On May 29, 2016 at approximately 1356 EVE Time, an Aeon belonging to Antony Koss of MATOU Alliance was destroyed in the YAP-TN system by pilots of Hard Knocks Inc. The supercarrier was originally tackled by Hard Knocks Inc. pilot Josh Tsutola.
Hard Knocks Inc. is well known for their ability to appear seemingly out of nowhere through their use of wormholes to rapidly travel around the galaxy. In this case, their reputation as a capital-killing boogeyman will certainly not suffer. Hard Knocks Inc. pilots had been making use of a wormhole in Esoteria for several hours before the kill, with pilots actively looking for carriers and other valuable targets to hunt down.
Today, those hunters were not disappointed. Hard Knocks Inc. pilot Josh Tsutola, who discovered the Aeon, was in the process of searching the YAP-TN system in Esoteria when he fortuitously warped back to the gate through which he had initially entered the system. On landing, he picked up the Aeon on his directional scanner and immediately derived that it was in a site.
Thinking quickly, Josh warped his Sabre to the site. Discovering the Aeon had just landed, he observed the supercarrier bouncing off of the site structure. He managed to get a bubble up on the Aeon before it could to reach align speed.
Two Hard Knocks Inc. Sabre pilots kept the supercarrier trapped in a bubble while a ping went up, calling for more interdictors and plenty of firepower to take down their target. According to Josh,
“After that it was just a matter of keeping him bubbled until the fleet landed. Myself and Shanq [Myteia] are quite experienced dictor pilots so we had no problems keeping him bubbled and keeping ourselves alive.”
It took about ten minutes for the reinforcements to arrive, as Hard Knock Inc.’s K162 (the wormhole exit which led to Esoteria) was nine jumps away. According to Josh, the supercarrier pilot struggled to lock the interdictors with his fighters, and eventually recalled them. A Phantasm arrived on grid at one point, but did nothing to assist his trapped ally.
Josh Tsutola stated that
“As far as super kills go it was pretty easy. [We] thought it was bait at first just because of how easy it was to catch him [and] had someone bring a ship scanner to make sure it wasn’t.” After the kill, the Hard Knocks Inc. pilots took little time to celebrate their success and quickly returned to the hunt. Their success is sure to be repeated in the future.
Special thanks to Josh Tsutola and Braxus Deninard of Hard Knocks Inc. for the information they provided.
