down; no luck. The fleet had exited the system, with one combat site still available. Speculation ran through the fleet - why retreat so quickly, with one more site left to check out? Had they caught wind of something? They hadn't collected their loot yet - a quick scan of the system sans filters revealed a staggering number of sleeper wrecks, including about twenty from the sleeper battleships. And the wrecks of a caldari battleship, and a caldari elite frigate. Maybe they had taken enough losses that they decided to call it, maybe a CTA came down. "Hey, guys! I have their noctis on scan." They still sent someone back for the wrecks, though, praise Bob. I had caught them at the last site, which meant a long wait, but we were patient. A plan was devised. When the noctis landed, I would pounce on it. Bump it. Jam its warp drive. Toy with it a little, see if the pilot would call for help, and hopefully we would get a fleet escalation out of it - it would be a sad night if we didn't get to cycle our guns.
It took the noctis what felt like hours to finally show up at the site I was prowling around. The encounter was over in seconds. I marked the spot of the first wreck the salvager tractored in next to himself, warped out, warped back in on top of the noctis, and rammed it with full power going to my microwarp drive. The collision sent the noctis spinning, although it kept trying to get back on approach to another wreck.
I resisted the urge to shout "STAND AND DELIVER!", and instead I quickly establish a target lock on the ship, pointed it, and kicked out my drones; a Mordus Angels falcon decloaked a short distance away from me and began locking my Stratios.
I got one salvo of fire off from my guns into the noctis' shield before the falcon's jam broke my lock; I tried to get my drones to attack the falcon, but I fumbled a little and didn't hit it fast enough. Trying to provoke a further escalation, two of our fleet members jumped into the system with me and warped onto grid; they locked up the falcon and began firing, but instead of hanging around or calling for help, the falcon warped off.
"Uh, why is there a capsule on... oh hell, he ejected?" one of my fleet buddies said.
I had automatically regained my target lock and point on the noctis when the jams dropped, and was still trying to assign my drones to assist the fleet guys in case of another jam and hadn't noticed the pod. Sure enough, the pilot of the noctis had ejected. And since I had his ship locked, he couldn't get back in. The pod warped off, and the three of us sat there surrounded by wrecks and an unpiloted salvager scratching our heads. One of our corp mates came in to grab the prize ship and fly it back to our station while I scanned down the hole the Angels had used to get into system - maybe if we chased after them, we could get them to fight. I mean, we couldn't be that scary, right?
Unfortunately, the pilot taking the noctis back reported that one of the holes enroute was in its death throes and would be collapsing soon; I began working faster, and had just pinpointed the only other hole in the system when another fleet member added that it looked like the noctis passing through had also put that hole on the verge of collapse. The FC didn't want to strand anyone in unknown space, so he ordered us all back home.
Next time, Angels... next time.
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Although I am somewhat disappointed that the Angels didn't come back for the fight, I can't blame them; they had no idea if they were dealing with three pilots or thirty, while we knew how many of them there were and what ships they were in. I definitely want to give them props for having the balls to bring a fleet into w-space, and for being crafty with their loot - they anchored a cargo container at a safe spot, and the noctis was depositing loot at their safe spot between sites. That's what was taking it so long, and so when we caught it it barely had anything in it. Their falcon hung around on d-scan for a little after it left the field, probably grabbing the rest of the salvage.
I do feel like a pirate, having actually captured my first ship. :D Of course, without my corp mates to back me up things may have gone differently, so I can't just claim the ship as mine outright. I think I'll go ask Nate what he wants to do with it, though, just in case.
Yar, har, fiddle de dee,
Being a pirate is alright with me,
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!
Yo ho, ahoy and avast!
Hang the black flag at the end of the mast!!
o7
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