Thirty Seconds Over Aurohunen

I logged on last night and found a damn carebear convention in my home system. I started grinning from ear to ear, jumped into my assault frigate and headed for the nearest belt.

I would normally begin the hunt by scanning the belts for a victim but, in this case, the victims did the work for me. Two of them in Badgers were happily mining away while a friend of theirs’ guarded them in a Rifter. To pass the time they were chatting in local about their ships, the asteroids, what belt they were in, etcetera.

I was wishing for a covert ops so I could be sure to jump right on top of them but, lacking those skills, I warped to the belt and hoped for the best. I landed 45k from the nearest one, clicked approach and turned on the AB. I was 9k away and priming my scrambler when the first warped out, followed closely by the other two.

Bah.

I jumped back to my central scanning spot and immediately found a Caracal NPCing in the next belt over. I jumped in 12k from my target.

I scrambled the Caracal and fired up the blasters, 30 seconds later I had reduced it to a can and a pod. I locked the pod and considered a ransom but he was only a month old and I had just blown up his shiny new cruiser, so I let him go.

As I’m collecting the loot he convos me asks me to give back his 4 launchers that survived the explosion. I said no so he offers me 1 million.

I flew to a planet to wait off my criminal flag and savor that sweetest of plums, selling a victim’s stuff back to them.

I flew to the station he was in and opened a trade. He puts up 800k and says that’s all he has. I pull back the launchers and wish him luck when, all-of-a-sudden, it turns out he has 1 million after all.

Not much money, but it’s just enough for a war declaration, perhaps it’s time to try that out.......

-Jocindus.