A Loki Hunt

Halloween.  The kids are gone, the Boy's abed, and now it is just me.  I am scanning down system after system, to no avail.  Maybe everyone is out trick or treating.

The 15th system I enter is a C3.  There's nothing on scan from the wormhole I enter.  I have come far enough, four systems down the chain from my home.  Also, there are a fair number of sigs in this system.  So, my plan is to fly around to make sure nobody is doing anything I can interact with, then leave.  Accordingly, I don't fire probes.  I move off the wormhole and cloak.  Then I raise the system map and warp to the inner system, some 20 AU in.

Wrecks.

Nobody is here.  The system may be completely abandoned.  But there is still a planet to check.  I warp out to the distant outer planet.  A routine dscan shows sleeper wrecks, a mobile depot, and a Loki.  Ooh.  I think I'll hang around a bit.  Perhaps I can put a trick in this guy's night.

There are two combat anoms in range, but some narrow-beam dscanning shows that the Loki and wrecks are not in either of them.  Judging by the wrecks, they are in an anom that the Loki has completed.  So, there is no way I am going to find it without combat probes.

I log off my Jita alt and log my alt Otto.  He's not in his Cheetah so I have to warp to my tower to get it.  But now he has combat probes.  (Von scans, and sees no change.  What's he doing?)  Otto sets off down the pipe to where Von is.  Four jumps.  Fairly soon accomplished.  The entire time I am watching the Loki on dscan.  I am puzzled that no wrecks disappear.  Is he not refitting into a salvaging fit?

Otto enters the system and fires combat probes at the wormhole.  He throws them out of the system.  Then he warps across the system to roughly where Von is.  Von heads out, back up the pipe.  I'll go home and get an Onyx, I think, for this job.  It's the best chance at tackle I have, that would also have a chance at killing a Loki.  (Even so, at 400 DPS it might not even break its tank.  But it's what I have.)

Otto has his probes out, and carefully narrows the location of the site down.  Once he has it down to five degrees, with the range at 2.7AU, he prepares to scan.  I am not sure if I can find the Loki with a scan at 1AU probes, but I think I can at least find the depot that way.  So, I scan and hold my breath...

100% on the depot!  I quickly hide the probes and warp to the depot at 100km.  And...

No Loki.

The Loki seems to have seen my probes.  He pulls his depot and bugs out.  I don't know what he doing all that time while Otto was coming.  Looting one wreck?

Von is a jump down the chain.  I have to decide whether to hang out, uncloaked, in alien wspace to wait.  I decide not to.  Von goes back home to sit.  Otto sits in the site, hoping that the Loki will return.  If it were me, I'd return not in the Loki but in a cheap salvaging destroyer.  So, I get out of the Onyx and into my normal stealth bomber.  If the Loki guy comes back to salvage, I'll drop on him.  It should take him plenty of time to salvage the wreck field, spread out as it is.  So I wait at home.  If he comes back in something unusual, I might choose another ship.

He does not come back.  Smart Loki.

After 15 minutes, I decide it's been long enough.  No big tricks tonight, but the Loki did leave some treats.  I want them.  I get out my own salvaging destroyer.  Down the pipe, and into the wreck field.  I deploy my mobile tractor and start to work.

Salvaging.

Nobody kills me.  I salvage the site unmolested, and get out.

Sugar rush!  Not actually much of a treat, kind of like getting hard candy.  Still, lame candy is better than no candy at all.