Too much time in space can wear down even the sharpest of minds. The constant monitoring of the space lanes, the threats that lurk aruond every corner, the battles and the ever watching eye on the scanners that announce enemy is inbound.
Eventualy the minds weakness shows. One such occation was the other night. Lying in my room looking at the steel walls I can see it from a more humorous perspective.
Once again I had been surveying the surrounding system of TDE. I investigated reports on hosile activity next to 020, in the 6YC system making sure that the fleet that were assembling was safe.
Every thing seemed to be going smooth untill the FC called for a cyno field in MGAM.
I quickly launched into a run for MGAM in order to put up a field.
As I spurred toward the destination reports started tickling in that TRI was one the move with a medium size fleet and most likely inbound for the MGAM system.
I arrived well a head of the TRI gang and in my haste I bought a beat up Merlin. The mechanics of the station looked very very wierd at me when I ordered it loaded up with Ozone and a cyno generator.
I promtly undocked and the last thing I heard as I headed out was the local docking communication ending with “…there wont be enough…”, I shrug it aside as whatever the little people in the docking areas thinks is of no consequence to a pod pilot.
I set off for the POS as the first of the TRI fleet entered the solar system. Thinking they were in for quite a surprise I activated the cyno field module… nothing. I willed it to activate and again… nothing.
A communication flashed up from the fleetcommander asking what in space I was doing and why I was not broardcasting a jump beacon.
That was when it hit me that I had never really trained the art of cyno fields to a large degree so the consumption of Ozone was huge when I tried to open it.
With hostiles now reported at the station I realised the hopeless situtaion. Our fleet was stuck in our home system, the hostiles free to roam and I was to blame.
I called up the regional maret interface and saw that next door there was a ship of desired design that could hold the amount of Ozone need to open the field.
I was sure the hostiles would have scouts on the gates but desided that since I had created such a mess it would be perfectly ok to loose a small ship and my clone. I made a quick dash to the next door system and back again to the POS without incident. Cursing my lack of attention all the way forth and back.
As I arrived back at the POS another more competent pilot opened a cyno field and our fleet jumped in. I was devastated.
While the fleet formed up and some still were jumping in a sole Sabre class Interdictor belonging to INZi showed up and was quickly killed.
The interdictors aligned for the station as well as the battleships with my insignificant ship in trail.
Carriers were undocked and were jammed at once, interdictor warp to the station and was shortly followed by the battleships. I warped in with the interdictor and ordered my ship pulled in by the docking crew.
I was promtly transfered to my Megathron battleship but could feel the moro from the hangar crew.
As I undocked from the hangar I entered battle at once.
The battle that followed must have been as frutrating to the enmy as it were to us. The TRI gang warped back and forth while activating their microwardrives making it hard to kill individual targets as they slipped in and out of range.
On their part our supperior remote repairing of the battleships kept our fleet alive as the enemy could not bring enough damage on any single ships for a longer period of time without risking their own ships.
Besides their fleet was outnumbered and outgunned so I was impressed they kept at it for som long as well as trying to begin with.
One of our ship had wandered off a bit and TRI was not slow to explot it and rammed their ships at full speed into our comrade. Their ships took massive damage to the structural integrity doing this and some exploded on impact with the metal beast piloted by Splagada.
Large version
The result was a loss for TRI but I can only assume they knew what they walked into.
As for myself I now have investigated the nature of cynofields and will not make the mistake again.
