Plus one.
So one night last month, the crew was Camping Curse with a couple of frigates, a couple of AFs, a couple of bombers, and of course, a Falcon. No students. 2 brand new instructors onboard make this an all staff fleet.
We’re shooting the breeze when a Scythe coming through. He’s battle damaged, running home from wherever the fighting is happening tonight. We break out the jaws of life to help get his pod from his ship.
Don’t panic. We’re here to help.
A little while later, a Loki jumps in. Strategic Cruisers in null sec are frequently fit with Interdiction Nullifiers. This makes them immune to the effects of warp disruption bubbles.
T3s never land in the bubble.
So when the Loki decloaks on the frigates, we enthusiastically but cautiously grab him. Our covops support decloaks: torpedoes away, the Loki is jammed, and quickly goes into armor.
Should be right about now.
The Loki activates a cynosaural field.
Imagine that.
Cyno, Cyno, Cyno.
Every OUCH pilot right clicks someplace and initiates a warp to a safe. Covert cyno, someone calls out. A Black Ops ship jumps in and our guys try to put on brakes, because sometimes the BOPS jumps when he should bridge and Black Ops are juicy kills. But local continues to spike, and the Loki is surrounded in jump effects until there are about 40 Noir and Mildly Inappropriate in Local. By then, our guys are long gone.
I’ve been watching this, aligned to a safe, jamming the Loki while my teammates warp away. When they are clear, I cloak up, and right click and warp to the gate.
The gate?
Hmmm. That’s not right. Who put this thing on my safe? Oh look, there’s a covert ops fleet 70k away, slowly approaching. I wonder if they are friendly.
Hey Breh-ehhnn, one of my BFs in a bomber says, you’re on the gay-yate.
Well, I’ll be damned. You’re right, this IS a gate. Thank you, bro, I had no idea.
The gang starts to approach the gate. The only positive things about this situation is none of the bad guys seem to be MWD fit and I haven’t been pointed by an Arazu. My aggression timer makes jumping through not an option.
Move. Move. MOVE!
I finally push the Falcon off of the gate and into warp.
Cloaked up safe on a tactical, I check my bookmarks: Seems that nested in the middle of my gate tacticals is a bookmark labeled “Stargate CL-85V”. I’m sure I put it there for convenience.
How inconvenient would it have been to accidentally warp into the middle of a gang of hostiles sitting on the gate?
Yeah, stupid of me really. I watch the opposing the fleet cloak up as they prepare to move on for easier targets. One of them asks in local, Why you run?
I laugh. There are so many ways to answer this question, but I think I’ll paraphrase Ron White:
Well, I don’t know how many of you boys it’s gonna take to kick my ass…
… but I know how many y’all are gonna bring.
Minus one.