Going out with guns blazing

After scoring two tough Rattlesnake kills, I moved out to the next random c3 I found. Well, not exactly random. System was clean and active. I was just lucky to stumble on one without much scouting.

I was watching a local guy sitting in a Dominix. With only few anomalies present, I just knew he won't resist of doing those sites. And why shouldn't he, everyone likes isk.

I see him swap for an Astero and warp to the active connections, presumably, checking his neighbors. Quite smart, but uninvited guest is already in the system. Finally he swaps for a Raven and warps to an anomaly. I follow him and warp to a hundred. Every time I warp to the site after my prey I get a mini heart attack, especially when I land close to a celestial. It doesn't happen often that I would get decloaked, but it has happened.

I make position bookmark and without much waiting I go for the kill.

The Raven goes down without putting much of a fight. Pilot warps back to the tower and logs out, while I move back to a c4 I came from, with the c3 static that is now end of life.

Sometimes stars are not aligned

In some hours connection disappears and a new one opens. I scan it out, jump in and get welcomed by an excited view.

Am I lucky or what.  I hold my cloak and try to pinpoint the Legion, but with no luck. He is not at any of the anomalies. I break my cloak and warp to the nearest celestial. I get a d-scan position on the Legion, but now I see sisters core scanner probes. Legion is not warping out so it must be ally, which means they have all connections mapped and keeping an eye on the new signatures. It worries me a bit, because if they have spotted new connection, there's a good chance they have spotted me, since most likely they have been spamming that d-scan. My usual approach to this would be to orbit the exit and wait for them to scout my connection to get the name and the corp. That or put my Domi fleet on the wormhole so I have eyes on both sides. Unfortunately I do neither. Domi fleet is far out that I thought I might land when their scout goes in and instead being patient, I warped across the system to see if there are any more ships.

System was clear and I used opportunity to launch my combats out of d-scan range. I warp back to the planet and scan the Legion out in one go. I do not know if he saw my probes, but when I land I still see him there.

I get the pilot's name and go to the killboard. I'm not very happy what I see. Jan Aubaris belongs to BAND of MAGNUS corp which is a part of THE R0NIN alliance. They are active as fuck and is usually type of entity I keep away from. However, I created a new connection and they have not seen my name yet. I start to think that I have been spotted when I see Legion warp out, but he only warps to sun and back. A typical "my armor is failing" situation. To be honest, this all looks very suspicious. I am sure the guy just happened to be farming, but my gut says that my ship or probes have been spotted, but why is he not going away? I also do not know if the scout is still in my wormhole. If he is, he would see my Domi fleet land and warn the Legion. Or he jumped in and jumped out seeing as wormhole is empty and I would be missing on a Legion kill opportunity. I decide to go in. I warp my Domi fleet and as soon as they land I decloak and tackle the Legion. Then I see Legion tackle me back and Svipul now is on scan. Oh shit.

My Domi fleet lands and I quickly primary the Legion. When I first tackled him, his armor was two thirds damaged, so I know he will pop fast with that active tank. Now I have another Legion land on me. I spread my points and have both of them tackled.

First Legion pops and I focus on the second one. Spider tank is setup and all is good. I get heavy dps from the sleepers, but I can manage. Unfortunately, with every d-scan check I see more and more ships appearing.

Then it hits me. I am not going out alive out of this one. It's something fascinating about this realization. My mind becomes super clear. I see a big fleet on d-scan, but instead of panicking and trying to warp off what I can, I make sure my spider tank is working and get ready for the last stand. The time I have been waiting for has finally come. Soon I will be on my way to Vallhalla. Enemy fleet lands. I'm ready boys, let's do this!

I continue focusing dps on the second Legion which is about to break. I take a quick look at the overview and I do not see any logistic ships yet. Not for long though, one Guardian lands as soon as the second Legion explodes.

It's not boo bad yet, one Guardian at close range is not a big problem. I quickly lock him and try to focus. Unfortunately the clarity of my mind does not prevent me of attacking my own Dominix by accident. Sleepers also seem to focus fire on my Dominix. I overheat the reps and try to kill the Guardian, but then his partner lands and they setup the chain. Meanwhile my Dominix is at it's limit.

Soon it goes down. Sleepers were without mercy, doing 65% of total damage. My own Domi, even if I noticed quite soon shooting myself in the foot, still managed to contribute 9% total damage.

With only two Dominixes left on the field and two of their Guardians being nice and healthy, I understood it was now just a matter of time. I cycle through my clients and spot my main pilot - Zosius, by some miracle, without any tackle on him. I initiate warp back to the c4, at the same time I eject from Proteus and warp secondary Domi pilot out. I can only imagine their surprise seeing one of the Dominixes warp off. I make to my safespot, cloak up and warp around with my pods to avoid getting combat scanned. Once timer is up I log them out and reflect on the fight.

What a beautiful fight. To be honest, I could not have hoped for a better ending. I was lucky that their fleet was disorganized and managed to inflict 1.7 billion damage while losing 2.7 myself. I'm quite sure they also have lost subsystem skillpoints in addition. This is definitely one of my preferred ways to go. I could have avoided it if I took my normal precautions. After a quick chat they told me that my Proteus was indeed spotted and they also saw my combat probes, thus backup fleet was assembled. But sometimes you have to take that risk and try to poke the bear to feel alive.

Aftermath

After waiting several hours. with my last survivor Navy Dominix, I scanned out a c4 static and moved to low-sec through a c3 and made it back to Jita. My death was long overdue. Since I created my own corp, I managed to score 230 kills worth over 60bil and lose none. Of course I was quite good at picking my targets, but also quite lucky in some cases. If you are doing any kind of pvp, it's inevitable you will lose your ship. You can only hope it will be a good fight when the time comes.