Category: EVE

The crew of the Kinetic Regret was gathered once again in the briefing chamber, several of them slouched creatively across chairs, bulkheads, or each other. The lights flickered in sync with the mood: dim and suspicious. Captain Gobbins stood before them with an expression that suggested he’d just read a war report and eaten a lemon at the same time.

“Good news,” he began.

Silence.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “Actual good news this time. Delve and Querious are, more or less, on fire. But not our fire. Their fire. The Imperium is evacuating.”

A few murmurs rose from the crew.

“Wait—they’re leaving Delve?” asked Lieutenant Gilthune Aideron, squinting like this was some kind of trap.

“Yes,” Gobbins said. “Turns out, after months of patient and surgical misery from our sig teams, the enemy decided they couldn’t hold it anymore. We didn’t roll in with titans or have some glorious one-day siege. Just… methodical harassment. You know—what we do best.”

He flicked a holoscreen into view, showing two bright red systems blinking out like dying stars. “Delve and Querious. Mostly evacuated. Consider it a love letter to the power of small, coordinated torment. Special credit to Rdmr and Jakaya with the BRO sig, Hedliner in BFL, and Nalani for older ops with the Prae crew.”

“Wow,” someone muttered. “So… no supers, no mass brawls?”

“Nope,” Gobbins replied. “Just months of being incredibly, relentlessly annoying.”

From the back of the room, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 scribbled something into a datapad. They hadn’t spoken since joining the Kinetic Regret three deployments ago. No one really remembered who had cleared them for duty. But every time something exploded, they were there, lurking with a stylus.

Gobbins pointed toward the glowing tactical map. “For the near future, we burn everything. Citadels, refineries, socks left on cloning bay floors—if it’s anchored and Imperium-colored, light it up and see if it drops a core or a killmail worth posting.”

Galthune raised her hand again. “Do we have… an actual plan?”

Gobbins shrugged. “The sigs might push further. Or they might pack up and poke the Imperium from somewhere else. HQ says new plans will come next week. Until then, just assume ‘maximum chaos’ is still policy.”

The lights flickered again, slightly more ominously.

“And yes,” he added, “before anyone asks, FRT has been poking at our moon holdings. Valuable stuff. Ansiblexes. It’s annoying, but we’re not fighting two blocs at once. Focus remains on the Imperium. Besides, they’re getting hit by Initiative and FRT too. So technically, the universe is… helping.”

“That’s terrifying,” Gilthune said.

“I know,” Gobbins replied, deadpan. “Lastly, if you were wondering what big doctrine change we got out of this—”

He tapped a button, and a large, rotating image of a Maelstrom appeared on the holoscreen.

A soft gasp echoed across the room.

“Yes. We’ve added Maelstroms to our doctrine. Because nothing says ‘we won’ like a fleet of Tempest knockoffs with dreams of glory and absolutely no agility.”

A long pause. Then a voice from engineering: “Captain, do they perform well?”

“Incredibly. For at least one fight. After that, your results may vary.”

Gobbins took a final sip from his mug, then set it down. “Now get out there. Burn Delve. Save the loot. Try not to die in a Maelstrom. And someone, for the love of everything, figure out what Gallente Citizen 4586793463 is actually writing in that damn pad.”

From the back of the room, Gallente Citizen 4586793463 quietly turned the page.

The conference room of the Kinetic Regret smelled faintly of burned coffee, ozone, and resignation. A series of blinking regional maps floated midair, updated with worrying precision. Red dots here. Blue clouds there. One pulsating gold beacon labeled simply: “C-J.”

Captain Gobbins entered, mug already in hand, and gestured at the map like it owed him money.

“Alright, listen up. This is either the beginning of a tactical masterpiece or the part of the war novel where everyone starts dying off in alphabetical order.”

No one laughed. He didn’t expect them to.

