A Noctis Erupts

Once again we need a route to high sec as several people have urgent matters to attend to in known space for a few hours. Therefore, we roll the static since the current chain of C5 space is a little less than desirable for anything other than staring at empty systems.

The new static has a static to C3, things are looking good. Of course, we first have to sift through 31 signatures to find not only the C3 connection but also a C5a as well. The C5a scout reports a tower but no pilots and the C3 scout reports a static to hisec. The C3 has several connections including an EOL wormhole only a few jumps from Amarr. This satisfies the pilots wanting out, but before they head out, we discover a Noctis in our static.

What? How did we miss that? Of course the system is 81 AU across so missing a few wrecks is understandable. Evidently, the C5 corp was running sites before we opened up the static. We setup a trap on their static and then start probing for the Noctis. The scout warps to the site and reports that the Noctis warped after a salvaging a couple of wrecks and before the scout could get in range.

Another scan and a second scout goes to another side only to report the same thing. The Noctis appears to be in a third site for a couple of minutes and then warps back to site 1, salgaves a couple of wrecks and then heads back to site 2. So far our scouts have not been able to get close since the pilot is using a MWD the entire time.

When he disappears to the third site, we once again scan him and send a heavy tackler to that location. The tackler has no interest in covert operations, he decloaks his strategic cruiser on the way in and lands on the scan result hot. Of course he is out of range of the Noctis by the time he lands, but he spooks the pilot into warping back to their wormhole where I am waiting with a heavy interdictor. As soon as the pilot appears on grid, I raise the bubble and watch the pilot land at zero right in the middle of the bubble.

The pilot jumps on contact and I follow and immediately put the bubble up again. Once his cloak fails, he jumps back to the static. Once again, I follow him and raise the bubble trapping him on the wormhole with a polarization timer. The Noctis goes down as soon as his cloak fails and we send Cuprum Ferron back to a cloning vat. We end up with about 300M ISK in sleeper guts and salvage from the Noctis and what was left in the sites. This is my favorite way to benefit from sleeper sites.