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 piƱata party, but that didn't matter so much -
The system was ours.
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