I awoke to the slow buzzing sound of a general alert. A friendly was being chased through systems coming from L-TOFR and heading in the direction of TDE. Distress signal went out as the pursuers slowly gained on his Deimos heavy assault-ship.
Running along the corridors of the TDE station I could feel the uneasiness of the station dwellers as their previous owners had abandoned them and they faced an uncertain future at the hands of an unknown alliance. Only the stories of atrocities of the battlefield was what impression they had of us, told by their fleeing masters.
They had been witness to the fast annihilation of their security that was their death-star moon POS’s in the system of TDE. They had seen the steady flow of damaged Roadkill ships docking up for quick repairs before joining the ranks on the field again. Ever noticing that fewer and fewer returning ships that did not make it back for repairs. They had seen the often futile escape attempts by industrial ships loaded with whatever possessions their pilots could cram in the cargo hold. Seen the bubbles and wrecks pile up in front of the undocking port. Finlay they had witnessed the full power of a titan attack on their station.
They were scared and as I ran to the docking bay I noticed their eyes being cast down but could feel their eyes on my back as soon as I had passed. They would get used to us eventually. Change is a fact and mankind is one of the best to adapt to a new situation.
My Deimos was ready when I arrived at the docking bay and I quickly boarded. As soon as my neocom hooked up with the ships interfacing I undocked while calling for additional backup and hooking up new fleet members.
We met up on the 5F gate in TDE and when we had 6-7 ships we burned for 6YC with hostiles reported in 6L78. A Merlin frigate escaped us barley as we jumped into O2O.
We met the enemy in open battle in 6L78-1 where we jumped in as they landed on the outbound gate and a Vexor had to bite the dust as I called him primary and called for points on whoever of the hostiles that we could catch. The rest of the enemy gang choose that discretion was the better part of valor and ran hard and fast. They cant be blamed as their prey all of a sudden had become a wolf and one with a pack. We escorted our alliance member home again missing the same Merlin frigate again. There was a general consent that it was stabbed (filled with Warp Core Stabilizers).
Upon returning to base the gang split up. Some went hunting for Gurista criminals while others oversaw the preparations of their battleships for to nights OP. Together with Ombre and Tarantino I took up position in fron of the station and waited for the time to pass.
I was watching the hypnotising trails of Ombre’s crow as he released bursts from his micro warp drive when all of a sudden a hostile undocked from the station. A hostile coming from our very station ? Ofcourse there are always stragglers who are slow and hide among the general Station dwellers but surely they should all have left by now.
Ombre brought his crow around and aligned for the hostile Throax, a distant cousin of my own Deimos. Tarantino was in hot pursuit and I aligned to ram his ship in order to deny him the opportunity to redock and get away in the myriad of hangars.
Bouncing hard as our ships made contact my sensors in the nose of my ship took serious damage against his armored side tearing off one of his engines. His ship slowed down a satisfying distance from the docking entrance.
The gunz of my ship was undamaged and the crew let loose the advanced blaster charges and drones were released. Again and again the shells landed hard on his armor, the high tech drones raining plasma on his ship. Slowly but surely his armor faltered but I was surprised that it lasted that long.
The destruction record showed a setup Ive not seen before. A weird mix of blaster, high tech armor tanking, rigged, cynogenerator ship. An abnormality ! Blessed be my blasters for ridding space of such a foul beast.
Not satisfied with the destruction of the ship I started targeting the POD that had emerged from the wreck. The clone sure was a malfunctioning one and better to rid the universe of that as well. Who knows what might have happened and where it paths would have led it. There are rumors of experiments that have given drones self-awareness by crazy scientists. We must be ever vigilant.
A message ran in from the leadership that we would be gathering our forces and heading out at 18:30. Since most of us were already in the fleet I started to organize the fleet into sections. 2 BS squads, 1 support, 1 dread and a carrier.
Slowly I realised that the BS fleet was adhering my voice. A strange feeling. I had commanded small squads before in Stain and ran one interceptor operation when we were based out of Period Basis, but never a full battleship fleet.
The command of the dreads and carriers were taken by Eddz himself. Leadership had for some time called for others to step up every now and then. I would never presume to have the strategic and tactic understanding of Tjakka, but decided to give it a go anyway.
(The KIA Alliance cards are (c) Snowcrow.)
