The Hollow Men

This is the way the world ends
This is the was the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

    - T. S. Eliot

To nearly all outward appearances, the debacle at 6VDT-H has paralyzed IT Alliance's command structure. Alliance operations are not being announced or coordinated. Calls for assistance from renters and allies alike go unanswered. Fountain and Querious are being gobbled up with little or no resistance.

Babylon 5 and Nulli Secunda are the latest of IT's renters/allies to pull up stakes. Babylon has dropped sov in all but one Querious and two Fountain systems. Their former holdings in Fountain's Skaven constellation have been snapped up by Deklein Coalition member Test Alliance Please Ignore (Test), while Fallen Angels Alliance (Fall) has occupied Babylon's abandoned systems in the Querious 9NP-AR constellation. Nulli Secunda, under pressure from the new AtlasDOT alliance (which includes Bobby Atlas' Di-Tron Heavy Industries), has abandoned LI-BA0 constellation in Querious. Whether the two alliances will pull back into Delve or seek greener pastures elsewhere remains to be seen.

Pandemic Legion (PL), hired by IT alliance to harass the Deklein Coalition home systems, appears to be suffering from the IT Alliance's operational doldrums as well. Word leaking into the forums indicates IT has stopped paying PL for their services. The timing of this is particularly bad for Pandemic Legion given the recent loss of 80 billion ISK to internal theft and rumored member discontent with taking an IT Alliance contract in the first place.

However.

IT Alliance continues to avoid a failscade. While the Black Nova and Destructive Influence corporations have handed all their systems back to IT Alliance and appear headed for the door, they remain in the alliance as of this writing. IT has lost player population in a steady trickle since the departure of FinFleet and X13, but there doesn't appear to be a rush for the doors. Curious that, given the various leaks about IT dysfunction.

This suggests someone is at the controls in IT Alliance central slapping hands away from the panic button - keeping things calm and orderly despite the lack of outward communication.

It may be a case of attempting a passive defense where an active one has failed. Keeping a low profile and feeding rumors of dysfunction might be intended to bore the enemy into careless mistakes; cause them to stop to grab systems rather than entering Delve to administer a killing stroke. By not offering fights in regions already lost, IT may be gaining valuable time needed to replace the ships equipment lost at 6VDT-H and prepare the defense of Delve.

For now, Delve itself remains intact and that will be the test of matters. Until one of the invaders wanders up that way gives Delve a solid poke with a big stick, no one will know if they've got a hornets nest on their hands, or an empty, hollowed-out shell.