200m between success and failure

After all the "fun" I had last week, I finally got a chance to take my recently reconfigured Cloaky Legion out for a spin in the Low Sec pipe.

The third system turned up two wormholes. The first was a C3 and showed no signs of activity.  Upon warping into the second, I immediately saw a Legion on scan with 10-15 wrecks, and no POS in site.  Could my luck really be this good?  I had hoped for maybe a Covetor, or a Drake or two, but a ratting T3 was too good to hope for.

So I got on Comms and called in the brute squad, while I tried to pin down the site he was running.

"Do you have probes this time?" came a question on Comms, man I am never going to live that one down.

So right about the time I think I have the site he is in, the Legion warps off.  Did I decloak, did he see me?  A quick warp to 100km off the site showed that he had simply finished the site.  I quickly checked all the planets and while there was a POS, there was no sign of the pilot in any ship.  Guess he was visiting this hole.

Sure enough in a few minutes a lowly salvager showed up on scan.  I warped back to the site to watch him salvaging the wreck.  Man I hope he was not calling it a night.

I warped back to the wormhole and jumped through to provide the brute squad a warp in for the operation.  Once they were in place I jumped back into the hole and warped back to the site in time to see him finish the last few wrecks.  Soon enough he warped off and disappeared from D-Scan.  It seemed like forever, but eventually the Legion reappeared on scan.  Time to start the hunt.

The second site I tried was the right one.  I bookmarked a wreck, bounced to a planet and arrived 30km from the Legion that was burning away towards a new spawn.  I quickly bookmarked a second wreck, bounced again, and promptly landed in the middle of 4 Sleeper Frigates.  The closest was a mere 6,000m away and closing.  The Legion was almost 35km away, but closing.  I held my breath and prepared to make the best of it if the Sleepers decloaked me.

I started moving towards the Legion as the distance between me and one of the frigates continued to shrink.  5k, 4k, 3k and I was ready to mash the AB and target the legion.  Hopefully I could get within overheated disruptor range before the Legion saw me and was able to react.

The numbers kept creeping down past 2500, past 2300, to around 2200, then mercifully started to creep up again.

The Legion kept closing distance, and in a minute was at about 14km from my ship.

I commanded the Brute Squad to "Jump Jump Jump" (why is it always necessary to say it three time?)

I decloaked, hit the AB, primed the warp disruptors and guns then started to mash the target button for the agonizing delay time.

The Legion turned to warp off, but was caught.  Soon enough the Brute Squad landed and the Legion melted under the combined fire.

A nice kill.  Lucky too.  While we might have had a chance had the Sleeper decloaked me 30 to 35km off the Legion, it was much easier at 15km to execute the attack.

I scoped the nice nights work of loot and high tailed it back to Low Sec and a station.  This ended the successful maiden voyage of my Cloaky Legion.

Fly Safe,
Mick