Eve's a small world after all...

I am sure that everyone here has chat channels they hang out in, places they frequent where they have people they either fly with occasionally, or maybe were in a corp with from a while ago.  You probably chat back and forth talking about fights and other things you've done.    It's a friendly relationship on perhaps a personal level, or a corporate level, but not necessarily throughout your alliance.

What if you're in a gank fleet, sitting in a wormhole, waiting for scouts in low sec, who come across your friends faction warfare fleet on its way to gank some carriers?

The chances of this in the whole wide universe of Eve, are pretty slim.  Yet, it happened to me today.

I wasn't the FC for this op, and I joined in as they were getting ready to pounce.  Apparently, there had been a gate camp in one of the low sec systems that our wormhole chain opened into.  Some folks put together a fleet,  and decided to go bust the camp.  They moved through the chain and set up on the low sec wormhole, and sent some scouts out, only to find the camp had dispersed.   So, they decided to try to find some kills.

From what I am told, there wasn't much traffic, just a few ships passing through, though at one point a large pirate gang jumped through the system.  It's pretty hard to catch someone warping gate to gate if you're not on the gate waiting for them, so not much going on.   I am chatting it up with my friend, talking about the out of fuel Russian POS we had just pillaged on a smash and grab op.   Scouts report a battleship fleet incoming, and FC calls jump, we all jump out into the low sec, and fleet warp to the gate.


[ 2011.10.19 18:39:26 ] Cipreh > about to countergank some pirates in lowsec at an undisclosed location
[ 2011.10.19 18:40:00 ] xxxx > lol
[ 2011.10.19 18:40:09 ] xxxx > Better not be my fleet :)
[ 2011.10.19 18:41:17 ] xxxx > BS fleet is us
[ 2011.10.19 18:41:40 ] Cipreh > we are hiding in a wormhole,
[ 2011.10.19 18:42:09 ] Cipreh > these pirates are skittish though
[ 2011.10.19 18:45:08 ] Cipreh > I think we are about to engage your fleet
[ 2011.10.19 18:45:19 ] Cipreh > bunch of phoons, fleet phoons, and domis?
[ 2011.10.19 18:45:58 ] xxxx > Ohhhhhh
[ 2011.10.19 18:46:05 ] xxxx > Some of them.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:13 ] xxxx > We don't want a fight with you.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:26 ] xxxx > Please do not engage us.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:38 ] Cipreh > I am not FC
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:45 ] xxxx > Well I see you in local.
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:50 ] Cipreh > run
[ 2011.10.19 18:47:58 ] xxxx > I really don't want to kill you.
[ 2011.10.19 18:48:02 ] Cipreh > you won't
[ 2011.10.19 18:49:03 ] Cipreh > sorry
[ 2011.10.19 18:49:24 ] xxxx > Sorry bro....... I really am.
[ 2011.10.19 18:49:40 ] Cipreh > lol good luck, have fun
[ 2011.10.19 18:51:11 ] Cipreh > ^^ everybody gets some pew


We land on the gate as the bulk of the battleship fleet warps off, and someone calls point on a lone Armageddon who was a bit slow on the warp.  He melts rather quickly.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847000

At this point the FW battleship fleet lands on us at the gate, and both sides engage, our FC called a Typhoon primary, but he was able to jump before he popped, we switched target to the next battleship, when someone calls "Cyno up!" over voice comms, and in jump two hostile Archons.  FC calls for everyone to warp out, but a few people were unable to escape.  We lost a Deimos, Guardian, and Legion.

http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847010
http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10848144
http://narwhals.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10847014

Well that was the end of the low sec roam.  I felt a bit conflicted, because I didn't want to fire on my friends who had come to the defense of our corps wormhole in the past, but my personal feelings cannot get in the way when someone else is in command, and I made sure I didn't give up vital intel to the targets.  I could have tried to tell the FC not to engage, but it's very rude to question someone like that in front of the fleet, so I just went along with it.

I apologized to my friend afterwards, and other then being a bit annoyed, he was pretty cool about the whole thing.  Turns out his fleet was on its way to gank some carriers, and was in a hurry, otherwise they wouldn't have hot dropped us.  It was a pretty fun day all around.

Have any of you ever had something like this happen?  How do you handle having to fight against your friends that might not always be on the same side as you?