I log in to my hostile home and immediately check both d-scan and my contact list for known pilots. No one appears so I deploy probes and resolve the six signatures in system. My scan speeds are increasing. There are 2 radar sites and 4 wormholes tonight. I find the 2 expected statics, a periodic and a K162. Since both the K162 and the B274 look identical, I surmise they are coming from the same region of space. Which turns out to be correct.
Upon jumping through the B274, I find a Probe sitting a few kilometers from the wormhole. This could provide entertaining so I move off the wormhole and cloak. After a few minutes he jumps into the wormhole. Did he see me? Unknown. Did he think I left? Unknown. Did he decide I wasn't a threat? Unlikely. Is he acting as bait? Unknown. Is he stupid? Maybe.
I give him a minute to move away from the wormhole and then jump in behind him. He is not visible at the wormhole but he is on d-scan and core probes are going out. Now I need to find him. It has been a while since I tried finding hostiles using d-scan but I am able to locate him at the moon of an inner planet, only to see him warp off as I land. This time he disappears off d-scan. The probes are still in system so I check the far planet and sure enough he is here somewhere. I resolve his location a little faster this time, only the see him warp again as I land. That is coincidental enough to have me checking to see if my cloak is up. It is! Luck is just favoring this little bugger at the moment.
Another check of d-scan now shows 3 additional ships and the Probe. For the next 20 minutes, I keep seeing various ships appear and disappear while the Probe appears to warp at random distances to random moons. Twice he warps to the same moon I am at but is too far away each time for me to engage and the other ships nearby have made me very cautious. All of the pilots appear to be from the same corporation and I know now that there are at least 4 and maybe 5 of them.
After a while, the combat ships disappear and a salvage ship shows up. A quick check of the closest radar site shows that they were running the site but I have no idea what all the jumping in and out was about. In any case, I decide this is a good time to ambush these thieves since there are no combat ships in range and I move to engage. However, I am too slow getting into position and the Noctis warps off safely.
As the Noctis leaves, a cruiser lands and microwarps to one of the sites cans to start harvesting it. I am given another opportunity, although the value of the target is considerably less. I start moving into position for the ambush at the nearest can. It has been awhile since I attacked anyone and the blood is pumping. I uncloak and activate my modules and then start the lock as soon as my targeting delay ends. Positive lock!
That went way better than expected. I was expecting to screw something up since it has been a while. WAIT!!! The error message that the target was out of range of my warp scrambler let me know before his ship warp off that I had failed my objective and was not going to get this kill. I wonder when I exchanged the disruptor for a scrambler? Oh well! I guess I managed to screw it up after all.
The hostile targets exit system with lots of laughs at the newbie pirate that tried and failed to kill them. I can only take solace in chasing them off for my hosts. Even if they will never know of my good deed in saving their other radar site. The time has come to call it a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment