According to a source inside the Drone Control Unit coalition, DCU leadership informed pilots that DCU is disbanding, announced in a closed doors meeting today. With the quote, “DCU is dead,” Badfellas Inc representative Mramorna Milijokaz informed listeners that the northern half of DCU territory would be completely surrendered to Skill Urself, while the southern half would continue to fight – but not under the name of DCU. Evacuations are already underway, but are heavily contested, with WE FORM V0LTA downing a Razor Alliance titan on Sunday afternoon.
“It has been 9 months,” Mramorna continued. “I have a job; many of us do. I’m not as young as I used to be. I’m tired of fighting. I can’t do it anymore. Our successes: defeated(sic) GOTG, TRI, and Trinity. Our failures: we were unable to transform, and made a massive diplomatic mistake in failing to pay SU.”
The timetable Mramorna mentioned revolves around DCU’s decision to pick a fight with Triumvirate approximately eight months ago – a fight which, on paper, DCU should have won due to their overwhelming numbers. However, much of DCU’s membership is comprised of renter corporations focused on ratting and mining; the coalition punched well below its weight in terms of PvP skill and experience. DCU did consider the war a victory, but at the cost of many of their best corporations being on lengthy deployments to the south. During those eight months, things began unraveling in the North, with Pandemic Horde relocating to Geminate and even smaller alliances like WE FORM V0LTA taking sovereignty in the middle of DCU territory.
As a personal anecdote, I was in a DCU alliance for several weeks after my corporation evacuated from Providence, and during that time V0LTA camped the alliance’s systems on a near-constant basis and even bashed a few stations, with no response whatsoever from the alliance – because they were all on deployment at the time my corporation joined and could not return to defend their own territory.
DCU, in this weakened state, attempted to contract Skill Urself to provide protection to the coalition. However, for whatever reason, DCU failed to pay, and then failed to issue a requested public apology for their failure to pay, prompting SU to begin an invasion instead. Under other circumstances, an invasion by SU might not have been cause for alarm, but in the aftermath of months of violence and war weariness, it proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Early indications are that the southern half of DCU – under whatever new name it adopts for itself – will receive support from TEST and Legacy, while the remaining regions of DCU space are already collapsing into a sort of anarchy. According to a poster representing WE FORM V0LTA on Reddit, V0LTA will be looking to hold sovereignty and rent it out, and there will surely be other organizations looking to profit from the chaos and the newly available sovereign space.
DCU members certainly seemed to understand that the coalition was dead, as the meeting ended with friends saying goodbye to one another and discussing their plans for after they part ways. Although the impending breakup of DCU had been foreseen for a long time – it was discussed among INN writers earlier this very week – that will surely not make the news any easier to take for the line members who have invested their time and energy into making the east their home. As INN reported at the beginning of this article, the evacuation is underway, but is being heavily contested by V0LTA and others.
Attempts to reach out to DCU representatives for comment have been unsuccessful to date. INN will continue to provide updates on the changing situation in the east, including reactions from DCU leadership if and when they become available.
