Today's Lesson: Dark Plans and Thunderbolts

“Let your plans be dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” - Sun Tzu

The Uni normally flies in large fleets. We do that for many good reasons that have been clearly communicated before.

But sometimes, hidden amongst the fleet of 40 or 50, is a smaller strike team with a different agenda.

Here's the After Action Report:

Channelling H. Cosell : "Down Goes Sabre! Down Goes Saber!

(If you are of a certain age, you'll get the pop culture reference. If not, try ESPN Classic and catch Foreman/Frazier.)

The main fleet was forming up to head to Amarr & chase the Mercs. I had RL issues to deal with shortly, so I declined. WT AD had been in system for hours, not in station & not on scans or probes, so the conclusion was she was cloaked, probably observing HQ.

Just in case, I swapped my Falcon for a Scorp, fitted with less jamming than usual, but more tank & tackle. I undocked at HQ to provide cover for our guys joining the fleet.

A few minutes later, S logs in. I gang up Oli in his CovOp Scanner of Doom and Eyedoll slinging pure Amarr laser light love for DPS.

S plays snipe games for a bit. We almost have him a couple of times, but give the Devil his due, S is a slippery rascal & never quite stayed in one place long enough for us to get the drop on him.

S warps away from HQ toward the Osmon gate. Oli follows & call contact behind the gate (paying attention, here students? Behind the gate meant that there was no celestial for us to bounce off of and come in at range to our prober). Oil warped off grid to drop a probe and I move to safespot 16au from the Osmon gate.

Oli calls a hit & 'warp to me at zero'.

I'm on the way, Eyedoll is 80au out (Oh dear!).

I land basically on top of S's Cerb. Scram, web, 2x Neut 4X cruise and 2X Caldari jammers go to work.... I know I'm not going to take him down without Eyedoll and I'm wondering where A is....

A shows up first in a Rapier and engages me. No worries, drones out & last jammer on A.

Eyedoll drops on to grid and that pretty much is all she wrote. S down. A disengages. Oli docks up to repair (S was slinging FOF's). We loot the wreck and I'm getting ready to have it salvaged, when first A returns for a look (but doesn't stick) and then S comes back at range in a Raven. Having accomplished our goal, we left the wreck and retired from the field.

GF's exchanged in local.

Bravo Zulu to Oli, the Probe Master!

Melissa Dawn added her perspective on this engagement here.

Just for emphasis, let me quote just a small section of my reply to her:

However, this was not a solo action, but rather the co-ordinated effort of a small team that required the capabilities of three pilots of three different races, flying ships with three different roles. It should serve notice to our enemies that we have the capability and the willingness to engage in small unit fights. When they see three Uni pilots, they won’t know if our guys are scouts for a 30 man fleet, recons probing for weakness or a strike team prepared to take out the unwary. That uncertainty leads to hesitation and ‘he who hesitates, is lost”.

Dee