Golden Retriever

This report is thanks to our fearless leader (or is it former fearless leader?  or is it our fearless former leader?) Miura Bull - without him, it wouldn't have happened.

I looked at MB's recent kills and noticed that he was doing well in a small low sec pocket of space.  I had a jump clone in Solitude and knew that there were a couple similar spots there - so I decided to try my luck.  I loaded up a rifter and headed to Sarline - the first of three low sec systems isolated from the rest of low sec by a bunch of high sec systems.

A quick scan noted both a retriever and a procurer somewhere in the system.  I assumed that they would be docked up in a POS somewhere or would flee when one of them shouted, "OMG! Rifter on scan!"  But just for form's sake, I flew to a safe spot and scanned around.  They were both in an asteroid belt.

Being a bit unacquainted with mining ships (and remembering that one of them had recently been buffed into a tough ship) I asked in the R1FTA channel which was tougher - a retriever or a procurer.  It turned out that the procurer is the tougher of the two.  So I turned everything up to 11 and made for the asteroid belt aiming to attack the retriever.

I had little hope of success.  For several reasons...

1. I was a negative security status member of the Black Rebel Rifter Club - surely they would be alert to the danger when they saw me arrive in the local channel
2. My rifter had been in Sarline and on their scanners for probably 4 or 5 minutes while I was chatting with my R1FTA mates about the procurer/retriever decision.
3. When I landed I would have to be close enough to scramble their warp engines before they fled.
4. These things usually just don't work out for me...

But, in this case everything worked.  I landed about 30k away and hit the overheated afterburners to head for the retriever.  The procurer fled, but the retriever didn't.  I webbed and scrambled him and started pounding him with my autocannons and missile launcher as I orbited close.  Part way through I remembered to turn off the heat on the web and scram and afterburner.  

As the retriever was going into structure I noticed that my warp scrambler had burned out (gotta remember to turn off the heat sooner...).  I figured that he would soon just warp away, but even there I was lucky and he didn't.  Instead he blew up in a fireball of destruction.  \o/

I made a grab for his pod and started pummeling it, but in typical Jack Dancer fashion I failed to orbit the pod and instead was flying off into space in a random direction - soon far enough away that my weapons were out of range.  His pod was damaged, but still had some structural integrity.  Eventually, before I could turn around and get close to him, he warped to safety.

My guess is that he was afk mining.

I headed in to grab any loot from the wreck (including golden omber), but not surprisingly a friend of the retriever pilot showed up in a rifter killer cruiser.  I warped to a safespot to wait out the GCC.

Sab Than Jouhinen (the unfortunate retriever pilot) and I chatted a bit (He seemed keen on having me fight him again "like a man" in the system filled with half a dozen of his friends...) then it was time for me to wrap things up for the night.  The cats needed to be fed...

Death to Flying Things score: 18-45-1 (there are a couple new losses in there due to misadventures related to a thrasher...)