Operation: Lazarus (Part 1)

Blogged by Jay Joringer

Blackstar's Jericho Wing had been complaining about the amount of traffic that was moving through their highsec static, as well as the amount of K162's that were prone to appearing in their system. This was making difficult for them to do their production. As much as this sounds like it's coming from a true bunch of carebears, it's part of the game. Those guys have stuck with Blackstar through thick and thin, so I wasn't about to ignore them. Besides, a quieter system might see Jarett on the wrong side of the killboard a little less. With that in mind, a C3 with a lowsec static was probably the best place to move all the guys from the C2 into. 

As it happens, we had spotted a decent one. Respectable PI, all Interbus customs offices. There was someone living in it, however; The Board of Education. It took me a while, and a small amount of digging to remember where I'd heard of them before. It was on their killboard that I spotted the familiar name of Riley Augustin, CEO of The Inheritors, who we've roamed with a few times. I chatted with Riley and asked if he was up for a little payback. Pirates never seem to say 'no' to those kind of opportunities. He did mention Max from [BOOKS] was a cool guy, but they were "sworn enemies".

Fleet up for the op was delayed a little while we waited for the U210 to despawn. [BOOKS] had a medium Amarr tower with no shield hardeners anchored, so we'd opted for a shield fleet. In the main, Ravens with Mjolnir Torpedoes, but a fair few Oracles, Tornadoes and Talos' backed up with a couple of Basi's. The EU corporations provided the bulk of the fleet along with a couple from [RINGS], but Universal Novatech Inc. conspicuous by their absence once again.

We'd set up the staging POS which we named Lazarus as we were once again starting C3 operations earlier in the day. As luck would have it, the C3 spawned a connection to another C3 that had a highsec static and to top things off, it was owned by The Flying Dutchmen, who we'd flown with while part of B274. Thankfully, they were cool about us moving an Orca an a couple of T3's through (although while they happily agreed to it in convo, who wouldn't expect a trap, right?). True to their word, they let us pass without incident.

The fleet had moved to Skarkon the connecting lowsec system when Lord WhoDAT decided to show up. Only 45 minutes late, so for his standards, that was pretty good. We'd even met up with Riley and his contribution to the op (1 other pilot) by then. The combined fleet was already engaging the tower when Whodat finally got his shit together. I called for a scout to guide him into the system, but he'd somehow managed to get himself camped in a station by a Brutix and a Typhoon and was screaming over TS for the fleet to stop shooting the tower and go help him. We could only spare one scout to go help him out, but he was AFK, so I asked WhoDAT to undock to see what was outside the station and where. He announced that a Machariel had joined the party, which changed things dramatically. Ravens would be pretty useless and it would eat the attack Battlecruisers for breakfast. Of course, with the numbers we had, we could work something out, but we'd need the scout. For the time being the order was "sit tight." Apparently, that order was too complicated and someone was about to learn the hard way just how good a Machariel is at bumping ships off an undock. Shortly afterwards, the alliance recieved this:

_________________________________________________________________________________

TO ALL THAT WAS IN THE PUSSY FLEET
From: Lord WhoDAT
To: Enigma Project [EXIII]
_________________________________________________________________________________
FAIL ASS SHIT, THATS WHAT I THINK OF ALL YOU PUSSY FUCKS THAT WAS IN THAT FUCKING FLEET,
YOU ALL ARE DEAD TO ME, YOU YET AGAIN PROVED TO ME THAT YOU ARE A BUNCH OF PUSSY NUBS

27 IN FLEET AND NOT ONE OF YOU PUSSIES WANTED HELPED ME OUT .

FUCK OFF

_________________________________________________________________________________

And for completion, here's the lossmail. Feel free to leave a comment.

Funnily enough, the alliance CEO's were discussing whether The Cleansing should be booted from the alliance. It's amazing how one guy being a complete tool on an a lowsec undock can save you a lot of delicate diplomacy.

Unencumbered by [CLNZ.], Enigma Project  finished the first phase of the op smoothly.  At least this POS was set up correctly and shot back, but then again, with as few guns and  ECM as there was on the tower, it may has well have been unarmed. The fleet moved seamlessly from one module to the next and it wasn't long before the guns were trained on the tower itself. It was too much to hope for that they had neglected to fill the strontium bay, although it wasn't completely full.

Once again, it was awesome to see the numbers committed to it. Even though POS bashing isn't the most exciting thing to be doing, it was good to get the guys together and talk shit over TS while ruining someone's day - that's the part that makes the ops worthwhile. With Lazarus firmly in place and the [BOOKS] POS into reinforced until 7am the next morning and all the defence modules incapacitated, we called it a night early so we could be ready to hit it again once it came out of RF. The US guys didn't need to do anything, but we left Anselm to keep watch until we logged back in...

(to be continued)