A Quiet Saturday With The Tuskers

Another weekend, another Tuskers corporate operation. Yet again I lead out our valiant warriors in a fleet of frigates. Our motley crew included a bunch of Rifters and pretty much the whole spectrum of Gallente attack frigates. Joc flew ahead in a Malediction to provide scouting and perform tackle duties while Alex and Yahrr formed our e-war wing in a Kitsune and Keres respectively. The Kitsune and Keres combination is ideal for frigate operations. It allows us to not only jam our targets but then makes it hard for them to reacquire a lock on our tiny little frigates. Unfortunately we didn't have a Sentinel to provide tracking disruption but we were adequately covered anyway.

The plan for the operation was to stay local and pick on targets of opportunity. We didn't want to waste our time on small fry or scanning down every single target at a safe spot or in a mission. Instead we'd keep going until we found something juicy that was worth slowing down the fleet for. Adirain was keyed into the fleet's navigation systems and we set off in search of adventure and profit...

And it came to us pretty quickly. From Aeschee Joc reported an Orca, Raven, Blackbird, and two Hyperions at an off-lined POS. This was too good to be true. We sent Joc to get the tackle on the Orca and jumped in the fleet. As we warped the Orca was called primary with drone carriers instructed to put them on Blackbird along with the damps and ECM. Joc held the tackle superbly and we landed upon our prey. Points were quickly distributed and we began working away at the Orca while Jolo began ransom negotiations. One of the Hyperions warped out at this point as did the Raven but the latter returned. The drones on the Blackbird did their job and it exploded leaving us free to engage without the annoyance of losing locks and juggling points. With their E-war support down Joc switched his point to the Hyperion and we continued to take the Orca apart. Ransom negotiations were stalling and with the tower in danger of coming online before we could make the kill I gave the order to overheat and take him down. With the extra firepower the industrial capital ship broke quickly and exploded in one of the most satisfying light shows of my time in Eve. Not wasting any time we swapped our focus onto the Hyperion and Joc was sent to tackle the Raven. The Hyperion melted and we moved to destroy the Raven. By now the second Hyperion had returned and with the Raven felled we turned on that too. This pilot was keen to pay ransom and countered our initial offer of 60 million ISK with 56 million, which we accepted and allowed him to go on his way.

Within five minutes of departing Hevrice we had possibly the most epic firefight that The Tuskers have been in to date. We destroyed a capital ship and two battleships and an ECM cruiser that were in support inflicting a total of 766,000,000 ISK damage. As well as that we got 56 million in ransom payments. It didn't seem like things could get better. How wrong could we be. This was the gank that just kept giving.

While not being hostile, ransom negotiations had not proceeded smoothly. Here is the ransom chat from the battle:

