Ambushing a mining op

The day gets off to a pretty boring start. There are a couple of signatures in the system, but no one is really interested in shooting sleepers. So we head out into the static looking for activity. A scan of the chain doesn't show anything interesting so we roll the static and start over.

The second attempt and third chains were also empty of anything interesting so we decide to try one more time. The fourth static of the night looks promising when we jump in. Our scout reports three Tengus and a couple of cargo containers on d-scan. However, they disappear almost immediately.

The static has a C4 connection, a C5 connection and a null sec connection. The C4 connection is EOL which almost makes me pause before jumping in. Almost! However, getting trapped in a hostile wormhole would at least make the evening more interesting, so down the hole I go!

There is no sign of the Tengus in this system. A tower shows a couple of pilots sitting unmoving and after looking around the system, I head back to the static. There is still the C5 and null sec as possibilities.

The other scout decides to check out the null sec system, so I head to the C5 which is completely empty except for a handful of anomalies and signatures. Resolving the signatures shows yet another C5. It is getting late but I decide to at least poke my head into c5b before heading home for the evening.

A d-scan shows a 2 Hulks, a Retriever, a Rorqual, a Kestrel and a tower within range. I move off the wormhole and determine that the Hulks and the retriever are not at the POS. Unfortunately, there is nowhere in system which is out of d-scan range so this is going to depend on luck.

I move to the outer planet and deploy probes, throwing them out of range as quickly as possible. The other scout jumps into system and warps to me. This gives us a covert ops frigate and a stealth bomber to initiate the tackles, with 2 DPS ready to jump as soon as the call is made. One last check of d-scan and holy crap the Rorqual has warped to the ore field. I press scan, wait the interminable few seconds for a lock and then fleet warp us to zero on the Rorqual.

By the time we land, the Rorqual is back to the tower. However, both Hulks and the Retriever are sitting nicely in the belt. The DPS jumps and warps to zero on the scouts as soon as we land. I tackle one of the Hulks while the stealth bomber tackles the other and alphas the Retriever.  One Hulk deploys ECM drones and escapes the stealth bomber before the second tackle is applied. The other Hulk is not so lucky.

We watch the locals for a bit, but they log without attempting to recover the dropped items. We blow the wrecks and drones and head for home. It was a good hunt.