Quoth the raven, 'nevermore'

As I mentioned before I FC for our small gangs when we go pvp. I’m not the greatest FC, although I hold my own typically, but I was off my game this night and we managed to lose a few guys. One to a solo Hurricane who I thought we had trapped. It didn’t help that I shot our Rifter that I was sensor boosting, but I don’t think he would have made it anyways. Losing a ship to a solo pilot with 6 guys out is rather demoralizing. We lost another ship, a Caracal, to a well placed bomb while he still had his MWD on. We unsuccessfully camped a few gates, but I eventually called for a retreat and we headed home.

Not willing to give up on the night without a kill I ordered everyone into their Stealth Bomber and we found a hole very close to our home base. This particular hole spidered into many other holes and we found 3 different towers, with 2 different groups active. We uncloaked on a drake sitting at a hole hoping to alpha it before he jumped, but we were unsuccessful. Just before we headed home for the night I checked the last hole for the second time and found that there was a Raven, Drake, Typhoon and an Absolution running an anomaly. They had already cleared the site and were now looting it… the slow way. I chose the Raven as primary hoping that it would have the best chance of a decent drop and knowing that we could likely alpha all of its shields with our EM bombs, which would make him a sitting duck.

I figured we would have to drop one of them fast to make the others flee, after all they had 4 big scary ships to our 5 bombers, 1 cov ops and a cloaked Rifter. As I was setting everyone up for their bombing run, something uncloaked and I gave the concise order, “ah f*ck something’s uncloaked just get him,” I followed it up with a frantic, “no bombs,” but my mates knew better than to bomb out of formation. Everyone uncloaked and aggressed. I told them to flee as they started to take damage, but no one reported in that they were getting attacked. Before I realized it, the target was in his pod and the other three had warped off. He got his pod off and I swept in to get the loot in my bomber before his boys came back with a vengeance.

The wreck was 18km off, when I noticed that there was already a ship right at it… it was my cov ops. I had forgotten to stop my cov ops from approaching the Raven while getting everyone in position. I of course is what caused the uncloaking and the rather disorganized shooting spree. It could have been a devastating mistake… if these four had fought back. I can understand the sheer terror of 6 ships uncloaking and losing a Raven in a few heartbeats, but the holies need to learn when to fight and when to run. The Absolution and Drake should have been carrying light drones not to mention their primary armament. They easily could have driven us off and prevented us from getting the wreck. Regardless I quickly looted the wreck and ordered everyone back out to high sec. We reached the exit and I stayed behind in my bomber to make sure everyone had the final exit BM, when the last two people warped in, HevyDevy and Rhohktar. What happened next and the Raven’s wreck will be in my next installment.