Monday 12 May 2008

Take me down to the POS bash

Mal: "Hey! How was your thing?"

Inara: "As advertised -- lots of needles and cold exam tables. I heard you had some excitement."

Mal: "Oh, nothin' much -- lotsa runnin' round, little gunplay...couple needles."



What a day, still feeling the after effects of last nights epic fight I was a bit groggy after a good nights sleep. I was sitting on the edge of my bunk trying to gather my senses when my local comms caught my eye, a pilot had entered system, a friend of the Wolf pilot from yesterday. I boarded Chaos™ a Jaguar class assault frigate and undocked. Allowing my systems to resolve I hit the button and it showed a Vengeance class assault frigate in the direction of the 2/10 plex, I imediately hit warp and loaded Phased Plasma faction ammo into the guns. The Phased Plasma is particularly effective against Amarr tech 2 ships.

I burst out of warp right on top of the ancient acceleration gate and was greeted by the Vengeance, I immediately initiated lock and primed my warp scrambler and web, it resolved and they kicked in, my guns spun up and started raining upon the trapped Vengeance, my rocket launcher adding the extra seasoning needed to complete this dish. The small armour tank was failing, my shields barely being scratched, I overloaded my weapons for that extra punch and the knockout came soon after, a beautiful explosion lit the Gusandall void, my tackling systems already primed and waiting for my lock to resolve on the escape pod.

SQUISH

...and yet another corpse gets added to "The Morgue"

I loot the wreck and dock up, a satisfied smile spreads across my face and I light a cigarette. My hangar crew busies themselves with offloading the loot and sorting through it for the Loot Hangar, ready to be moved to high security space and sold, it's getting full in there and soon Keira will make a run to Rens and turn a tidy profit, just the thing to fuel my voracious combat habit.

Huginn the edge

Later this afternoon I was contacted by a friend, Viper Sam and Black Flag had a POS coming out of reinforced mode this evening and he asked if I wanted some fun. Initial plan was to try and rep it but with Intel being gathered it appeared this would be futile, a large force was expected and another plan was formulated, by this time of course I had already purchased a Scimitar logistics ship and had my Hangar crew assemble and load it. Another time perhaps. I did however decide on the Huginn recon cruiser as I would be part of the anti support wing. Anti support was only one of the wings, we also had a battleship and ECM wing which would operate independently from us and all in all we had 12 combat ships and Keira in her Claymore sitting at a safespot.

We mustered in Aralgrund, a few jumpsout from the system where the POS was and away from our HQ as the gates into the POS system from there would most likely be camped. There was a long wait for the time to disembark and there was general chatter in comms channels but soon the time came and we all undocked into the dark.

Our Fleet consisted of 16 pilots from 5 different corps:
Armageddon
Maelstrom
Typhoon
Megathron
Falcon
Blackbird
Blackbird
Blackbird
Cerberus
Huginn - Me
Rapier
Rapier
Hurricane
Hurricane
Stabber
Vexor
Claymore - Keira

The hostile fleet consisted of 16 pilots:
Naglfar
Naglfar
Revelation
Armageddon
Dominix
Maelstrom
Megathron
Megathron
Raven
Raven
Raven
Tempest
Tempest/Vagabond
Purifier
Nemesis
Hound
Surprise Rapier

It was clear to me this was a suicide op, something I didn't expect to survive and I stated in voice comms to the rest of the support wing "If you get out of this in one piece, you didn't try hard enough" It was going to be epic, 5 different alliances arrayed against us, a motley crew of pirates out to save a drugs lab.

It wasn't until we warped into the fight that we knew exactly what we were up against and it quickly became evident we were out gunned but damn it we weren't going down without a fight. Our wing commander called targets and we went to work and boy what a fight, all hell broke loose. Our targets were called, Maelstrom, Megathron, Tempest, a surprise Rapier and a Megathron. They went down one by one but we were losing ships fast, the amassed fire-power against us just too much. My Huginn went down in flames, an honourable death for an amazing ship, my escape pod instawarping to safety. Probably didn't help that the POS was bugged and fired on me, c'est la vie

After the dust had cleared and the aftermath inspected it was clear we were spanked, 11 losses and 5 kills. The POS was destroyed and a minor inconvenience for Black Flag but something they are no doubt to bounce back from

A great fight and everyone was stoked. Only pirates of this calibre could come out on the losing side and still feel good about themselves, only pirates of this calibre would go into an engagement like this without regard for personal safety.
Most of us had no stake in the POS, but everyone was up for a fight and I have to respect and admire them for it.

I returned home to Gusandall, the op over and me in desperate need of something to drink and a cigarette, should probably eat something too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Argh, this entry has more british spelling than any previous one I've read over I think. He's doing it just to screw with me, I can tell.