Well, things have finally calmed down a bit for us, so I have some time to do this post. I have a lot of ground to cover, so this is going to be a long one. As I said before, this has been a very busy week for us. On top of the war dec we have active from Cosa Nostra., we've had continued action verus Brotherhood of Starbridge, a Russian wormhole alliance.
To understand the whole story behind what's going on, I have to give you a bit of history about Starbridge and the Narwhals.
Our alliance and theirs have fought in the past, most recently, we declared war on them after they had reinforced a POS in one of our alliance members system. During the war, Cosa Nostra. declared war on us as well, and there were several engagements. During the course of the fighting, we completely destroyed two Starbridge controlled wormholes, and attacked a third, causing them to self destruct several billion isk worth of ships. (That's another story for when it's slow.) They managed to reinforce a single POS, belonging to an alliance member corp, before we routed them from the system.
Fast forward to two weeks later, we get the call that Starbridge and their allies have invaded one of our allies, Aquila Inc. They have several dreads, and a 150+ gang of RR Drakes, Tengus, Logi, ECM, Command ships, and assorted others, in the system and they have started seiging a POS. Now, the guys from Aquila are not people you want to mess with on their own, but they just didn't have the numbers to repel an invasion of this size.
So, we rallied the troops, and put the call out to all of our allies, and friends, as well as some former enemies, and gathered a 150 person fleet of our own, consisting of Apeture Harmonics, Talocan United, Narwhals Ate my Duck, Transmission Lost, and various other wormhole corps and alliances. We formed up and waited in high sec for an entrance into the wormhole.
The folks from Aquila who were there fighting for their home did an amazing job, fighting outnumbered better then 4 to 1, and managed to take control of their static several times throughout the day, but were unable to keep control of it long enough for us to move the fleet in.
Below are the related kills from the Aquila forces who fought throughout the day to keep their home.
http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13276
Damn, I am glad they are on our side.
The Aquila home system is a class 5 wormhole, so they had to scan a route out through several other systems, and Starbridge was collapsing, or mass reducing the wormhole, every time they took control of it. Which meant the Aquila scanners were in constant danger of getting trapped out, every time they tried to find us a way in.
While the battle is ongoing, our shrinking fleet is sitting docked up in a central high sec location, not really doing much, and starting to lose members to AFK, boredom, and time. Knowing we need to keep the momentum up, or risk losing most of our fleet, I started asking around, trying to find if anyone had an alt logged off in a Starbridge controlled wormhole. One of the guys in fleet chimes in, that he has an alt in a Starbridge class 2, with a barely defended POS.
Jackpot!
I ask him to scan us a way into the system, and luckily it's very close. I order the fleet to make best speed over there, and we form up in system, and head into their system.
Well, lightly defended is one way of describing this POS, it had a total of three batteries on it, which our 120+ person fleet made quick work of. While we waited for news on an entrance to the Aquila system, we reinforced their POS, which to our suprise, only had 15 hours of Strontium in it.
After the fleet finished beating down their POS, there was some discussion on whether the fleet should head to another Starbridge system, and continue our offensive, or go back to our staging area, and wait for word from Aquila. It was decided that we would go back to the rally point, and wait, for an entrance, as it was getting very late over in Russia, and reports were coming in that hostile fleet numbers were dwindling.
Aquila strikes a massive blow to Starbridge when they catch their Orca, with THREE large Amarr towers in it! Now they will have a harder time reinforcing, as well as popping wormholes. Personally, I think this was the turning point in the battle for control of the system.
http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13276
Back to the waiting game...
About forty minutes later, I finally get the report that Aquila has taken control of their static wormhole, and has found a null sec connection. I plug it into my autopilot, and it's nearly 40 jumps away, deep in null. Shit, too far away. Aquila begins collapsing the null wormhole, trying to get closer, when Starbridge manages to take back the static, and collapses it.
After another thirty minutes or so of back and forth, the fleet is starting to get antsy, when Aquila announces they have regained control, and connected to Firebird Squadron's home wormhole. I am on good terms with the folks from FBS, so I quickly convo'd one of them, and asked them if they could find us a route in.
More waiting...
Finally, we get a report that we have a lowsec entrance to the chain that will get us into the Aquila system, and it's only 14 jumps away! I order the fleet to make best speed to that system, and dock in top station, while we get bookmarks copied. Once the majority of the fleet is there, we move through the chain quickly and jumped into the Aquila system. It looked like someone had kicked a wasps nest and an angry swarm of 100+ T3's came boiling out.
We quickly got bookmarks to the various POS in the system, and setup a camp on the wormhole, while the majority of the fleet began the assault on the Starbridge tower. After reinforcing and rape caging the tower, we waited for them to log in, and hopefully put up a fight.
Throughout the night, we have people watching the hostile tower constantly, killing off anyone who tried to escape, and keeping track of the folks who were stuck in the POS or AFK. At some point, one of the people in our fleet figured out the password for the enemy shields, and I have heard conflicting stories about how this was done, but the results were the same either way.
We proceeded to bump the afk members of their fleet out of the POS and destroy them.
http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10694946
They are gonna be pissed when they wake up.
Some more time passes, and the fleet continues to kill stragglers that log in, until our numbers wane just before downtime. At which point the invaders log in en masse, and beeline through our skeleton crew guarding the wormhole, and make it out with about half their fleet.
After downtime, the EU timezone takes over guarding the system, gets a few more kills, and finishes off the pos.
http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13354
Though they are still getting kills today as Starbridge and friends are logging back into the Aquila system, and I doubt this is the last we will hear from Brotherhood of Starbridge.
Overall battle report below.
http://kb.eveaquila.com/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=1&view=kills
I would call that a definate win for us!
EDIT: The Aquila guys did a write up from their side of the fight over at FHC.
http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?144-Wormhole-Space&p=222641&viewfull=1#post222641
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