Arriving in the docking bay, my docking bay I was greeted by a sight of chaos… still.  Partly assembled ships, equipment, tools, guns, modules and so forth scattered across the decks as far as the eye could see.

“You!” I yelled to one of the Caldari techs responsible for this scene of bedlam.  “Why are my fricking ships STILL not ready” I yelled into his face whilst grabbing his collar.

“We’re still fitting Ma’am, we need the protocols and assignment procedu-” I cut him off mid sentence.  “I don’t care! Make it work, make them them.  I don’t care if you have to put round bolts in square holes – get me some more birds to fly. Clear?”

He nodded, somewhat shaken at the ferocity of my yelling, and grabbing of his oily coveralls.  “Good” I said, much more calmly, half slapping, half patting him on the cheek.  “Off you go then”.  Bless them, being Caldari through and through they were keen to “follow procedure” unlike their Minmatar counterparts who’d quite happily just “slap it together and go”.

I looked around the station, I had to admit I preferred the Caldari ones – having grown up on one most of the time.  They were also more “clinical” and up to date compared to the Minmatar ones and a lot less noisy.  Ok, sure, they were all a uniform and boring colour but I could live with that.

An attendant arrived with a drink and some olives that I’d ordered.  Taking the drink in one hand I smiled, taking the olives in the other and calmly, carefully up-ending the container and tipping them onto the floor.  “These are black, I wanted green” I said solemnly as they rolled across the deck in various directions.

“I’m sorry, I’ll fix that for you” her voice trailed off as she’d turned and made her way back.  I hadn’t meant to be so snappy, at either of them, but I was having withdrawal symptoms from the various stims that I’d been used to taking, or nerve sticks to counter their effects when no longer needed.

I still had a choice of a few ships, and made my way to the preferred one and got ready to launch.  Happily in my pod, on board and clearing the docking ramps we headed out into space to see what could be found.  The comms were somewhat quiet with three of us talking, exchanging info on various possible targets and the like.

Another new recruit joined us and shortly after we found a Maelstrom on scan.  It was quickly narrowed down and tackled.  Our DPS arrived along with myself, and shortly after another tackler in the form of the newest recruit.  Fluffing up the initial lock, I managed to target a fleet member.  Realising my mistake quickly, I targeted the Maelstrom.  The locks were resolved, but I’d forgotten to disable one of the ECM modules.  For the several seconds it was active, I disabled one of the locks on our tackler – or so we thought.

Not to worry, we had another.  The other ECM modules were on the battleship and hitting decent regular cycles, I switched the last one over as soon as possible whilst the tackler re-established his lock.  Then everyone lost their lock – except for me being quite some distance away.

“He’s got an ECM Burst” someone yelled.  The tacklers did an amazing job keeping the ship pinned down, although a couple of the enemy drones were chewing one of them up.  Flicking the overview, I went to jam them but they were quickly popped before I had a chance, so I continued to focus on the battleship.

The pilot was invited to a convo and ransomed, we took off the DPS to “show willing” and were quickly rewarded with a blinky wallet.  “Points Off” said Raelyf who was conducting the ransom – the pilot was free to go.

A very nice reward for a few minutes work, and good teamwork and communication all round.

On to more business, this time a Raptor which had found our new recruit and tackler.  The Raptor engaged and sped towards him.  Giving his location we were quickly in warp from various points in the system all landing at our desired ranges, to see a fight well under way.  

Moments after arriving our tackler’s incursus exploded into fireworks across the darkness of space, but the Raptor wasn’t escaping.  We had him pointed with another incursus and our rupture was tearing chunks out of him, to ensure he didn’t escape by popping the tackler, you’re truly had him jammed up more than a jar of marmalade

We didn’t offer a ransom, but simply blew the ship to smithereens.  Unfortunately we missed the pod as the pilot made a very quick escape with his tale between his legs.

Waiting out and criminal countdowns, collecting loot and so on we then made our way 1 jump over with Hrothgar being in the lead.  He’d tackled an Enyo but I was still in warp to the gate.  Raelyf arrived to assist and they quickly destroyed it.  Dropping out of warp, about to lock the target and it exploded.

To our surprise it was faction fitted so they scooped some very nice loot from the deadly little frigate.  Nice work guys, brilliantly done.

The rest of the evening was pretty quiet, although we did have a look around to see what we could find.  A large enemy blob was cyno’d into a system near us, consisting of about 15-20 ships.  Being a mere 4 or 5 of us, not in a set up for that sort of thing we decided to steer clear and avoided their clear trap that they’d prepared for us.  They left shortly after without causing any trouble.

It seems it’s either really busy, or really quiet.  Tonight started off very quickly, with a ransom and a kill (plus another for 2 of the gang mates) after which it trailed off quickly.  No doubt being a Friday everyone is busy enjoying holo-reels and whatever their poison may be.

Time for me to do the same.  o/