The Raven That Could

"Dew, Jump through the gate!"

"Like Hell!  Not until the Raven jumps first!"

So went my first battle  inside my Guardian.  I had been training non stop to pilot one, and pilot it well.  Luckily most of the secondary and support skills were already nearly there, so it wasn't too long before I found myself in the warm embrace of "Medic!" as I aptly call her.  It was a decent sized fleet, the full compliment, and quite a few of us Logistics ships.  I was following the lead of one of my corp mates, one of our corp's directors in fact, so I really did not want to screw this up.  However, at the same time, I couldn't just play stupid.

As an Interceptor pilot, primarily, I typically kept one or two tackle ships locked at all times, because we always need at least two or so, or so I believe.  However, at this particular moment in the battle, the most intense skirmish, I should say, had us against a nasty fleet from the obnoxious Goonswarm alliance.  We were flying with CVA and other holders in the Providence region, determined to drive the swarm out of our lands.  The skirmish became a stalemate, so the order to jump through the stargate was given.  When all but a few had jumped, I noticed a lone Raven, some 40 kilometers away, slow boating back.  I immediately scurried my fingers over the controls faster than a Matari goes after free duct tape!  By the time I had him locked and my remote repairs activated, he was in half armour, down to structure as my second cycle started.  My corpmate told me to jump before I practically gave him the finger.  And with just two of us, we kept a Raven in Armor, topped off, the entire time he slow boated back to the gate and jumped.

It's one of those things that goes with the duty of being a logistics pilot, to be sure, and it's a great one.  We single-handedly kept an entire fleet alive, the few of us who were there.  At the end of it, when I docked her up and stepped out of the ship, I could see the battle damage all over her hull, and to this day I don't want her completely fixed up.  No, I see every burn mark, every patched plating as a sign that, no matter how hard they try, that they will never take down us or our fleet as long as we're on the field.  That Raven we saved was a testament to that.  I never got a chance to talk to him, so I don't even know if he was completely thankful, but when you can keep a single shield tanking ship afloat with armor against a 40+ ship fleet of mostly Battlecruisers, that's is saying something.

Either way, I'm just glad I could help out, one rep at a time.