But we have not shot anyone in days.
What to do? Space is dead around where we are. We've been carebearing it up like nothing else. It has been quite silly. The local bug just caused people to log off and not come back until they were sure it was fixed. I was reading a rant by a Nyx pilot that didn't feel safe ratting because of it... (teeheehee)
We decided to look at the map and find a system where there had been some kills. Our desire to kill being high and our lack of targets pushing us out of our normal paths. We found a low sec pocket surrounded by high sec that had 7 kills in the last hour. Interested, we decided, what the hell...
While we're at it, Titan shortcut... because it's fun.
Two members of our fleet were flashy reds. This means that their security status is so low that they are outlaws in empire space and kill on sight in any high sec system. I had manged to drag my sec status up to a -3.8 so I was good in the .06 and .05 systems we would cross.
For our flashy members, it was a race from gate to gate ahead of the faction police. They are not as deadly as Concord for someone with GCC. They don't lock you down and just blow you away. You can escape them. One guy jumped the gate and got nailed by customs for the drugs in his cargo hold.
They both hopped into the system and began to shake their asses and run around to see if we could get anything going. There were some -10 toons in the system but they would not engage. They chased them, they ratted, they did everything they could to bring a fight. Everyone stayed docked. The FC decided to move the rest of us a gate back and see if that helped. As we left the gate someone in local goes , "Why are you guys warping off, I know you."
We didn't answer.
Soon boredom set in. We headed back out of the system in a different path. This time everyone from my corp on the roam had to make the dash through .07 space. It's amusing that.
You land, the local fills because its high sec, the color of the sec status changes from dark orange/reds to bright greens and you know that if you don't get off the gate you are fucked. Suddenly, high sec, where people love and adore and scream to make safer, is a special type of blue sec status tinted hell. I made sure to wave in local as we ran through and hopped out the other side back into the safety(?) of low sec. It is such a somewhat stupid yet fun thing to do. Its a great way to lose a ship and it has happened to all of us. Yet, we still do it. Weee!
We were not finding anything. My CEO, whom we had lured onto coms to be social for once, commented that there was a wormhole to low sec up in Gallente space in our home system. Win! New place to go. Weee! Yay! Wormholes.... I've never gone through one... I've looked at them but now was the time it seemed.
Wormholes are odd looking things.
Gallente space. I started the game around here. I was enthralled with the nebula then and I still am. Its gorgeous.
The bad news is that it is as dead here as it is where we live.
We are up in gallente space hopping in and out of low sec and nullsec as we weave our way. I got to see a faction warefare system for the first time. It has a similar screen feel to an incursion.
At one point, the scout cross jumps a hurricane. He tells us good luck. We are in null at the moment so no gateguns. Not that gateguns stop us. The GCC count down just sucks. But we're not going to skip a hurricane.
He held his cloak as long as he could. I'm hovered over my overview. My MWD is already cycling. I'm ready to snap target and approach. He is going to go for the gate, its the only option. A deep breath. No blinking. The cloak only holds for so long. The tornado is burning off the gate to get some distance to properly use his guns. We're all ready, and we're all quiet..
Decloak "Point!" "Point!" "Go for bumps!" coms is spammed but not in a chaotic way. "He's going for the gate. Overload!" Guns are blazing and he's almost made it back to the gate when he explodes.
It's not an amazing battle full of overwhelming odds. We had a lot of firepower. However, he was tanked properly and if he had made the gate he'd probably have gotten away. Most of us we're aggressed. We had a drake on the other side. If he had been in structure that probably would have done him in. The irritating thing about gate jumping is that it changes sessions and that causes the game not to record the people who aggressed in the previous system. Therefore we 'lose' a kill mail/report. We still get the kill but your participation does not go onto the board.
"Nighthawk on scan. He's ratting, get to the gate."
"We're on the way."
"Lost him."
"My balls are getting bluer..." someone comments.
"I'm looking, give me a second."
"Shut up! You just got a hurricane kill," says the FC.
"That's right. We already fed you," I add.
As we waited on the gate.
"Local up! Local up, up up, times 5!"
"Get ready people. We don't know what it is. If it's cruisers, we're going for it. Hardner's on, get ready. Don't agress until we see them!"
My hands got sweaty. They do that with PvP. I can get that excited. Normally, my hands are super dry. Now, they got moist with the anticipation. What is it going to be? We can also jump the gate to escape if we needed to. However, 5 of them, 5 of us, the odds are good right now...
Ships started decloaking. Cruisers! Rupture, Rifter, blackbird.. some other shit that I don't remember because it was going so fast. All of them neutral (not even flashy yellow). Excited, the FC called primaries and we started spamming our locks. This was going to be interesting once they engaged us. Everything is overloaded and the target locks are landing...
They vanished. Fleet warp had been activated and poof, all our targets were gone as our locks landed on them.
Sigh. We had been so excited. We were ready to engage. The moment was there and then it vanished. On the other side of the gate, in system, our scanner was trying to hunt down the nighthawk still. He got a warpin but the Nighthawk moved and then vanished off of scans.
Sigh.
We hopped into the system and started working our way home. Two systems down and we hear from the scout...
"Flashy Abso on the gate."
"Jump through on landing!" ordered the FC and directed one of the flashy guys to go first.
"Scare him through?" he asked?
"Engage him!" roars the FC.
From coms, my CEO goes, "Might want to see if he targets you first..."
Stealthy FC for the win. "I can FC from anywhere..." he said in our chat.
But the pilot warped off as our flashy bait laded hurricane landed.
"Where did he go?"
"He's off scans."
"Go to the sun. If he lands on you we might not get there in time."
"Going.... he's not here"
"I don't see him on scans," says the scout.
"Cloak."
"These is no one here and the few that are we can't catch," said the very disgruntled FC.
Back to the wormhole.
The scout bounced through and called out that a drake was landing on the wormhole. The drake was someone that we knew quite well. He is part of an antipirate group that live in a high sec pocket of low sec. He gets bored and comes into our system to taunt us. Sometimes we chase him. Sometimes he dies. He has had honored 1v1's with one of the guys and lost every single one. I've been polite to him during the course of the war and chatted with him in local. However, it seems that he isn't allowed to talk to us when his alliance/corp/blues are in system. This irritates me deeply. He came and helped to bash our POCO but could not return a polite hello.
"He just landed on the wormhole!"
The fleet split in half. Half went through the wormhole in an attempt to point him and kill him on the other side. The other half stayed back in the other system in case he jumped again. You can only go through a wormhole entrance every 4 minutes. He saw us land with him and he decided to bolt back to the other side. Right into the hands of the people waiting for him.
Point is called once. Point is called twice. He's down. The rest of us wait out our timer and jump back through.
We hovered around the wreck while we played with the new 'kill reports' to look at the fitting and share the kill mail... errr kill report. It was a PvE fit Drake that he was going to take through the wormhole. He didn't have any rigs on it and a missing mid. I understand the missing high due to the launchers. Perhaps he had already scanned out a site and switched ships to go run it. I don't know.
He posted a cute little link in local to a cartoon guy flipping you off. Funny that. I was just thinking that it seems we often bump into kills on the way back home.
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