Friday, March 20, 2009

A Week of Blood

Selina dropped on the thick couch within her apartment at the headquarters station. The past week, beginning with the previous weekend, had been a whirlwind of activity both good and bad and she had a feeling this weekend would be no different.

It started off on Saturday with the decision being made for the fleet to head into one of the wormholes that have been popping up all over the place since... Well... Anyways, it was a chance for the corp to get a feel for fighting this ancient race known as Sleepers. They had gathered a fleet of about 15 ships, a mix of battleships, battlecruisers, logistics and such and struck out towards the previously located wormhole. Once inside, various complexes were scanned down, patrolling Sleeper gaurdians dispatched, wrecks looted and salvaged.. All in all a very successful op with barely a scratch on any of their fleet's ships.

It wasn't until the call was made to return to the wormhole and head home that the op hit a bit of a snag.

A decision was made to first jump a couple ships through the wormhole back into known space just to make sure there weren't any surprises on the other side. Once that had been accomplished, the rest of the fleet was ordered to approach the gate and jump as well. First one then another disappeared through the wormhole.

"Captain Froulia, commence wormhole jump."

"Umm....I'm sorry Miss Selina, but I cannot process your request."

"Captain Froulia, that is not a request. That is an order."

"I understand Miss, but there seems to be a problem."

Selina mentally ground her teeth. "And just what would that..." her words cut off as she stared at the wormhole ahead of her. She hadn't noticed it before but strange fluctuations began emanating from the anomaly and growing quickly. And suddenly, as if it just never was, the wormhole was gone.

Immediately the comms lit up in a frenzy. Half the ships had gotten out but the other half were now stuck. The horror stories she'd heard from other pilots had just come true. Immediantly the FC demanded order. A reordering of squads was created, those in known space and those still in wormhole space. As a rule of thumb, the probe ship was intended to be last to leave and thus immediantly went to work, seeking an alternative exit, while the squad in known space started the trek home. Eventually of course an exit was found through which the remaining fleet was able to get through. An even better turn of events was that the exit brought them within only a few jumps of the corp's operations base for cyno jumping carrier and jump freighters.

So that was Saturday.

Sunday, a fleet was formed to go on a rather lengthy roam. All in all, about 20 pilots showed up for the roam. For the most part it was a smooth journey, but the only kill being a pirate in a Megathron who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After returning to the home base, a majority stayed together and decided to go harass the local bullies in the region. Unfortunately, the fleet ended up losing two Raven battleships in return for killing one of their Megathron battleships. It was a slightly bad decision on the fleet's part for being so far away from the bait ships.

Either way, for the night, it was a 2 for 2. Not really good but acceptable. As for Selina personally, she realized then she really needed to get someone working on shortening the time of her battleship's targeting computers as she was beginning to feel like she was always a step behind everyone.

As for Monday, she did take that day off. Relaxing just a bit and getting some paperwork and other things in order. Tuesday, herself and a couple others headed out to see what could be found. They ended up finding a crow interceptor who definitely gave them a short run for the money. However, with her trio gang spread out well enough, all it took was one bad mistake and the crow met it's demise.

The following night, while herself and her corp mate, Promephius, decided to go check out a couple active systems in the area, they came upon an ally who was attempting to narrow down a couple of unwelcome visitors from the nullsec regions nearby. Fleeting up with him, they were eventually able to catch them at a planet and within short order, separated one from his battlecruiser while the other, in the Caracal cruiser, escaped. Unfortunately, it turns out the ally was quite drunk and just being an absolute punk in passing along the killmail if he got it. Claims he never got one, though he didn't seem to know where to look no matter how many times it was described to him. Of course there is the possibility the pilot ejected. Either way, seems it will remain a mystery...

Finally, yesterday, Thursday evening, Selina had set out flying wing with Promephius. They hopped around a couple systems within Solitude, tried to bait/catch a couple of blinky pirates but not having much luck, made the decision to head towards empire some 20 hops away. Destination was Mara, a system well known to be active with pirates. However, they decided to split up slightly with Selina taking the slightly shorter route through a few low sec systems. Upon jumping into the first lowsec system, she was greeted with a delightful small surprise.

A number of pirates had set up a gate camp. Immediately her mouth began to water, looking at all the juicy targets on her radar. Too many for herself in her Incursus, even with Promephius nearby in a Vexor cruiser, but it definitely gave her hope of some action that evening. Moving on, she finally came to Tama, another well known pirate system. Sure enough, subspace communication beacons reported an average of 20 to 30 pilots in system, with numerous ones marked by Concord as shoot on sight. Passing word to Promephius, the decision was made to hang out for a bit and see what could be found.

Spotting a couple of assault frigates in a belt, Promephius gave the word he was warping in. Selina got a tad confused by which belt he'd called and aligned to the wrong one but as soon as he relayed he'd found them and was engaged, she immediately set her navigational computers to warp to him. Unfortunately it was a delay that probably cost them the kill. Quickly they primaried the Wolf. For a moment, things were looking really good...but then the inevitable happened. Out of warp came 2 more elite frigates, a stabber cruiser, and a short distance off a Falcon uncloaked. Decision was made it was time to bail out. Unfortunately, they already had Promephius locked down while Selina alone escaped. At that point, all they could do was sit and laugh as it took nearly a full 3 minutes for so many ships to chew through his armor, him unable to do much of anything except spam the warp command given the Falcon had him completely jammed. Finally, of course, the ship's structure gave way and although he would've normally escaped, there was a slight delay in his pod systems which ended up costing him the life of his clone. (Of course a petition was filed to the systems engineers...though they both knew it would probably be for the most part ignored and blamed on pilot error)

So all in all in had been a pretty decent week...though Selina was definitely itching to get her own killmail...

"Ah well, sleep is a waste of time anyways," she said with a quiet grin before standing, grabbing her jacket and heading for the hanger.

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