Slipped away

I log in back to EVE. A lot of to do things are pending. Such as plex my expired accounts, add skills to train, that even with increased queue limit I still forget to keep it filled. Wormhole was empty. My c2 I've been staying at has a c4 and high-sec exits. I scan the system and check surrounding systems. I don't expect to find any action as it is early in the morning. I find some guys sitting at the tower in a clean system, but that's about it.

It's a potential system to stalk in. I see they lost a Rattlesnake earlier and absence of anomalies means they are active. After watching them for a bit, they all log out. I decide to check the high-sec connection.

High-sec has only 2 signatures and both of them are wormholes. One of them I just came through, so I quickly scan the other. There is some activity. I saw an Astero on scan, probably doing a Relic or Data site. I give it a shot and scan the site. I manage to get visual on Astero, however, he warps as soon as I make 200km bookmark. I would think he saw my probes, but that doesn't explain why he bailed after such a long time. Perhaps he saw someone else on scan? I decide to stick on the wormhole and see if anything else comes through.

After not much waiting, a Mastodon lands on the wormhole. A deep transport ship, that has +2 warp core strenght as a bonus. If he has 2 warp core stabilizers fitted, I won't be able to catch it, but at least I can try. I decloak, burn to the wormhole and wait for him to appear on my overview.

Here he is. I quickly lock him and burn for the bump. I see him trying to burn back to the wormhole, but my bump sends him the other way. I quickly warp my Domi and try to keep bumping him. I jump in the big guns, get a lock and send my drones on him.

He is just out of my scram range. I check Proteus screen to get ready for another bump. A shock goes through my body as I see my Proteus going out of scram range when I burned to wormhole. I guess Mastodon pilot changed his alignment from the wormhole. Especially since I have Stiletto now on grid and probably more reinforcements coming my way. I overheat my scram and try to burn back to range only to see transport ship warp off. He might have been aligned and keeping a close eye on scramble icon. I had many times when inexperienced pilots failed to warp out when I lost point for some seconds. This was not the case.

I see the direction he is warping and try to follow. Unfortunately, I had wormhole scanned, but have not had made bookmark of it, so I land 7km off while Mastodon lands on 0 and jumps through. Too late. I can't believe I failed so bad. I should have paid more attention and stuck on that ship instead of continuously bumping him when he was already too far away for jumping back to high-sec. Should have overheated scram on my Domi and tried to keep secondary tackle. It's very easy to see the mistakes, but it is so different when you are in the actual fight. Especially when multiboxing so many accounts. But I cut myself some slack. After all, it was my first encounter after two weeks hiatus.