Content delivery business, Part 2

It's not over until it's over

It was time to move out. I was a bit feeling uneasy about moving with active alliance living next door to my destination system. Fortunately, connection became end of life. People are usually reluctant to use those wormholes. It was also 15 minutes left until downtime. I need to move 4 jumps out from my current staging system, so time frame should be just enough for the moving op.

I decloak my Domi fleet and start traveling. My Proteus is scouting one jump ahead. So far so good, I'm 2 jumps in and there's still 7 minutes until downtime. I jump to the next wormhole and see something strange. A Megathron is on the wormhole. Scan doesn't show anything else. I thought it might be some sort of an ambush, but it didn't feel like it. More than anything, I think this guy was either rolling wormhole or is just traveling. He was not standing still. He was actually accelerating. I did analysis in my head in a few seconds before decloaking and trying to grab him. I was too late. His ship entered warp. He must have warped to a tower, or some other wormhole that I probably don't have scanned out. With 6 minutes left, there's no way I can hunt and kill him in time. Maybe I should just let him be.

Or maybe not. I see him warp to one of my bookmarks. This particular bookmark makes it very interesting. He is warping to another wormhole, that allows only frigate sized ships through. What an opportunity! I immediately follow him. Unless he warps to 100, I should be able to catch him and he won't be able to go anywhere. There he is. He lands on top of me and I promptly tackle him. But just tackling is not enough. It's a race against time now. Servers are shutting down in less than 5 minutes.

My Domi fleet is in warp. I am not sure if they will arrive in time. Distance is not that big, but battleships warp and decelerate really slow. With combined firepower of my 3 Dominixes, I think I have a fair shot of scoring a kill. Here they land. Without big ceremony, I quickly target Megathron and unleash my Ogres. His shields and armor melts really fast. In just a minute he was almost in structure.

I guess he is not tank fit. This kill is in a bag. He should pop any second now. Any second now... something doesn't look right. His structure is going down not as fast as I would like to. With such short time left, every second feels ten times slower. I'm shooting his structure for what feels like an eternity.

Two minutes left until cluster shutdown and his structure is finally drawing it's last breath. Mega goes down. Another successful content delivery within the deadline.

That was close. A shield and hull tanked Megathron. We exchange good fight in local and I continue with my tavel. And by continue I mean enter warp just as severs shut down.