AMBUSH

I send word ahead to the outpost to make sure that my scimitar is ready for immediate launch as soon as I arrive.  Word has come down from alliance fleet commander to form up for an emergency operation that must leave immediately or the enemy may escape.  As I jump into the staging system the fleet commander reports that they are preparing to leave from the outpost…I am in warp willing my ship to arrive sooner.  The outpost knows better than to delay a capsuleer when they are approaching and I am able to dock immediately upon arrival.

I extract my pod from my hurricane class battlecruiser and have it linked to the scimitar class logistics cruiser without ever setting foot in the outpost.  As soon as I have linked and the systems checks are passed, I launch the ship out from the outpost and set course for the target system.  It is only two jumps away from our main staging system so takes just a few moments to arrive.  I am one of the last to arrive at the target system and I assemble with the rest of the fleet on the entry gate.

The FC orders us to move to planet 1 and wait for the warp in to the WH.  One of our scouts has found a battle site with some people busy looting the field and has moved into position to get us a warp in right on top of them.  Our interdictor arrives at the WH and the fleet warps to him.  Everyone gets into position on the wh and the interdictor jumps into the wh system.  The enemy is beyond dscan range and do not detect his arrival.  He warps to zero on our cloaked scout that is sitting just 6000 m from the enemy.  His orders are to deploy a disruption bubble as soon as he lands.  He reports that he is in warp and the FC orders the rest of the fleet to jump into the wh system and warp to 0 on our scout.  We should arrive within seconds of our interdictor pilot.

The dictor pilot lands and deploys his bubble trapping two enemy ships….within 10 seconds the rest of us land and the FC calls the rattlesnake as primary.  Our entire small fleet drops to within 20 km of him and we all open fire, given that I am in a logistics ship my role is to repair any damage done to fleet mates.  I have a single light autocannon for self defense and I use it here on the rattlesnake knowing that it will do no real damage but you never can tell what can happen.

The rattlesnake explodes in a fireball and the FC shifts our fire over to the proteus that is also trapped in the bubble with rattlesnake.  We shift over to him but he is no match for us and he goes down in a nice fireball of his own.  Because we had the warp bubbles deployed the capsuleer pods are unable to make it clear before we are done with their combat ships and we send first one then the other capsuleer to his clone somewhere in known space.

While the main fleet was dealing with the rattlesnake and proteus our interceptor pilot burns nearly 80 km to get primary tackle on a loki that is sitting just watching us kill his friends.  As far as I know he makes no effort to escape from the area and our pilot lands primary tackle on the loki, with the dictor following close behind to trap his pod.  The fleet burns down the loki and sends the capsuleer to join his other friends in known space.

Only one of our ships took any damage and with several scimitars in the fleet we are able to rep his shields without any trouble.

The FC gives the order to loot the field and we pull in everything that we can find and prepare to withdraw from the system.  Our initial scout has found another wh into low sec so he is dispatched to check it out and see if there is something else that we can go and attack.  We have more than enough dps and shield repair power to deal with a small pirate base.  He reports that there is only one capsuleer in the low sec system and the FC makes the decision that we will head back into our space with our loot and stand down.

The final tally for our side:  Rattlesnake, Loki, Proteus, and the pods for the pilots destroyed.  300 million or so of loot recovered.  No losses to any allied ship.

Our scout later tells me that he had been observing this group attack, destroy two other ships, and just sit around at the combat site doing whatever they were doing until we dropped right on top of them and destroyed them.

Lesson for the future:  If you can ambush someone in a WH, there is no reason why you can’t in turn be ambushed.

 

Ranger Gama

Never Trust A Woman....

Yet another salvo of missiles and beams slam into the drakes shields, the warning alarms scream that my ship has been locked up and under attack.  I check the tactical readout and smile to myself, those poor guristas pirates are doing their best but their best isn’t good enough to really threaten my drake.  Even with the number of battleship and cruisers they have engaging me.  More continue to warp in to try and support their fellows and while you can’t ignore their dedication to each other they are totally out matched and yet they continue to try.

While yet more pirates arrive to engage me and my corpmate one of the directors of the corp gets on our comm frequency and asks what we are doing and if we could help some other corp mates move some stuff to the new staging system in tenal.  They have two orca’s that need to be moved and they need scouts and combat ships to watch the route and protect the ships during the move.

Well we decide that helping our corpmates get their stuff moved and staged into the new region is more important than killing the pirates who have no real chance to do anything against us.  As such we elect to go and help get these ships into position.  We both fire a couple more salvos of missiles or projectiles and watch a couple more pirate ships explode before we warp away, leaving the pirates to tend to their damaged ships and rescue their friends.

They have enough scouts so we arrive with our combat fit battlecruisers to provide close in escort coverage.  At this point they have already been going for a while and several others have joined the escort rising the number of scout and combat ships to nearly a dozen, not to bad for just two orca’s.  This includes the webbing ships to help them align between the gates.

By the time we arrive with the fleet they are basically done but we are asked to stay to help escort some freighters to the new home region as well.  We are a little concerned about how slow they are and if we have enough people in the area to be able to scout and web and protect them.  The call goes out corp wide to get more scouts webbing ships and combat craft into position for this operation.  One of our principle fleet commanders offers his webbing Loki if anyone can fly it as he is in his rapier at the time.  I tell him that I can fly it and he sends me a contract for it while I head over to get it.

It is fitted slightly differently than I usually have them but the important part is that it has two webs that we can use to help the freighters align for their warp faster.  I have never done this before and it takes me a couple attempts to get the hang of it with them but soon I have them going into warp within 10 seconds of emerging from the artificial wormholes generated from the stargates.

The question goes out to the original director who asked us for help how much stuff there is to move and she replies that there is a lot and it will take several trips for us even with the number of freighters we have involved.  I don’t have an exact count but seems like we have about 10 different pilots involved in this operation.  I didn’t really notice that the director didn’t actually answer the question so the fleet commander asks her again exactly how much stuff do we have to move, her answer causes everyone on comms to groan.  18 million m3 of stuff.  We get to it and have it mostly moved to the next system we are using for the relay to keep our combat power concentrated when one of the other directors’ mentions that we have some more stuff to move that was in a different corp office and needs to be shipped as well.  We ask how much and again we all groan.  14 million m3 more.  A total of 32 million m3 of stuff to move and get into the new region.  OMG

Well we all get down to work and get it all moved, takes the fleet something like 3 hours to move it to the secondary base.  We had it scheduled to move in three stages.  After 3 hours of working on it many of the fleet have been active for 12 to 15 hours and their crews are getting tired and mistakes are being made, so the order to stand down for the night is given.  We have the stuff in our new region but not in the final target system.

So what began as a simple escort mission for two orca’s projected to take 15 to 20 minutes ended up taking 3 hours and we didn’t even finish the operation.  On the bright side we have moved a considerable amount of ships, modules, rigs, drones and ammunition into our new region so that it is available for use.

Moral of the story:  Never trust a woman when she says she has “a little bit of stuff to move”

Ranger Gama