A technical and factual tale of driving a battle uber. Disclaimer: Not the Dutch DJ. Deciding to test if the NPC gunner I abducted was willing to shoot for me, I began a search for a low level bounty. Immediately a $1000 taxi ride was requested from some point in space to Paradise Cove. The first thing of note was that since the pick-up point wasn't a common location - the nav computer in my stolen NPC cutty black wasn't routing. I had to manually transit toward a moon before a routable path to the next system was available. [31mkm to pick up] Aside from the destination being suspicious, the first thing to tip me off that this might be no straightforward fare was the fact that the target was 665.8 km from the nearest orbital marker. And immediately between the OM and the target was a cloud of NPC enemies which were immediately on sensor range. At least 5 enemies. This is determined immediately after asking the pax what their situation was, and they replied 'just chillin in space'. I engaged the mob of ships and got them to chase me away from the target so I could circle back. Doing so cost me 2 nose weapons and one of my front pylons. Did a hot pickup with enemies just out of targeting range. At this point I had used all of my noise chaff and too much of my missile decoy chaff for comfort. Due to the obvious additional danger not disclosed in the $1000 contract, I shrewdly negotiated an additional $225 auec from the passenger. Then it was the jump-abort trip to Paradise Cove. Immediately upon entering the vicinity another enemy engaged us. An attempt to make enough distance between ourselves and the enemy in order to do a hot-drop did not work out, and we exploded at the drop point. It is unclear if we collided with the planet or if we were shot down, as I was attempting to visually confirm the doors had opened at the time. What I was able to confirm visually was multiple bodies careening to the planet and another explosion shortly behind us. Having delivered the passenger within the legal boundaries of the contract I requested my payment which was promptly received. tldr; Something sketchy about Paradise Cove.