Home is where the heart is

Last Tuesday night I made official what a few of my corp-mates already knew and what I'm pretty sure some of my alliance-mates suspected. I announced to everyone that I would be leaving AMC and was actively looking for a new place I could call home. I had previously worked out my "looking for corp" advertisement and all I had left to do was to announce to all of New Eden that Cozmik R5 was ready to fight for a new cause. I was surprised at how fast attention was given to my post; remember, I come from a very quiet corp/alliance where chatter usually means business or trouble, and voice comms used only when necessary like fleet ops or board meetings. Within 5 minutes of posting on EVE-O Recruitment I had 2 convos going and 2 mails, and at the same time I was trying to skim through the various corp recruitment ads. This was faster than I expected because a lot of corps don't see EVE my way. Oh well! But one convo was catching more and more of my attention because the requirements I was asking for a new corp were being checked one after the other. It felt like I was talking to another "Me" who was understanding every single view I had of EVE. And in some weird way, it was almost predictable that I would be joining them. I still took a full day and a half to study the various options which presented themselves, but that first big convo turned out to be the good one.

And so just as the weekend was about to arrive I joined an alliance that though it has seen its share of trouble and drama, it is still alive and well. And I must admit, it sings a special song to Cozmik's racial heritage. The corp is called Trust Don't Rust; The alliance is called Ushra'Khan! When I started thinking that moving out of AMC just might improve the fun I have in EVE I had a short list of possible places where I could do what I like, some with people I knew, and some I had heard about. But even though I didn't know what had happened to U'K after they got disbanded from the inside, it was still in my list for a couple reasons: in my early days U'K was in Curse and one of BOZO's rare blues, at least when I joined 'em. We even had mixed fleets together and I know of at least one U'K pilot who later became a BOZO. And a bit later, I fought beside them in the Provi War. In fact, the first time I ever docked up in Providence was in a U'K held station. I then moved out of Providence, some guy disbanded them, and I sort of lost track of them for a while. Well, until the big convo that is.

So what's up with Ushra'Khan now? I could barely believe it when it was announced to me: back in that crazy place called Curse! As I've said before, this region's map is pretty much imprinted in my brain, and close to 50% of my collection of bookmarks is in that region alone. I still know some people who live there so I may get to score kills on 'em, or vice-versa. And this time around when I move there I will have the hability to jump back to Empire easily to resupply, and learn skills faster when I'll be a few days offline.

On Thursday evening the alliance switch happened and I was ready to haul part of my stuff to the Low-sec jump-off point. Kind of interesting as I had to do the trip in my Orca, but I took care to spend a lot of time not only scouting the way, but also monitoring the traffic I may encounter, and when I felt ready I went for it, without encountering any problems. Yes, this is dangerous flying people :) After this was done, I docked up the Orca in the last truck stop before Curse known as Berta, grabbed the trusty Taranis I had left there and proceeded to do what a lot of people fear to do and jumped straight into Doril. It helped that things were starting to quiet down but Curse is the last place in New Eden where you'd want to let your guard down. So with the help of my numerous tacticals and safespots I made it safely to U'K HQ. Cozmik has come home!

On Friday I didn't do much in EVE because 1- the only ship I had was my Taranis, and 2- I was dead tired from a crazy week at work. I did undock when there was a chance we could fight a few ships in our system, but a few ships became a lot and we had to get safe. A bomber gang and sleepiness followed so I logged. Saturday I was in full vegetative mode; this was the first weekend where I didn't have any moving-related activities so I took it very easy. There was the Montreal EVE Meet in the evening but it was one of the smallest ones with 3 pilots (me included) showing up; blame family suppers, gf birthdays, and NCDOT for this :) But on Sunday morning my stuff had been delivered and I decided to make good use of the 3-4 hours I had to kill before I had to go out. Not too long after I logged in a Scimitar was spotted flying unassisted (!) towards us so we set up a quick trap. I fumbled the first tackle and we came close to losing him because of my impatience, but we had him trapped on both sides of the gate so I took a deep breath and waited for the next opportunity. And I redeemed myself quite nicely: for my first U'K kill I got the final blow, top damage, and even scrammed the pod. Not a bad start!

I then got into a small 6-man fleet for a guy who wanted to practice his FC'ing, flying cheap to semi-cheap ships. It was cool to have a bubbler in gang again, something not possible in Hi-sec wardecs! So we charted a path through -A- territory in Catch, which would have us getting back into Curse from Jamunda. There was very little traffic on the way, with ships being very elusive or POS'ed up. But the action would happen at the Litom/Utopia gate where a Heretic and a Thorax were camping. I was then ordered to tackle the Heretic and proceeded to fuck him up. Once again final blow and top damage; the pod was very quick/lucky in escaping 2 bubbles. But the Heretic had put his fire on me and I came a bit too close to popping. We then got a good bead on the Thorax on the Utopia/Hemin gate, but Lo and Behold, about 15 reds jump in on us. Pancake gets called; a few ships like my oxygen-spewing 'Ranis get out, but some don't. Things started cooling down a bit and when the gang had moved off the gate we got into Hemin and docked up. Some waited out the heavy traffic, and some like me logged, but not before making repairs and finally planting my medical clone in Curse. God how I have missed this place !!!

Trust may not rust, but in rust I trust

o7