"And It Just Stood There!"

Last night was the first time in three weeks the moons and stars aligned and I could log in for a serious PvP session with no potential interruptions. Much to my joy, a defence fleet was morphing into a roaming fleet just as I logged in and one carrier jump later I was ready to join. I jumped into my Arazu which I'm really becoming to love and I enjoy the sneaky scouting/tackle role that the Falcon just can't pull off as well.

We began our flight with me as +1 jump ahead scout and soon rolled into AY-24I where there was one red in local and a station. I began scouting the system and saw an Onyx on scan. I thought it was POS trash because the name was "Vad3r's Onyx" and the red was called Kasssy but imagine my surprise when I dropped out of warp cloaked to the station and saw Kasssy in the Onyx there and many kilometers off station!

I approached under cloak to get within the 43 km scram range but at around 50 klicks the Onyx warped off. Drat! But wait, it warped to the sun it looks like. I warped to the sun at zero and saw the Onyx 100 km away, just sitting there. Warped back to station and back to the sun at 100, dropping cloak in warp to avoid the locking delay.

BAM! Right on the stationary Onyx. It must have been looking for a fight. Well, it found one. One point, three points, two remote sensor dampeners, drones, I was all over it. Once point was called, the fleet warped in and soon the Onyx and Kasssy's pod were gone.

That was a nice start. We continued on and I dropped into BK4-YC to see three NCDOT reds in local and a Large Mobile Warp Disruptor II covering the gate. That's a lot of coverage. Since BK4 is a dead end system this allows the residents to rat pretty safely and lots of time to safe up when a fleet jumps in.

I cloaked and moved to the edge of the bubble to go take a look when one of the reds warps to the bubble in a Slepneir command ship, one of the more feared combat vessels in the Minmatar lineup. I tried to mosey on over towards him and get within tackle range but our FC was worried that there was more backing him up. NCDOT are not generally stupid. So I was tasked with flying around system and seeing what was waiting. Sure enough, Chimera on scan. If we engage the Slep and the Chimera warps in to remote rep, could we take down the command ship while not losing our fleet? Iffy.

I warped back to the bubble and saw the Slep gone. I was slow boating back to the gate when suddenly the same red was back, this time uncloaking in a Falcon on the gate! I reported this on comms and the fleet readied. The hostile jumped just as the FC ordered two Hurricanes to jump through. Our dictor bubbled the other side and the Falcon cloaked and crashed the gate.

Damn, he made it! It was up to me and the two Hurricanes to catch him. I saw him decloak and recloak and I burned towards him with my five drones chasing me. Come on, come on.... YES! He reappeared and the locking began. Despite jamming one of the 'canes, we had him covered in points and DPS and he soon exploded with his pod soon after.

We carried on with the roam. We heard intel reports of an Ev0ke gang harassing friendlies in the Q-6 constellation so we burned over there and me and fellow Canadian Jade in his Vagabond (What?! No Dramiel?!) went in to see what was up. I found the hostiles, five of them, Vagabond, Rook, Crow, Megathron, and Dominix. They tried to catch me but its not my first trip to the scouting circus. Jade and I tried to shadow and lure them into our fleet but they sensed (or had a neutral alt tell them) something was up and they made a run for it to the nearest Ev0ke station in F-YH5B. We failed to catch them and our FC apologized for being too cautious, but hey, we engage with the rest of the fleet too far out and Jade and I could be paste before reinforcement arrive. Sometimes caution is called for.

The rest of the roam was uneventful and we made it back to CVA space unmolested. Happy with the two kills and a decent performance (ignoring the fact that I locked a gate in each engagement, warp scrambling one and siccing drones on the other) I logged off satisfied.