Ambush

Based on the local chatter as we gank the Drake and Naga (see previous post), we know there is someone else around. We branch out and discover that their are 3 piloted ships in the adjoining wormhole. Two drakes and a legion. Wait, one of them just reshipped to a Drake. We now have 3 drakes. Wait! One of them just reshipped to a Talos. Wait! One of Drake pilots is now in a capsule. Back to a Drake. The second Drake pilot is now in a capsule. Back to a Drake! Ok! This is getting old.

In a little while, one of the pilots warps off, followed by a second pilot and disappears. Thanks to our scouting earlier in the day, we have both their static null sec and the incoming K162 from high sec. We put cloaky scouts on all three wormholes in the system and continue watching their activity. 

The high sec is only 4 from Amarr and we suspect that may be where they have gone. We put a scout in the null sec but they are not in there although there is a Cheetah visible in the system and +1 in local. Hmmm! Data or Relic site? I wonder if he is paying attention. We drop probes to find out and sure enough about 10 seconds after the probes go out, the Cheetah disappears. He was paying attention and it was a relic site. We bookmark it and recall our probes.

One of the pilots returns from high sec, warps straight to his tower and then 2 pilots go offline together. Crap! It looks like we caught them on the end of their playing time. In a bit, the second pilot returns from high sec and warps to his tower. Reships to a Drake and warps to the null sec.

We wait a minute and then jump a ship in behind him into null sec just in time to see him disappear from local. The chase pilot picks a random gate and warps to the next system. He enters the next system just in time to see the pilot disappear from local again.

We setup on the null sec wormhole to wait for his return. It takes a while but eventually he shows up in local again. The wormhole flares and he finds 3 Proteus' sitting there waiting on him. He waits out his timer and then jumps back to null sec. We follow and immediately burn back to the wormhole while activating our weapon systems. As soon as he decloaks we start burning his shields.

As he gets low on shields, I call a halt to the DPS while we wait for our flycatcher to arrive. He announces "Oh Crap, good trap!" in local as the flycatcher arrives and bubbles him. We finish killing the Drake and send Macgunner Trivanne back to the cloning vat.

Almost instantly, I get a private convo from him and he wants to know if we came from the C2 or from null sec. Evidently, he had been running a site escalation several jumps away in null sec. Knowing that he was the only one online and we weren't going to get any more action, I let him know that we had been watching him and his friends for some time.