Pursuing a Mammoth

Tonight we are moving stuff in and out of wspace. Earlier, I scanned down our static C3. It has a lowsec static, but it also has two K162s which are C2 by appearance. I entered the first one; it's a highsec static. Five sigs, so I scanned it down quickly. The highsec exit is 13 jumps from Jita. So I got my Jita alt in his freighter, bought a few things on our "wormhole needs" list, and slowboated across highsec to the nearby station. We've transshipped everything into industrials, and are on the way back headed into deep wspace.

From highsec we enter C2. As normal, every time I transit a wormhole I dscan. This is a good idea in any ship. While transporting, you are looking for anything out of the normal. Any ship, probes, etc. If you don't like what you see, you might back out, or you might go for it. Anyway, nothing new on dscan. C2 is clear. We warp across to the C2->C3 link, and transit. Again I dscan. This time there is something unexpected. There's a Mammoth on scan. (Does anyone use Mammoths anymore?) Well, I can't hunt a Mammoth in an Epithal. We continue on through C3 to our wormhole, jump, and warp to our tower.

If that Mammoth's pilot is smart, it's either back at its tower or out of the system. But maybe he is not smart. It's also possible that he missed seeing me on dscan. (Still, he must know that his system is wide-open, with four incident wormholes.) I quickly dump the goods I carried in, out of my Epithal and into storage. Then I get in my Manticore and zoom back to the wormhole. I'll be polarized, but I don't care. I'm looking for a kill

Across the wormhole, immediately I dscan. The mammoth is not on scan. It is possible it was transiting the system, from the wormhole I have not explored to the highsec. But this seems less likely than it being local. I've already scanned the system, and I bookmarked the local tower which is at the outer planet. I cannot see the outer planet on dscan from here. So that's probably where it is. I warp to the tower at 70. While in warp, I dscan, and there's the Mammoth. Almost certainly local.

I land on grid at the tower and... no Mammoth. It's also no longer on dscan. So I guess it must be out planet-gooing. I arbitrarily pick the customs office for planet I in the inner system and warp to it. As I warp, I am dscanning, and the Mammoth reappears. It is almost certainly doing PI. But it is not at planet I. I arrive on grid and no Mammoth. As I exit warp I am narrow-beaming dscan at other planets, and there he is at planet II. I throw it back into warp to planet II.

I land on grid at planet II. The Mammoth is there; he's about 10k from me, and I head for him. But my scrambler cannot quite reach yet, and I can see he's already aligning. He's had a fair amount of time here while I was trying to find him. I could uncloak and go for him, but I don't think there is time. Instead, I look where he is aligning to. I can see that it's planet III. A direct line. He warps, and I am warping right behind him by no more than a few seconds.

Remains of a crappy fit

I land at planet III's customs office about 10 km from the target.  As soon as I am out of warp, I approach him.  I uncloak at about 6 km from him, and get my lock started and my sensor booster on, then my torps and target painter.  The lock completes and my torps commence.  It only takes maybe two cycles and he explodes.  I go for the pod... tweet tweet tweet and it's locked too, and scrambled and podded. 

I have zoomed past him in the excitement, so I come back to the wreck and grab the small stuff. But there is way too much for me to carry: there are PI goods that he did not manage to throw back in the POCO. I ask in corp chat for a mate to bring an industrial to haul off the PI goods. I remember the corpse, and grab it while Timmay is transiting and warping to me. He loots the wreck and warps off.

Now there's nothing to do except link the kill mail in corp chat. Looking at it, it's a bad fit. I wondered why I killed him so quickly: because he has almost no tank. And I see he is stabbed up. My scrambler was not holding him there; he simply did not have enough tank to take more than a few seconds of my fire. Next time guys put more tank on and for goodness sake if you're doing PI use an Epithal.