EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Once inside Dragons of Redemption, Blitter became every CEO's dream carrier pilot. This was during the days where capital ships were rare, Rorquals and Jump Freighters did not exist, and carriers were the primary logistics engine of conquerable space, moving critical fuel, strontium and ships from the empire markets into deep 0.0 without risk. None of this ferrying is particularly fun, and carrier pilots were not known for being eager to help out with this sort of alliance-level drudgery; Blitter ingratiated himself almost immediately by helping with this. Beyond this, he was nice to his new corpmates, witty, and sociable. An agent who is considered a funny, friendly member of the team isn't going to be suspected of being a spy; in fact, if an agent is good enough at making friends, anyone who accuses him of espionage may find themselves under suspicion. By doing the critical yet boring carrier work, Blitter quickly gained the trust and respect of the Veritas leadership. Inside of five days that trust would be betrayed.

The system was JLO-Z3, one of Veritas' five stations in Scalding Pass. Blitter and seven other carrier pilots were inside a POS staging for a capital operation when the first major opportunity to act against Veritas presented itself. Contacting me via instant messenger, Blitter incredulously related the situation: the CEO of one of the Veritas member corporations, Doctor Einstein of Grettistak, was planning on ejecting from his Chimera-class carrier and warping between the other towers in the JLO system to check on their fuel levels. Carriers were too clumsy to warp around in this way, and Dr. Einstein had announced his plan over teamspeak. The teamspeak channel only had eight people in it, including Blitter; the tower the carriers were staging at had a password set to prevent any hostiles from gaining access, but each of them had the password. If it could be arranged properly, Blitter held the key to a capital-level Grand Theft Spaceship.

We scrambled to find a pilot who could fly a Chimera who was online at the time, without giving away the nature of what we were doing to any possible Veritas agents. Luck was with us; we got a pilot and had him log off in a pod in a system one jump from JLO-Z3. While Blitter kept an eye on Dr. Einstein's empty carrier from his own Archon, he kept the Veritas pilots on teamspeak occupied with idle chatter - using his charisma to reduce their awareness level while building up trust. A Swarm covert ops pilot got into JLO-Z3 and began carefully setting up a warp-in on the tower with the staged carriers; if it was arranged properly, the pod with the goon Chimera pilot could log on, jump into JLO and immediately warp to the covops, placing him just within range of the empty capital ship. If the warp in was set up improperly, or if the Veritas crew noticed that something was amiss, they could change the password as soon as the goon pod showed up and ruin the whole plan. Tension increased as everything was in readiness; Dr. Einstein remained out of pocket, clueless. Go time: Pod logs on. Pod joins gang with the Covops. Pod jumps into JLO-Z3, hits warp, enters the password Blitter gave him while mid-warp: bam, the pod lands within 10 kilometers of the unpiloted carrier. It has to slowboat to get within six klicks of the Chimera to board it; with nail-biting slowness it approached. Blitter reports that the Veritas pilots have caught on: "Hey, there's a pod in here!"

It was too late. The Swarm pilot had reached the Chimera and boarded it, cackled and then warped away. A huge win for an alliance as lacking in capital ships as Goonswarm; an embarrassing loss for Veritas, who had fewer than ten carriers themselves. We judged it a worthwhile 'win' to burn Blitter's cover over, and waited for the inevitable. There were only eight pilots who knew the password to the Veritas tower; one of whom had his carrier stolen, so that left a list of seven suspects, Blitter included. A quick background check would have noted that Blitter had only been in Veritas for five days; compared to the veterans in the tower with him, he was the most obvious spy. Whenever you find a hostile espionage action and you want to try to catch a spy, the first thing to do is write down the names of everyone involved and the time it occurred; this is the 'timestamp' and even if no conclusions can be immediately drawn from this, it can be pieced together with other timestamps to catch a hostile agent. This was not done. Blitter remained.

We knew that it would only be a matter of time before Veritas’ members realized the error of their ways did their homework and caught Blitter out. Even though it wasn't official yet, his cover was blown; when this happens, the only sensible thing to do is to cause as much damage and havoc as you can, sow mistrust and hope to go out with a bang. The opportunity came the next day, as Veritas began evacuating from JLO; the system had been invaded the night of the carrier theft, and a general pull-out was called to safer areas of Veritas space. Blitter volunteered to help with his carrier agent, and his seemingly selfless offer was gladly accepted.