The Drill!

Lately, I have been running numerous missions for my recently acquantained agent. Scheenins has been a quite system and to be honest I didn't bother much for the attacks on the miners or the proceedings of the nearby pirate corps and alliances. Apart from the infrequent participation in gangs roaming the low sec, or camping stations in high sec, my everyday schedule involved the death of numerous NPC piloted ships.

However this day I wanted to put a break to this repeated pattern, so when a corp and alliance mate told us that some pirates were camping the nearby Stacmon gate, into Ostingele system, a low sec to high sec space gate, I left my agent for a while to take part in an attempt to lift the embargo. Sadly, by the time I had reached Stacmon, the thin gate camp had been lifted by the pirates and there were no immediate targets to attack to. However, my corp mate, capable at spotting stuff in space through his probe skills, located a Navy Issue Scorpion, relaxing to its safe spot. This same N.I. Scorpion was seen to be piloted by a pirate, thus making it a twice as juice target for us. We gave once more the call to arms, to gather the force to take down this ship, which is well know of its tanking abilities. We were almost ready, to attack, as my corp mate had resolved a convenient warp in point for us near the target, when the alliance comm channel was set on fire!

Apparently a POS owned by a corp in the alliance, in low sec, was attacked by some unknown at that moment force! A call to arms for all available pilots to gather at Stacmon in order to defend our POS was issued, so our small fleet's priority had to be sifted by attacking the N.I Scorpion to more important issues. The fleet gathered in sort time and our high alliance numbers made it possible to prepare a formidable force. However, before we would lead such a fleet into its possible diminish, we had to gather some intel about the force attacking our POS. Thus, various collaborators, that didn't wear our alliance colors, went into the POS's system to get us an assessment of the tactical situation. It quickly came clear that the attack was not a prepared one. A rather small force took some shots at our POS's modules and then - what a mistake - hide to its own POS shields to wait for the Global Criminal Countdown timer to go by.

Although the attackers posed a small danger for our alliance operations in the area, their actions of defiance of our authority couldn't go unanswered! The decision was taken immediately! Switch the goal of the fleet from a defending one to an offensive. Hit hard their POS, and get it removed from the system once and for all! When everyone was ready, the FC, took the fleet on the move. The few high sec systems between our current position and the entry to the low sec area were quickly traveled by our heavy BS gang. Upon arriving the first low sec gate, special care was taken to scout ahead for possible pirate camps, though at the same time we didn't want to delay the reply to our attackers actions.  A few jumps after and we were ready to attack the enemy POS.

Since this was  a big Gallente Tower, with guns and neutralization batteries protecting it, we had to ask the contribution of our capital ships fleet to make our work easier. The defenders, managed to catch a few of our pilots unprepared and so we endured two Raven losses. They were, sadly, shield tanked and that made them easy preys to the gunners of the POS and their concentrated fires. No matter of their efforts to defend, our heavy guns outnumbered and killed theirs. The POS's fate was decided at that point. After a few more minutes it entered into reinforced state ... allowing to the defenders to prepare better for our final attack that would send their POS into oblivion. For us it was time to take a break, relax and prepare for the final leg of this payback operation, 16 hours later.

After this wait period passed, and - what the planet side inhabitants call - a new day had come, we were ready to attack the POS and blow it up! I had to start late as various things required my attention into the station, but when I joined, the fleet had already been eating the armor of the undefended POS. Its owners seemed to have surrendered to the idea of its distraction. Our fleet didn't care! With or without defenders, this metal construction would soon be a scrap! A few minutes after my arrival at the POS location I was engulfed into a bright light ... the sign of the end of life of another POS.

The next hour passed with us repairing and unanchoring all the modules, guns and facility structures the owners had anchored to their POS. These would surely add some income to the alliance coffers or just be used in some of our future POSs. We all left after everything was collected and CONCORD had cleared their records of our illegal actions. Sadly the will of the enemies was so weak that our war had been retracted immediately after we had the POS down to its 50% shield the night of our first attack. An hour that the CONCORD rules would allow us to attack the enemies, was too short to bring us some more kills. Our reaction was once more swift and harsh ... the enemies had to pay for their actions and they did!