The Fog of War

Well, this was a hell of a weekend to decide to fly again.

As you may have been clued in through numerous accounts by other pilots, the heat has been escalating in Providence and Catch space intensely for the past few weeks. A play was made by certain CVA holders to capture the F9E-KX to HED-GP pipe—which is a main route to empire space for Against All Authorities [-A-]. And expectedly, -A- didn’t exactly approve of this gesture. In the past few days they have been working to take back their systems in the pipe, and as of 1.23.10, they decided to move into D-GTMI—official Paxton Federation space, and home to M3.

By the time I logged in on the morning of 1.23.10, all POS’s were reinforced. All jump bridges were off-lined. It was all the evidence I needed to know we got steamrolled. Details were hazy in the rush to find out what exactly happened, but it was somewhere in the ballpark of this: -A- brought a force of 450 ships, including 4-5 Titans, about 6 Motherships and around 60 Dreads and Carriers. D-GTMI’s defense fleet amounted to about 350 pilots, and fought valiantly for an hour before being forced out of the system. In the aftermath, all it seemed we could do was repair the damage and evacuate as many assets from the area as we could. That is, until -A- decides to return.

Since that morning, they have returned—many times—and I’m getting a suspicious feeling that they aren’t here to simply deliver a message.

I’m going to refrain from commenting on the politics of how the situation came about, but each side has their perspective, and even sides within sides have theirs. Bottom line is the damage is done, and continues to be done—and we’ll have to defend the front line for as long as we’re able. It may yet be long after this is settled before we have true clarity on the situation.

For now, it’s anything M3 can do to keep Providence space liberation-free for a while longer. Good flying to us all.