Hunting Bex - when your heart is not enough, Part 1

There is a lot of randomness when I choose my targets. I trust myself to Bob's guidance. I roam the w-space and try to find potential system or a target. Bob works in mysterious ways. Sometimes you barely avoid death, sometimes you are rewarded. This time, Bob sends me to a very special place. A place where I would meet one of my biggest challenges. I do a standard killboard check of one system I visit when I see the sight below.

It has a lot of kills by a pilot named Apex Bex, or just Bex, who runs a blog called Disciple of Bob. I like to read various blogs and I am especially interested in blogs about wormholes. I know Bex well. And I know he knows me. There's nothing worse than to hunt someone who knows you, your strengths, your weaknesses and how you operate. It would be so much easier to just pass this wormhole by, but I couldn't. Bob sent me here. It was a sign, especially after reading numerous failed attempts of baiting his faction smart-bombing Proteus. It was a challenge, of which I had no choice but to accept.

My first order of business was to add his whole corp and related characters to watch list. If he is on-line and watching wormhole, this hunt is over before it started. Thankfully everyone was off. I know I only have one shot at this so everything has to be perfect. I can't be seen and there has to be no trace of me. Even if I'm in space, my Dominixes absolutely can't be detected. My priority was to make a good safe spot, which proved to be difficult. Bex's tower was at the only outer planet and making safe in the middle of the system is never good idea as that's where most anoms and sites spawn. After some tries, I squeezed my safe to, what I think, was the best place. Just outside his tower and on the edge to closest planet, but still out of active high-sec connection at the time.

My second priority is to stay completely stealthy. Which means I can't kill anyone in the system as it will appear in the killboard with my name written all over it. Which is a problem, because, of course, you will have random tourists visiting your wormhole from high-sec.

How I can resist not trying to grab this Helios? That's right, I can't.

I am with dilemma. I either take opportunity kills in the system and get my cover blown or I ignore all potential targets and wait for Bex to log in, which might be a very long time. First of all, our timezones do not mach. Then I might never get an opportunity to gank his ship as it takes him split second to kill frigates and warp away. I would have to baby sit EVE full day, which I won't do. One thing is clear though, if that Helios dies, my cover is gone. I try something I haven't done for a very long time in wormholes - ransom.

I go for it. What do I have to lose?

The conversation was going slowly. It seems I always run into non-english speaking Russians. I try to be as clear as possible with my demands. Surprisingly...

I get my wallet flash and see a 50mil deposit. Well, that went better than expected. Of course, I let him go.

50 mil richer I start second phase of my plan.

To be continued...