¶ I skipped the shower when I woke up this afternoon, heading right to my capsule and bringing The Perfect Storm’s systems online.  I didn’t waste any time announcing my presence to the fleet commanders in O-2.  A glance at the Local comm channel showed 228 pilots connected, and the number was rising.  I reported before that the NCC had managed to replace their cynosural system jammer under cover of an Avatar-class titan piloted by Papa Pod of Pure. alliance.  But we already had plenty of capital assets in place, so G00DFELLAS high command was showing no sign of letting up on the siege of O-2.

¶ At the moment, not much was happening, so I kept one ear on the secure channel while I browsed GalNet looking for updates and information from other parts of the cluster.  Just as I was reading about the destruction of an Un-Natural Selection supercapital construction yard rumored to have been in the process of constructing a titan and a mothership, the HUD showed a cynosural field beacon a little over 3 million kilometers away at another moon orbiting O-2RNZ VI – Pure. had disactivated their cyno jammer to allow reinforcements from Morsus Mihi and RAZOR Alliance to jump into the system.

¶ Friendly scouts had reported other NCC forces gathering within a few light years of our battlefield (that’s right, OUR battlefield) and we had been expecting this development.  When a cyno jammer is offlined, it cannot be activated again for 30 minutes.  During this thirty minutes, anyone can light a cynosural beacon, friend and foe alike.  It wasn’t long before a cyno appeared over 4 million km from the tower the primary fleet was massed at.  Expecting action to erupt at any moment, I instructed the crew of my Hurricane to ready my guns and launchers and ensure that the MicroWarpdrive was functioning properly.  A few minutes later, comms roared to life with urgent orders from the FC:

“Support to VI – 16 POS, Support to VI – 16 POS, friendly capitals tackled, gogogogoGO!!!”

¶ I arrived at the friendly tower to see no less than 30 hostile vessels on my overview, which was set to show only support craft at the time; no telling how many battleships and capital vessels were on the field.  Unfortunately, in the urgency of the order we had not been given a warp-in, so those of us who had not yet been to the VI – 16 tower to capture a navigation bookmark were arriving as far as 200 kilometers from the fight.  Primary, secondary and tertiary targets were called and I struggled to find a friendly closer to the action but farther than 150km from my position so that the crew could give the warp drive something to grab onto.  Without friendly forces on the HUD, that’s not as easy as it sounds!

¶ Finally I found a warp-in and engaged the warp drive, which was bogged down by the energy phenomena occuring locally due to the volume of hybrid and energy munitions being spent as missile payloads detonated and turrets fired from ships and drones alike ((in other words, lag was horrible, took a while to load grid and module lag was around the 2 minute mark – nothing compared to other battles I’ve read about, but UGH it was rough)).  But I spare no expense in finding competent crewmen for my vessels, and the engineering crew had the Perfect Storm moving in no time.

¶ Unfortunately, the power of the Hurricane is well known and I was called primary as soon as I was in range.  Sturdy as she may be, a battlecruiser can only take so much and try as I might, I was not able to get her out of harm’s way before her defences gave out.  After this, I managed to extricate my capsule from the fray and return to the primary forward operations center at P6 – M20 where I listened to the comm link for another twenty minutes or so as I pondered what would be the best time to sneak another support craft up the pipe.

¶ It was clear that the friendly capital ships had been rescued, which made me feel a little better about the Perfect Storm and her crew.  In wars like this, every little bit of intel counts, so it’s safe to assume that what precious few survivors there were are not enjoying life in NCC interrogation centers.  As soon as the last friendly carrier was out of harm’s way, I heard the FC’s call for support at the AGG-NR gate giving orders for warp-ins to be established.  With carrier pilots assigning fighters and superb target calling, the <GODS> fleet was doing extremely well, fearless and efficient despite the Avatar-class titan looming on our directional scanners maintaining a constant threat.

¶ The battle at the gate was progressing so well, in fact, that none were surprised when the titan appeared near the gate to fire off its doomsday device, destroying 8 battleships, 2 Heavy Assault Cruisers, 2 Force Recon cruisers and one Command Ship.  The fleet commander had constantly warned the G00DFELLAS on the field to stay aligned whenever possible, which no doubt saved the bulk of our assembled fleet which now included GBC elements, courtesy of Axiom Empire <AXE> alliance and the Destructive Influence [DICE] corporation from Band of Brothers.

¶ At this point, things got a little jumbled and chaotic on the secure channel (a doomsday ignition tends to have that effect on most situations) but if I understood the situation correctly, the enemy fleet followed our forces to our deathstar and rejoined battle, ultimately resulting in the destruction of a second hostile Nidhogger-class Minmatar carrier.  The first wasn’t mentioned because I have no idea when it was destroyed; it was about a half hour after my Hurricane went down, but I don’t recall hearing a Nidhogger get called primary during the fight over the AGG gate.

¶ When the fighting had died down for the night, the killboard showed 113 kills and 77 losses.  I don’t know if our boards are still in sync with the other GBC boards, but it seems as though Axiom Empire lost only two battleships and one interceptor and [DICE] lost nothing.  In the interests of publishing this entry in a timely manner, I’ll skip the killboard searches to verify that assessment.  Regardless of exact casualty rates, having battle-hardened friends from AXE and BOB on the battlefield with us is a welcome thing indeed, and perhaps will work as a first step toward repairing the relationship between our alliance and the GBC at large.

¶ All in all, nothing lost, nothing gained; the cyno jammer is still in place and the Pure. resistance isn’t yet utterly crushed, but at the same time the siege of O-2RNZ seems set to continue for as long as it takes.  We’ve got our eyes on a very worthy prize indeed.





-Havo out.

Popularity: 1% [?]