New neighbours

My Taranis slowly orbited one of the corporate Hulks chipping away at the Arkonor asteroid, hopefully a deterrent to any would be stealth bomber. Our communication channel active, people doing different things, and generally enjoying the quieter more laid back lifestyle that is wormhole space.

All of my attempts at Sleeper combat had proven more difficult than I'd expected, firstly the Myrmidon I had tried was a complete failure, the sleepers switching fire onto my drones, requiring constant attention to pull them back into the drone bay before they were destroyed, which had severely limited my damage output. 

The next attempt in a blaster fit Brutix had gone better, requiring me to burn straight toward the sleepers with a microwarp drive before melting them with the close range high damage fit. Its tank however had some trouble dealing with the battleships and the need to get right on top of the enemy meant I couldn't be pre-aligned to safety should another pod pilot wish to pay an unfriendly visit.

"Imicus on scan" reported the corporate channel, a quick check of the directional scanner didn't show them within range of our current grav site. The idle chatter stopped as the mining vessels warped out back to our POS. Warping to a safe in the center of the solar system and hitting scan revealed the Imicus, his friends and their newly anchored and onlined tower.

Completely under our collective noses another corp had moved in within the last hour, on lined their tower and setup several gun batteries. Having just endured the tedium of removing an offline tower days before, the prospect of our small group taking on an online and actively defended POS was extremely unappealing. Covert ops and bombers were dispatched to monitor things, intel was being harvested from killboards and character employment histories. Diplomatic negotiations were left up to me.

Mdih Lihu > new neighbours?

my attempt at diplomacy appeared to have failed.. our eyes on their station reporting the anchoring of more guns.


Mdih Lihu > not feeling talkative?

Perhaps more than words were required to attract their attention. A corp member warped an Armageddon directly onto several batteries, incapacitating them with pulse laser fire before warping off again due to the lack of a warp disruption battery. Meanwhile the low security entry point they had been using was located by one of our scanners, and I switched out into a hound stealth bomber and anchored a small bubble 20km from it in line with the new station, assuming the several Iteron V's in their shields might attempt another trip.

The harassment of their operations lasted for a couple more hours, whenever someone would inch out of the shield to load a freshly anchored battery one of us would be there, firing bombs and torpedoes and forcing them to retreat into the shield. Unfortunately never doing quite enough damage to destroy them before they burned back to safety. Finally a very close call for one of their Heron pilots prompted a response.


FantomChaser > lol not bored yet? xD
Mdih Lihu > Nah, talking to people at the same time :)
Mdih Lihu > so you CAN speak english haha
Mdih Lihu > so... whats news?
FantomChaser > nothing much just spending endless hours of ancoring and putting online
FantomChaser > preparing for rest of the corp to move here
FantomChaser > having 5-10 ppl preparing all rdy awaiting to putting up 2-3 more posses ><
Mdih Lihu > eep, going to shoot ours down?
FantomChaser > well considering how you been to ours
Mdih Lihu > haha, well.. you didn't respond earlier so we considered you hostile :)
FantomChaser > well i cant promise your safety dont think my ceo like that you been harrashing our Lpos
Mdih Lihu > no doubt, but we were going to try be diplomatic to start but nobody responded.
FantomChaser > diplomatic means if no respond ya send a mail
FantomChaser > but as you started hostilities and the corp hunger for more pvp the diplo gonna be a thoug one
Mdih Lihu > true true, but you moved into an occupied wormhole without saying a word, surely you can understand our position
FantomChaser > tmw im gonna put my pvp char in the corp and move him here :) hes one of the strongest pvp chars in the game up to bs size wich is the biggest ship in here
FantomChaser > we had deep core scanners and warped to 3 differnt  planets with massive distance to each other and made directional scans wo a single control towers

The strongest pvp character in the game doesn't know how to completely scan a system for a tower? His attitude and comments instantly solidified our response.

All non essentials would be evacuated from the wormhole at the earliest safest exit. The remaining backup batteries, ammo and hardeners would be anchored and online, several months worth of fuel imported along with ammo and all the necessary ships to endure a prolonged siege. While we didn't believe we could win, it was our intention to make it as unsafe and costly as possible to remove us, if we couldn't live in and profit from the wormhole system. We would ensure that they wouldn't either.

A short time later FantomChaser landed in the bubble I was orbiting near the low sec exit. The Crow interceptor a completely unsuitable target for my bomber I cursed and regretted my choice to change ship. Warping back to our tower I switched back into my Taranis initiating a squad warp, bringing Leysii's harbinger into warp toward the bubble with me. I couldn't have landed any closer to the Crow, instantly he was scrambled and my blasters began to strip his ship apart. The harbinger landing and applying drones as the crow came apart.

FantomChaser > that was the point of no return i think ;)
Mdih Lihu > yep :)
Mdih Lihu > you were shooting our bubble haha
FantomChaser > blocking the way
FantomChaser > no worrys calling in the ally :)
FantomChaser > funny thoug my mwd wouldnt activate even thoug i wasnt inside the bubble

Overnight we used a couple of sniper fit battleships to incapacitate most of the modules which had been onlined. To my utter amazement, I discovered this poor chap happily mining away in a grav site. Seemingly oblivious to the hostilities occurring between our peoples until I introduced his biomass to the vacuum of space.

FantomChaser > if you wish to be here you better stop that shit btw
Mdih Lihu > You move into an occupied wormhole, what did you expect?
Mdih Lihu > You weren't exactly friendly when I tried to speak to you *shrug*
FantomChaser > lol tryed... ive been busy putting up the pos and do other stuff to keep a eye on local
FantomChaser > and then you open fire.
Mdih Lihu > Yeah, I'm a fan of the preemptive strike.
FantomChaser > well gonna cost you your a 10member corp with around 3-6 aktive members rest is alts
FantomChaser > then you say you will go the diplomatic way when you finally get some contact.. 5m later you blow up a ship not the best diplomatic directions ive seen.
Mdih Lihu > I try to be friendly after the initial shooting, you basically tell me your guys want pvp and good luck with that. We're supposed to sit around while you get setup and organised in here so you can kill us?
FantomChaser > dont worry we got a few guys in we r a bit short to fix a pos thoug but not far away :)

After several more days of harassment, which included us nearly trading a Raven for an Armageddon in a bait gone wrong before we both managed to disengage. Bubbling, guarding and driving down the mass of wormholes to near collapsing. After much posturing, and threatening that our station was soon to be removed and our corp would be destroyed. The moon where the enemy pos had once been was suddenly vacant, and our home was quiet once more.