Command of a fleet is never taken ! It is only granted by the members in the fleet as long as you perform well and give sound commands. The Capsulers of KIA was allowing me to lead them and for that I was grateful.
The battleship fleet met up on the 5F gate in TDE, when I counted 14 Battleships headed out. Tarantino ran scout duty together with Ombre and they behaved and executed orders timely and clearly provided the intel that KIA’s scouts are famous of. I admit that I may have been over cautious, but I was not about to loose a BS fleet so our progress may have taken longer than was absolutely necessary.
The route to Q-T was scouted and as we jumped in we were greeted by a small Goon camp on the L-TOFR gate in Q-T. I told the fleet to align for the station and called up command. Orders were to help the Goon battleship detachment take down a POS at planet 8 orbiting moon 5. We received a warp in point and I ordered the fleet to warp individually as Eddz had command of the fleet and therefore I was unable to initiate gang warp.
En route to the POS I gave final instructions, remember to call for remote repairing, pay attention to the fleet broadcasts and load up short-range ammo, who is warp out point in case of emergency warp out, remember to passive align towards a planet that was called as general warp out. It may sound absurd but to repeat the command I had heard a thousand times made me feel an inner warmth. At 18:45 we arrived at the POS which was almost half into its shield.
To our pleasant surprise it was not armed at all and contained only basic mining modules, moon harvesting array and a few Silo’s. The goons had been at it for quite some time and welcomed the additional firepower. It took all of 30 minutes of our combined firepower to cripple the tower into reinforced mode. Felicia Stone claimed to had been targeted by the moon harvesting array and gotten a nice tan.
The tower for some odd reason held no Strontium and would exit reinforced mode within 1 hour.
I ordered the fleet to warp out and head to the station to support a small tactical unit that held any enemies at bay and firmly docked inside their station.
I called up fleet command again and was ordered to take the BS squad to help the dreads and main capital fleet take down a larger tower.
I came out of warp next to Kresh’s looming Moros Dreadnought and opened fire on the tower along with the rest of the fleet. I can only imagine what it must feel like to be in command of the Moros Dreadnought. It has been a personal goal for a long time but I have been caught between the Moros and the Thanatos which I need for logistic purposes.
As the tower was reinforced we turned around to rejoin the small squad at the station and I gave all a small break for pilots to check the ships, see to the crews got fed and so on. In KIA terms called a BIO break.
We had Snowscrow in the fleet and as such the ever watchful eyes of the Capsuleer Labor Union (CLU). CLU had almost shut down an entire operation back when we were securing Period Basis.We had been on OP for 4 long hours and not given a single break. Under such immense pressure the pilots went on strike until the situation was resolved. The BIO break was the result and an agreement signed that if an operation takes longer than 4 hours every member is allowed a 10 minute break of hostilities at a safe-spot every 4 hours.
(The KIA Alliance cards are (c) Snowcrow.)
The staion was devoid of enemy activity and really we were just passing time for the P8-M5 tower to come out of reinforced mode. After 20 minutes I ordered the fleet to warp to the pos and prepare. At 20:13 the POS came out of reinforced mode and we once again opened fire.
After 10 minutes two hostiles appeared on the overview and was quickly identified as Stealth bombers. These small ship can contain a single munition charge that can be quite damaging to battleship fleets.
They went for the Goons located 40 km away from us and when they emerged from the POS shield was both promptly disposed of. After a while a new stealth bomber showed up on the overview and headed in the general direction of the KIA fleet before cloaking up. I called that all ships aligned for the station at full speed but this brought us out of range too fast. A new plan was formed and we aligned between two different asteroid belts going at 100 m/s and the range varying from 30 km to 50 km to the POS. This way our battleship fleet would be able to warp out fast if additional bombers should show up. I suspected the single bomber might be the warp in for more and as better to be safe than sorry I had the pilots burn fuel running back and forth between points while keeping fire on the POS.
At some point a single Suicide Megathron pilot warped in and was killed but managed to cause a single loss. I salute Gemstone505 for taking initiative and not surrendering, but screaming defiance to the last breath.
We were after some time joined by dreads and I called it a day. I gave command of the battleships to Mikhalio who is a seasoned pilot and to be just a much better fleet commander than I am.
I hope I will get the chance to lead a fleet again however small the job. For now I’m letting my crew pop some Quafe and turning on the holoreels.
