A check of my system scanner shows an anomaly in system and it is not surprising that d-scan shows the hostile pilot in the same general vicinity. I warp in at range and sure enough he is running the site and looting as he kills.
Since he is tanking the sleepers, I can now say for certain that my cloaky ship does not have sufficient DPS to break him. This overconfident pilot deserves a lesson in the dangers of wormholes but I will not be the one to deliver it. The disadvantage of solo hunting!
Wait a minute, d-scan suddenly shows the locals have warped a Noctis somewhere nearby. That seems odd and suggests they did not know about the Drake pilot. The Noctis disappears a few seconds later and a Marchariel shows up. Then the Marchariel disappears and the Noctis comes back. The Noctis leaves again and returns again and leaves again. Maybe the locals are running sites next door. Meanwhile someone is stealing the sites in their home system and both groups seem oblivious to each other.
If pilots ignore combat ships, I have to conclude that core probes will not scare them. I move to a safe and deploy probes and quickly resolve the static to high sec. While I am in warp to it, two more pilots show up on d-scan with default ship names. I recall probes while in flight and sure enough there is a Catalyst and Ferox sitting on the wormhole to high sec.
While I am watching the two hostile pilots sit on the wormhole, the locals go by with a Falcon, 2 Marchariels and a Tengu. It appears that my guess of them running sites in a neighboring wormhole could be accurate. However, that makes at least 5 of the 6 online pilots actively piloted so I elect not to deploy probes again to find the connection they are using.
Meanwhile, the Catalyst pilot jumps back to high sec and the Ferox pilot joins the Drake in the anomaly. I am still watching the wormhole when the locals land a small fleet on the wormhole. Evidently, they were not as oblivious as I thought. Their fleet consists of an Onyx, Falcon, Vagabond, Drake and a Hurricane.
The bubble goes up on the wormhole and less than 60 seconds later, the hostile Drake pilot lands in the bubble. I expect him to make a run for the wormhole but he instead turns and aligns with a planet. Surely he knows he cannot outrun the Vagabond. Maybe he is hoping to get outside the bubble and escape with his pod. The Onyx pilot realizes what he is doing and drops his bubble to burn closer to the action. The bubble goes back up a few seconds before the Drake explodes leaving the capsuleer trapped in the bubble. A few seconds later, one of the local pilots has the capsule targeted and the hostile capsuleer has been given a free trip back to safer environs.
This leaves the Ferox pilot still in system and a couple of d-scans later I find him sitting off of the first planet. I am expecting him to warp to the wormhole but he continues to simply sit and then surprises me by warping back to the anomaly. At the same time, the locals pack it up and warp everything but a Hurricane back to their tower. Why?
The Ferox finishes off the last ship and then slow boats across the field to loot all the wrecks before warping to the wormhole and exiting to high sec under the watchful eyes of the Hurricane pilot. I can only surmise that a deal was struck with these newbies after killing the Drake.
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