We Gank a Hulk

It's evening, and that means EVE.  I log in, and things look nice in my system.  No incident wormholes, and our static is almost certainly uninstantiated.  We're zipped up and ready for action.  Not much to do though, just a barracks and some gas sucking.  That's OK.  I suck gas while waiting for corp to arrive.  Jayne shows; our alts and mains clean out the gas lickety-split. Then Timmay arrives, so we turn to the barracks.  That too falls rapidly.

It's still early, and now it is time to hunt.  What will C3a hold?  We must find out.  I get into Artemis, my cloakly Tengu, and launch probes.  I resolve it; then warp to it.  Jayne is already there in his Hound.  We dive into the wormhole.

On the other side, the view is clear from the wormhole.  There are six sigs and one ore anom.  I remember to bookmark the wormhole, then start warping around the system to see if there are any wrecks or obvious targets.  Unfortunately it is a large system and it will take three warps to see it all.  So: where I am, nobody, no tower.  Outer planet right: nothing.  Outer planet left: nothing.  Inner system: Hulk.  Aroo!  But probably at a tower though.  I dscan to find the tower.  I find the tower.

Hulk not at tower.  Hulk smash!

There is that one ore anom, so that's the obvious place for it.  And it is.  I announce on coms; Jayne tells Timmay to get in his bomber and come in.  I warp to the anom at 100.  There it is: a Hulk about 150km from me.  I make a perch for the guys, then I zoom out my view so I can see where stuff is.  There is a monster asteroid sitting 170km from me in the right direction.  I zoom back in and check the line; it appears to be clear.  So I warp in at 30, arriving at 15000m from the Hulk.  Strangely, it is neither mining nor moving.  Just sitting there.  Hmm.  I start towards it.

Meanwhile Tim is crossing the wormhole, and getting ready to warp.  I tell the guys to warp to me, since I am close enough for their warp disruptors.  I am at 10000km.

Is this an ambush?  The use of a Hulk says no: it's too expensive for bait.  It's just a clueless player.  But who uses a Hulk to mine solo?  It's ludicrous.  It seems too clueless.

Suddenly the Hulk moves.  I think the pilot has seen something on dscan (though in retrospect I am not sure what).  Or perhaps he noted the new signature from our wormhole via the evil magic of the discover scanner.  In any case, I think he is aligning.  I had been going to wait for the stealth bombers, because they are cheap and Artemis is not.  But now there's no time to wait.

I uncloak, and head at the Hulk.  I am slightly out of range of my scrambler right now, but I will have the range in a few seconds.  I start trying for the lock.  My decloak timer expires and I start locking.  I get the warp scrambler active, then the assault missiles.  Seconds pass, and I lock the Hulk.  My assault missiles start up.  Jayne has also uncloaked and locked him, so things go very fast.  (Timmay also got in on it, though I did not notice that.)

Boom, Hulk down.  Now we go for the pod, and surprisingly, lock that too.  (Timmay has a sebo.)  Pop.  We get our first pod as a small gang.

The verdict is now in: no trap, just clueless.  I swoop in and loot the wreck, getting 16m in various mining crystals, a strip miner, and other stuff.  Then I move away, cloak, and warp off to fire probes.  We look at the killmail: ugh.  An awful fit.

With the excitement over, I scan down the system.  There is one gas site.  Five of the six signatures are wormholes.  Ours, an EOL C4, two nullsec, the lowsec static.  Yo Ingvar, if you're reading this: before doing anything like that again, zip it up.

With no sites to run, and the evening yet young, we pop the wormhole to try again.