Shuttle's Bane

We have run a site in our system.  It's the only one, so we open our static and see what C3 system is there today.  I take in my cloaky Tengu... a tower, nothing happening.  Lowsec static.  I fire probes and start scanning.  A gas site.  Then another wormhole... I resolve it and warp to it.  "Dangerous unknown"... so, C4 or C5.  I viddy it, and it's C4.  (C4s are easy to tell from C5s.  They are yellowish and not reddish.)  Jayne warps to me in a bomber to go in and look.

He finds a totally clean system.  No anoms.  One sig.  Nobody home.  Oh well.  I am done in C3a, so I pop out into lowsec to get the entrance.  Guys might want in later.

All in all, dull dull dull.  Jayne says he's leaving.  We almost get off coms when... someone spots a new sig in our own home system.  Oooh.  Probably means wormhole.  We come back from C3, and get probes out.  Yes, it's a wormhole.  We get a cloaky on each wormhole, the C3 one and the new one, which turns out to be another dangerous (and clearly C5).  As I am sitting on the C3, I see a covert ops uncloak 55km from me, and fire core probes.  Well, no surprise is happening on either side.  He has probably seen several of our ships sitting at the POS.  We've seen him.  Still, we get the Onyx ready just in case.

Eventually, our guy on the C5 wormhole sees him leave.  We warp there but he is sure to be gone.  We enter C5a in a Falcon and then my Tengu.  The Falcon reports a large number of ships on dscan.  I dscan, and he is right.  Lots of rookie ships, shuttles, and ventures, with a sprinkling of other ships.  I spin around dscan, and quickly find them all at a POS at planet VI.  It has two moons, so I guess Moon #1, and warp to the wrong one.  Then the right one by elimination, and I can see.

All of the ships are empty, except one: a shuttle.  It's pilot Birdman, or something like that.  And, as I watch, I see a self-destruct message.  What is happening?  Boom.  Shuttle gone.  Pod.  He gets in a new shuttle, and I see another self-destruct message.  Then he cancels it.  But he starts again.  Is he trying to say Hi?

those poor shuttles!

He seems busy, so I warp around.  The system is otherwise empty of targets.  So I return to sit and watch.  The pilot blows up a few more shuttles.  Each one takes at least 2 minutes, and sometimes they are cancelled, or he sits in his pod for a while.  But he never does anything very interesting.

I call it a wrap on our night, and send the guys off.  We're getting nothing here.  I do my normal PI, all while sitting and watching.  The pilot seems to have wandered off; he's just sitting in his pod.  Now it's late for me, too, and I am ready to go. So I warp back to the wormhole home, cross, and log out.

What was he doing?  Only the Birdman knows.