Yesterday the Imperium formed up again to cover the removal of the last of our Keepstars from Cloud Ring. It was another big form up, a display of strength, a “filthy blob,” as streamer EVELog called it back when we dropped a huge force to cover the Keepstar deployment to 6RCQ-V two years ago. I wish that clip was still available.
It wasn’t quite that big of a blob, but there were still a lot of big ships on grid and over 2,000 of us logged in and moving to cover the operation. Fortunately the last Keepstar was only in B-DBYQ, on the other side of the gate from our staging in J5A-IX, so the move to get there was the least painful of the three operations. The Mittani was even spotted undocked in a Revelation.
Over the Keepstar logo
He had to have chosen that spot on purpose.
The movement of the fleets followed the usual plan, with subcap fleets warping ahead to cover both sides of the gate, then capital ships gating through by fleet, aligning to the Keepstar, the warping off to tether up on it.
There was word that PanFam might make a move to interfere with this last Keepstar removal, but that apparently meant a small interceptor gang hanging around for a bit before being chased off once the subcaps were stationed around the gate.
The final Keepstar from the J5A gate
A few other people did show up, either by accident or in order to watch the spectacle. Those that got too close were shot pretty quickly. A rather surprised Tengu pilot managed to get shot by a titan… op success maybe? They were carrying a covert cyno though, so they were up to no good. I managed to get paints on a Stiletto that wasn’t quite fast enough to get away. Nothing slowed us down and the pile on the Keepstar began.
There we are
There were some stragglers who missed previous withdrawal ops who jumped their capitals into the system, but before the Keepstar removal began the cyno jammers were turned on to keep any hostile capitals from showing up.
Getting our jam on in 1 second
And then, once things settled down and everybody was on the Keepstar, we sat and waited for a bit. I put my camera at a set angle and managed to get a before and after shot.
Keepstar is there
Keepstar is gone
So it goes. I even managed to slip into a fleet with my alt Claude Ring, which I created about four years ago and held onto for just such an opportunity. He asked in Local why the Imperium was leaving him. Then, when he spoke up back in J5A, people said they thought they were done with him.
That was pretty much all I created that character to do. He has barely enough skills to fly T1 logi in newbie fleets, just so he could be there.
Meanwhile, we started running the whole op in reverse, with subcaps on the gate and capitals aligning back out.
Capitals aligning to the J5A gate
Some warps and a lot of tidi later, everybody was back at the Keepstar in J5A. After that, there were move ops to reposition forces.
Flight of the Faxes
Later on today, at the regular Saturday fireside, The Mittani will be giving us a war planning update and is expected to announce some new ops coming up. We still have a week to go before the NIP between the Imperium and Legacy Coalition expires. We are still working on bring up ADMs and getting supplies laid in. If nothing else happens it will be a long week of waiting.
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