The Darkness. conquest of Querious continues. Although progress is being made, the road continues to have its bumps for the former N3 alliance.
On May 17th, two days after their unsuccessful assault on the final station timer in ED-L9T, Darkness and their allies in The Kadeshi, Short Bus Syndicate, Dangerous Voltage, and Illuminati Confirmed. formed to attack the nearby station in U-HYZN. The Imperium’s Reaver SIG formed to defend the station, but reinforcements from the Goon Homelands were slow to form, and could not arrive in time to assist.
Outnumbered roughly 2:1, and facing Tempest Fleet Issues and Apocalypse Navy Issues with triage Archon support, the Reaver Ishtar fleet skirmished briefly, then withdrew. The Imperials killed a few small ships, most notably an Oneiros, while losing three Ishtars, a Confessor tactical destroyer, and a hurricane. Total losses in the fight were small: only 1.2bn ISK destroyed. Once the defenders ceded the field, Darkness quickly flipped the station, and destroyed the CONDI Territorial Claim Unit before putting down their own.
The next night, May 18th, the action shifted back to ED- for the shield reinforcement timer that had been begun in the aftermath of the May 15th battle. Reavers again formed early, and a Tengufleet formed in Deklein to come and assist via wormhole. Eager to not repeat the mistakes of the night before, the Tengufleet moved out early. With Imperial forces already in motion, Darkness formed their Navy battleship fleet again, once again setting up with triage and dreadnought support.
The Tengus never arrived. The wormhole had seemingly been discovered by Darkness, and reduced to critical mass. Normally, this would have ensured that the fleet would turn around and go home, but apparently, nobody bothered to check the hole’s status before the order was given to jump.
One Scimitar got through, and the wormhole collapsed.
With Darkness already getting on their titan, the lone Scimitar pilot burned the four jumps to ED-, passing through the enemy staging system along the way. Once he arrived, he joined the Reaver Ishtar fleet, switching to a spare Basilisk.
The Ishtars got set up on the station grid as the timer ticked down, waiting for the enemy cynos. Moments after the timer expired, a Darkness Manticore decloaked… and nothing happened. As the Manticore warped off again, assumptions in the Reaver fleet were that the pilot didn’t have his Liquid Ozone. Quickly, the Reavers warped down to station to try to take advantage of the situation, beginning to put remote shield boosters on the station’s shields.
It wasn’t long before the Manticore returned. This time, though, as the cyno went up, an Imperium Oracle was on the Manticore, cutting the bomber down before the entire enemy fleet could arrive. Initially light on logistics, the Tempests took losses as they began to fire on the Ishtars. The situation quickly stabilized with the arrival of their triage group, however, and a few minutes later, a quartet of Darkness dreadnoughts, along with a Revelation from Lasers Are Magic, took the field. The fleet’s positioning, 70km off the station, was suboptimal, but under most circumstances, it would probably be perfectly serviceable.
The station’s partially-rebuilt shields began to drop. The armor, only able to be repaired to 56% three nights earlier, would not long hold out against the combined fire of five dreads and four dozen battleships.
But then Pandemic Legion arrived.
Once again PL intervened, bringing a subcapital fleet of T3 cruisers, along with a small frigate gang from Pandemic Horde. Forgoing their supercapitals, they arrived in the general vicinity via wormhole, and moved into southeastern Querious to join the fight. According to Ron Mexico of Pandemic Legion:
“We were super sneaky and hid back in a wh that was pretty close. And we didn’t have to lug triage around this time around the horn thru Catch and Querious. So we were able to get there fast without anybody noticing.”
With PL on the field, the advantage quickly shifted, and the dreadnoughts began taking fire. One dread pilot, having suffered a vicious bounce that sent his Naglfar skidding well out of effective range, jumped back to the Darkness staging system in I1Y-IU. When he asked for a re-entry cyno, he was refused and told to remain where he was.
Even as the dreads’ damage began to slacken, the station’s shields remained pegged at 0 as the armor continued to slowly tick down toward the 50% reinforcement timer. Finally, the order was given to overheat reps. One Basilisk pilot docked, undocking moments later in a triage Nidhoggur fitted for a quartet of capital remote repair modules, and went triage green. A second Nid warped in from off-grid to assist in the desperate efforts.
As fire continued to rain down on the station and the dreadnoughts attacking it, tension was high among the Reavers logistics pilots watching the armor numbers. 53%… 52%… 51%….
And there it stayed, as one after another, the attacking dreads withered and died under the combined weight of T3 and Ishtar fire. By the time the last dreadnought died, the station was back up to 52% armor, and the Darkness fleet was working to clear tackle and withdraw to their in-system staging POS.
As Darkness cleared the field, the Reaver and Pandemic Legion forces shifted their DPS ships to destroying one of the two remaining Sovereignty Blockade Units (SBUs) in the system. A 3-gate system, ED-L9T requires at least 2 SBUs online under Dominion Sov in order to be attacked. One of the Darkness SBUs had been destroyed during the earlier fighting on the 15th, and never replaced. Meanwhile, logistics ships, including both Nidhoggurs, continued to work to repair the station and the station services.
With the SBU destroyed, it would be at least three hours before Darkness could attack again. Soon, Pandemic Legion began their own trip home, and a short time later, the Darkness fleet extracted as well, exiting through the LS-V29 gate, leaving only a single, apparently afk, Legion orbiting the tower, and an unmanned Prowler, in their staging POS.
According to some reports, it is possible the afk orbit of the Legion bumped the Prowler out of the tower’s forcefield. What can be confirmed is that the tower killed at least two Ishtars, and an Imperial pilot was able to make off with the Prowler, containing a cargo of faction dread ammo.
The Reavers’ logistics pilots, meanwhile, remained hard at work through the early morning hours, restoring the station’s armor, shields, and services to undamaged condition. In the end, the final totals for the fight stand at Darkness and their allies losing 27.17bn ISK in assets, including 2 SBUs, while inflicting 1.56bn ISK in damages. Darkness lost 3 dreads and 2 carriers, with Lasers Are Magic losing a Revelation, and Illuminati Confirmed losing a third Archon.
On the surface of it, this fight looks fairly cut-and-dry: Reavers call in PL, PL kicks ass, takes names, everything’s saved. But the reality is that ED- station timer was an incredibly near thing. Many things could have gone just a little differently and changed the outcome.
If the pilot who’d clicked ‘enter wormhole’ had been flying a Tengu, instead of a Scimitar, and unable to use a Basilisk, would that slight reduction in reps, magnified over the length of the fight, have made the difference? If the Manticore pilot had not encountered cyno difficulties that delayed the application of damage, and given the Imperial logistics pilots a few minutes of uncontested repair-work, that almost certainly would have tilted the scales. If the Darkness Naglfar that had to jump out hadn’t bumped, or if the dreads were closer to their optimal range, it is all but certain the station would have fallen.
As the events the night before in U-H clearly demonstrate, Darkness is capable of fielding sufficient force to overpower the small group of Imperial pilots living in ED- station, especially when the Reavers are unable to bring in additional support. Only ED- continues to elude their grasp. But for how long? And how many more tricks can the Reavers have up their sleeves?
Author’s note: TMC reached out to Darkness. for comment, but as of the time of writing, have not received any reply. If this changes, we will be happy to update the article with their statements.