[ 2009.04.18 15:34:06 ] Ka Jolo > 600 million
[ 2009.04.18 15:34:19 ] DrJam > so i gotta go to paypal to get that yeah?
[ 2009.04.18 15:34:47 ] Ka Jolo > It's up to you, mate. How about 500M?
[ 2009.04.18 15:35:03 ] DrJam > 250m?
[ 2009.04.18 15:35:15 ] Ka Jolo > 500
[ 2009.04.18 15:35:43 ] DrJam > what promise do u give that you will not fire afterwards too?
[ 2009.04.18 15:36:34 ] Ka Jolo > Time's about up, take your chances.
[ 2009.04.18 15:36:42 ] DrJam > hmmmmm
[ 2009.04.18 15:36:51 ] DrJam > i will give you 300m to stop, the n the rest if you DO stop
[ 2009.04.18 15:36:59 ] DrJam > but not if i die
[ 2009.04.18 15:37:05 ] DrJam > i will need th emoney to buy a new ship then
[ 2009.04.18 15:43:16 ] Ka Jolo > Raynelock, sorry about that--we saw the control tower was about to online, and didn't have time for more games like we got from DrJam
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:01 ] Raynelock > lol
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:06 ] DrJam > funny, i thought this was games
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:26 ] DrJam > first POS ever... and still dont know how to do it
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:30 ] Raynelock > i wasnt going to pay anyway
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:33 ] Raynelock > hahaha
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:39 ] Ka Jolo > Our loss
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:42 ] DrJam > thanks dude..... good to see arabs are online too
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:52 ] gmjab > hey
[ 2009.04.18 15:44:59 ] Ka Jolo > gmjab, you wanna pay? We have a ransom board where you can verify we honor ransoms.
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:10 ] DrJam > meh, i asked about half [payment beause our experience so far is that people lie about stopping
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:23 ] Ka Jolo > 60 Mil for your Hype and pod
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:27 ] DrJam > would YOU trust you? lol
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:29 ] Avan Sercedos > sorry to hear that Jam
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:36 ] DrJam > yeah man, i can tell
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:38 ] gmjab > how about 56mill
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:47 ] Ka Jolo > Sure, that'll do.
[ 2009.04.18 15:45:56 ] gmjab > who do I pay?
[ 2009.04.18 15:46:01 ] Ka Jolo > Me.
[ 2009.04.18 15:46:23 ] gmjab > done
[ 2009.04.18 15:46:40 ] Caster Rom > Gf
[ 2009.04.18 15:46:57 ] Ka Jolo > You are free to go; you have 2 hours safe passage from our gang. You personally.
[ 2009.04.18 15:47:11 ] Ka Jolo > Assuming you don't initiate hostilities, of course.
[ 2009.04.18 15:47:15 ] gmjab > thank you
[ 2009.04.18 15:48:36 ] DrJam > hmmmm, sooooo this is better than wow how?
[ 2009.04.18 15:48:44 ] Alex Rudd > risk
[ 2009.04.18 15:48:50 ] Wensley > you get to blow expesnive stuff up :)
[ 2009.04.18 15:48:54 ] DrJam > not whwn its real money
[ 2009.04.18 15:48:55 ] Ka Jolo > Have a good day, mates.
[ 2009.04.18 15:49:07 ] EVE System > DrJam was kicked from the channel by Ka Jolo. , Effective until 2009.04.18 16:19:04.
[ 2009.04.18 15:49:16 ] EVE System > Raynelock was kicked from the channel by Ka Jolo. , Effective until 2009.04.18 16:19:12.
[ 2009.04.18 15:49:26 ] EVE System > gmjab was kicked from the channel by Ka Jolo. , Effective until 2009.04.18 16:19:20.

I hadn't actually noticed the comment about PayPal at the time. It does lead the question as to where their ISK came from. We also have no idea why they called us Arabs. Anyway, we kept it polite and civil as is our way so we were a bit surprised at their later communications.

DrJam: instead of paying you, i decided to make a bounty. also, thanks to your charm and wit, an will be obtaining ISK and creating further bounties.
DrJam: also, i will be quiting EVE so that this does not annoy anyone. how do you like that risk, rofl. "i too am sorry". :P

True to his word Ka Jolo was now the proud owner of a 100,000,000 ISK bounty. They didn't stop there and in fact put similar bounties on half of the people present at the fight, myself included. Fantastic. Avan received further communication from them so maybe he'll post that here at some point.

With our timers completed we began to scan the local systems but didn't find anything worth fighting except for a Caracal with warp core stabilisers that we couldn't pin down for long enough to drop the fleet on. As I was beginning to weigh up where to take the gang next we received intelligence about a pair of Hulks in Costolle with a Rook for protection. It looked like our day was going to carry on getting better. The fleet made good speed and waited on the Costolle gate while Joc got the tackle. We jumped and warped so quickly that I forgot to set my camera drones to video capture mode. Never mind. We landed on the Hulks and began to engage. Once again ECM, drones, and damps were focussed on their ECM support while we spread points and began to lay in. Kruger81 of the 22nd Black Rise Defensive unit landed in his Drake and was causing us a few issues until Alex jammed him and Joc scrambled him. With our drones over him like a rash the Rook bailed and we set about the job in hand destroying both Hulks and the Drake.

With these two fantastic engagements under our belts we decided to take the fleet back to Hevrice and wind down the operations. It had been a fine couple of hours and we'd done over a billion ISK in damage with a small fleet of frigates and not taken a single loss. And we did it all within two jumps of home. It looks like Verge Vendor is livening up a bit. As always thanks to The Tuskers for being such able pilots and good guys. Special thanks to Joc for his brilliant scouting and tackling and to Leo for providing the intel on the Hulks. Oh

Fly reckless!