Thank you for flying Air Lei Harper

“Lei, you wanna see a really big ship?”

This sounds vaguely dirty, and is a question posed to me by Steelfist; one of my corp mates.

So Steel asks this question early in the week, during a time I actually found time to play (sorry about the lack of updates this week – real life aggro). I find out that Steel wants to move one of his capital ships and he wants my help. I am to take a piece of crap ship and fit it with expensive hardware, which I am to then take into the depths of lowsec in order to light a cynosural field for him to jump to with his capital. This field shall be precisely 5 km from a station, so that he may jump and then immediately dock so as not to get ganked, or his paint scratched or whatnot.

I laugh at the question and check my skills, to see what it actually entails to generate a cyno. I tell Steelfist “I can help you in 3 days, 19 hours and 44 minutes.” expecting him to laugh and find someone else in the corp to help. Instead, he simply says “OK” and we agree to make this happen at the weekend.

Fast forward, oh, about four days. I learn my requisite skill to a rank of 2 (and, I might add, the skillbook cost me the better part of 10 million ISK) and outfit an Imicus with a cynosural field generator and 400 units of liquid ozone (again, not cheap). By this point I am slightly annoyed and I’m hoping Steel is going to pay me for my trouble and expense here. My CEO Kurt pays for the ship so I don’t feel too bad, and I get to flying out to the ass-end of lowsec in order to help Steel move his ship.

My trip was pretty uneventful though once at my destination I have a slightly hilarious moment where a couple of Tengus are blatantly following me in and out of the station. Steel assures me that they don’t give a crap about me…they know what I’m here for and want to see what I bring through. So we get set up and I decide on positioning to light my cyno.

By this point it has been drilled into me to pick a good spot and use the tactical overlay to ensure a 5km placement of the cyno field next to the station. So I pick what I feel is a good spot, count down over TS so that Steel can undock and get ready to jump, and light my cyno.

Steel jumps into the system and immediately cracks up laughing. You know how some stations have that ‘bay’ region that you undock out of? Well, that’s where I placed my cyno…close enough to be safe but not close enough that Steel hits the station and gets bounced 50 clicks away. His ship literally appears inside the bay and I am immediately christened a “Natural Cyno” due to my perfect placement.

Now I get to sit here for 10 minutes like an idiot. As predicted by my corp, a bunch of people show up to see what the cyno is doing here (too late, already gone) and eventually one person realizes that whatever is going to happen, has happened already, so they take their frustrations out on me. I get insta-popped, and then podded. Honestly, I don’t care too much because this was a cheap ship and I was using a jump clone, and I marvel at how little my character’s death affects me nowadays.

So, this time I squeeze everything onto the ship I get dumped back into, which of course with me being Gallente, is a Velator. Steel needs to do two more jumps so I don’t want to waste money.

The next two jumps go off completely without a hitch. My placement is perfect, my Velator survives, and Steel is so thrilled that he decides he wants to move another capital. So, we do it again. Again, without a hitch. By this time word has gotten out to the alliance that I’m helping people move and Ambedrake (my FC from my nullsec roam) asks me to help him too. So I go even deeper into lowsec and put Ambe’s carrier perfectly onto a small Amarr docking ring.

Everyone is very pleased and I’m happy that I’ve found something I’m good at. Even if its being a goddamn taxi driver. Still, the corp has a good internal policy: “Always tip your taxi drivers, and always tip your cynos.”. So, I walk away with about 50 million ISK and another 50 million in skillbooks that Steel found sitting in his capital.

Incidentally, I don’t get killed at all in the Velator. I come close one time with Ambe, but he decided to undock a HAC he had with him to protect me while I waited for the cyno timer, and the ships that show up quickly leave when they see a Tech 2 Cruiser orbiting me at 500. Nice. I decide to keep the Velator, and name her “Shamrock”…luck of the Irish.

As we’re wrapping up, Steel (the excitable fellow that he is) is asking me how awesome it was for me to see all these capitals up close, since I’m so used to frigates and destroyers. I tell him that it was so awesome and amazing, because I don’t have the heart to say what I really feel, that being that when you’re zoomed out to 50km on the tactical grid, constantly looking for interlopers, even a Rorqual looks kinda tiny.