Deterred

It's the weekend.  I am out during the day, looking for Europeans or whoever is around.  I have searched down a long line of C4s, X877 after X877.  There's a C2 hanging off of C4e via a K162, which I happily take.  C4s tend to the boring.  C2s often have something going on.

I enter C2a and scan as usual.  There's a tower on scan, and a Bustard.  This is par for the course -- probably an unmanned ship at a tower.  I look around for the tower, and on the first scan, find that the Bustard is not in the same hemisphere.

The Bustard is out in space!  I point at few COs, and find it at the third one.  I throw it into warp immediately, at 10km.  As I warp, I wonder exactly what a Bustard is.  I think it's a T1 industrial, like an Iteron V.  But it might be a T2.  I don't have time to check.  People don't spend much time doing PI, at least not much outside of a POS force field.  So you must go with what you have.

I land on grid, and there's the Bustard.  It is already aligning, I can tell.  And I am about 12km from it.  I doubt I can catch it here, but there are good odds it is going to another CO.  I head at it anyway, and sure enough it warps.  Straight at planet VI!  I warp to the CO at VI, again at 10km.

En route to Planet VI

This time, I land on grid almost right behind the Bustard.  I can see it get too close to the CO, and get throw out of the CO out into space.  This is not helpful for me: it is about 17km away from me.  But I head it anyway, fairly confident that I will get there in time.  The guy is not super fast doing his PI, and indeed I get into scrambler range.

I set orbit around the Bustard at 1000m, then uncloak and proceed to get my systems going.  I change my mind and head in for the bump, but this turns out to be unnecessary, both because it is feeble and because he is pinned by my two warp scramblers.  My light missiles crash into him.

Gotcha!

Plink, plink.

 Or rather, my light missiles plink into him.  They are not hurting him much.  They are, after all, light missiles.  Not torpedoes. 

I was afraid of this as I warped, but I felt there was no time to refit into my torpedo fit.  I am in my anti-Venture fit, and that means light missiles.  I figure that it will take a while, but unless he gets help, I'll be fine.  I set my orbit at 1000m again, and set to watching dscan.  So far, there is nothing unexpected there.  But the system is rather large, and it might have any number of occupants.  Since I have not reconnoitered it at all, I don't know.  And so I scan.

I get in several rounds.  His shields are dropping ever so slowly.  Then suddenly, I am hit.  My shield is down to 80% or so.  What?  I double check that nobody is on grid, except me and him.  Nobody is.  Evidently, he has a gun of some kind mounted.  Well, this might be interesting.

Ouch!

I keep at it, but his shields are giving way only slowly.  Whereas mine are dropping rather alarmingly.  When I am at 50%, I can tell he will win.  I give it up as a hopeless cause.  So I randomly pick a CO and warp to it at 100km.  I give him a "nice" in local, which I hope he saw.

The CO I happened to select is in the outer system.  When I land on grid, there is a Myrmidon sitting at the CO.  Odd.  It's no threat to me; I am cloaked and distant.  Still, it's odd that it is here.   Was it perhaps part of a chase-the-Bustard ambush?

My attack has failed, and they know I am here.  Still, I'll recon the system to see what's happening.

It turns out there are several locals here.  I find their tower.  The Myrmidon is there and a Loki I have not seen.  I watch as the Bustard pilot refits into a Broadsword.  They sit out in a point in space with an interdictor and fire some bubbles.  I am guessing that is the highsec exit, but I don't know it.  Eventually I deploy probes and search down the system.  The place they have been is the highsec exit, but I don't fly to it.  I'll get to it later, I think.

A Bustard, as it turns out, is the T2 Caldari Transport Ship.  (I kind of knew that -- we had one once.)  It mounts missiles, not guns.  I am not sure if I could have killed it before it killed me, given time and torpedos instead of light missiles.  On the other hand, my torpedo fit only has a single scrambler, so my only hope would have been a very speedy refit.