Red Door Painted Black

(Image from MissMayraQ and used under Creative Commons license)

The image is apropos of nothing in the post except the Rolling Stones Paint It Black was in my head last night as went warped into battle. It was an exciting night and I'm going to tell you why.

I logged in and immediately word was up about a fleet gathering. It was looking for short ranged remote rep battleships and I, loving battleships, immediately signed up even though my time frame was limited. I hopped into my Armageddon Memories of Mynxee and warped to the rally point.

As the fleet was getting ready however, report came in of an incoming Goonswarm fleet: about 29 Drakes and various smaller ships putting their numbers around 70-80.

The ProviBlob sprung into action as the Goons approached the region capital of 9UY. The order went out to reship to mid range battleships and I quickly docked up and entered one of my new Megathrons, Vae Victus:


I rejoined the fleet and a short while later we moved out as reports of Goons messing up locals in 9UY continued to come in. It sounded like they wanted a fight, and we were going to give it to them.

The next thirty minutes in 9UY were a series of hectic close ranged engagements, mostly with us trying to bubble and engage them but a few times they attempted to turn the tables on us with a series of bomb strikes, at one point a number of bombs stripped my shields and most of my armour; thank god for Damage Controls and Logistics.

Every warp was fraught with danger and shouted commands over voice comms:

"Align planet 2! Align align! Align planet 2"

"Drakes on station. I have warp in."

"XXXX is primary, YYYY secondary. Now YYYY is secondary, get him guys!"

"Enemy is 100 klicks off planet 1. I have a warp in."

"Bubble bubble bubble bubble! NOW KILL THEM! DAMMIT!"

"I'm right in the middle of them, warp to me now, warp now... ah crap. I'm dead."

"I need a scout, anyone got a covert ops?"

"ZZZZ in Nighthawk primary, get ZZZZ!"

"BOMBS!"

Most of the fighting occurred at ranges within 20 km and I foolishly forgot to load Anitmatter into my cargohold so I was gimped with long range Spike ammo with an optimal of 137 km all battle. Oh well, we had lots of firepower and I didn't have to worry about switching ammo for the one or two times the enemy was at 80 km. Lesson learned.

In the end we outnumbered and outgunned them over two to one and we killed 25 and lost 8 (the killboard says 27 to 6 but two Tempests that died were with us but got on the wrong side of the killboard due to "friendly fire"). I got in on 12 enemy killmails which was awesome and one friendly killmail which is not so awesome but allow me to explain.

The friendly Tempest, Belamont, was in my battleship squad. After one exchange of fire we were at the gate and I had him targeted for remote repping as his armour was down. The enemy Drakes warped in and I targeted one of them and activate my weapons but forgot to change which target I had selected. I realized my mistake immediately and deactivated my guns after one salvo fired. I then used my remote repper to repair the damage I caused and he was almost back at full armour anyways.

The bombers that killed him happened later, but there is no timestamp on the killmail to indicate that. Oh well.

That battle puts me at 17 kills for the month and we're not even halfway through it. Too bad I can't start stockpiling kills for January.