Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Dear Marlenus. What a time I’ve had! After tonight’s adventure, I knew you’d want another postcard.

I remember fondly the Ironfleet forays into the wormholes with The Empress and on TEARS ops. But, since I’ve been down in 0.0, I just haven’t seen very many wormholes at all. And the few I have found, didn’t lead to anywhere interesting.

Until tonight. One jump out of my “home” in 0.0, I found a wormhole leading into unknown space. As I was in a covert ops ship, I jumped on in and warped around a bit, checking for locals on my directional scanner.

It quickly developed that the system contained one armed POS and had two ships in space — a Retriever mining barge flying T1 mining drones, and a hauler. So I went to a distant location, uncloaked, dropped combat probes, recloaked, positioned the probes very carefully, and did my best “speedy probe” evolution. Just as soon as I had a warp-in on the mining barge, I pulled the combat probes back in, then warped at 100 to see what was what.

And there they were, merrily mining Arkanor from the Retriever into the hauler, via a transfer jet can. There was *nobody* else visible on directional scan, but of course there might be other cloakers like myself.

So, back “home” I went (2 jumps) for a combat ship. Normally I would have recruited some other guys from the alliance, but everybody else in local was vigorously engaged in a long-running and futile-seeming effort to bait and trap a cloaky Vagabond that’s been hanging out in “our” system. So, I didn’t want to try and pull them away for a wormhole mission that won’t advance our local military interests.

Instead, I decided to jump in my trusty Sabre light interdictor, which I’ve trained on for years but never actually flown much. (I did lose one shortly after getting to 0.0, in the process of which learning that I don’t know how to use them properly in fleets. So, my other two have been gathering hangar dust.)

My reasoning is that I could hit the wormhole, warp directly to the barge/hauler pair, pop a bubble, and with a bit of luck maybe even get two kills. And (I hoped) if I could pod the hauler pilot clear out of the wormhole, I might even get a chance to sneak back in later and salvage some of the yummy Arkanor they were mining.

Like any military plan, it did not survive contact with the enemy intact. Here’s how it actually went down:

I hit the worm hole and warped right to my Retriever bookmark. Unfortunately, he must have been alert (or lucky) with his d-scanning, because by the time I got there, the Retriever was gone. (I know he left in a hurry because his mining drones were still there.) So, I popped the bubble and engaged the hauler.

Weird, it’s some Amarr hauler I’ve never seen before. Impel? Which one is the Impel?

And right about then I noticed, this Impel is isn’t dying as fast as I’d hoped. In fact, it’s pretty crunchy. Did I really catch me a Transport?

Turns out, I did, a genuine no-shit Deep Space Transport kill:

2009.09.12 02:18:00

Victim: Hauling Styx
Corp: Division of Dying Stars
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Impel
System: J151516
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 6441

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 2.0
Corp: Steel Fleet
Alliance: Ocularis Inferno
Faction: NONE
Ship: Sabre
Weapon: 250mm Light ‘Scout’ Artillery I
Damage Done: 6441

Destroyed items:

Medium Cargohold Optimization I, Qty: 2
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 5

Dropped items:

Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Arkonor, Qty: 1503 (Cargo)

He died well. No bribe attempts or blubbering. But of course, I had to pod him anyway, just in case he had a spare hauler lurking in that POS:

2009.09.12 02:20:00

Victim: Hauling Styx
Corp: Division of Dying Stars
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Capsule
System: J151516
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 407

Involved parties:

Name: Jim Bridger (laid the final blow)
Security: 2.0
Corp: Steel Fleet
Alliance: Ocularis Inferno
Faction: NONE
Ship: Sabre
Weapon: 250mm Light ‘Scout’ Artillery I
Damage Done: 407

So then I spent the next little while chortling as I hauled 1504 units of Arkanor (3 trips in my Prowler blockade runner) home to my hangar. (With my refine skills at the local station that’s roughly 2000 Megacyte and 1000 Zydrine — quality salvaging in anybody’s book!) The Retriever pilot was briefly on scan in a Heron, but I never encountered him again.

Wish you were here!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Salvage Notes, Today In Ironfleet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.