War I made my chice when I left my birthspace in the Gallente Federation and switched sides to the Caldari State. I had always hated the expansionist Gallente politics, the bullying indintimidating of the smaller neighbours along it's borders, and my views only hardened in capsuleer school as I trained alongside would be pilots of Caldari, Amarr and Minmater origins. I've been working for the Corporate Police Force in Caldari space for some months now, I flown dozens of missions rooting out pirates, escorting caravans and mining barges and fighting fleets of self replicating drones out in deep space, and then then my agent Hola over at the CPF Logistics - Support - Security section calls me in and says she's got something for me. A weird gas cloud that pirates of unknown origin are hiding in, they are warp disruption tech to pull passing freighters out of warp and rob them. go and sort it out she says, and like a good little trooper I load up my guns and set off to face down some pirates. Except, it didn't quite go down that way. I loaded up my hulking Dominix battleship, which in a moment of booze fuelled idiocy I named Mr Whippy, and launched out from the CPF space base. Mr. Whippy (the ship's onboard AI personality takes on the name given by its owner) started reeling off the day's events and other items of useful information in his rather camp and prissy voice, we aligned on the target area and engaged the warp engines. Kusomonmon V has 23 moons, Moon 22 hung vast and bright behind us, a moment later it had shrunk to the size of an apple, and then with the passage of another moment the stars blurred and shifted and we spend down the tunnel of hazy, oily, refracted light that is the human experience of warp travel. I've tried asking the AI's what they see in warp, but their answers are bizarre and confusing. We emerged after a few seconds into a bright cloud, pulses of light crawled and throbbed through the cloud's filaments, dragging hazy streams of dusty particles behind them. Mr Whippy prevented me from gazing too long at the majesty of it all by turning on the warning klaxons. Multiple targets ranging from (whoop whoop) 80 klicks out, we are being targeted by five vessels (whoop whoop) "Jeez turn off the fucking noise". I got ready for combat, pressed myself back into the pilots chair and the shell of the capsule rose up smoothly around me, I really should have done this back at base but like so many pilots I dislike getting gelled unless I really have to. The jack slots at the back of my skull opened up and Mr Whippy connected with me, with the capsule sealed the shockgel flooded in and quickly covered me, we were one now, man and ship. My consciousness flooded out, I could feel my massive bulk in space, I/We engaged the drives and the battleship began slowly to turn to face it's aggressors, at the same time I reviewed the information coming in from the ship's sensor array. Five frigates were speeding towards us, two Gallente Navy Tristans and three Maulas electronic warfare support frigates. Almost as soon as we got a fix on them the Mauls threw out a blanket suppression field, although our drives were now working at full strength, they were pulling against the strange space folding effect of the field and we turned lazily like a leaf on an eddy. We communicated by thought now, two as one. Mr W began to target four of the incoming ships, as a battleship we had a huge signature radius, it was easy for enemy ships to lock on to us, and they did within seconds, and as soon as they had locked on the missiles began to launch. We took the first and second batches of missiles on the shields before we managed to get a lock on them, within a second of locking on, the Maulas scrambled our targeting and we lost them again. -Launch drones- I thought -Maybe they can get a lock- ~Ogres ?~ -No, send the Warriors, I bloody hate fighting Frigates- This is the problem, Frigates are super fast and small, they're hard for a battleship to lock, it's hard to get my big coil cannons to track rapidly enough to get a decent shot on them. The five Warrior drones shot from my drone bay, this was like having five little pieces of me shot out, the fighting drones and urgent and aggressive, little hungry killers that become almost sexually excited in a fight. Missiles continued to rain in on our shields, I watched impassive as the shield marker dropped down to zero, no matter, we're an armour tanking vessel. The two lead frigates were close enough now to open up with their ion guns, the hull began to boom as projected masses of superheated iron slammed into it. The armour plating began to fail in two places, with a thought I turned on the armour hardeners, we had installed a thermal and kinetic hardener and they began to soak up the damage. Until that is the other three ships got within range. - bollocks - ~ indeed ~ For sixteen seconds we wallowed and lumbered to turn as the enemy pack hurled fire against us, even the hardeners were struggling to maintain armour integrity now, I switched on the first of our two nano armour repairers and began to keep a watchful mind's eye on Mr Whiipy's capacitor level. Our drones hung dead in space behind us, with all the jamming warfare around they couldn't lock either. Finally though, lock, one two three four, instantly we opened up with the 3 dual coil cannons, and as the Tristans were already doing a close 5k orbit around us we tried to lock them with the heavy neutron blasters, the noise was deafening even through the shockgel as the 5 banks of weapons began spitting antimat shells at the frigates. The Warriors got a lock and sped off after the Tristan's, who in turn switched to shooting at the drones, they were so close to us and moving so fast that we would be really lucky to catch them with on shipboard weapons. For the next minute or so the glittering cloud was further illuminated by bolts and streaks of red laser fire, then by the explosions of one of our drones, then rapidly by one of the Tristans. We had managed a gun lock on the leading Maulus as well now, his shields melted under the combined shell power of three banks of our twin cannons, as his armour blew apart the pilot turned his ship to run, he would know though, he was too close, there was never a chance he could outrun the guns now. Two ships down, the other Tristan was taking damage, we were holding our own now that the incoming laser fire had been switched to the drones. Another enemy ship exploded and the two remaining support ships tried to run, we called the damaged Warriors back to the ship and launched five heavy Ogres in their place, the Ogres are as big as a frigate but just built for speed and firepower, they rapidly caught up with the fleeing frigates and tore them apart. Those were not drone ships, in less than two minutes I had extinguished the lives of five people, five Gallente, my birth people. There is no going back now.