Vengeance v Kestrel

The hunt:

The previous day I had tried to scan down a number of mission runners, but without any success. When I landed, they were simply too far from the accelleration gate for me to catch them, and they warped out.

On a couple of occassions, though, I contacted the mission runner and offered to let them finish their mission - for a price. Nobody took me up on my offer, sadly.

However, this did mean that I had paid at least some small attention to the names of the mission runners, so when I saw one of them back in the system the following day, I knew at once that they were probably running another mission.

As per my usual practice, I tried to get a pretty good fix on where they were using my Dscan before I went for my scanning ship, and I began to get this eriee sense of deja vu. Wasn't this pretty much the same place that they had been missioning yesterday?

On a hunch, I aligned to the old bookmark I had made when I scanned them down the day before. Using my ships heading as a guide, I conducted a narrow beam scan, and sure enough, there he was!

Still not quite believeing, I warped to the old mission site, and was greeted by an accelleration gate. I activated it, and landed right on top of a Kestrel.

I pointed and webbed him before opening fire. As he had aggro from the mission rats it did not take me very long to destroy his ship.

2011.07.04 19:24:00

Victim: Constable Bond
Corp: State Protectorate
Alliance: NONE
Faction: Caldari State
Destroyed: Kestrel
System: Hevrice
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 3511

Involved parties:

Name: Taurean Eltanin (laid the final blow)
Security: -8.2
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Vengeance
Weapon: Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket
Damage Done: 496

Name: Coreli Defender / Serpentis
Damage Done: 3015

Destroyed items:

Ballistic Control System I
Cap Recharger I
'Malkuth' Standard Missile Launcher I
Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 39
Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 663 (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Heat Dissipation Amplifier I
Power Diagnostic System I
'Malkuth' Standard Missile Launcher I, Qty: 3
Small Shield Booster II
Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 117

I also managed to capture his pod, so I offered him one opportunity to buy his implants. He offered me half a million, but I preferred the killmail, so I sent him on his way.


Afterthoughts:

Clearly, there is a lesson here for mission runners: once your mission is compromised, it is compromised forever. Better just to get a new one.

That aside, there was not much in the way of a fight here. The Kestrel was at about 30% shields when I got there, so most of the work had already been done. It did vindicate the time I spent trying to scan down mission runners, though.