Operation: Lazarus (Part 2)

The following is taken straight from Anselm Cenobite's After Action Report.

I went to bed when the Saturday night fleet disanded, so I missed the final action when Jay and the British lads logged on, so he'll have to fill in those details in a part II eve-mail. However, this part I message will summarize the first half of the night/morning's events.

A few of the US lads stayed on in the wormhole during the day (Saturday) to keep an eye on things. We had originallly discussed with Ludis and Jay the possibility of using the Orca to roll wormhole entrances, but decided not to do it. (There were only 3 of us active in the Wormhole, and a 4th mostly AFK, so we didn't feel we had the muscle-power to protect the Orca while rolling holes).

Ludis eventually had to go to bed, and about this time, the hostiles starting getting friskky. There were three we knew of, one in a cov ops, another switching back and forth between Talos and arbitrator, and the third in a Talos. The Talos started nosing out of their POS while the, shooting at the bubbles we had put up the night before with a Talos. I maneuvered out in a pilgrim tried managed to get close enough to decloak and bump him a bit away from the POS shields, but the forcefield broke my cloak, and he ran back inside with no significant damage. I cloaked up and retreated, as his buddy showed up in an Arazu and the two of them together, cautiously, took out the last bubble.

We did by luck find a nice K162 leading directly to high-sec, 4 jumps from Jita about two hours before it would come out of reinforced, and when the enemy starting showing signs of activity, I was worried they would find this new entrance. So, I hollered in alliance until JeanPaul and a few others showed up, and eventually we gathered a fleet large enough to do some damage, and collapsed the high-sec exit in the process. The last two or three pilots would have to use the low-sec exit, and we moved the main fleet to sit on the U210 lowsec static.

About 25 minutes before the POS would come out of reinforced, we had sent one pilot through the low-sec as a warp-to person for stragglers, when he discovered there were a big bunch of ships sitting on our wormhole waiting to come in. He hollered in coms, and I called for everyone to warp away. (We actually slightly outnumbered the attackers, we discovered later, but we had no logistics ships and they had four logis). Our fleet tried to move back to the friendly POS, but at least two pilots got stuck and scrambled by the newcomers. We lost a hyperion and at least one other ship in that encounter.

The hostile fleet turned out to be a mixed bag of mercs. About a dozen sat on the wormhole exit while others helped escort the locals in moving out ships from their POS into known space. It looked like the locals were giving up and tearing everything down, including offlining their tower. We decided not to engage and let them move out, since our ultimate goal was to take the system after all. We did, however, scan down an alternative exit so our pilots in pods could reship. (We ultimately found a route to high-sec through several intermediary wormholes).

It turned out a bit more complicated. We were soon contacted by one of the mercs, who informed us that the locals had decided to leave the system, and they had hired the mercs to negotiate a sale of the wormhole. If we were not willing to buy the wormhole from them, the locals were willing to pay us [the mercs] to "uninhabit" us from the wormhole ultimately. I made general diplomatic noises, and told them they would have to talk to Jay. 

Then, we saw the locals had not just offlined their tower--they had immediately rebooted it and started onlining it again during these discussions. There was much groaning, because we thought they had restronted it and we were going to have to do the big POS bash all over again. About this time, it looked like the night was over. The other Brits had not yet come back online, and it was 1:30 a.m. here on the East Coast, so we started to break up the fleet, with several members feeling blue-balled and a little frustrated. I left Anselm logged in, parked cloaked in system, but went to sleep for about four hours.

Blanks filled by Jay Joringer

I logged back in  ready for the reinforcement timer and couldn't believe what people were telling me. Re-anchored then re-filled the strontium bay? And threatening to kick us out if we don't buy. It didn't wash with me.

Firstly, I didn't believe those friends of theirs were mercs. I knew Max and his guys rolled with AAA and a various assortment of lowsec nobodies, and that's what the killmail looked like. The only part that might ring true was the lone member of Aquilla Inc in among their gang.  But given that they tried to bluff the guys with the tower being re-anchored and re-stronted, I liked the odds that merc thing was also a bluff. It seemed like Max just called in a few favours from individual pilots who sent a few alts to help him out. Whether what I thought was right or wrong was soon to be a moot point anyway.

More of the fleet logged on, and I called their bluff. Maxemus Payne and his scanner alt, Ennrion were sat in the forcefield. Seeing the fleet re-engaging his tower, Max burned out of the forcefield to take potshots at one of our own Talos', but warped away when Ludis Drakava and Keeley Ellis broke off the main fleet to pursue. The Anathema in the forcefield warped off towards the U210 and the scout confirmed both ships jumped out to lowsec.

I wasn't going to take the chance of him getting a warp in for any friends who might be able to help him out so we got the Orca to mass it straight away. I posted sentry on the lowsec side in the Loki. The Anathema probably had eyes on the whole time and I wasn't disappointed to see Max warp in to engage  He wasn't doing alot from 50km out, but I wasn't going to change that by burning straight at him. I took a wide arc, then cut back on his orbit with MWD and Point overheated. When he realised what had just happened, he went offline, but too late - Kill: Maxemus Payne (yeah, for some reason he engaged a Phoenix moments before).

He logged back in a minute or so later, cursing his ISP. I'm reliably told by Riley that Ennrion is one of Max's alts and he was online the whole time. Now, I'm not saying it wasn't a legitimate d/c - I'll let people make their own minds up on that one.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the fleet had the tower back down at 26% and had started reciting Blackstar's adopted mantra: always bet on stupid. On the face of it, the threats and posturing seemed like a good idea, but then again, a bluff is still a good option if it's the only play you've got. We collapsed the U210 before the scanner or any support could arrive and it wasn't too long before the [BOOKS] tower made a pretty explosion. They'd managed to clear out anything of any value while the US guys were on their watch, so we didn't have a piñata party, but that didn't matter so much - The system was ours.