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Over the past year, Future Corps has hosted or joined in many wormhole sieges. We have a habit of naming them after places. In the past, we've had Mexico, Fiji, Dallas, Boston, Pretoria, and a few others. This one, our largest to date, was named Toledo.

 

In the weeks leading up to our invasion, we staged five capital ships into the system, logged out until needed. On March 9th, we used a well timed C140 exit to bring in our fleet, and began the slow task of sieging the residents. Our Dreadnaughts laid into each tower in turn, while subcapitals chewed through POS modules. A lone small tower was reinforced with no Dreads at all. There was an attempt to POS gun, and to online additional batteries, but they were incapacitated before the onlining timer was completed.

 

For several towers, smartbombing "Boombox" battleships were deployed against groups of POS modules to take advantage of the Red Giant effect, a massive 85% bonus to damage and range.

 

From our entry into the system to the last tower entering reinforcement was eight hours. Meanwhile, our own tower was deployed, and all connecting wormholes were cycled multiple times. All the while, the residents scrambled to adjust strontium levels to time the towers' exits, although they only succeeded to do so for half.

 

During the first night, multiple breakouts were attempted, but ultimately denied. On the second night, the long, slow dirge of self destructs carried on for hours. During our scouting, we had identified a total of 10 capital ships that they could have used to make a stand. Instead, they scuttled every ship they had skill to pilot, loading what capitals they could to log out, and destroying those they could not. We offered ransom several times, but were turned away, with the claim that we were "terrorists", and could not be trusted to uphold our side of the bargain. As the timers ran down, they even claimed "victory" by denying us their bounty.

 

But this fight was not over.

 

Not to leave a job half done, our fleet was once more dispatched across the system to destroy completely the last remnants of their occupation. One by one, spread across 12 hours, towers fell. Just after downtime, a hostile Moros logged in, reason unknown, and was quickly agressed, then killed. Some hours later, a Naglfar met the same fate, claiming to have intended to log into Singularity. In total, 1 small, 5 medium, and 4 large towers were razed, the last killmail arriving just over 48 hours from our initial invasion.

 

While self destruction and denial of loot will remain a valid tactic for the foreseeable future, and there may be few assets shown on killboards as a result, the residents of Toledo will not soon forget what they lost in that system.

 

As for us, we still enjoy the challenge of a siege, even if the profits are slim. So we continue our trek through wormholes, and are always on the lookout for another system to give a name to.