End of Line

We have just opened a new chain and are spreading out looking for activity. It is approaching the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and the activity levels are low due to people traveling. I am scanning with my alt and find the static high sec and the static c4 for the new wormhole. A teammate jumps the C4 and reports back that an Iteron V lands and jumps going the other direction. He links the pilot name and doesn't think he was spotted as he held cloak while the other pilot landed and jumped.

So we have an Iteron V moving stuff from a C4 into a C2. I move over to the high sec and confirm that he exits to k-space at that location. On the theory that what goes out will usually return, we set a trap with a cloaked Flycatcher on the C4 and prepare to wait. Less than 30 seconds go by when the Flycatcher pilot reports back that he has an activation. I am sitting in a Sabre and a corp mate is sitting in an interceptor in our home system.

The Flycatcher pilot reports a Bustard has appeared and immediately decides to engage. We jump and warp to the C4 and land just as the Bustard jumps back and a Proteus decloaks. I jump on contact but there is no sight of the Bustard. He either cloaked or warped off. A Falcon has decloaked and is sitting about 30 km off the wormhole yellow boxing me. I fly around assuming the Bustard has probably cloaked since that ship is not the most agile ship in Eve. However, I am unable to decloak him and the Falcon has be permajammed at any rate so it wouldn't really matter.

The Falcon of Rall Mekin does not miss a single cycle so I finally decide to burn out and put a bubble on him. The Flycatcher pilot has headed home to reship while I decide to test the tanked Sabre and see how long I can survive. Surprisingly I manage to avoid making any mistakes that get me tackled by the Proteus for several minutes but my luck finally runs out and they shut down my MWD. Once they shut down my MWD, it is all over and since I had bubbled up the Falcon, I not only pay for the mistake with my ship, but was given the pod express to high sec as well. Oh well! That pod was getting a bit ripe anyway.

The Flycatcher pilot returns to the fight with an Absolution and an Oneiros, but the Falcon and Proteus are joined by another Proteus, Hurricane, Loki, Wolf, and Rupture. With more pilots appearing on the high sec wormhole, I call it off and tell everyone to get out. The Absolution is going down but while it burns, the other pilots manage to escape back home.

I tell everyone to return to our home system and prepare for an invasion force. Against this group, I expect for them to come looking for our home system. We flew with a couple of them in the past and have encountered them more than once. My alt is sitting on our home connection watching activity as we prepare for home defense. There are only 4 of us online at the moment so our options are somewhat limited. We know we will be fighting outnumbered but I am going to field a fight if they come looking for us. We put a couple of pilots in battleships on the wormhole to encourage the opposing force to engage when they find us and cloak a Falcon nearby.

It takes several minutes but finally probes appear in the C2S. A few passes with the probes and they are all within 1 AU of the wormhole. Now we wait for their scout. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, Hapachu decloaks in a Proteus and jumps the wormhole. He immediately jumps back out and nothing else is seen for several minutes. In the meantime, we are joined by another corpmate bringing our total number of pilots to 5. We are beginning to think they left when I see a fleet coming on d-scan. Holy Crap! We may be getting more than we can handle.

I have logged in another character who is sitting out of d-scan range of the wormhole in a Bhaalghorn. One of our pilots has a Navy Armageddon at the wormhole and an Archon off d-scan. We have a pilot single boxing a Navy Megathron and another in a Tempest Fleet and the last pilot is triple boxing a sensor boosting Blackbird, a Scorpion and a Falcon.

The hostile fleet lands with a Navy Brutix, 2 Proteus, 2 Legions, 2 or 3 Lokis, a Hurricane, and a Vigilant. At this point, I stop watching and get the impressed Bhaalghorn pilot headed for the wormhole. They begin jumping and before everyone gets in, the wormhole crits. We engage and they immediately pop the Blackbird and the Falcon. I think the Falcon got too close to the wormhole while trying to manage multiple accounts at once.

The Archon and Bhaalghorn are in route, but their firepower overwhelms the Navy Armageddon before the Archon can land. While they are killing our Navy Geddon, we kill their Navy Brutix and once the Archon lands they start jumping out. I have locked 5 strategic cruisers and start applying neuts across the board as they begin jumping ships back out of the wormhole.

The wormhole collapes leaving six or seven of them in the wormhole. We spread our points and lock the Proteus of Hapachu, the Legion of Rall Mekin and the Legion of Clickless. The Bhaalghorn has all of them nueted out and while they have massive buffer tanks, they have no ability to do any meaningful damage. At this point, anyone who isn't pointed abandons the field. Hapachu initiates self destruct so we focus our limited firepower on him. Mindful who lost the Navy Mega is now back with a Devoter and puts the bubble up a few seconds before Hapachu's Proteus explodes. We return the favor he gave me and send him on the pod express to high sec.

Next up is Clickless in a brick Legion. When Rall sees the Devoter, he abandons ship and escapes in his pod while we are killing Clickless. We clean up the field and bring a pilot in to fly his legion back to our corp tower.

Part 1 shows the fight in our wormhole and the Legion abandoned by Mr. Mekin was fit identically to the one of Clickless. Part 2 shows the Absolution we lost in the C4. Part 3 shows the Sabre and pod that I lost in the C4.

In total, just over 2.5B ISK was destroyed in what I believe amounts to a draw. Regardless, the encounter was fun! We managed to leverage the mechanics of our static connection and field a fight while vastly outnumbered. Since they brought a good fight and were pretty good natured about the whole encounter, we scouted a route and helped the stranded pilots who escaped the field back to k-space.

Thanks for the fun guys! In the chatter after the fight, they revealed that the Bustard had cargo worth many billions of ISK. Therefore, the escort and the quick response once we engaged it. Their pilot told me that I came very close to decloaking him in the C4. Engaging them on that wormhole started a chain of events which made the evening interesting for both groups. Fly Dangerous!