Chapter 6
The Vard Front
Enlarge the place of thy hole, and let them stretch forth the tunnels of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.
I. The Gate to Hed
By YC126 the rats lived in Sosala, in the Bleak Lands, docked in Ibn Khatab's Fortizar.
Everyone called it the Watermelon. Some called it melone.
One day, a war would be fought in its name.
That year the war was at Vard, on the edge of Hed, the constellation that holds Auga, with a gate out to Ezzara. In February the Amarr took Kourmonen, and then they started leaning on Vard.
Casper Sullivan had been running his own fleets since the end of YC125, and by then he was coordinating the capital wing. On the seventeenth, nine days after the system fell, he took it into Kourmonen.
He flew a Phoenix Navy Issue and killed a Moros Navy Issue worth fourteen billion ISK. A few minutes later, FL33T was six dreadnoughts to two ahead.
Then Deepwater Hooligans dropped in, dreadnoughts and black ops together, and they had not come to help. In under two and a half minutes they killed seven FL33T capitals. The last was Casper's.
Metropolis Daily News ran the fight the next day as "Kourmonen Clash: Victory for the Republic!!" and reported "the enemy missing some dreads."
The enemy was missing six.
FL33T was missing nine.
II. Two Vargurs
In early March, MINMIL lost Jayai and moved to Vard to hold it. By Metropolis Daily News's account, the system "almost reached 99% but we're pushing back, inch by bloody inch!"
On the fifth of March, Empyrean Edict brought battleships to a fight with FL33T there. Eight FL33T ships died in under two minutes.
Casper's Vargur held on for six more minutes, killing Exequrors while it could, and then it died too. The pilot who had done the most damage to it was Galdoroni, in a Golem.
Two nights later, FL33T came back in force. Casper had already lost eight ships that night before he got into another Vargur.
When the battleships met again, Casper killed a Golem.
It was Galdoroni's.
III. The Templariarch
The Amarr kept leaning. On the thirtieth of May, a Crimson Inquisicion pilot called The Templariarch was in Vard in a Revelation Navy Issue, with the Amarr militia around him.
Thirty black ops battleships landed on them, FL33T's and Deepwater Hooligans' together, with Ushra'Khan alongside in Lokis. The escorts died first, then the dreadnought.
The next evening, Vard fell to the Amarr.
FL33T kept fighting there all summer. On the seventh of August, The Templariarch came back in another Revelation Navy Issue and killed seven FL33T ships. Then Deepwater Hooligans turned up in Tempest Fleet Issues, and one of them, Kalaratiri, took the final blow on the dreadnought.
A minute later, Kalaratiri shot a FL33T Caldari Navy Hookbill too.
IV. Absolute Chickens
Back in Sosala, the summer had its paperwork. In June the alliance launched a member portal, my.minmatar.org. In August, Rattini Tribe published its claim to be the number one faction warfare corporation.
If you feel this comes off as bragging, you can f*ck right off.
From June through August, FL33T fought a running feud with Absolute Order, the ABSO alliances out of Providence, with a string of fights around KBP7-G. FL33T accused them publicly of running what amounted to a scam on new players, dressed up as a donation project.
On the grid the pattern held. FL33T would raid. Absolute Order would answer with overwhelming numbers.
Then decide the numbers were not overwhelming enough.
On the ninth of August, FL33T took dreadnoughts to a Fortizar timer in Sosala, and Absolute Order formed over a hundred pilots to stop it. The part of that fleet that engaged lost ten ships, five of them Feroxes, most of them to Casper, back in a Phoenix Navy Issue.
BearThatCares titled the record Absolute Chickens.
The propaganda images were ready within twelve hours.
The alliance's warzone guide that September accused Absolute Order of "losing Feroxes to frigates." In Sosala, four of the five Feroxes had died to dreadnoughts.
V. The Lowsec Alliance
RMC, the Red Menace Coalition, one of the nullsec groups that had formed behind CVA in January, once brought three hundred pilots to fight one hundred.
Three hundred nerds against a hundred lowsec chads: that was how BearThatCares put it, and the name stuck. FL33T already thought of itself as the lowsec alliance, and every pilot who joined after that was joining the hundred lowsec chads.
On the twenty-fifth of September, TURBOFEED OR GLORY and URSA. brought Vultures, Ferox Navy Issues and dreadnoughts for an Astrahus in Kamela, and lowsec answered all at once. FL33T, Wild Geese and Deepwater Hooligans shot the same dreadnoughts as Empyrean Edict and Meta Reloaded. Seven of them died in eight minutes.
EXTRA!!! Lowsec ignores ACLs and comes together to save Astra in Kamela!
In October, BearThatCares wrote about overextension: the warzone was producing more fights than MINMIL could keep organized. Kourmonen had changed hands six times before November was a week old.
In November the alliance signed up for the annual Blood Brawl, where all four empire militias bring fleets and the rules of engagement are "shoot the other fleets." The Minmatar side would fly Hurricane Fleet Issues, and the briefing promised its newest pilots something:
We will be taking a titan bridge to Zarzakh for all the new players to experience bridges for the first time!
FL33T spent November back in Vard in small ships, its busiest month there since March.
Vard had changed hands once, and stayed Amarr.
