One last hurrah

As I was writing my last entry last night, I was winding down for the evening. As the two corpmates I had been pirating with signed off, I wrote my entry and got ready to dock up. Then two things happened. One, two other corpmates of mine signed on in system. This is significant because we are not based out of low sec. Most of our corporation is down in Delve. Secondly, some random few day old characters were running around the system in noob ships and shuttles. My senses immediately perked up at that.

Based on experience, when I see multiple noob scouts bouncing in and out of a system like that it means someone wants to get something through but is worried about piwwwwates. I had set up shop on the Biphi gate, Biphi being a nice long pipe. In that pipe system I had cloaky eyes from an alt. The noobship kept bouncing in and out of the system, and everyone time I would decloak my Tengu and lock it up he would warp off. Then a shuttle parked itself 100 off the Biphi gate. I warped to an off grid of the Biphi gate and dropped some combat probes. Narrowing the search parameters I immediately got a 100% hit on the shuttle. I warped straight to it, locked it up, and blew it away. The pod sat there, spinning in space. I called to my corpmate Xollst, who warped to me and popped the pod. I didn't want to take the massive sec status hit for podding in low sec.

The noobship was back at this point, also 100km off the Biphi gate. So I scanned with probes again, got a 100% hit on the noobship and warped to him. Pop! This time the pod warped off. Wide awake and very curious at this point, I surveyed the situation. In Biphi, I had two neutrals that had yet to show themselves after coming in from Mamet. Nothing on scan. They had been in there for a good half hour. I had two noob scouts zipping around Yong and popping in and out of Biphi. Something was going on.

Downtime was rapidly approaching, and we were approaching the five minute server shutdown mark. I decided to get crafty. I had everyone but my eyes in Biphi and my cloaked Tengu log off at the Biphi gate. Then we waited, with my boys sitting at the character selection screen. Sure enough, the five minute timer started. Then one of those UFOs in Biphi showed up at the Yong gate. Punisher. Nothing to get excited about... and he jumped in. I watched him on my main monitor and he just sat there in Yong, not moving. I glanced back at my laptop and... sweet mother. An Orca was landing on gate in Biphi! "ORCA ORCA ORCA... log on log on log on!!!" I yelled. The Orca sat on the Yong gate in Biphi. My finger hovered over the jump button, in case the Orca started aligning off in Biphi. It didn't, and dissapeared in the cosmic swirl of a gate activation.

At this point my boys (in a Drake and Geddon) had logged in and were emergency warping back to the gate. The Orca appeared in space 14km off the Biphi gate, and I immediately pointed and started raining missiles down on him. For those of you who don't know, Orcas have paper thin tanks. Very very easy to take down. But we were racing against the clock; at this point there was about 40 seconds left until downtime. Missiles streaked towards the Orca, blossoming into wonderful explosions on impact. The humming of the pulse lasers accompanied the explosions, flashing across space and into the hull of the Orca. Her shields dissapeared, then her armor. She was at half armor when my screen dissapeared, replaced by the log on screen. I cursed.

My location is MTZ time in the US. Downtime is 4am. At this point I realized I had to stay up, no questions. So I left my headset on and told Xollst to start yelling when the servers came back up. Dozing off with dreams of Orca kills, I was awakened by a drunken Xollst yelling that the server was back up. I logged on, and had him and Anskelmi sit at the character selection screen. I logged on and hovered right underneath the gate, cloaked up. I waited patiently, and sure enough the Punisher logged on. Knowing this was the Orca's eyes I sighed. He would see me in local and remember what I was in, and keep the Orca logged off like any smart pilot would with a hostile in system.

Wrong.

No sooner had I told my boys it was unlikely we would get him when local increased by one as the Orca logged back in. I told myself not to get my hopes up, as he would probably log on and off right away to create a new safe spot.

Wrong.

The Orca landed on gate as I was decloaking. I immediately pointed him, and he launched drones. Wrong move. My corpmates logged in as I started pounding on the Orca. I've heard that as dowtime hits you are still engaged to some degree, and the Orca being in half structure lends proof to this. We must have pounded his hull for quite some time after my screen blanked. I held DPS until Xollst and Anskelmi were there (they were screaming that if I killed him they would kill me). They landed and lit up space with beams of light and streaking missiles. The Orca popped in a glorious ball of fire, leaving the giant husk sitting in space. I logged on a hauler alt, who came and salvaged the wreck and picked up the loot, which was nothing exciting. Xollst was still wide awake and getting drunker by the moment, and I was exhausted. I logged off with a smile on my face despite his protests of more kills to be had. What a way to finish the night.

On a side note, please take the time to visit Crazy Kinux and put in a vote for my blog in the comments of his post. He is reorganzing the blog pak at this time, and I would love to share my PVP tales with all that read the blog pak.
That is all.