Eyes on the wormhole will not save you

I've been abandoning EVE. She doesn't like to share. If you are doing stuff, you better be damn sure it will cost you most of your leisure time. How to avoid that? Don't go out. Leave a date with EVE for another day, because she will not take it kindly running in the background while you pay no attention to her.

I've been fooling around. My friend convinced me to play Battlefield 3 and I got hooked on it again. Played it for some days until I got sick of it again. Then there was The International 2015, a Dota2 tournament.  I haven't played that game in a year, but watching pro matches I couldn't help myself and wasted several days of free time on Ability Draft. I get addicted too much, too fast. Or should I say I am an addict and all I need is a little taste and I can get dragged back into it.

Meanwhile, EVE was running silently in the background or not running at all. And in return shit didn't happen. D-scan was empty, there was nothing else but ambient sound in the system. While I do advocate this afk style gameplay, you do need to put a little grain of salt in an effort if you want to find targets. Which means scanning surrounding systems, checking few jumps down the pipe every now and then. If you stay in one place you have to be extremely lucky or live in a good system that has activity guaranteed. It was neither for me so  I decided to change up.

Surprise gank

I have scanned another wormhole, with few sigs present and a corp that has few active players. Perhaps not a perfect location, but I was too lazy to look for a better one. I mean, someone has been doing those anomalies and I'm sure as heck gonna try to gank it.

Fast forward almost a week and nothing was happening. Signatures were still disappearing so something was going on, it just probably was happening when I was at work. One fateful day I log in. Nothing on scan until I warp out of my deep safe to the center of a system and see a very unusual sight.

Wrecks! And a ship! I am a bit disappointed with Damnation on scan. What a strange choice of ship to do c3 sites. I find him at the tower. I watch for a couple minutes and get puzzled. No one is salvaging wrecks and no one is in a rush to do the next site. Something is off here. I take a closer look at Damnation and see him with an active ECCM module or some shit. It feels like it is made for ganglinks, but they are useless inside the tower's forcefield. There's still nothing on d-scan. Only outer planet that is off range is where I logged in and d-scan was empty at the time. My gut says to check again, just for the heck of it.

*Click*

Cyclone? No, it's a fucking Paladin, a holy grail of pve ships. My Bob, I don't even remember last time I had encountered one. It takes me a moment to find him at the only Anomaly in range.

Just look at him. Sitting out there, in the open. I better not fuck this up. We must have passed each other in warp. It would explain why I didn't see it when logged in and when warped to another side. That is quite interesting timing, but now I have an opportunity to make my stay in this system count. There's only one problem - he is well within range of where my Navy Dominixes are logged out. I have two choices:

1. Wait for him to do another anomaly in the center of the system, outside d-scan range.
2. Grab him and log in my Domi fleet, hoping I can tank and hold him enough time.

While first choice might seem safer, I have had bad experiences before when I bet on carebear doing one more anomaly, only to have him pos up and be done for the day. No, this time I will go with option two.

I get to log-in menu of all my Domi pilots and get my Proteus into position. This is it. Log log log, decloak and tackle Paladin's ass. Fleetup my Domis, set squad commander and initiate warp. Paladin unleashed drones on me, but I got relieved when I saw they were light drones and not ecm. Soon my Domi fleet landed and got to work.

Marauder went into bastion mode and did his best to tank the incoming damage, but he was no mach for Dominix Navies with heavy neutralizers. Once cap ran out it was over pretty quick.

Not the most expensive marauder in the world, but still a worthy prey. It's pilot seemed quite surprised.

He had eyes on the only wormhole signature in the system. He was safe as he would instantly hear when someone entered and could warp away to safety. And normally that would be the case. Unfortunately for him, I am not a random day tripper. I am a hunter and I can be watching and waiting for you for days without you even realizing it.