Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

Our current siege in coming to an end with the target Corporation removing all the assets they could and no longer attempting to defend their system. It means the arduous work of cleaning out a swathe of control towers and customs offices is ahead of us so this evening was dedicated to that cause. With everything of import reinforced we were working on an undefended Gallente tower when an activation on our NullSec connection triggered excited calls on comms and the fleet redeploying to the connection. It was a pair of Dominix class Battleships looking to roll the connection away as some of our number had been poking about in there earlier. We were able to destroy one whilst the other escaped, but the NullSec connection remained intact. With no hint of the conflict escalating, we returned to our work.

I didn't have an ideal ship for POS Bashing on hand, so I brought my Artillery fit Sleipnir along to provide those dank shield boosts for our Rattlesnakes. For the better part of an hour we continued our work unmolested and undisturbed. We were in a pretty lazy mood, as POS bashing tends to do to you, so we didn't notice the Flycatcher until it landed amongst our fleet. It immeidately started dropping bubbles on the Rattlesnakes that were about 20 kilometres from me. With an optimal range of about 50 kilometres I immediately began burning away so he wouldn't be able to get under my guns, and that's when the Stealth Bombers uncloaked. D-Scan showed a Vindicator, Megathron, Brutix and Stratios also inbound and whilst the FC was calling primaries and other members were scrambling into Basilisks, I decided the best thing I could do would be to clear the Bomber DPS from the field in short order. In the space of half a dozen volleys three bombers went pop, two were forced to withdraw and the active tanked Flycatcher also got alpha'd off the field. Switching fire now to the Stratios it was soon in low armour and withdrawing but the Rattlesnakes were having a hard time with the combined DPS of the Vindicator, Megathron and Brutix. Soon our first Rattlesnake was destroyed and a second was in low armour, then structure and then the Basilisk shield reps landed. With hardeners and reps overheated the two Basilisk were just able to out repair the combined incoming damage, had there been bombers on the field it would've ended very differently.

With the survivability of the gang secured the aggressors dropped like dominoes, their active tanks being horribly inadequate to deal with the incoming fire. All told, it was a 1.9 Billion ISK group of kills for the loss of one 600m ISK Rattlenake. Not a bad trade and a nice initiation for my brand new Sleipnir, bagging herself four kill marks in the process. Gotta love those 720mm Howitzers.  =]