He continued. “For the last few weeks, we’ve been in a standoff. Us, dug in up here in the Dronelands—our cold, wonderful home of anchored crap and endless bubble traps. Them, posturing down south, slamming into Insmother.”

He jabbed at the region with his mug. “Imperium. Mainline. Hitting hard. Meanwhile, our sigs have been tap-dancing in their soft zones—Delve, Querious, those lovely holiday destinations.”

He turned, tapping the table. The lights dimmed. The map zoomed in dramatically. “Now. Today? Big shift. Imperium’s packing up and moving in. They’re staging in C-J—right on our border. And they’re giving Delve and Querious the ol’ ‘good luck with the fire sale’ treatment. One week’s notice to their locals. One week.”

Gilthune Aideron tilted her head. “So… they’re abandoning two entire regions to come live next door?”

“Exactly,” Gobbins said. “So first off—and mark this moment—I’m going to say something… nice about Goons.” He held up a finger. “They’re sacrificing a lot. Uplifting their core. Relocating their entire war machine just to come brawl at our gates. That takes guts. Or hubris. Possibly both.”

He took a long sip, then sighed. “And frankly, we might get some good fights out of it. Medium scale. Frequent. The kind where you lose a Harpy and don’t spend six hours in structure. The fun kind of suffering.”

“But?” Gilthune prompted.

“Oh, there’s always a ‘but,’” Gobbins said. “The big fights—those’ll be messier. Titan buffs from the last patch are lopsided, and we’re still working with a numbers disadvantage. So in those cases, we rely on regional mechanics and defender’s advantage. You know, terrain. Cynos. Lag.”

A low murmur rippled through the crew. Someone coughed in the background. Someone else sighed audibly and opened a stims packet.

Gobbins’ voice dropped just a hair. “Let’s not kid ourselves—Imperium’s still the biggest bloc on the server. In EU and US timezones, no one else comes close. But we’re probably the closest. And if they’re tied up with us… then we’re doing our job.”

He tapped the holomap again. The glowing system of C-J pulsed brighter.

“Now, I know everyone’s wondering if we’re moving again. HQ’s evaluating some better staging systems. For now, instructions remain unchanged. So don’t start shoving your carriers into a bowhead just yet.”

He paused, glancing toward the back.

There sat Gallente Citizen 4586793463, silently recording on a notepad that looked older than the war. As usual, they offered no questions. Only scribbles.

Gobbins gave a faint shrug and turned back to the map.

“Prep for contact. Keep your clone in region. And maybe… clean your cargohold. I don’t want to die next to 300m in fireworks and a single exotic dancer again.”

He paused.

“Again.”

Most of the time, I have no issue completing data / relic sites – but other times, especially if I’m some place dangerous, I will cherry pick the sites. Here’s my hacking method for those sites.

Scan it down, warp to the site at 100km (cloaked). Since my helios is very fast, I decloak and burn off until I’m 150km (or more) from the nearest can. Then I bookmark that location (also known as a perch). Make sure you’re in a fleet with yourself. I’ll warp to the nearest can, and cargo scan everything. If it has more than 5m in loot, I’ll hack it (leave untagged). Otherwise, I tag it with a 0, and then warp back to the perch. Tagging lets me see in the overview the cans I’ve decided to ignore and the ones that I haven’t done yet. Then I just warp around to the cans with no tags, and hack them.

If I see things on d-scan I’ll either continue hacking or I might warp back to the perch and hang out for a bit and make a judgement call depending on what they’re flying, if I think they’ve brought friends with them, that sort of thing. I also think about the ISK left in the cans, sometimes if I’m not in a huge rush I’ll number them based on the ISK value so I go after the more expensive cans first in case someone pops in.

My ship of choice is still the helios, and I don’t think (for pure hacking) there’s any reason to fly anything else – at least not for me. This little ship is so speedy and costs just pennies compared to what I’m hauling around. It normally takes me a single system to recoup any loss I might experience.

Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to do with all of these blueprints.

Fly your way! o7