After so many days of feeling lousy, I’d had enough. I was actually feeling slightly better- my head only felt like it was full of cotton wool instead of pebbles.
Over a steaming hot cup of Earl Grey tea (apparently this was an old Earth favourite- one of the things I was glad they had brought through the EveGate), I caught up on the events of the last week or so on GalNet. It seems U’K managed to bag and tag another System Shock Initiative (SSI) carrier some days ago, with help from AAA. This carrier had a Triage Module fitted, so it was a tough nut to crack. Apparently, we’d got it tackled at a Deathstar POS, couldn’t crack the tank due to Triage, withdrew, but then heard that AAA were coming with a fleet. So, it was re-engaged, the AAA fleet arrived and boom.[OOC- only added it to my own board as you can't see it on U'K board]
I had been vaguely aware of Triage modules, but had no concept of how they worked. Having done some light reading (all my brain can handle at the moment), it seems like a great module to have. I’ll need to do some training in the use of these modules, but need to buy some manuals from Empire first.
Other than that, Curse has been turning into a really hot place to be, with some massive alliances all down here in numbers. Oh, and BoB lost another titan yesterday, it was tackled by Pandemic Legion, then approximately 180 Goonswarm came to finish the job. A GalNet post is here.
So, still feeling a bit cold but otherwise OK, I made my way down to my hangar, feeling like a released prisoner emerging from his cell for the first time in ages. I didn’t feel like flying anything too big, just small and cheap should I make some mistakes in battle, and so hopped in the Jaguar Assault Frigate. The pod fluid was warm and comforting, and I felt much more at ease in the dark, enclosed space. The ship and I became one and we launched out in the void.
Sure enough a gang was forming, and we heard reports that a CVA gang was camping the Hemin gate in RMOC, a mere couple of jumps away. A 15+ gang formed really quickly, and our FC listened to various snippets of intel about their composition (all T2 ships, but no Falcons that we could see), and made a quick decision. We had the numbers to engage them, but lacked the EW of our own. Either this was going to a painful ‘you didn’t bring any EW so you lose’ battle, or a pleasurable ‘neither of us brought any EW, so this will be fun’ battle.
The FC, myself and two other ships warped to RMOC gate in Hemin, resembling a very small gang, while the others waited in Utopia so as not to give them a clear idea of our numbers. We drove off their Vagabond scout back into RMOC, leaving them with no scout. They clearly wanted us to jump into them. So, we did, while the rest of the gang jumped into Hemin and warped to the RMOC gate while we held our cloaks and surveyed the enemy in those 30 seconds. The area was bubbled, any pods would have a hard time getting clear of the area in time, but unless pilots are bloody minded they usually stick to pri/ sec targets
They had an all T2 gang (bar an Arbitrator), including a Basilisk logistics cruiser which would have to be the primary or it’d make things hard for us. Sure enough, it was called primary. We decloaked and I burned toward it. That’s where the frustration started. I had an afterburner on the Jag, against my usual rule of 0.0 =MWD, and to be honest, it took me so long to get into my autocannon range (even with Barrage), I could’ve cried. Even at 1km/s, it’s still damn slow when the target is 20km away.
To make matters worse, the CVA gang weren’t just sitting there, they were actively zooming around when they got called primary, so frequently I couldn’t keep up unless I got to them before they MWD’d away- as I had a Warp Scrambler it also shut down their MWD, allowing me to keep up. However, as a result, primary shifted quite a few times, leaving me approx 20km from the new primary each time, and I couldn’t get in range quickly enough.
Ships started to go down. Our gang lost the first three, a Taranis, Crusader and Hurricane but in the meantime the primary Basilisk had MWD’d away, so we turned to a Zealot. He was near to me so I managed to scramble him and his MWD, tucking into a tight 8km orbit and he soon went down. The Arbitrator was next, I could barely get to him in time before he disappeared in a shower of white hot plasma, his drones deactivating in space immediately.
After that, the primary kept changing as they zoomed around, leaving me frustrated as I couldn’t get near anything to target it. Damn Afterburner!! We lost a raft of ships in the next couple of minutes: Curse, Manticore, Deimos, then some T1 ships, Rifter, Moa and Condor.
I started taking heavy damage and as I wasn’t being remotely effective, and on the gate, I saw their Basilisk slip out and jump into Hemin. I knew he had damage, so I thought “what the hell”, and chased him. To my pleasure, on the other side of the gate was Ratokus in a Hound Stealth Bomber. He was uncomfortably close to the Basilisk, so I locked up the logistics ship and prayed he wouldn’t warp until I got into range…. and then I was. Scrambled and he was already into deep armour, the volleys of cruise missiles were tearing holes into his ship. Flames broke out and the ship exploded. Very satisfying indeed.
Unfortunately the damage I had sustained before I jumped out had glitched my HUD, and my overview was showing absolutely nothing. I knew I had to restart the ship’s mainframe, as it had done this before for no reason and that fixed it. I sighed, made for a safespot, and performed a reboot. When comms were re-established, I heard our gang was very much in the fight still, so warped back to RMOC gate and jumped in, to hear the words “they’re leaving”. We held the field, littered with blinking wrecks, stationary drones clustered together and ships darting to collect loot before we were jumped.
I was a little cross with my sub-par performance, the AB really wasn’t a module that suited this type of fast warfare, although perma-running it was quite nice when orbitting a target at 1km/s. When I returned to the station, I removed the Rocket Launcher I had attached and fitted a MWD that I had in my hangar. With the gap in the high slots, it’d act as a heat sink for overheating my guns so an empty high slot wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Grumpy and headachey, I headed back to bed. As a final note, it seems neither gang had EW after all, and the battle lasted for a good amount of time as a result

I opened an eye, mustering what willpower I had left and gazed balefully at the chrono on the table next to my bed. I had been asleep for about 20 minutes. Dammit. Every pore of my body ached, even thinking hurt. The ever-present headache was….well, still present, my nose was still alternating between being bunged up and leaking like a holed pod and I was getting really fed up at feeling so miserable.
Regular readers of my journal may have noticed that I’ve been mentioning overheating more. Well, this is because it’s so damn useful.

