Sins of a Solar Spymaster #10: Bastard's Bluff (Page 3)

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Sins of a Solar Spymaster #10: Bastard's Bluff (Page 3)

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Posted May 5th, 2009 by The Mittani

I don't bother to reply. Half an hour later, he checks his email and finds that, while he was bashing out that last angry message, the entire Northern Coalition (NC), a grouping of 10+ alliances directly to IRC/ED's west, have reset IRC/ED's standings to neutral, meaning that hostilities were imminent. ED owned an outpost in the middle of NC territory, and that outpost was now at serious risk of invasion and capture by thousands of pilots who once were on IRC's side. Abruptly, I receive a new email:

To The Mittani,

We have heard the news and realize that you are powerful enough to command virtually everyone to attack us, so we will immediately withdraw from Insmother.

Any of your allies who wish to be BLUE need merely ask for reciprocity. As long as we are Blue to them, we will set them Blue.

If we are to be able to assist at all in the Tenerifis area to help fight –A– (who has always been RED), we will need our stuff back. Can you assist in that?

You win.

Dib

Much better. Still, rather than feeling giddy, I thought that this whole conversation was vulgar. I don't enjoy behaving like a stereotypical 'Space Tyrant'. That kind of [censored]-waving, self-aggrandizing back-and-forth is exactly the sort of exchange that e-honor types relish. All the same, it got results: IRC conceded and announced an immediate withdrawal from Insmother and retreated from RA space. This caused tremendous disarray among the membership of IRC and ED due to the sheer public humiliation and the shattered faith of the pilots in their leadership. The following ham-handed 'official statement' by IRC/ED's directorate only fanned the flames of member-level rage:

Troops!

Let us state right here and now that despite whatever you see on forums or wherever,
the decision to withdraw from the war was done by IRC AND ED. Would we have continued the fight,
then IRC would do so as well.

With that said lets start...
We have been buttf[censored]ed, [censored]raped, slapped silly, pushed over,
steamrolled, pushed down,
humiliated and for [censored]sake every other synonym someone can create for
this event
(feel free to reply with new ones, the most original reply gets 5M from me)

Is there a single pilot in this alliance not pissed off?
Probably only the spies who now giggle silently.
I can assure you that we are very much pissed off!

The big question is: Why dont we continue to fight and show them all the
middlefinger? ..|.
It's because we like to live... as simple as that.
Even tho every cell in our bodies tells us to continue, we would loose and
loose everything we worked for.
It was either that, or drop this war and live on.
HC honoustly believes its in the best interest for the alliance to live on.

So, what the [censored] happened...?
As you all know IRC got robbed by an ex-HC member and Goons used this to
put pressure on them to stop them and us fighting RA.
When the fights continued, Goons arranged for all entities to set us neutral.
With this they threatened to have all these entities
(incl. Xdeath and solar who confirmed the arrangement) attack us this
weekend.
The only way to prevent this from happening was by withdrawing from
Insmother entirely.
Hence we have.

last night we had a 5 hour meeting where we first adressed everyone,
then had a boardmeeting followed by an HC meeting.
During these meetings we reviewed the situation and discussed our options.
What we expect is the following and i am going to be straight forward here.

option 1:
The attack may happen even tho we complied to Goons demands.
If so, we will defend our homes untill we have nothing left to fight with.
No, this does not mean we will suicide everything, but we will do whatever
we can to live!
Thats a promise!

Option 2:
The attack will not happen and all of EVE will be neutral except perhaps
XdeathX/Solar.
I would expect some entities to attack us anyway.
Not with the numbers threatened with, but some may see us as a wounded
animal and will try to take advantage.
If this happens, then we do the same, FIGHT!
We are not hurt in strenght, we will just walk funny for a few days.

Option 3:
The attack will not happen and we are asked upon to fight alongside Goons
again and we get blue standings with everyone again..
Yeah... right... dont like to think about this one.

So, here we are. Hurt in the [censored] and in our pride, but still well
alive and strong.
We will continue to become stronger as we have the past year.
We will continue to invest in our space and if someone thinks they can
take space from us,
then i wouldnt want to be in their shoes when you have the angry mob
waiting to blow some steam.

In the near future, HC will continue to review our options to grow and
become stronger.
As soon as we have information available, this will be shared with you all.

This war has showed us where we need to improve and it has certainly
showed EVE that we ARE indeed a force to be recognized!

For now, we ask everyone to rebuild their losses and strenghten defenses.
Prepare for the worst.

In the end, all of my fancy diplomatic maneuvering and bare-knuckled theft was for naught. While IRC/ED did publicly surrender and withdraw from Insmother, their invasion catalyzed a resurgence within the moribund Red Alliance. RA waited a mere two days after the IRC/ED announcement before counter-invading Etherium Reach. My hard-won peace hadn't amounted to much, though now it was IRC/ED losing space instead of Red Alliance.

But I couldn't complain. After all, Gobblock wasn't actually one of my agents - he was just one of 6000 goons - and he hadn't stolen a red cent from IRC, much less a titan, capital fleet and a pile of jump freighters. Against IRC, I hadn't had a card in my hand, because the real thieves had used Gobblock as a cover to shield their identities. In return for financial compensation, the culprits had given Gob doctored screenshots to help him pose as the guilty party, and after I spoke with him, he agreed to play himself off as a 'GIA Agent', acting as if 'his' heist was part of an alliance-level reprisal for the Insmother invasion. To my delight, IRC had fallen for a bastard's bluff.