Stepping On A Hornet’s Nest

I logged on tonight and find a Cheetah on scan immediately! I have enough time to grab my oracle before he launches probes and I’m on my way to our C4 connection before he cloaks. I should have enough time to catch him as he retreats after scanning. Although once I get to the C4 wormhole I see that the connection is ready to collapse at any moment. I see a third un-scanned signature in the system and figure this Cheetah pilot is probably not from the C4, I bet that unknown sig is another wormhole.

I head back to my hangar and get back in my scanning ship. I head out to a safespot and throw my probes out over the system, quickly resolving a new wormhole. I bookmark it and head back to my tower’s warp in point. See, we have a bunch of warp disruption bubbles around our tower with a bunch of anchored cans sprinkled around to hopefully pick off snooping covert ships. And surprise surprise, our Cheetah friend just appeared on my overview. I watch him struggle in the bubble for a few seconds before our tower’s guns free his capsule from his ship.

Oh shit…

I chuckle to myself at the noob-ish fate of the enemy pilot. With his system’s wormhole discovered I grab my sniper ship and setup on station to monitor any activity from the hostile system. After a few minutes I haven’t seen anything and curiosity gets the better of me. Time to suit up the Anathema again, and see what I can see.

What I see is a big sign that says get the FUCK OUT OF HERE! A huge fleet is sitting on the hole, drones out, logis and interceptors at the ready. Holy crap am I in a bad spot. Thank god Bob found me worthy to spawn me a mere 4 km from the hole. I immediately jump back to my HQ system. A few hostile ships are already there. A bubble somehow is up already, I punch my MWD and pick a direction away from as many ships as possible. As soon as my cloak is up I switch directions, just in time as an interceptor zips by within 7 km of my ship. I align and warp away and breathe for the first time in a few minutes.

Dyin’ never looked so good.

I decide I should keep an eye on them for a while and warp back to 100 km. Unfortunately that bubble thing they put up, well it sort of sucked me to within 10 km of their fleet. I’m not so lucky this time. The bubble has me, my ship explodes and it only takes a minute for them to pod me. I have to say, as much as losing 100 million isk in implants hurts, the new death animation….is sick.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Apparently I had been complaining about not having enough action in the home system a little too loudly…

I logged in today to find Oz and Azx online in the POS, not getting anything done, as usual. But something is different. Azx has a strangely more intimidating aura about him, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think it has something to do with the little red box with a skull next to his comm channel portrait. Apparently I had just missed some fun.

Between the giggles and joking I came to find that the pair had happened upon a capsule in the home system earlier today. They gave chase, and found a Rifter on the lo-sec side of our static worm hole. Oz immediately engaged and obliterated the ill-fated ship with little trouble, managing to snag and destroy the pod as well. It was later discovered the frigate actually had nothing to do with the capsule seen previously. The poor pilot was literally less than 24 hours old, but Oz’s bloodlust didn’t seem to mind, as another corpsicle was added to our collection.

The system was however quite again, so we decided to run some anomalies and be productive for a while. At least until a Cheetah shows up on our d-scan. We race back to the tower and hop into our combat appropriate ships. I choose my Devoter anxious to put her bubble to good use. I warp to the static and set the bubble up orbiting the wormhole while Oz scans the system suspecting a new signature to be found. Sure enough another wormhole has appeared in our system, and this one leads to Gallentean hi-sec empire space. The blockade is moved to this new wormhole. A few minutes go by and then the local comm channel springs to life.

Apparently our visitor does not like his chances against the ships buzzing about his exit out of w-space. We had been monitoring d-scan thoroughly and knew he hadn’t put any probes out, and thus was unable to find the lo-sec static so far. His diplomatic intentions were worth a try, but we were in no rush to accommodate him.

 

 

I tried extending an olive branch, but it was refused. Twice to be exact. The blockade continued for another 20 minutes or so. The stealth ship not making an attempt at the wormhole, and us refusing to just let him go. But our patience began to falter and we offered to remove the blockade. Unfortunately for him, he took his sweet time getting to the wormhole. His staling allowed Oz and I to get the idea of parking bombers 30km off the hole, and blasting it as soon as we saw the Cheetah decloak to activate the hole.

Enter blockade stand off number 2. The Cheetah pilot was watching his scanner closely and saw Oz and I hop into our bombers. This new tactic put the brakes on him moving anywhere near the hole. Another 15 minutes goes by and Oz decides to move an alt into the hi-sec system to make sure no enemy fleet is preparing to ambush us.

Not five minutes goes by before Oz yells into the comm that a fleet of 10 Legions is warping into our system. Our forces pulls back to the tower, clearly outgunned for the time being. Trash talking begins on both sides and real life duties are beckoning, so I go afk in the hopes that the rabble is dealt with by the time I get back.

It’s about 3 hours later and the home system appears quite. I scan down our new static and make sure to keep an eye on my watchlist to see if our visitors from before are online. Two are, but I’m confident that I can warp into k-space in my pod without getting caught. I fly to Amarr to grab my new Pilgrim and navigate it safely back to our home system and tower.

As I’m fitting the last module on the ship, a Broadsword and Buzzard appear on my directional scanner. I had been planning on running a few anomalies before calling it a night, but the arrival of more ships has ruined the mood. I’m content in knowing we at least got to fool around with a few hostiles and the encounter was fun even if not particularly violent, and log off for the evening.