A Fly in the Ointment

TomyLobo> Sending your ass where you came from

I laughed in my pod as the Loki entered the wormhole, its weaponless hull showing significant armor damage. Courtesy of my torpedoes. A buddy of his had shown up briefly before, in a Paladin, but he didn’t matter, staying at his safe spot 90km away The Loki Pilot wasn’t too bad, actually, requiring me to manually pilot in order to intercept him on his Micro-Warp fueled orbits. And he had the power of backup, whereas I was on my own.

Unfortunately for him, I had long stopped caring about numbers and combat record statistics. Instead, I was out here just to annoy him.

I knew that I had been too far away from this particular wormhole to give effective chase, but I went for it nonetheless. When I emerged on the other side, the Loki vanished from my local scan. Cloaked? Warped off? I didn’t stay to find out- instead I returned to the w-space system we had come from. Because that one, I knew, had a Paladin mowing through Sleeper sites.

I was under no illusion that I could take on a Paladin by myself, but maybe my torpedoes could make the crucial difference in breaking his tank against the Sleepers? Before they turned to kill me, of course.

I would never know: he launched a flight of light drones, which would be a death sentence for my Purifier. Back to d-scan then.

Hmm… the Loki was back on scan - probably scanning out  the other exits from this Anoikis system. I ignored it - if I attacked it, it would just play the same wormhole game as before. But there were also two Ventures on d-scan… i hesitated for a moment, and then sent out my probes to scan out the nearby non-combat sites.

Please please please … Yes!

My probes got a solid hit and I warped to the site where now three Ventures were going about their business.

I was under no illusions when I went in. My single point could not hold them, my torpedoes could barely scratch them, their combined drones could kill me in an instant. but maybe I could get off by sheer alpha?

…Nope. The Ventures warped out as soon as I decloaked and sent my torpedoes racing towards my closest target. I didn’t blame them - I’d have done the same.

But it also meant that my fragile-to-begin-with cover was truly blown. I started to warp around the system randomly, only to eventually return to the gas site I had chased off the Ventures earlier. When I had left, I had spied some abandoned Tech-2 drones. which could be beneficial to my cash flow.

Bad mistake. Their Paladin pilot had downshipped into a Destroyer, and was just waiting for me to go after those drones. The encounter ended quickly.

Yet, … I claimed victory. I had managed to distract their attention for quite a while, or so I liked to think, and them eventually podding me back to k-space was actually doing me a favor - I wouldn’t have been able to find my way back otherwise.

Op Success.

…except for that damn cloning headache…