Friday, July 5, 2013

Much Ado About Nothing

        “Phrasing!” -- Sterling Archer

        [ Good Moooooorning, Jerma! ]

        “Gods, every day!”

        [ Somebody has to keep the spirits up. And since you’re useless before your second coffee, and our war targets are hiding, the task falls to me. And you’re welcome! ]

        “Speaking of our targets, looks like we only have our usual station sitters again.”

        [ Yep, I see them. Plenty of other people seem to have moved into their slots though. I haven’t seem these before. … What do you think, shall we suggest to our exalted leader to add these to our targets? ]

        “We could, but what would that bring? They’d just dock up like the current bunch. Upper belt is clear.”

        [ And I almost have the signatures. You know, while I knew that it would be like this, I am still disappointed. ]

        “That our targets don’t come out, roll over, and let us shoot them?”

        [ You know what I mean - that they aren’t even trying! Push us around a little, see how we operate, what our patterns are. Bait us with a juicy Exhumer and then drop a Blackbird on us, while the drones take care of the rest. … Two relic sites, I’ll go and make tacticals. ]

        “Well, that’s industrialists for you, kitten. Ark Combat did briefly try to find our weak time zones, but gave up as well. … Planet VII belts has some lonely miners. I wonder if we can move to Plan B on the last day.”

        [ Wouldn’t that be nice! Wasn’t Ark Combat trying to talk you into dropping the war? ]

        “The very same. Convoed me, tried to butter me up with compliments, calling me sexy”

        [ Well, you are cute when you have umbilicals sprouting from your connectors! ]

        “Shush! Anyway, he then went into the spiel that they haven’t bothered anyone, and didn’t want to fight, and what it’d take to drop the war.”

        [ Right, I remember! The 500M offer - which I still think was cheap. ]

        “Planet VI belts are empty… Obviously, I wasn’t cheap enough. He left in a huff, saying that he’d go to bed now, and we wouldn’t see them in space for the duration war.”

        [ Which is partly what this is all about. And nice of him to tell you which timezone he operates in. … Tacticals are in corp bookmarks. ]

        “Yeah. Maybe I should make it up to him afterwards. Find him, if they return to the area, have a nice chat, give him some, ehrm, ‘special attention’.”

        [ ‘Special Attention’, I like the sound of that! Can I join? Can I join? ]

        “A Menage-a-Trois? There’s an idea… but he might be scared away. …aaand the other belts are empty as well.”

        [ Just tell him there’ll be fireworks and he’ll be happy to come. … You know, we should go for drinks later, have some fun hours while our targets aren’t watching. ]

        “I’d be up for that! Any specific place you have in mind?”

        [ Nah. I prefer the leave-the-elevator-and-follow-the-noises method. I’m sure we’re going to find someplace suitably epic. ]

        “Very well - I shall put myself into your capable hands then!”

        [ You’ll love it! … and first one to see the next war target gets the first rounds free. ]

        “You’re on!”

3 comments:

  1. Quick and dirty... I liked this one.

    I've had to be a docked war target though so know how frustrating it is being on the receiving end of a dec where there's no hope of being able to muster adequately for it. In a case like that there is no choice but to blueball the enemy, because undocking when you know you will always lose is an even less fun way to play the game.

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    1. I've been on the other side as well, and we often took a vacation in such situations (in one notable occasion, we ended up colonizing a wormhole and stayed there even long after the war had ended).

      But on the other hand: in this case it was literally only the two of us against a total of 100+ targets across 11 corps (no neutral helpers of ours lurking in the shadows), I was rather sloppy on OpSec here, and even the above post was written while the war was still active. Scaring our targets was the only way we could achieve our actual objective - so in this case, they didn't blueball us, rather they blueballed themselves.

      I am not quite sure what the takeaway from the whole operation is, but it shouldn't have been that easy for us.

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  2. And as a very late comment/shout out: Alarra Doshu actually did read what I wote, and drew the right conclusions. And she didn't tell me long after the war had expired.

    Alarra, one day I'll find a way to write my story in a satisfactorial way, even if you already know the high points.

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