Covert Ops and Sleepers

Covert Ops
I am sitting in my ship firing away at sleepers with a corp mate. We are doing well, we have had to control the range and make sure that we are keeping our ships moving to avoid at least some of the incoming fire. We have managed to clear the anomaly were we detected the sleeper activity. Nothing but wrecks remain.

My corp mate warps away to grab a salvaging ship while I remain behind to watch for any intruders into our area. Nothing. It is very quiet, probably too quiet. He returns in the noctis and gets to work on tractoring the wrecks and getting them salvaged. It is going well when all of a sudden a Buzzard uncloaks approximately 80 km from me.

I sound the alarm that we have hostiles in our area and knowing that he would only have uncloaked if he was here for trouble, I begin the locking sequence for my guns. They have a terrible locking time against such a small target but it is all I can do, none of my weapons nor drones will do anything until I can get a lock on him. The targeting sequence counts down and I see no reaction from the buzzard, I am a little surprised but still he will get away before I can get a lock. And even if he doesn't he is outside my optimal range.

I arm my primary cannons and prepare them to fire the instant that my systems lock. 5....4....3....2....1....Lock...1400mm Artillery Cannons Firing...Target Destroyed. I send the command to begin locking onto his pod while my cannons cycle....9....8....7...6...5...Target Lock failed, the target is no longer within targeting range.

Crap, he warped away. I have my dscan open looking for additional targets but nothing appears on my screen. My corp mate goes back to salvaging and gets the area cleared of sleeper wrecks. He is headed to the buzzard wreck when my dscan picks up a megathron, I let my corp mate know we have incoming and he warps away to safety.

I lock onto the buzzard wreck and fire another salvo to destroy anything of value that we are not able to retrieve. I continue hitting the dscan but the mega has vanished and no other ships are on scan. We return to our base and call it a good night and we both order our crews to stand down for the evening to get some rest. I believe that the buzzard pilot made a mistake and ended up with his warp carrying him into an object that destabilized his cloak without him realizing that we could see him. By the time he realized it, his ship was down.

Ranger Gama

SPGU