Scanning peeps down - am for hire

Love my arazu and it's very handy to scan people down - now that I am approaching Level V in all my scan related skills.

So it was with some luck that I was scanning for signatures when I got a call from a friend of mine; he needed me to help probe out a broadsword HIC who had leapt into a hidden safe spot after drawing aggression. Then he completely shut down his system in order to hide himself. The pilot was flagged as a criminal so it was an added incentive.

Through, a combination of residual halo from his weapons' discharges and the 'painting' of his hostile ship by the gate guns with an electronic, time-limited, rapid-decay isotope meant that he was still visible to the electronic eye in a very specific energy bandwidth. Well, visible until the isotope final expired and this was about 15 minutes.

I had to roll and I switched in a recon probe launcher and undocked. I was only two jumps from where I needed to be. Arriving at the target location, I was pleased to see my wallet was flashing. Payment recieved.

I dropped a fathom probe, as it was clear the HIC was less than 10AUs from the gate that he was hanging around. Investment in good skills and technology meant that I was going to get my results in under 44 seconds; not bad in an Arazu. My scan time in the helios is almost 28 seconds but it had no combat gear. The Arazu did have and thus was much more useful.

First attempt and I had a hit with a high probability of success and zero deviation.

"Hit. Warping to target." I informed my two colleagues. They started to align towards me as I leapt into warp. The target was 8.9 AU from his last known position and patiently waiting for his flag to expire and then the background radiation will hide his ship until it powers back up. However, I had time.

The warp tunnel collapsed and I was 2 km from the broadsword, blinking red and angry in my overview. I snapped on my warp scrambler and informed my two colleagues (actually, clients since they were paying for my scanning service) and within ten seconds, a curse and hurricane had appeared alongside. The firing began but the passive tank on the broadsword was immense and it took a good few minutes before the EMP shells knocked down the shields. The armour was stripped off in under two seconds and the broadsword blew up.

Amidst the cheering and hooting the capsule of the captain automatically ejected and shot off in a random direction. He was still disconnected and probably was oblivious to the loss of his ship.

"V, can you scan the pod down?"

"Usual fee please." My wallet blinked and I dropped another, more accurate but shorter range probe.

"41 seconds to a hit."

The pod appeared in my list of results 41 seconds later and I warped to it. My two clients followed me and gleefully popped the criminal.

I had already bookmarked the wreck and came back in a salvager and cut out some very nice salvage. All in all; a nice day.