New contract v Scalar Alliance

After the eventful weekend, we were informed of the real reason we were back in Empire- a contract against a small Alliance called Scalar Alliance [OOC- read some back history on this conflict, here]. We had been hired to bring some muscle to the table.

The action was taking place in Pure Blind, a rather poor region of not much interest to anyone, which I concluded to myself, was why a small Alliance were being allowed to 'look after' the Region by Triumvirate, their neighbours. The latter could, let's face it, move in and move these guys out should they see fit. But current events had it that Tri were undergoing some leadership issues, and had removed a couple of more PvP orientated corps from their Alliance recently, so who knew what was going on.

Anyway. The upshot was that we were ordered to move our ships closer to one of the entrypoints into Pure Blind, Torrinos. The earlier hostilities with BoB and friends had ceased as we had dropped the WarDecs, and thus fighting in Empire wasn't likely to happen (other than suicide ganks.. and you don't tend to suicide gank combat ships). A friend of mine outside the corp, we'll call him "Bert", helped out with his T2 transport, a rather scary looking black Amarrian ship. Very imposing indeed. He wouldn't take any ISK, he just enjoyed hauling stuff around. He was going that way anyway on a trade run, and as my ships didn't take up too much space, it was no bother.

I flew my Tempest up myself, you can't realistically transport Battleships without involving Freighters and we weren't going far so there was no need for that. The journey was uneventful, but as the autopilot aligned the ship for warp in Oipo, my pod's heads up display flickered slightly, then came back. I quickly checked the ship's systems, and found that the capacitor was down to 33%. Weird. I checked the sytem size, and there was the answer- the gate to gate distance was almost 200au! I made a mid-point safespot, you never knew when they'd come in handy, and in a system this big, it was a nice place to hide.

Torrinos was a busy little system, over a hundred pod pilots there. I guess high sec systems that were also entrypoints to nullsec were quite rare, and the opportunities were there for all sorts of safe trade and commerce. Of course a lot of KIA were flitting about, doing the same as me, or just acquanting themselves with their new home for the next week (at least).

The op was starting a little later than normal to allow people to get ships in to place. Impatiently listening to comms chatter, I found myself quite looking forward to this. The first proper contract we'd had since the whole Tortuga move, and we were all looking forward to going back to our roots.

We formed up in our Battleships to smash a camp in EC-P8R but they'd obviously heard we were coming and had gone by the time we arrived. As our main objective for tonight wasn't a BS gang, we switched out to small, fast ships, and went back into EC. I was in my trusty Stiletto once more. I had to buy a T2 Warp Disruptor module for it, as they were almost half a million ISK cheaper in Torrinos than in Nonni, which amused me.

So, we jumped through and surprised an Exequror, Rapier and Armageddon. I was a little surprised to see the Exequror, it was a ship with a huge cargo hold and not often seen in PvP. I was more concerned with locking the Rapier before it cloaked- with a Sensor Booster, my lock time was very quick, and so I had him locked and his warp core distrupted in short order. I turned my mighty 250mm Artillery and missile launcher on him, and put myself into a distant orbit, awaiting the double webs. They never came. The Exequror had popped really quickly, the 'geddon was pointed and wasn't going anywhere, so the others had similarly turned their guns, drones and launchers on the Rapier. It wasn't built for damage, but stealth, and it's hull soon crumpled, buckled and tore apart with a bright flash.

The 'geddon pilot was vainly trying to reach the safety of the gate, but now he had our full attention. Shields blossoming with the impact of the incoming fire, then shimmering as they failed. I'd seen it a thousand times before, but it always captivated me. Armour holding briefly, a green haze of the gases vented by the armour repairers desperately trying, and failing, so stem the flood of damage. Steam and debris being ejected into space as the hull is breached in one, then five, then many places. The crew lifepods hurtling away from the doomed vessel. The inevitable silent blue flash as the reactor takes a hit and the ship is blown to pieces.

Just as we were collecting the loot, a hapless Comorant pilot, minicung, emerged out of warp off the gate- as we had a bubble up, he was nowhere within jump distance. He popped very quickly. His death log showed he had an interesting mix of railguns, lasers and a smartbomb fitted. I pondered briefly if he knew something I didn't. Maybe not.

I volunteered to be the scout up the pipe to RQH-MY. I had no idea why that was our destination, but didn't ask, as I didn't really need to know. The journey up was uneventful apart from when I was holding on an outgate waiting for the rest of the gang to jump into the system, a Crane Transport warped up and jumped through the gate. As I knew he had a built in warp core defence system, i knew my single Warp Disruptor wouldn't be enough to stop him. Although he had made the right choice of ship out here, he was lucky it was just me!

So, we get to RQH, and split between the Mantenault and MQ-NPY gates. I was on the Mantenault gate, an entrypoint back into lowsec Placid. We then were met by our employer, who talked to Eddz briefly. The whole exercise was a show of force, let the employer see what he's getting for his money. Scalar did put in a showing- an Eagle of their's warped in at 200km and locked me. With a finger poised over the jump button, I watched as his railgun rounds shot past me or plinked off my shield with no damage. I wasn't sitting still, or a large target, and I had my MWD off, so he gave up and warped off. He did, however, warp back at range and kill a friendly Kestrel belonging to our employers corp, but they are hardly expensive. He smacked us in the local channel (which I think really is lame, but that's just my opinion) about not protecting our employer, then ran away. Uh huh.

Called it a day after that, the WarDec against Scalar was live in just under 24 hours, so they won't be able to use empire, sentry guns or Concord to hide under. Just as we were disbanding, a Raptor belonging to "TheJackalKiller" jumped into us from Mantenault. He almost made it back to the gate, but we killed him quickly enough. He had no weapons fitted, so I assume was just transiting. His corp, "Soliders of Eve" (I had to double check Concord's registration database, as it seemed to have a spelling mistake in it, but that is the name they chose), was one of the corps causing troubles for our employer, so that was cool.

I found a nice quiet safespot in a nice quiet system and told my small crew to get some sleep. I followed suit.