Prelude to War
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Prelude to War |
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Prelude to War Half the galaxy: Yarrr! <shakes fists> |
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The MC took a contract in late January to probe and harass the northern alliances, in particular to stir up Tribute and Morsus Mihi. We declared Empire war on the ‘Big Four’ – D2, IRON, MM & Razor. It was nothing major but it did mark the first time MC had fired a planned shot in anger at the Northern forces. MC motherships saw action for the first time on a large scale, often engaging ridiculous odds in an attempt to gauge, “Just how tough are these things?” As the contract drew to a close, the MC went on a bit of a road trip to the drone regions to assist Outbreak and FATAL against the bandwagon of alliances attempting to remove FATAL from their recently constructed outpost. We knew it was a bit of a risk to deploy so far from our home in Period Basis but the pay was good and there was an added carrot – the opportunity to destroy a Mothership. When all was said and done, a combined MC and Outbreak capital fleet reduced [STK] Helen’s Mothership to scrap. It was the first Mothership kill in EVE and we would have been celebrating like mad except for one thing – as the operation started we had received word that AAA had invaded our home systems and were putting several of our towers into reinforced. New orders were drafted and cyno alts moved overnight. Cell phones woke people from their beds and over the next 48 hours the MC went home en masse. On Saturday afternoon, 17 February, AAA came to L5D-ZL to finish what they started… and were greeted by three Motherships and over thirty allied capital ships, with more cynoing in every hour. Local peaked at two hundred twenty-one for the first starbase defense; MC had ninety-one in our gang. Fifty-eight of the AAA gang were in battleships. What followed was a bit of a stand-off, with AAA not willing to commit capitals in front of our towers and our primary goal not being ‘pew pew’ but the repair of said towers. If we'd have a bit more experience with our Motherships at that time, AAA might have had a very different fight on their hands than the defensive one we chose. AAA still managed a pair of allied carrier kills and nailed an MC dread who had been told it was “all clear” outside the station except that he undocked from the wrong station. Starbase guns, fighters and our support fleets managed to score heavily and frustrate AAA’s efforts. After the first weekend the “MC DIE” campaign simply… died. All this time I had continued to investigate rumors of people from the Coalition side of the war preparing to offer us a contract against BoB, yet it was becoming apparent by the responses to AAA’s attack on us that such an offer was not coming. Many laughed, and still do, stating that MC’s “side” was obvious. I can only say that there were many inside MC who would have been more than happy to see such a deal made. In the end, however, the Coalition left us little choice… and then BoB put their cards on the table with us and that was that. During this two week period, Northern Coalition capital ships continued to put MC cyno chain towers into reinforced. None were destroyed but then one afternoon in Gehi, a small group of Northern capitals decided to try to finish one off… This taking place on the eve of our contract announcement was rather amusing timing. |
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Prelude to War | |
Introduction - Prelude to War - Querious & Lonetrek - Period Basis - Tribute - Pure Blind |
