A 'warm' welcome home.

Yesterday was day 1 of freedom. My 'hades week' in the Work Pod was over with, and I was freed from the confinement of my 9x9 office cell, allowed to roam the world, or, more truthfully, fasten my buttocks to the stability ball that I call a chair and let myself roam through New Eden.

Day 1 didn't go so hot.

Katt and I decided to try clearing an entire magnetometric site in Our Slice of Heaven. We've cleared the first two waves and looted the relics on a regular basis for the past months, but we've never been willing to tempt fate and face the 3 Sleepless Upholders that come at the end of a typical C3 Mag site. With some friends helping out, we figured we could give it a go.

Wave 1, cakewalk. Bring in the Analyzer ship to take care of the relics before we push on, take those back, store safely and come on back in combat ships.

Wave 2, cakewalk. Turn on our tanks, smiling happily at our full capacitors as we ready the remote rep.

Wave 3, manageable. 2 Battleships, not really that big a deal, we were handling it fine and starting to get into a groove when it happened. Onyx and Tengu drop out of warp on top of us, and the bubble goes up.

"Oh crap."

Then the Rokh, Drake and Drake arrive inside the edge of the warp bubble.

"Double crap."

In what must have been a relatively swift and skilled use of combat scanner probes, our ships were reduced from 'hey, we got this!' to imminent death. I scattered for one edge, trying to draw them off while Katt and our corpmates headed the other direction. They seemed intent on destroying her Typhoon, but given that, even at 20km out, my Scimitar's 4 Medium Shield Transporter's were well within range, they weren't having a great time with that.

Their own tanks held up under massed drone-fire without much of a scratch, our ships being outfit for the long-haul of PvE combat, not for burst dps.

They switched targets and came after my Scimitar, but once they had a standard point on me, their Onyx paced the battleships to destroy any hopes of escape. As it was, webbing kept me from getting to the edge before my shields finally (after more than a minute of fire) crumbled. As expected, my pod was sure to follow.

This process was repeated, minus my shield transporting, upon all 3 of the others. I don't have KB links, as P2AS doesn't have a Killboard at this time.

So, what to do when 4 of you are stuck out in Empire? Run for the entrance!

It was closed.

Fortunately, we had other corpmates who had not been deployed and destroyed in the battle of Magnetometric pass. New entrance found.

11 Jumps of low-sec.

Sigh.

Noob-ship fleet action! We made it back without incident, hopped in new ships and converged upon the Wormhole that had permitted the Brotherhood of Starbridge to invade our territory. While we were gone, they had gone to work running every last one of our unfinished sites. Part-way through the wormhole collapsing process, they converged on the wormhole themselves, collapsing it with Leilani on the wrong side, less than 2km from another of their ships.

You guessed it, second BS loss of the day for the alt.

Got the pod 'out' and warped around their system for a while, chatting at their english-speaking comrades, giving them props for their very well executed gank. Eventually I self-destructed and ran my way back into the hole through the previously scanned entrance.

Meanwhile, we had the Tengu (Cov-ops fit), Rokh, and a Heron sitting inside our wormhole. Katt started collapsing the entrance to at least limit their stay, and they camped her outside. She managed to just narrowly escape their clutches and cloak-up in the low-sec system and we outwaited them, Minuit sitting off the gate in a Stealth Bomber, eating popcorn while I watched them hope she would be dumb enough to jump back into their grasp.

We proved to be the more patient group, and when they left, with a parting shot of 'bu))' that I'm not sure I understand, but took to be a sign of great frustration and sadness, we finished collapsing the wormhole and replacing our losses.

All in all, a very expensive day for Katt and I, and P2AS, but, we later went out on a loot-selling run, and recouped pretty much the entire cost of the days adventure, and a months fuel.

Could be worse.

Fly straight,

An Unintentional Adventure

So this morning has been a little crazy in Our Slice of Heaven.

Katt and I logged in, frowning grimly when we realized someone had come into our wormhole. (For those of you who don't live in WH space, you may not know that WH systems do not 'load' onto the server unless someone is inside. Therefore, if you log in W-Space you'll get a 'this system is still loading, please try again soon' message if you're the first person after downtime to try and enter).

We immediately hopped into our battleships and scanners, calling on additional ships to ensure a nice smooth popping of the offending wormholes.

I found the problem. Our usual exit was still weak and in place, as expected, but we had another opening into 0.0 and someone had obviously poked their nose in.

So we started the not-so-exciting process of weakening the wormhole. Our calculations were running smooth, until I stepped through for the last jump.

The sucking sound that a wormhole makes when it collapses around you is usually a bit exhilerating. When it drops you in Q0OH-V, the butt end of no-where, 30-odd jumps from Empire, in a Typhoon sporting 7 reinforced steel 1600mm's, it's not really all that awesome.

Nope, really not.

So hey, what the heck, I buy these things knowing they're likely to end up on the wrong end of a blaster eventually, I set destination for Keberz and start warping.

20 or so rather boring jumps go by, and I'm starting to wonder if I have a chance of ACTUALLY making it out alive... Nawww....

So I arrive at the gate into GE-8JV to see a Crusader and another sitting on gate. My odds of survival plumet, but I warp through immediately on landing, hoping that the Crusader pilot is a little slow. When my systems come back online in GE, I see a Stiletto. "Ok, I'm toast."

I'm locked up faster than a dog with rabies. I let loose the local message I had prepared 8 or 9 systems earlier, explaining that I was just trying to make it back to Empire, and 'gank if you must, but I'd LOVE a free pass *hopeful smile*'.

I was informed that I could get back to Empire really fast if I warped to the local station.

I played around with my drones a bit while they chewed on my shield-tank. Drove off the nemesis that was torping me and bombing my poor drones. I DID forget to use the 3 guns on my ship, cos I was pretty certain of my demise and having a nice chat with the boys who were doing the demising.

They got through shields and I thanked em for a good fight and asked their corps, offering a mention on my Blog for their hard work... The 7 x 1600mm plates held out longer than I thought they would, under the circumstances. I warped my pod out before the two interceptors could catch it, told em all to 'Fly Straight' and continued on my merry way.

I don't think they tried to follow, though I kept my warping as fast as I could to avoid any hassles. I ducked to a planet to avoid the drag bubbles on the Keberz gate and slipped back into High-Sec, kissing space-dust and thinking about what a journey it had been.

Little did I know that adventure number 2 was about to start...

Another wormhole popped up, and in the process of damaging it, our alt, Leilani, got stuck in a Class 4 Wormhole... *sigh*

But you can read about that tomorrow...

Fly Straight!