Poking death with a stick, Part 1

First blood

It was getting annoying. Since I've bought Nestors to replace my triple Domi setup, I did not have any chances to properly test them. I've been living in one of c4s, hoping to catch a farming Marauder or some other shiny ship, capable of clearing c4 anomalies. Of course system would be empty for the most part and when it wouldn't, I would see locals bring Guardians and Armageddons with other ships, basically a normal pvp fleet, to a fight somewhere. So I either have to sit out fleet fights or watch d-scan in a totally empty system. I was really puzzled why during my stalking there would not be any "calm" days, when corp does not yet have full fleet logged in, but only a few guys, who would run those anomalies for a quick ISK. I know they like to run them as I came to an empty system several days ago and since then only had few anomalies present. Oh well, I guess you can't always have things go the way you want. I decide to scout and search for a new home. Being a witness of how current corp I stalk can field a proper fleet, I might end up dead even if I get a shot at a Marauder in an anomaly. Last thing I want is to die before actually killing anything.

Luck would have it I get a connection to a promising c3 static. At first it looks like an abandoned wormhole, but I manage to find a lone tower sitting, with no defenses. Inside the tower there is a single pilot. I watch him swap a Rattlesnake to an Occator and do so some errands. While he is not yet doing sites, I am happy to see some activity.

Even if I don't get him today, I am confident I found my new home. This Rattlesnake will go down sooner or later. And it turns out it will be sooner rather than later as I watch him accelerate and warp to an anomaly. I follow him and with shaky hands align my Nestor fleet. This is it, the moment I've been so eagerly waiting for. I pre-warp Nestor fleet, grab the faction battleship, turn on neuts  with secondary points and get ready for some killing. I even manage to lock and focus MTU first, just in case that Rattlesnake has some goodies inside.

Operation goes very smoothly. Big advantage of my Nestors is that I got twice the number of heavy neutralizers now. Each Nestor carries 2 heavy neuts, with possibility to refit to a third. In this case it's not needed as Rattlesnake gets sucked dry and explodes in a short manner.

My first kill with the new doctrine and it couldn't have went any better. I was surprised how fast it went down as it was mostly passive shield fit. Last time I had such Rattlesnake I couldn't break it, but I guess leaving no cap to run those shield resist modules made all the difference. Since everything went so well, I decide to stick around and stay for another few days. Maybe I will get lucky enough and score a second Rattlesnake kill. C3 is with high-sec static, so it should be very easy to replace it.

Calling it quits is not in the dictionary

Next day I log in. As usual I check if there are any active ships on d-scan and proceed scanning the system for unresolved sigs if there aren't any. Without the watch-list this is the best I can do. I rely a lot on luck right now to stay unnoticed. This time it looks like I just missed the farming. I find two Gilas at the tower. Oh boy. Things are finally looking up after long ganking hiatus.

But something did not feel right. Gilas were just sitting at the tower and doing nothing. No salvager, no resuming to farming another site or anything. Constant check of d-scan reveals something interesting.

An unidentified Stratios in the area! He disappears before I can even get an approximate position. Suddenly situation became much more clear why locals ceased their farming activities. And since there are hostiles, I might as well map the new signatures in the system. Nobody will give a shit about scanner probes now.

The things were getting more interesting as time was passing by. All of a sudden I have a Vargur with two Rattlesnakes land and start shooting the defenseless tower! Holy crap.

I do a backgound research of the corp and get some doubts if it's something I should take on. Two Rattles and a Vargur I should be able to kill, but if there are more ships around, I could be warping to my death. Since this wormhole have a high-sec static I decide to see where the connection leads and maybe get reinforcements from the Wormhole PVP channel. However, upon landing I am greeted by a heavy interdictor sitting in a bubble.

To be continued...