A few weeks ago I was relaxing in station preparing to head out to investigate some reports of sleeper activity, when a flurry of noise came over corporate comms. It seemed that there was a special surprise in store for a friend of Eve Scout by the name of Mark726. Due to a wormhole related timing phenomenon I had a panicked shuttle flight to the Signal Cartel office in Zoohen to try and reship in time for the op staging, only to find when I got there that I still had over an hour to kick my heels.
Thankfully I wasn’t the only one who showed up a bit early and after jumping in my Party Boat – a fully festival launcher fit Talwar – I headed over to Jakanerva where a citadel had been anchored by The Evesploratory Society to be named The Eve Travel Rest Stop in Mark’s honour (Eve Travel is Mark’s popular guide to some of the galaxy’s must-see tourist spots, essential reading for explorers like ourselves; give it a read next time you’re in station).
We spent some time admiring each other’s ships… or in my case being asked politely to move away from the pretty battleships as my bucket of rust was spoiling the pictures, before we all hurriedly docked in the citadel to await Mark’s arrival.
Once he was in system and on approach to the citadel we received the order to hit the undock en masse and begin surprising Mark with Signal Cartel HUGS – a huge barrage of fireworks and snowballs.
The sight was breathtaking as our fleet followed the small scout ship round the system for about 30 minutes lighting up space with thousands and thousands of oversized party poppers. Sadly I severely underestimated how long the event would last and quickly ran out of ammo for my festival launcher, but I hung around and focused my efforts after that to taking some pictures of the fleet in action.
Mark seemed genuinely moved by the event and the new citadel. It was great to be a part of one of the corp’s signature fleet events and some of the most fun I’ve had since graduation back in Cistuvaert.
Cloaked In A Hole 