UNLM War Ending
Another war has come to pass. The targets and our employer have come to an agreement and all hostilities are to be ended effective immediate. There are no ill feelings on our part, and I hope the same can be said from them. They were stand-up gents during the conflict, and with the exceptions of 1 or 2 times, there was no smack given from either party.
We did have one last entertaining battle before the end, however. Unknown to the targets, we had actually gained access to their wormhole system several weeks ago. We had been keeping an eye on things in their “panic room” for a while, looking for the opportune time to strike a massive blow. I knew that they occasionally ran large-scale mining operations with a fleet of barges and an Orca. Wonderful thoughts of crashing that party had danced in my head for weeks. We had even followed them into a second system that they seemed to be setting up in. They had hauled a large Amarr tower and some defenses, but were crushed by another corporation and lost nearly everything. From my reports they seemed to be getting hit repeatedly in the system by a roaming gang. I believe they tried to pull up the tower and leave the system but were intercepted, the tower stolen, and the members driven out of the system and into 0.0 where all but 1 were destroyed. Brutal.
There was a hefty bounty by our employer on the heads of two of their pilots who were often in the w-system as well, and I had been waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Unfortunately, one of those pilots mainly played during our off hours, and the other was rarely to be seen outside of a station or POS shield – and even then was always in a frigate or shuttle.
Eventually a combination of opportunity and intel forced our hand, and we made a move to attack them in their system that they believed belied safety from the war. We received word that they were pulling out from the w-system. I’m unsure the exact reasons why, but I assume it was due to the system being mostly dead. It had been farmed into oblivion, and their friends that had bunked with them in there had recently moved out as well. Whether the plan was to resettle a different system or simply pull out of sleeper space for a while, I do not know. Either way, there was a chance of losing access and going through the pain of infiltrating their new home. It took a great deal of effort to get in the first time – I didn’t want to repeat that needlessly.
With several pairs of eyes on their POS, their corpmate mining in a retriever, and both sides of the current entrance to highsec (their w-system had a static highsec wormhole, very convenient) we waited. We missed the first major opportunity when a Legion and the Orca left the system to drop off goods at the station, but were able to pounce the second time the Orca came through with a Pilgrim in tow. I landed next to the Orca on the highsec side of the wormhole right after he jumped to me, and he quickly jumped back through. I followed with the Phobos, pinning him down again. He was trapped in the w-system since there is a cool-down on jumping twice through a wormhole so quickly. I kept 2 of my corpmates on the other side to snag him when he tried to jump again, as I doubted my small guns on my Phobos would kill him in time. His corpmate in a Pilgrim warped off, and returned in a Sacrilege. During the fight we noticed that the wormhole connection was now critical due to mass limits, and we decided to jump both our Zealot and our Armageddon pilot in, hoping to collapse the wormhole with the mass of the battleship. Otherwise the Zealot was to jump back through and hold in highsec to catch the Orca, which would certainly finish off the connection.
*Pop*
The wormhole connection snapped shut behind the plated Armageddon, sealing any chance of escape for the Sac and Orca. I swapped from the infini-point script to the bubble to ensnare the targets, but I did it a moment too soon. An enemy Curse had come out to join the fight, but the bubble went up a moment before he arrived and so put him at the limits of the engagement. He was able to turn tail and warp off before we could establish a tackle, and we focused back on the other two ships. The Sacrilege all but vanished from existence after a few volleys of the Armageddon and Zealot, and a new corpse floated in space shortly afterward. The mighty Orca followed suit, and the CEO’s pod held captive.
I gave the orders to lock and tackle the pod, but to hold fire while negotiations were made. Luck was on our side in that our employer was online and active, and after a few minutes we were able to come to an appreciable agreement for all involved parties. We released the pod, scooped the loot, and left system through the newly spawned highsec exit via another scan alt. We left a can with the bookmark in it at a planet and relayed the information to our now previous targets before leaving system.
I had considered waiting until they were moving the POS equipment out, as it was a large faction tower with all faction fittings with an estimated price-tag of roughly 3 billion isk, but the risk was too great that we would miss them during our off-hours. I was not prepared to spend 14 hours staring at their POS in Red Bull induced insomnia, and the potential to have a juicy target without any backup to take them out.
All in all, it was a good war. We ended with 27 kills and 3 deaths plus a fair amount of damage caused to the enemy. The employer was pleased and has promised us the potential for further contracts, and I’m sure our target corp will bounce back from this attrition. They are in general a good bunch of pilots and I wish them well in their future endeavors.
-Barashi
