What lies beyond?
Day 5
Location: KFR-ZE Syndicate
First up sorry for the delay. I had intended to post daily updates on my progress, alas RL kind of took over with the company I work for going into administration. Obviously this dragged me away for a couple of days since none of us knew if we were even going to be paid at the end of the month, let alone whether we would still have jobs. Anyway that has all settled down so normal service is resumed.
Last time I had just been popped after a spell of concentration fail on my part. So it was time to update the clone again and dive up to Jita for a replacement ship. This time rather than just using the general purpose exploration set-up I opted for something a little more travel orientated. So cloak, expanded probe launcher (just tech 1 this time) with some sisters probes, salvager, MWD, a pair of i-stabs and a pair of hyperspace velocity optimisers. This gave me a nice tight ship for quick aligning, a good turn of speed in warp (19.4AU/s) and the MWD will assist me in escaping any more bubble camps. Well, that's the theory.
I was keen to pick up where I had left off, the main question was whether I should retrace my steps or not. I had traversed Cloud Ring and nearly made it through the Outer Ring and into Syndicate. My planned route afforded me a complete circuit of syndicate since I wanted to visit both of the systems I lived out of and a quick duck through Solitude would also let me visit some old hunting grounds there as well. With the original planning calling for an entrance into Syndicate via 3KNK-A and exiting through the same system I felt I could get away with coming in from Placid via TXW-EI and the only system I would miss out on was 5-FGQI.
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| The Cloud Ring as seen from Syndicate. |
Now TXW used to be reasonable quiet after the introduction of the different types of gates since the region gates were now so massive that it was almost impossible to catch people even with a max skilled HIC pilot: your bubbles just weren't big enough. This still didn't stop me feeling a little apprehensive when I entered Vestouve, I think the transition from Empire to Null will always make me a little nervous. But as with my initial transition into Null things went smoothly and my journey from there around to KFR-ZE was entirely uneventful.
It's now time to set the way-back-when machine for a couple of years ago. This is back before the different gate types were introduced and before the Epic Arc storyline missions were implemented. I was a part of a "PVP alliance", mostly we did high-sec war-dec's against people we thought would give us a good fight. We had been mostly active in the Tash-Murkon region with regular excursions against CVA in Providence and had started to explore the low-sec areas in Genesis.
After a campaign in Genesis where we allied with the weaker of two warring corporations to force a settlement and allow both to come together and grow into what they would eventually become thoughts turned to establishing ourselves in Null-sec, we had tried before down in Curse but that story will wait for later.
Syndicate was selected and we mobilised to move en-masse, this was complicated by a desire to have a freighter available but a plan was hatched and one Saturday we set out from Amarr and escorted the freighter loaded down with as much as it could carry. It was a very tense affair as not only did it contrain most everything that we owned that could be packed down (spare ships and all sorts) but we opted to make the journey in the most powerful fleet we could assemble.
Quite honestly I'm surprised we made it at all, let alone without a single loss. It did take quite a few hours and there were definitely some tense moments as the Freighter docked after scouting reports indicated potential hostiles. We would either drop everything on them if they were an isolated group or bait them away from the route with a small gang. Now either I'm far too easily led or I suffered a rush of blood to the head because I volunteered to not only fly my armour tanked Scorp. (I kid you not) but also volunteered to be the primary cyno pilot. This meant that I was always in the vanguard regardless of what was deemed appropriate and, as anyone with experience of this will tell you, flying ewar in low-sec is the quickest way to wreck your sec-status. It also meant that I would generally be the first to take sentry fire as I locked and jammed as soon as we landed. Not good when ewar is going to be primary anyway and doubly not good when the fleet is relying on you to drop a cyno if things go pear-shaped. Nevertheless it was a role I would repeat many times and quickly developed a reputation as a suicidal maniac.
We enjoyed a good few months of activity in KFR but it was not without internal stresses. Many pilots were better at losing ships than replacing them and there was a distinct care-bearish attitude present. It was not uncommon to find that nearly half of our active crew had disappeared back to high-sec to mission up some Isk. Whilst this was done with jump-clones it wasn't done in any sort of order and always there were the whines about it being okay for everyone else because either "you've got mission alts" or "you can just sell GTCs". We didn't, we just worked at it. To prove a point I took up ratting, chaining BS spawns in my sexy, sexy Hurricane. I was able to demonstrate that it was perfectly possible to live out of null-sec with just the weekly jump freighter trips to keep me supplied. Needless to say it didn't have any effect.
Now, when I said I got a reputation for being a suicidal maniac I should mention that I wasn't actually the only one. An event early on proved that it was a highly contagious disease. We had managed to bait some people into a fight on the Vestouve gate in TXW. As usual I had warped in about 70km off of the fleet in my Scorp. and was having great fun annoying the hell out of them all with my ECM. Then an interceptor appeared bang on top of me and we realised that we had a second wave about to land on us. Moreover they were going to land on me. The FC (our CEO) called for tacklers to disengage and prepare to warp to me and that the rest of the gang should continue the engagement on the gate. Then came the call I hadn't been expecting....
"Drop Cyno!" cried the FC, to which my only reply (having seen what was about to land on me) was "Are you fucking nuts?". "I'm not losing your Scorpion. Drop that fucking cyno right fucking now. I'll jump my alt in, all other caps are to stay the hell out."
As soon as I dropped my cyno one of the cruisers in the second wave dropped one as well. Just as I was calling out the counter-drop my CEOs carrier appeared next to me, launched fighters and assigned them to me until he could get targets of his own. Before my warning had even been completed another 5 carriers jumped in. When asked what they thought they were doing the response was a simple, "we're bored". So what had started out as a fun small gang fight had suddenly turned into a fight on two fronts with the FC not only attempting to run both engagements but also trying to run a ship in each one. Didn't lose the Scorp. in that one either.
After "proving" ourselves to an alliance based out of PVH8-O on a POS bash we were assisted in moving down to Y9G-KS in order to help them deal with a problem that they had there. The "proving" was itself a rather fun encounter and I'll be making a stop off at the system were it happened. As for our adventures in Y9G-KS, well, that will have to wait for a couple of days. I'm off now to move into Solitude and visit the triangle that we occupied after leaving Syndicate. If you can't be good, be dangerous. o7
