It’s a quiet night in our wormhole. Our nullsec connection is to some backwater region where little is going on at the current timezone. The few people online are busy with maintaining their PI or cleaning up their inventory. Some do logistics via the wormhole-chain with the closest exit to Jita.
Suddenly Holecamp
I did so myself with a blockade runner just a couple minutes ago. Someone else is currently hauling in a new cruiser and other things with his trusty old Deep Space Transport. If you fly them right, Blockade Runners or Deep Space Transports rarely get in situations where they can get killed. Why am I saying this? Well, this Occator was around eight years old. Yes, I said was.
As it truned out, the highsec wormhole was now camped by a seizable gang, quite capable of blowing up a DST if they would manage to pull off the boosh from their command destroyer. The gate – pardon – hole campers had a Bifrost, two Sabres, a Nemesis, Orthrus, Proteus and Stratios.
Turns out they knew how to use a Micro Jump Field Generator and the friendly DST was now tackled 100km off the highsec wormhole two wormhole-jumps away from us. The comms swaped to combat mode, realizing we likely would come to late to do anything, but decided to try anyway.
I brought my Bifrost in first to scout the situation on the highsec wormhole while our DST-pilot used the chance to safe his pod and implants while he wasn’t bubbled. He ejected, and the campers seemed to decide to keep the hauler alive instead of killing it! At least that was what I guessed from the Occator being on dscan for more than two minutes during which people switched into combat ships. I warped my Command Destroyer on grid to confirm the situation and saw them all sit right on top of the hauler. As it later turned out, their Orthrus had a cargo scanner fitted, so they knew the contents of the Occator were worth around a billion. We guessed they decided to bring in a pilot capable of flying the T2 hauler instead of killing it. Not a bad call for sure.
Meanwhile our gang got ready. Two Drekavacs, one Vedmak and a Cerberus were one wormhole-jump away. The Orthrus had started to chase my Bifrost and seperated itself from the his gang – good for us. I gave the call to warp to my Bifrost at 50km so our gang would land in solid range to engage the campers. Judging by their chaotic reaction, we caught them completely off guard: The Proteus started to burn towards his Orthrus buddy while the others just sat there for at least half a minute doing nothing. The Nemesis just exploded after two volleys from the Cerberus while the Othrus, tackled by my Bifrost, lost the 1v1 against our Vedmak – The Mordus Legion cruiser had shot most of his Rapid Light Missile clip into my Bifrost. Our Drekavacs proceeded to tackle the comparably slow Proteus and Stratios. It was a pleasure to coordinate and dismatle them while they struggled in disarray. They cleary did not expect an actual fight.
We just had arrived in time as well: An Impairor landed at 0 on the Occator while the fight was still going. But our Cerberus had the hauler locked. And one can not board a ship that is locked by a player or NPC if it isn’t the original owner of the ship. Ha! Sadly the Stratios pilot realized this as well and sent his drones on the DST. We could not kill the SoE cruiser in time and the trusty old hauler met his end.
Run Away!
Ther was no time to loot when a Gila fleet showed up on dscan. Inlcuding Scimitars, and Rapier plus a hand full of Interdictors.
A tacital retreat was in order or we would become content too. I scouted our wormhole back and saw two Sabres and a Flycatcher land with me. No, that wasn’t the way we were going to take back. Still it got spicy as some had initiated warp to the wormhole already! Luckily, everyone still made it off the bubbled wormhole while the Gila fleet seemed to still struggle to organize themself, while losing point on the Cerberus and Drekavac.
My Bifrost exploded, due to polarization. I take it as sacrifice to Bob. Instead of the direct way home, we managed to jump the highsec wormhole in an unbubbled moment and met up in Jita to restock. Then we set course to a lowsec connection in our chain a couple jumps out and went home safely.
Summed up: An Occator lost, an expensive pod safed, and a nice little skirmisch had. Chase around the system and safe extraction on top – gf!
the greybill 