A tale of two Orcas

With the Noctis popped and looted, the pilot vanishes. He isn't a local to the system, or to any of the current wspace connections we have mapped out, his corp ticker not matching up with any of the known stations. I pop out probes and quickly eliminate the known sigs, finding a new wormhole reasonably quickly. A corp mate jumps through to scout as our little group sits cloaked just off the new k162. The tower is found, the pilot and an ally sitting in Orca industrial ships.

Our scout reports they've both warped in the direction of the hole we're sitting on the other side of. We all hold cloak as both the Orcas appear on our side of the hole then jump back through. Go go! We give chase appearing on the other side with the two whales slowly aligning away. Points are spread and we have them both, the former Noctis pilot is called primary and I actually remember to overload my guns for once. Armor melts away into structure when both ships suddenly disappear, not warp away, just vanish.

There is much confusion and raging as none of us understand what happened, I even evemail the Noctis pilot to find out, normally people are all too happy to boast about their escape and I'll take that if it means learning and adapting to counter it the next time. People wander back to our home system dejected and a little annoyed at the unexpected turn of events.

A short time later while I'm just sitting cloaked at the hole, and my corp mates are again discussing running some sites, the two Orcas appear on my overview.

"They're back, quick back to the hole"

I try to initiate warp to the hole but it doesn't take, one of the Orcas has jumped through collapsing it and leaving our buddy the Noctis pilot trapped here in his Orca. I warp to the bookmark and land right on top of him, locking and pointing him again with another corp member who stuck around as the others start rushing back. We've got him to low structure and someone calls out for us to wait so he can get on the kill, other people are calling for guns to be turned off and against my better judgement I stop shooting...

This is the bit before the low structure bit, which I forgot to screen shot, so imagine this... but with some more shooting.

A few seconds later the Orca disappears... again.

Had we all kept shooting with overloaded guns, at the rate he was dropping I have no doubt we would have killed him. At least the pilot is kind enough to respond to my message (via Evegate).

After a bit of back and forth he went on to explain that if a pilot logs off before any aggression is taken, he will disappear from space after 1 minute no matter what. I had assumed (incorrectly) from reading recent patch notes that getting shot extends the timer by 15 minutes, so logging off isn't going to save your ship any more. However by logging off while still under the jump cloak, and no bubble to aggro him there was no way for us to stop him from disappearing. Which to me seems like a bit of a strange rule, but you work with what you've got, now we know for the future.

While we waited around for a while, it was pretty obvious he wasn't going to log back in any time soon, and we decided to call it a night.

So while it wasn't a happy ending for us, we played some small part in a happy ending for others.

Now I need to find a way back to kspace, I've got some interdictor related skill books to buy.