The ship dropped out of warp directly in front of the gate, a few seconds behind the rest of the small gang.  Contact alarms, sensors and indicators light up across my view as we’d landed slap bang in the middle of the enemy ships.

Whilst the rest of the gang got to work I raged at my bridge crew “Why the hell have you dumped me in the middle of this!” I demanded.  “I… I… I didn’t see it Ma’am”.

“You didn’t hmm?” I retorted

“No Ma’am”

“The get the hell of my bridge, and send someone else in who is more attentive”.  With that he scuttled off.

“Take us out, quickly” I told the crew as the ship came about on it’s axis having no other celestial objects to get to, we have no option to return or safe.  Taking the quickest option, we were shortly in warp once again.  The warp conduit and spatial distortions, which I usually love seemed to last for an eternity – and we still had to get back, again!

“Hurry up! Hurry up, damn it!” I cursed.

A similar pattern re-occurred, as the ship swung around once again.  The best we could hope for was 100km and to get out of sentry range asap.  We didn’t actually need to take that precaution, but it made sense.  I was in a tin can crammed full of electrical wizardry, keeping the distance and making them work for it made sense.  Besides, more friendlies or neutrals could jump through to assist any moment – who might not be -5 flashy.  No point in getting mashed by sentry fire, or having to leave my gang mates.

We raced across space, no expense spared to get there as soon as possible.  The ship shuddered as it decelerated out of warp, landing smack bang 100km from the gate.

“Weapons systems, target all hostiles – ECM officer standby”

“Yes Ma’am” various voices echoed around.

“Get the sensor boosters on-line, inject range scripts – and get us away from the damn sentries”.  Thankfully we only needed to be another kilometre.

Preparations were made, all systems were ready.  The ECM burst into life, emitting their invisible but deadly rays towards the enemy targets.  I’d decided to split the load 50/50 across the primary and secondary targets.

The nimble frigates and interceptors whizzed around the geddon, which was having trouble tracking them.  It was slowly but surely being torn to pieces to smaller, faster and more deadly adversaries.  The Nighthawk command ship was in a supporting role.  The gang dealt with various drones that had been deployed admirably, and kept both targets pointed at all times.

“Alia, are you jamming these?” the voice comms crackled.

“Yes, we’ve got 50/50 on each and getting in a few cycles here and there” I replied.

“Ok, switch to the nighthawk, the geddon is taken care of”

“Roger” I replied.

I disengaged the ECM on the geddon, and switched everything over to the nighthawk.

“Get us in closer, helm!” I snapped.

There was a few brief glances exchanged.

“We need optimal jamming on that command ship” I clarified “Keep us at maximum, but optimal”.  

“Aye Ma’am”.

The nighthawk was now under electronic attack from our 4 jammers, supported by sensor boosters and distortion amplifiers.  Now we were closer, we were getting off a hell of a lot more jam cycles – sometimes between 20-40 seconds across a staggered formation.  A perma was too much to hope for against a nighthawk in our poxy tin can.

As the EW attack wreaked havoc with the command ship, this brought valuable time for the gang to finish off the geddon which exploded – after de-agressing and then foolishly re-agressing.  That had sealed his fate.

The gang switched to the nighthawk, buzzing around it like flies but there was no way we could break the tank of this monster with our current deployment.  Suddenly, and rather wonderfully the vent came alive with a recently arrived corp member.  “I can bring a BS with some neuts”.

We quickly withdrew and re-grouped.  There was some smack in local from the enemy ships, but we kept it cordial and didn’t take any bait.  Shortly we were ready once more, and with a neuting BS in our arsenal which would tip the balance ~evil grin~

“He’s on the gate, the nighthawk” intel reported “And the wolf is back again”.  The plucky frigate pilot had quickly re-equipped and got back into the fight.  Fair play indeed.

The gang warped to engage once more.  We held position until they were in place and had the command ship pointed.  Warping to 70km this time, a rinse and repeat ensured – with a few differences this time.  The CS had full ECM attack 100% of the time, and our neut BS was taking chunks out of his cap and ergo his tank.

The command ship was going down – slowly, but was going down nonetheless – his tank was broken and it was only a matter of time.  The wolf had scattered pretty quickly, maybe warping to a safe or another point – we were busy on the CS.  It’s shields were about 45% – which is concerning for a Caldari pilot and were continuing to drop.

The question was – why wasn’t he de-agressing and jumping.  The answer soon became clear as friendlies to him jumped into the system on the gate.  With what we had there’s no way we’d have held them off, plus broken the tank of the CS.  There weren’t enough neuts or ECM to go around.

“Disengage, disengage!” the FC ordered as we scattered to safe spots throughout the system.  The enemy ships actually made good of their smack previously and offered “gf” in local, which was returned.

All the time the comms were alive with various chatter, scans and intel popping up.  The most interesting one, and most accessible one which got every pirates attention was an AFK freighter heading towards a high sec gate.  He was only 15km from safety.

“Point it, get webs on it – lots of them” the FC said.  Pirates scrambled over themselves to get to their ships – a combination of battleships, tacklers and so forth to take down the freighter.  The lumbering hulk was quickly multiple pointed and webbed.  Going a mere few km/s it’s fate was sealed as the DPS ships laid into it.  Warping to 100km and backing off out of sentry gun fire, we powered up the sensor boosters and offered our DPS for what it was worth.  3 heavy missiles launched across the 100+ km distance and slammed into their target an eternity later – their damage was limited but every bit helped before the freighter jumped into high sec.

“Shall we…” ventured a crewman.

“Yes, why not” I laughed as our ECM modules attacked the freighter across the void.  They were even more useless than the heavy missiles, but still, why not.

We tried to ransom the hauler when it reached structure.  The lumbering hulk swaying as it crawled towards the gate.  It’s shields inactive, it’s armour melted and massive holes in it’s structure venting cargo and oxygen into space.

There was no response – so we blew it up and snagged the pod.  Again no response, so the pilot was quickly returned to his medical facility courtesy of The Bastards + Co.

Some nights are quiet, some nights you’re down – and others, you’re busy and right back up again.  Ride out the lows, and enjoy the highs.  A good night all round with an awesome gang and corp, what more could you ask for?  Sure, solo is good for a while but there’s only so much you can do and only a few people to share it with.  When you have a good gang, and a good bunch of guys then it just amplifies the experience.

A good time was had by all, and looting to boot.  Yarr!