A Scout Gank

The weekend.  I am in EVE doing various small chores.  I have some PI to rearrange slightly.  My Jita alt does a bit of PI, but then wants to leave wspace.  He's in blockade runner, and there is sleeper loot to go out. 

A check of the timing on bookmarks shows that the way out from last night -- C4a - C4b - C2a - hs -- should still be there.  However, you can never be sure about wspace.  I am pretty sure, but not absolutely, that we opened our own static.  Then I am less sure of the next wormhole, and I have no idea what the timing of the highsec wormhole is, other than that last night it was not EOL.  I may have to probe out a new static. 

Rather than running the pipe unseen with my Jita alt (though it would likely be safe), I get Von in his trusty Manticore.  He will scout the pipe.  Not only is the Manticore cheap if I get jumped, but it has probes.  And also weapons; maybe I will find someone to gank.

Our static is still around, wobbling along in its EOL state.  As expected.  I jump in C4b, and dscan.  Just a tower; no ships.  The tower appears to be Russian-owned, from the Cyrillic in the labels of various modules.  I warp across to the C4b/C2a wormhole.  It also is EOL, which is pretty good evidence that we opened it, meaning it will be safe to use.  I jump to C2a.  Again, a dscan shows no ships.  OK, fine.  I head back up the pipe.

There are a few more things for my Jita alt to do.  Then he grabs all the blue loot and salvage from our loot can, and tops off his cargo with Hedbergite.  Then out he goes.  As he enters C4a, I dscan as usual.  There is something new: a Venture and a Mammoth on scan.  Hmm.  I get him out without incident, and head to Amarr.

The Venture has piqued my curiousity.  I doubt he's gas mining; probably just at the POS.  Still, you never know.  Just as I am crossing into C4b in my Manticore, Jayne logs in.  He asks what's up as I am searching for the POS.  (Should have located it last night, but didn't.)  I inform him of the situation: our wormhole has 1-2 hours left, but the Russians next door might be huntable.  Now they have 2 Imicuses and the Mammoth.  We get on coms.  He gets in his Hound.  I tell him to wait on our side until I figure out what's up.

I find the tower, and warp to the moon.  One Imicus has disappeared.  I land within 100km, and move a bit close to make sure I can look at stuff if I need to.  The Imicus I can see turns into an Iteron V.

I am hoping someone wants to do PI.  So we wait.  The Itty V turns back into an Imicus.  Neither ship moves.  After a while, Jayne reports wormhole noise.  It's the missing Imicus, which entered our system via our static.  I tell Jayne to go for it; we know there is no backup.  I am about to fly to the other end of our static in this system, when the Mammoth changes into Iteron V.  I figure the enemy scout will evade Jayne, so I stay at the POS, hoping this guy is going to do PI.

Getaway

Jayne attacks.  A stealth bomber is not the ideal ship to attack a frigate in, but it can certainly kill one if the frigate pilot is not very alert.  This one gets locked up, and hit with a round of torps.  But just before he would have been killed, he jumps back.  Jayne reports this to me.  He jumped back.  Attack!  Uh... I'm not there.  Now I regret staying at the tower.  The enemy will escape unless he fails to warp immediately.  Still, I warp to the wormhole. Might get lucky.

I am dscanning as I fly there.  No Imicus.  Evidently he has not warped.  I land, and the wormhole uncloaks me.  I turn on my sensor booster, and orbit the hole at 500m.  Then I dscan and wait.  I am visible on dscan, so I have to be careful.  Dscan.  Dscan... safe.  Hmm.  Maybe I am too late.  It is possible the guy already moved off and cloaked. 

Nope.  There is the Imicus, exactly 8000m from me.  He has not gotten himself safe.  I immediately head at him, and start locking him.  I get my systems active.  The lock completes; my systems open up.  My torps kill him in one volley.  (Jayne's torps must have removed his shields at least.  But evidently the wormhole jump removed Jayne's damage from the killmail.)  Now I go for the pod, same drill.  Lock, get weapons active, and... got him.  Boom.  Corpse.

Good loot -- for an Imicus

A quick dscan shows there is nothing coming, at least nothing uncloaked.  The same two ships are present, so I am pretty sure nothing is coming.  Still, haste is always prudent.  I loot the wreck (the loot fairy is nice today), and scoop the corpse, then move off a bit to see if they'll send over anything else.

They don't.  After about 30 minutes sitting (as I fly to Amarr, sell stuff, then fly to Jita with my alt on the second screen),  I give up.  My wormhole can potentially start closing in about 30 minutes.  I want to be on the other side soon enough.

Yo, scout dude: don't loiter on wormholes when you are escaping from known enemies.  Jayne could have killed you just as easily as I did.

Also: inertial stabilizers are considered harmful. They are fundamentally flawed components that few fits, if any, should ever use.  This is because ships that rely on align time to get away from danger are also relying on small signature.  Stabs decrease your align time, which is good.  But they also increase your sig, which is bad.  The one effect cancels the other, at least partially.  Use nanofibers instead.  They don't speed your alignment quite as much.  But they also don't balloon your signature.