He who looks, finds

While being a hunter, more often than not, I feel like a god damn prey. When I think the system is empty, I will have a random fleet out of nowhere land on the wormhole I watch.

Or stalk a nice "quiet" c4 in hopes to catch a ratting ship, only to encounter a fleet that would suck my capacitor dry before I could turn on first repair cycle.

Wormhole is full of dangers. I got two big fears when hunting. One - getting ganked by one of such random fleets while traveling, and two - getting ganked while ganking a ratter. Sitting afk on the wormholes you can see all kinds of things. I would watch fleets traveling and returning back in pods. Some would never come back. I won't lie, it can get stressful. Especially when I put 4 billion on the line, I can't be just replacing my fleet left and right. I decide it's time to take it down a notch.

Class 5 and 6 are where the big boys are playing. I never go to those wormholes as it's a small chance I will encounter anything I can kill. Class 4 is hit or miss. Can be occupied by a pvp corp or by farmers. Class 3 and 2 are just right. It might not have such lucrative targets, but the corps that usually live there are less dangerous. I settle-in in one of c2s. I am very interested in the Tengu sitting at the tower.

If I ever saw a name that deserved to be shot in the face, that would be it. Unfortunately, the Tengu does not do much. No matter, I got time.

While stalking the system for a few days, I did not see any action, despite system being kept tidy. I finally manage to nab a Brutix and was ready to call it quits, but Bob sent me a sign. The very next day I saw a ship that would change everything.

A Golem! In a class 2 wormhole. That is certainly a sight you won't see every day. It's not totally unexpected though. This particular c2 has a c4 static and that's exactly where I see the marauder warp. I warp after him at range. He jumps. I give him a head start. I don't want to try and get him on the wormhole. I prefer the anomaly, less room for error that way. Without waiting too long I jump in. The marauder is nowhere in sight. System is large so I warp around and finally spot him on d-scan.

I spin around my screen, but struggle in getting his position. Naturally, I expect to see him at one of the anomalies, but his position is not even close to any of them. Is he at a signature? Perhaps he is at some random wormhole? Fear start settling in as this might not be as straightforward gank as I'd have hoped for. Finally I start seeing some wrecks on d-scan.

I pinpoint Golem's position and without moving my screen warp out of range, launch combat probes, send them far away and warp back to position. I now see 6 small sleeper wrecks. I get a bad feeling about this. I've seen these guys mine gas as if they were addicts. Could it be that this marauder is actually clearing a gas site and not a data or relic site? No time to waste. I align my Proteus, scan the marauder in one try and warp at 10. Something I rarely do, but as I feared, it was a gas site and I might not have enough time to make a perch. Within seconds I land on grid. The Golem is just sitting there, doing nothing. No more sleepers on the field, but his velocity is a round zero. I make an instant decision and decloak.

I spam that lock, but nothing happens. Seriously, how long can that sensor re-calibration timer last? Suddenly ship disappears. What the...?  Did he warp? No, that's not possible. Did he... did he actually cloak? Thanks to my good habit of approaching my targets, I set max speed to the last direction my Proteus was going and sure enough, the Golem decloaks. It's play time!

I set the Nestor fleet in warp and keep a close eye on that Golem. The marauder goes into bastion mode, but that does not help him much. Reason I swapped out my Dominixes to Nestors was to double the neuting power. Triple, if you count refitting to extra neut instead of cloaking device, which I can do without a mobile depot. The marauder, with his dying breath, does a few shield boost cycles, then goes dead silent and quickly pops.

To be honest I expected more. While I am extremely happy with the Golem kill, I did feel disappointment not to see any faction or deadspace modules. It's a poor man's marauder. I'm not even sure how well he could deal with class 4 wormhole anomalies, but it certainly was overkill for the gas site.