The paint wasn't even dry!

Well, last night was a doozy.

After a fitful rest, only interrupted by housekeeping wanting to clean my berth, I was energised and ready to go for another evening's combat.

Sure enough, our gang was up already, camping the Doril gate. We'd been there so much recently, we were getting to know the first names of the stargate personnel. Apparently, they love watching ship combat, so getting a job on the outbound gate of a 0.0 border system is quite a sought after post.

I jumped into Doril, and joined my comrades orbitting the gate, when we got a call from our Alliance mates on Utopia gate in Doril- a large (but not larger than us, according to intel) force of ships was on the other side. We hurried back to Sendaya, and most of us changed to Battleships, apart from those of us in Huginns, Rapiers and Hic/Dictors.

Back into Doril. The non-BSs warped over to Utopia gate on instruction from the FC, just in time to see a AAA Flycatcher cloak off the gate. The faster ships engaged MWDs and sped toward the last point we saw him at- he wouldn't be able to fit anything more than a Prototype cloak as the electronics of non-covert ships were really quite incompatible with cloaks. As it was with a Proto cloak, so much of the ships energy went to cloaking the ship, it took most of your engine power.

As a result, he was decloaked easily, and we promptly despatched him. I had double webs on him, and we also had another Huginn and Rapier with us, so he wasn't going to make it to the gate any time soon.

We jumped through into Utopia, while the BSs came to the Utopia gate in Doril. As we jumped in, we saw 3 interceptors on the gate- 2 were 100+km off, and one, a AAA Stiletto was on the gate.. but curiously didn't jump and got killed. Almost immediately, an Eris Interdictor exited warp on top of the gate, ejected a warp bubble and jumped through. We all knew what this meant, so we mentally prepared ourselves for battle.

FC told the BSs in Doril to jump through to us, and told support to hold fire until we saw how big their force was. I was a choice target, as they were mainly in nano'd smaller ships, and they all hate being webbed. I was starting to take damage, so jumped back through to Doril as the BSs appeared in Utopia and their big guns opened up.

In Doril, I was convinced I was going to get destroyed- there was a bubble on the gate and a 20 man AAA gang who'd come in behind us. I was impressed with their organisation, but more concerned with getting out- while holding my post-jump cloak, I saw I was just outside of their bubble. Luck appeared to be on my side as I was aligned to a clump of planets, so I decloaked and warped...phew.

I could scan the gate from the point I exited warp and saw the gang had jumped through. Human nature being what it is, everyone wants to be in on the kill, but if I was in charge, I'd have told them to stay there- they could have picked off any ships coming back through. However, as it turns out, our BSs were doing a lot of damage on the other side.

I warped back to the gate, and landed on the edge of Hictor Bubble. A Broadsword was there on the gate- I ignored him and burned to the gate, he ignored me. I was needed the other side. Jumped through into a chaotic swirl of drones, plasma, projectiles and missiles. I quickly identified the Deimos HAC that was the primary- it was well within web range. Decloaked, locked and webbed, and let rip with my 650mm guns and assault missiles. He was destroyed quite quickly, but my threat indicator was squawking in my ear- I was under sustained attack from a Sacrilege HAC. I switched all my ordinance to the Sac, my drones popping out of their bay and made my way back to the gate. I was out of shields, he was entering armour... not good. I was about to resign myself to losing the Huginn when he was called primary! In very short order, he was transformed into a wreck.

And this is where I made my mistake. I was on the gate, and started to shoot another target. We had intel that a TCF gang of 65 had entered Doril- they weren't blue to us, and it was likely we' get caught in a nasty sandwich.

The FC called for us to withdraw, so I switched all my guns off. I kept trying to jump, and the stargate kept denying me- my combat electronics were still in operation. With one eye on the overview (no-one locked me yet), I double checked my guns and missiles- all off. About 60 seconds had passed, I should be able to jump! "Stargate denies you access" WTF!! With the rest of KIA jumping through, there were less and less targets for AAA, and inevitably, they decided I was too slow and a good target to shoot at. Frantically punching the jump button, and wondering why I couldn't jump, my shields vapourised, as did my armour. Surely now I would jump through, saving my pod and clone.

And then I blacked out, the image of the gate burned on my retina. Like I was stuck in glue. Couldn't move. Then nothing. Huginn down. It occured to me later that my bloody drones had been busily fighting, blissfully unaware that I was trying to jump out. Still, my own damn fault, very noobish.

I woke up to the concerned face of a Sendayan Concord technician looking down at me. I drew in a deep breath and filled my new lungs for the first time. The Tech smiled and withdrew, indicating with his hand a towel and shower in one corner. Chatty bunch, these cops.

So, I had been podkilled then. I mourned briefly for my other clone with it's lovely implants and cool shades, then pulled myself together. I had to get another ship from Rens, as Derelik, the region that I was in, was quite frankly crap for shopping. To cut a long story shorter, I shuttled up to Rens, bought another Huginn, an even cooler pair of shades, then hurried back to Sendaya after getting my ship fitted with guns, launchers, drones and ammo.

The gang were patiently waiting for me, bless them. We had decided to give Doril a rest, word was clearly out that KIA were in town, and everyone loves to fight us! We headed out to G-5EN2, the border system for Providence. Had a couple of kills here and there, but when we got to 7MD-S1, a large CVA gang came up behind us, and engaged those of us left in ERVK-P. The rest of the gang jumped into ERVK, but I got primaried quite early, and my brand new Huginn got destroyed. I wasn't about to wake up in a clone bay again, so when I knew I was going down, I MWDd out of the bubble, which saved my pod when it popped out of the fiery wreckage. I warped away.

CVA weren't quite quick enough to stop the rest of us exiting the system and, frankly GTFO the area. Back to Assah in my pod with the gang. I docked up in Assah, rented a room for the night, showered off, and went to bed grumpy!

However, the battle reports made interesting reading. In the first fight vs. AAA, we actually came out on top, considering they had 20 more ships than us. In the second fight vs. CVA, they outnumbered us 2 to 1, and we, to be honest, got stuffed.

Still, them's the breaks!