Things ISK can't buy

Well.

This evening had definitely not gone as planned.

All I had wanted to do was staging a few ships Next Door, when on the last trip I noticed a neutral Hurricane on d-scan. And having nothing else to do, I’d thought I hop into my trusty Purifier and see how close I’d get to the Hurricane’s location before he’d smarten up to me.

Feeling unusually social, I chatted away on Alliance comms while diddling away with d-scan angles and distances, when suddenly I found myself in a fleet with three Alliance members lusting for pod juice, and asking if I could given them a warp-in.

Dudes, I had just narrowed down his likely location to a Cosmic Anomaly, let me warp there first to take a look!

The Hurricane indeed had been in that anomaly, blissfully unaware of the storm clouds on the other side of the system gate. As I had warped in at distance, I bid my fellow Allies members for patience: let him trigger the next wave first.

Once the next rat wave arrived, I bookmarked one of the wrecks near the Hurricane and bounced off a safe spot to get close to him. It was a gamble, as there were a decent number of wrecks, dust clouds and asteroids just salivating to uncloak me.

The fleet boss had asked to give notice once I got to within 10 klicks of the target - I thought of doing better by putting the target between me and the gate, but in the hurry of the moment failed to do so. Plan B then had been to sneak up on to the Hurricane to give my fleet a warp-in at their optimals, but the playing out its superior speed, the Hurricane actually pulled away from me.

Not that it mattered: having heard my 10km announcement, the fleet had entered a system. First on the grid was the Oracle, throwing out point and laser fire at the hapless Hurricane. The others followed soon after, and I dropped my cloak and settled into a tight orbit to lob a few torpedoes of my own - our diplomats liked to show off a positive kill statistic. ... or at least two kills in a year.

The execution - it could hardly be called a fight - was not much to brag about, as the Hurricane didn’t stand a chance. However, the happy feeling I took away from knowing that I didn’t fully mess up the scouting...

...that was priceless.