Bubbles and birds

At last, there is something to shoot. Another scout through the neighbouring systems shows the strategic cruisers have gone, replaced by some small warp bubbles. That's a neat trick. Fin and I launch our Manticore stealth bomber squad and ostentatiously waste some faction torpedoes clearing the bubbles away from the high-sec exit wormhole in the class 1 w-space system. Even with a pair of target painters lighting them up, our torpedoes struggle to inflict much damage on the small bubbles. But we destroy all three of them, enjoying the explosions and vandalism of it all.

Being stealthy, we lurk in the system to monitor any activity. There seem to be some ship movements occuring at the tower in the C1, looking like more trips will be made to high-sec and, one imagines, back again. With Fin keeping track of what is coming in and out I head back to our tower to swap in to my Onyx heavy interdictor, fitted with a cloak for improved lurking. Once back in the C1 and sitting quietly on the wormhole, Fin returns to the tower to get her Nighthawk fleet command ship to add some firepower. I plan to keep my Onyx cloaked to see if any ships coming in try to run away from Fin's Nighthawk. If they jump back through the wormhole then there is nothing I could have done, but if they try to run I can decloak and activate my HIC's bubble to snare them, hopefully causing them to panic and make a mistake.

Before Fin returns, a Heron warps to the wormhole. It drops a new, medium warp bubble on the wormhole before jumping through to high-sec. I watch, cloaked, and relay the information. I'm not sure why they want to restrict their own movements through the wormhole, but they clearly miss the bubbles we recently shot. And then the wormhole flares again, a ship entering from the other side. It is a different Heron, quickly followed by the bubble-dropping Heron. Oh, excellent, that makes the second one polarised. I drop my cloak and activate my bubble, impatiently waiting for the sensor calibration delay from the cloak to wear off so I can target the two frigates.

One Heron knows what he is doing and simply moves away and cloaks. My systems cannot lock and I can't move quickly enough to try to bump in to him to drop his cloak. The second Heron is not so quick, my systems locking on to his ship. I open fire and move towards him, to try to keep the faster ship within my bubble and prevent him warping, and his frigate pops without him escaping the bubble. Sadly, his ship explodes a moment before Fin drops out of warp, but at least her Nighthawk can help despatch his tiny pod, solving his polarisation problem by sending him back to empire space.

We loot the wreck and I am happy to find a dozen Sister's scanning probes that I claim for personal use. Rather than beating a hasty retreat, we loiter in the pocket. The earlier reconnoitre didn't see any ship more threatening than a Hurricane battlecruiser, which we can comfortably defeat, and we are rather interested in seeing what response our attack provokes. What I don't quite expect is for someone else to come through the wormhole from high-sec, particularly not someone from the same corporation. A pilot who left earlier in a shuttle is now in an Osprey, and I activate my warp bubble and we both engage the ship. He quickly flees back to high-sec, but it makes me wonder if people in this corporation actually talk to each other.

Fin jumps through to high-sec to find no sign of the pilot in the disturbingly open local channel. The C1 remains quiet. I return to our home system, getting back safely, whilst Fin pokes a few high-sec miners. When Fin follows she tells me that the high-sec wormhole is now critically unstable. It has been unstable since finding it, but now it is becoming precarious to jump through in anything big. Actually, Fin doesn't quite tell me that as much as accidentally announce it in the w-space local channel, in what I consider to be some excellent if unintentional smack talk. Imagine, if you will, that mean aggressors have just attacked and podded one of your pilots, then one of them says out of the blue, 'Heh, I just crit'd the WH'. That's got to be insulting.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: eve online, heron, hurricane, manticore, mmorpg, nighthawk, onyx, osprey, penny ibramovic, pvp, scanning, w-space