Piracy pays
3rd June 2010 – 7.25 pmI'll take a look around our neighbourhood. I explored earlier and have bookmarks for all the wormholes I found, plus one I missed, and a few sites of interest. My first stop is the class 3 w-space system that is connecting in to us. There is a piloted Kestrel frigate in the shields of the tower here, but he is not active. I leave the system and pass back through the home system to jump through our static connection. The C4 is empty. The C2 that connects in to the C4 is quiet too, no one wanting to talk to me this time. The high-sec exit there has gone but as it is a static connection, and the system is devoid of any other signatures, it is easy enough to scan the new exit.
My day becomes interesting when I head back through the C4 and in to the C3, as there is a Retriever, mining drones, and a jet-can visible on d-scan. I have a target. I also have the gravimetric site bookmarked from earlier, which makes getting an accurate position on the miner without giving away my own position much easier. This is why I like to scan in advance if I have time. Warping in to the site shows the miner to be alone and I bookmark the can he handily jettisoned to be a marker for ambushes. I also have a colleague to share in this piracy, which always makes it sweeter. He gets in a Lachesis recon ship, I get back to our tower to change in to Butterscotch Delight, my third Onyx heavy interdictor, and we warp out.
The plan this time is to blow up the ship and ransom the miner's pod. That way we get a kill and some iskies out of our mischief, and is perfectly achievable with the heavy interdictor's bubble. Sadly, this plan looks like it is going to fail, when returning to the C3 shows the Retriever missing from d-scan. His can is still visible, though, and my optimism makes me think that perhaps he will warp right back in to the gravimetric site with a hauler to collect his hard-mined ore. I warp the two of us next to the jet-can anyway, hoping the miner will indeed return. We sit there for a minute, the site out of d-scan range of the occupants' tower, and wonder what is happening. No one warps in.
Maybe the miner caught a quick glimpse of my Buzzard and warped out, returning in a cloaked ship to see what threats arrive, if any. It seems unlikely. Never the less, there is a hefty jet-can of ore sitting here waiting to be claimed. I can pilot the corporation's Bustard, capable of hauling all of the ore in one trip, whilst my colleague cannot, so I volunteer to get the transport ship if he sits and waits, looking menacing. I am clearly still hoping the miner returns, though, because before I warp away from the tower in the Bustard I fit a web module in a spare mid-slot, so that I can still get myself on the kill-mail if the opportunity arises.
'He's come back.' Oh, goody! Point him and hold him until I get there, would you? My colleague has no problem doing this, if only because he wants to get iskies from a ransom. Without the Onyx's bubble to guarantee to trap the pod my colleague is now attempting to get a ransom for the miner's Retriever. Meanwhile, I am jumping back in to the system in a rather benign Bustard. I warp to the jet-can again, and target and web the Retriever. I get within range of opening the jet-can and proceed with the plan of stealing all the ore anyway. I came all this way in the Bustard I may as well make use of it, but it must be disheartening for the miner to see his ore being taken just as he is negotiating to save his ship and pod.
My colleague is successful in extorting the miner. He gets a sixty million ISK ransom for the ship, which we split between us. As soon as the ISK is deposited in my colleague's account we break off the engagement and warp out of the site, letting the Retriever pilot do the same. We safely get back to our tower, where I drop off almost twenty thousand cubic metres of crokite ore. It's another successful session of lazy mining, now with added profit. I ask my colleague how he finally was able to convince the miner to pay the ransom, as apparently the pilot was concerned that he'd pay and get shot anyway. 'I told him that his ship is only worth one point on the kill-board.'
3 Responses to “Piracy pays”
Lovely story.
It had never occurred to me that gankers might pre-scan down the sites then hunt me in scannable sites without displaying probes. That's sneaky.
Yeah, I'm crafty like that. But you're probably safe. Take your Hulk out, you'll be fine.
Heh, given our vast experience, overwhelming professionalism and precision execution, you had better just scan down your sites and call us when you are ready to have us come and ransom you.
Sheesh, we're becoming the Python Wormhole Cartel....