The Orca Escapement

Today one of your guys who was camping a C3 reported in with the fine news that he had an orca bubbled 5km off its exit in a fit of excitement. I was in Jita shopping on an alt at the time, and immediately downed tools and began burning the 9 jumps towards the entry system. Whale blood in the water attracts sharks.

Sadly, the Orca's cries reverberated through the cold depths of space, and a Megathron, Armageddon, Falcon and a Rook turned up and made the situation rather....untenable. The Orca wallowed its way to safety and we retired, bruised but un-beaten.

I retruend to the home wormhole directly, so as to allow me to complete my shopping. The other fellow spent his time probing enroute home, and found his way in to a C2 Black Hole with O477. He probed in to the O477 and upon jumping through, saw a Nightmare, Proteus, loki, Ferox and Noctis on scan and plenty of wrecks.

The locals, probably having an alt on the hole, scuttled back into their POS and deployed a bomber to snoop into the C2. My corpmate postulated in Alliance chat that they'd probably drop an Orca on the O477 to collapse it so they could continue doing sites. no sooner had the thought been evinced than this came to pass; an Orca on the hole.

Not one to be blue-balled twice, and having finished my shopping, I spat an Exequror Navy Issue from the SMA for my alt and hopped in my trusty "Top Damage Dealer" Augoror navy and burned for the entry with precipitous haste. 7 jumps were completed in <5 minutes and as I was warping to the K162 into the C2, the Orca landed and jumped into said hole.

Our team consisted of a Clegion (c. 200 DPS) a Falcon (ZOMG Jamz!) a Flycatcher (Bubbles) and the DPS wing: Nexecq (820) and Naugoror (570). So basically it was an EWAR squad (in place and cloaked on the connection) and all the DPS still enroute.

They had a Proteus, Loki, Ferox and Orca, and possibly a Nightmare in the POS, which was off scan. This, we had discussed, was going to be epic.

"Should I de-cloak now, or wait for the next pass?"
"Go now." says I "Next pass may not happen."

I jump through from hisec and squad warp to the O477. As I'm landing, bubbles are up in the C3, Falcon is transiting into the C3, and the Clegion is decloaking to lay its "DPS" on the Proteus.

I push through, damn the bookmarks. If this goes south, in a bubble, I'll be heading home via the Hisec Express.

I decloak and we primary the Proteus, whose tank goes nowhere fast. The Ferox arrives, and we burn it down in seconds (Ferox). We send him to hisec immediately, as the bubbles will expire imminently and we cannot afford for him to reship. This duly happens, and the Orca uses the bubble expiry to escape.

Our Falcon pilot is suffering terribly at the hands of drones and has to jump out. What was a walk in the park turns nasty. They primary the Navy Execquror which is no surprise if you consider its DPS, though I guess that it was more to do with it being Gallente. Its still very rare in w-space so I doubt they saw it as the prime threat.

There's a short race; all my DPS and the legion's weak flailing burning down a 100K+ EHP Proteus, versus a Proteus with serious DPS burning down a relatively weak Navy Execquror. The Falcon is double-tapped for 2.5 minutes, and the Proteus gets capped; the Loki is doing most of the DPS right now and I overheat the Execquror to finish the Proteus off and receive holy Falcon jams to keep my alt alive in the last 10 seconds. In the process of just winning the race, I burn the guns due to dual-boxing.

Somehow the Loki switches DPS to the Legion. I pod the Proteus pilot back to hisec - again, no reships please - and I check d-scan. What I see I initially mistake for a Revelation, but I blurt it out anyway: Redeemer!

He lands at 70km and my Exequror is in 20% armour. Knowing this will be a sniper Redeemer, I warp my crippled Nexeq off the hole to a planet, and bounce back.

For some reason, so does the Redeemer, and gets caught it a bubble. The Loki is webbed to fuckery now, and slowly wilting but I point up the Redeemer and shoot it, figuring it's got to be pimped to over a billion. The NAugoror blows it up in seconds - I hardly had time to jump the Nexeq to safety (cursing the lack of hisec BM now its guns were fried) before the Redeemer was raped.

We then burned down the Loki and exchanged GF's and scooped the loot.

Forgot to scoop the corpses sadly.