Unexpected Escalation

Some time ago, before I lost it I was flying around in Mallet's Mallet, my Cyclone.

I had located a missioning Talos and brought in my probing alt to find me a warp in. Within minutes I had a warpable hit and my Cyclone landed within 10km of the fearsome Gallente Battlecruiser.

I gained point on my unsuspecting prey and started to quickly take it down whilst taking little damage myself. Then something I didn't expect occurred....

First, a Helios decloaked right next to me followed within moments by a Drake. Not wishing to look a gift-horse in the mouth I locked up both of my new companions whilst I finished off the Talos. My point was then applied to the Drake with my drones and guns on the Helios which practically instapopped.

The Drake wasted no time tackling and engaging me. My active tanked shield boosting Cyclone tanking his damage fairly well with him making maybe 5% progress past what I could repair back with each volley. I reloaded to EM ammo in my guns and launchers after polishing off the Helios and set about his inevitably buffer fit Drake.

Progress was slow but steady through his shields, overheating my invuln to stabilise the progress he was making against my active tank. The overheat paid dividends and I was soon well in control of the damage restoring comfortable tanking of his damage. My cap booster was nowhere near running out of charges so I became confident that I was going to emerge victor.

Soon after his Drake was a smouldering ruin and the pilot sped his pod to safety. I had the old adrenaline shake back and savoured its short lived effect. I had though to myself when the Drake landed oh crap I'm gonna die but the much underrated Cyclone proved her mettle despite my low expectations.

A Tale of Three Russians

Putzing about in and Hevrice as per usual, in a Frigate this time I happen upon three battleships acting very oddly in Murethand. The three of them are doing what I can only describe as repeated formation warps to the control bunker in the system and then back to their POS.

Intrigued, I place my probing alt in the system to keep an eye on them while I take Kirith back to Hevrice to get a bigger ship. My biggest ship at the time when this occurred was a battlecruiser, thus I plump for a trusty Drake.

I ask in intel channels if anyone is interested in catching them with me, however everyone is either deaf or afk. Feeling somewhat frustrated I attempt to convo Itsmehck1, a former corpmate who always tends to be up for shooting against what would normally be considered as unwise odds. He's akf too, meh!

Checking again on my prober I notice that they've stopped formation warping and have entered a faction warfare beacon, a Gallente Major Complex. This again is weird as they are not a faction warfare corporation. I observe them clear the site and subsequently loot and salvage all of it. Maybe the tags are worth a fair bit of isk?

During this time Itsme responds and I give him the low down. He's well up for it so makes best speed to my in another Drake. Meeting up in Melmaniel just a minute too late as the battleships warp out of the beacon and towards a gate. Seconds later though our frustration turns to delight as they've warped to the gate we're on the other side of! So now the conundrum is do we engage three neutral battleships in 2 Drakes, after all battleships are nasty and they'd have the sentry guns on their side too to boot.

Gate fire. They jump into us and of course as pirates we perhaps foolishly engage. Just two battleships decloak along with . . . . a Mackinaw! We light up the Mackinaw who goes down super fast, I get my point on the Typhoon as it does so. The Phoon has heavy neuts and my capacitor is swiftly drained offlining my hardeners, MWD & point. Through careful timing I get my point restablished. The other battleships escapes through use of EC-600's and neuts against Itsme, our own drones have been wiped out by the Phoon's smartbomb.

Now taking fire from the sentries and the Phoon with offlined hardeners were both looking worse for wear. The Phoon is going down though and explodes just as his buddy in the Mega arrives back on the scene. Thoroughly expecting the Mega to jump and run he surprises us by engaging much to our delight.

We both linger on the gate laying into the Megathron, without the pressure of neuts on us we're able to activate our mods long enough to take him down.

We offer gf's in local and warp to safety. With our shields recharging we warp back and loot up what we can. One of the victims returns to his wreck in a Wreathe which smartly jumps to the next system as we arrive on the scene.

Waiting out our GCC Itsme probes down a Hurricane next door which we pop not long before a Talos jumps into us, again promptly destroyed.

I tend to find that you can always rely on Itsme when faced with silly odds.