Warbears!

It has been a bit of a rough week IRL and I haven't been as active on Eve outside of the usual scanning/logistics/a little attention paid to my wallet (I am most of the way to replacing my Stratios. <3 ).  Yesterday, though, I started logging in to Eve when I got home from work, and as I was getting online I heard happy news - someone was moving multiple iterons through a couple of systems down the chain.  A pilot was linked.  They were from Dropbears Anonymous, a corporation in Brave Newbies and in general some cool people I've flown with before.

I tagged my Manticore bomber and took up position on one of the in-use wormholes; the scout went back to reship into something combat worthy, and we waited for the haulers to come through again.

I heard a call of "Iteron on d-scan" over coms, and sure enough it showed up on my own d-scan shortly after; I got ready to hit my cloak and start pointing... and then the hole fired. (For people who are not wormholers: much like a stargate has a distinctive visual effect when it is used by a ship and it 'fires', a wormhole makes a very distinctive noise when it is used.)  "What the hell?" I asked myself, since I knew the iteron hadn't landed yet... how could it have slipped past me?  No, no, someone new must have jumped through from the other side.

Oh well!  I announced the new unknown on coms, and then the iteron landed on grid.  I decloaked and pointed it, and fired a salvo of torpedoes, and then the new ship dropped jump cloak - a second iteron!  Their haulers had crossjumped.  The first iteron jumped through the hole, and I started locking the second; it jumped back through to the other side as well.  I called it out, and followed through - the one that had just jumped would be polarized now and unable to get away.

I came out of the hole and loaded grid, and didn't see anything.  I knew an iteron couldn't warp away that fast, so both haulers were holding cloak - sure enough, shortly after my jump, one of them dropped cloak and started aligning.  I dropped my jump cloak as well and pointed it, then hit my torpedo button... only to loose point.  Whoops.  I had hit the wrong one, and recloaked instead of hit 'make target explode'.  I dropped cloak again, and started locking; the iteron jumpd back through the hole to the other side.

Now, at this point, hindsight tells me that I should have stayed on the far side of the hole to catch the iteron that had polarized itself, and let the fleet try and catch the one that had ran back through.  However I was running on instinct, not logic, and instinct said "CHASE!  CATCH!  KILL!!!"

So I jumped after the fleeing iteron (and saw the second iteron dropping cloak to warp off as the hole fired and pulled me back through), locked it, and pointed it as the other two guys in fleet landed on the hole.  The hauler exploded. \o/  It had been carrying POS fuel.  The capsule got away, and warped back to the hole a couple of times before the pilot's polarization timer ran out; I kept trying to lock it each time (just on general principle) but we didn't bring a bubble to catch it.

Since they were running haulers, there had to be an exit down the chain; we already had a decent enough low sec connection, but the guys found the high sec C1 the Bears had been using two holes down.  (Our static was connected to a C6, which connected to a C5, that connected to another C5 where we had caught the haulers, with that one connected to another C5 leading one way towards the Dropbears' home system and a C4 leading the other way to a C1 that connected to high sec.  Chains are fun. :D)

With my bomber on station to guard the chain, I ran my pod out to low sec to pick up an epithal I had ditched in Minmatar space.  I came out a couple of jumps from Bosena, and began motoring towards the market-pirate haven known as Hek.  It is my least favorite 'hub', but at least the stuff I had was already there.

A couple of jumps into high sec, I passed a gate that had about a dozen red flashy ships on overview.  I went 'huh' - there was no CONCORD force in the process of blapping them, no wrecks, so it didn't look like an in process gate camp.  Then I remembered that we were at war!  LOL!  I switched one of my chat windows over to [Local] and sure enough there were a dozen war targets in system, with a few of them swearing at me, someone asking me to bring a big ship and not my (expensive~) pod, and one guy saying I was rude for not even waving.  So I waved.  "Sorry guys, I wasn't even looking at local!  Good hunting and what."

Still... I didn't want to be rude.  As I approached Hek, I dropped into their public channel to shoot the breeze.  "Didn't mean to be rude.  How are you gentlemen doing today?"  This was greeted with some derision and some more swearing (I had to laugh at that, poor mercs) but one of them was civil enough to engage in discourse. :D  I pulled my hauler out of my hangar, filled the cargo with more missiles and rail/blaster ammo, and set a course for the high sec connection the scouts had just found while we chatted.

Their client was happy with the kills they were getting - one of the EoL guys lost a Caldari Navy Raven in the first week of the war, although now that we were in week three and had finished moving into the new system
war kills were down to a few cheap frigates and one Sky pilot that has lost three Ibis' in the last week.  Three Ibisii, those get expensive~.  The guy asked when we were bringing them a fight; I told them we already did that a couple of times (we had) but they didn't seem to want it at the time, and now that we were moved in we were pretty much done with high sec for the time being.  I invited him to come out to the wormhole to play (and gave him the wrong Null system to come to, of course) but he declined.  He complained about being bored, and so I showed him some of the related loss pages for a couple of the bigger fights I have been in over the last couple of weeks and trolled him again about leaving high sec to get into the WH game.

I do hope that whoever is paying them feels it's worth it; I myself don't see the point of hiring high sec mercs if you aren't going to send them to cause any real damage.  I mean, sure, if I want to move something pricey by myself I give it to an alt of mine... ooo~.  Such horrid inconvenience.  I need to quit Eve!  Heh.  At least they are camping pipes, and not station undocks.

Back in the wormhole, my bomber was almost decloaked by a Dropbear Stilletto passing through; it didn't sweep the hole, though, just passed on through.  A Crow followed shortly after, then another couple of interceptors, and Patriot (the Dropbears CEO) in an Ares, all one at a time.  It looked like they were getting an interceptor roam going in k-space or something.  I let the guys know and we pulled together a half dozen pilots to camp in the chain and pick off ships passing through (hoping for the Dropbears to get a fleet together to chase us out), but I had to take off for dinner.

The hauler gank was nice, but I neeeed more pew.  Taking off from work early (yay weekend) and getting my scouts out when I get home; if I can't find anything, I'll buy a cheap Drake or something and try to find a hilarious way to lose it.

o7
-K