It's Friday night and I have been online for a few hours. My RL has allowed me to get on again after DT and I just did a quick mining operation. I thought I'd take it easy for a while. I was listening to TS and heard word that another corp's FC wanted to pick up some implants. We had a lowsec wormhole from a C1 we were connected to.
A scout was sent out and a quick run to Jita was performed. The scout just watched one of the lowsec gates as there was a gate camp on it. There was 2 x Gnosis at the gate with another ship or two. I was only half listening.
This is nothing unusual (the gatecamp, not me only half listening. Well OK that's normal too) in Lowsec, however and ship after ship would get through. Were these guys letting blues through or did they not actually have the sensor speeds to lock the ships? A hauler came through which provided a great diversion for the inty to slip through. Thanks mate, bad luck, they went for the hauler.
The FC then expressed an interest in getting these lowsec gate-camping, hauler ganking cowards. Who's in?
Lan and I said "Sure". Dan and Gerond had already bailed for the night. A plan was formed. Bait Nereus, and a logi supported cruiser fleet for the kill. We ended up having the bait, 2 x Loki, 2 x Legion, a Proteus, 2 x Guardians and a Stratios. We formed up on the wh entrance ready to go. A quick WH check and the Lowsec has more than 4 hours. The C1 is EOL timewise, but it wasn't EOL before downtime so there should be 3 hours on it still. Both allowed medium ships through and we were a cruiser fleet. All good.
The bait would go through the wh into the C1 first, and out into it's lowsec static. The rest of us would be a jump behind, Set destination Jita as that will take us through the gate camp once we are in lowsec.
We are ready.
FC: Jump Jump Jump.
Through the hole I go: Wap wap wap.......
"Hole has collapsed, repeat hole has collapsed"
Oh shit.
FC: "Who is in the hole, report in".
Turns out we got 2 Lokis, a Legion and me in my Proteus through. The bait was already on the LS exit so we were a fleet of 5, with no logistics. We also had no probes fitted on these combat ships. The hole was empty, so we let gate cloak expire as we'd be off grid in a "Safe" right now. Lanvarok in his Legion didn't make it through. He started sourcing another exit to get us back in.
Another LS located, that we could use to return. Overall this wormhole entrance is 7 jumps away from our origin (where Lanvarok started scanning from). How far was it from where we will be when we exit this hole though? Now we just had to get there and see. Fleet wise we were probably still overpowered for a Lowsec roam, but the safety net of extra numbers and most importantly logistics was now unavailable. On we went. Hopefully we won't collapse the other hole and get stuck in this C1. Damn that would be a pain. I don't have a cloak fitted.
Our Scout/bait reported that lowsec had people in it, but there was faction warfare going on, or incursions or something, so it was busy. No one on grid on the hole so we jumped through and out of the C1, 1 at a time. With us all out of the hole, we set our destination to the new lowsec entrance. 13 or 14 jumps, mainly lowsec.
I looked at my planned route. 30 jumps. ummm what have I done? Did I add a waypoint to get there via Jita? Nope, changed the route option for quickest instead of safest. There we go. I'm on the same page as everyone else again.
We set off through lowsec 1 jump at a time. The 4 T3s all stuck together with the bait being our scout. If anyone took the bait we'd drop in and hopefully overpower them...... maybe. I hadn't actually flown in a fleet with these guys before. I'd been on TS when they had been running operations so I knew how it sounded, but this was a baptism of fire (of sorts). Still, I was learning how they operated and just had to make sure I wasn't the dead weight of the group. I linked the FC my fit and told him the turret DPS (with no drones).
Lan put alts in the hole as pegs. We could just warp to him to get through. The odd ship was on the gate when we zoned in. Here an Algos, there a Cynabal, everywhere we went they'd run for cover. I was getting a little more comfortable with the situation. I would have been happy enough just getting to Highsec and waiting for another hole to get in, but I was also happy to travel with the group and "die by the sword" and hopefully take some others down with me if we did run into trouble.
I sent Lanvarok updates on which system we were in so he would know when to zone back out into Lowsec for us to warp to. We didn't want him sitting in the LS full time.
In the end we reached the entrance, and managed to get back home again. No ships lost, but no ships killed. Well done to Lan getting us back in, and to the fleet/FC for keeping cool when the brown stuff hitteth the fan. I might just take a probe scout of my own along next time.
On the other hand, those gate campers sure dodged a bullet. If only they knew.......
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