Paranoia

Sometimes you can encounter weird situations in w-space. With no local and no eyes down the pipe, one can get very paranoid, therefore a tinfoil hat is recommended while piloting in the unknown. I logged in and started scanning the system when I heard a jump sound. I saw an Astero jump from one of the wormhole connections and warp to low-sec. Then another jump sound and Mastodon, a Minmatar deep space transport ship, suddenly appeared. Damn, I only have my tackle Proteus on. It's so unexpected and while it looks like a potential target, it may have some warp core stabilizers fitted, so I am not sure if I should even try to get him. Perhaps I should lay low and pretend system is empty. That's exactly what I do, but transport ship doesn't warp away. It just continues to move to no particular direction while Astero returns from low-sec and lands on the wormhole. They are both from the same corp.

This is very strange and to be honest, I am struggling to understand this behavior. If he would be afk, his ship would just sit and not move. If he would warp and went afk, it would land on other wh and stand still. Instead, he just moves to direction, not even aligned to anything as far as I can tell. If I didn't know any better, I would say this smells awful lot like a bait. I had encountered deep transport ships before that had scram fitted. This would be a perfect trap, luring target far away without possibility to make escape by jumping through the wormhole.

But who would they be baiting? I have logged only some minutes ago, in a deep safe. There's small chance my ship has been spotted and close to zero chance they knew the pilot (unless they saw Proteus on d-scan when I logged in, checked system's kills and made a guess it was me, by doing analysis of ships I bring and creating bait based on educated guess, and fleet waiting on other side, ready to kill me, all this in a few minutes since my log on.. oh my god, I need my tinfoil hat).

I check their killboard and conclude that this being a bait is a very small chance. I decide to go for it. I quickly log in my Domi fleet and burn at Mastodon at full speed and tackle him at 40km off the wormhole. That's a long distance to cover by going 200m/s. Bob doesn't approve such negligence and if he doesn't have warp core stabs in lows, he is about to pay the price.

Well, what do you know. No blob is jumping through the wormhole and no rescue ships on d-scan. Mastodon pilot woke up and changed his course back to the wormhole. That's very optimistic if you asked me. In his place, I would eject and at least try to get pod to safety in case there's an interdictor on the way. Meanwhile, my Domi fleet lands and I unleash everything I have on the transport ship. It goes poof.

Looks like it was a shopping run, sadly without any blue loot to sell. A kill is a kill and every ship is equal in the eyes of Bob.