An Ishtar in C1

It's Sunday evening.  I've been on EVE half the day, with little to show for it.  I did get in some POS fuel earlier, taking advantage of a nice connection three jumps from Jita.  And my Jita alt got his PI goods moved up and down to and from planets.  He had almost run out on all of his planets.  So that was nice.

The main highlight of the day was watching a frigate party swarm a Venture at a wormhole deep down my chain.  (Presumably they came through a small wormhole in the system, from C6.)  I blundered into this, having seen the ships on scan and gotten curious.  I looked, then warped to 70km to the wormhole they were clearly at.  As I aligned for warp, I hit a dscan and there was a freshly -fired warp disruption probe.   Augh!  Abort!  I tried to abort, but it was too late.  I warped and of course ended up about 10km from the wormhole.  But I don't think the gankers knew I was there; they were looking for other prey.   Still, when I hit grid it was only them there.  I had an alarming moment thinking they saw me on scan (which they may well have) and were gunning for me.  But they were not.  I slid back from their bubble and did not even have to warp.  So when the Vexor jumped in a few moments later, I got a good view.  Sorry, no pix.  I wasn't thinking clearly.

Anyway, now it's after dinner time.  By now the main traffic of the day will have died down.  But I still have a nice chain scanned, so it's time to head out and see what I can get.

I head down into C4b.  Nothing.  It's got several wormholes off it; by now they may or may not be there.  But if they are, I am heading in.  If they are EOL, that probably means I instantiated them earlier in the day.  So I'll look.

I look in C1a.  Nothing.  Back up, then to C2a.  The wormhole is EOL.  I head in.  Nothing.

Jayne comes on, and we get on coms and chat a bit.  I'll call him if I can find something to attack.  He logs off.

I head into C1b.  C1b is a terminal system for my chain -- since its static did not lead to more wspace, and it had a lot of sigs, I did not search it down.  I just looked for towers, which there were none of.  And targets, which there also were none of. 

But that was earlier today.  Right now, my dscan from the wormhole is promising.  There's sleeper wrecks, and an Ishtar.  Anything else?  A mobile tractor unit, as one would expect.  And Republic Fleet bouncers.  I move off the wormhole and cloak.

C1b is an anom graveyard, with perhaps 50 anoms of various kinds.  So I am not bookmarking them all.  Instead, I swing around dscan as if looking for a POS at a moon.  Quickly I narrow it to the right site, then warp in at 100km.  This is lucky, since it appears the Ishtar has finished the site and is now setting to salvaging, using salvage drones. 

Salvage drones?

Do salvage drones really work?  Maybe with top skills?  I guess they do work because he slowly cleans out the wrecks.  (He also has a normal salvager.)  He scoops his tractor and warps off.  I catch the direction and easily find the new site.  A sleeper wreck appears on scan. 

Now I text Jayne.  I want to drop on this guy, but I also want a gang.  While I wait, I warp into the sleeper anom and bookmark the target's tractor unit.  I watch him kill a few sleepers.  I start wondering if I can gank this guy without help.  But this rumination is cut short.

Having been there just a few minutes before, Jayne is back on in just a minute.  I tell him the situation, including that the target is in a C1.  This means our "normal" PVP fleet, battleships and Onyx, can't be used.  Our selection of gankfleet material that aren't battleships is meager.  (We try to limit the total value of ships at our POS.)  Anyway, we have Falcons, so Jayne grabs one for his alt.  (Not great in retrospect.)  And he uses his PVP Stratios, which is already perfect for this sort of thing, other than its costliness.

While he is making these choices, I swap my two characters.  Otto can't fly my Onyx, so he heads downchain to becomes my eyes on the target.  I head back upchain to reship.  When I get there, Jayne is ready.  I swap into Onyx.  We're already fleeted, so I fleetwarp us off. 

EVE is pretty.

Back down the chain.  C4a to C4b to C2a to C1b. 

Meanwhile, Otto watches as the target clears the site he is in.  He is now salvaging, with wrecks still being pulled in.  This is a choice point.  He's probably far more alert on dscan now, so there is some risk he'll warp.  The gank would probably be more likely to go off if we wait for his next site.  But that assumes there will be a next site; there is always the chance he'll leave after this one.  Also, I don't fancy waiting out in wspace, even in a decently strong fleet.  There's always someone bigger.  And it could be a while -- he's salvaging with drones.  So I order us in.  We'll take our chances.

We jump the wormhole, then warp to the tractor unit.  The die is cast.  Will he see dscan and warp in time?

No.  We land on grid, and I raise my warp bubble.  He can't warp, but maybe he can run.  We lock him up and get warp scramblers and a web on him.  Now he cannot outrun us either. 

Die, MTU loot thief.

We start in on him, and it is clear pretty quickly that we can break his tank and that he won't escape.  That established, we stop shooting the Ishtar and lock up the tractor unit to kill it first.  We don't want to lose any juicy loot to it.  It dies.

Almost dead.  No, you can't tell.

Now we turn back to the Ishtar and grind it down.  Boom.  The pod, squish.  I turn off my bubble.  We run around collecting drones, Jayne loots the wreck, and I grab the corpse for my personal trophy case.  Then we GTFO and head back upchain.  As Penny says, job's a good one.