Lucky escape

I'm going to declutter our messy home system. My first task of the day is to activate some pesky gravimetric and ladar sites. We don't need to get rid of all of them, just in case the mining bug infects us or we need some gas, for whatever gas is used for, so I stick to activating the more common and less profitable sites. This still will remove a good bunch of signatures from the system whilst leaving us with a bunch of exotic gas and ore to harvest should we want to. And, to be smart about this operation, I move all of the bookmarks for the sites I activate to a separate folder, so that I can check and delete them easily over the next few days.

Sites activated, I scan for our static wormhole and explore. The wormhole is easily found, sitting on the outskirts of the system and stupidly distinct. Why am I even bothering to tidy up? Maybe because it isn't our static wormhole but a K162 from class 2 w-space. It's time to hunt! I jump through to see a messy result from my directional scanner, as I count nine towers in range, along with an Iteron hauler somewhere. This is a silo system. I look for the Iteron, finding it piloted at one of the many towers here, but he doesn't seem to be active. Warping to the outer planets finds two more towers, but the lack of ships lets me launch scanning probes quietly. My probes find seven anomalies and five signatures, which I'm sure I can resolve pretty quickly.

Three ladar sites and two wormholes are resolved. The connections lead homewards and out to high-sec empire space, although the exit wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime. The Iteron is still doing nothing, and maybe this C2 with its static exit to high-sec can be used to ship some fuel home, although I don't trust the EOL wormhole at the moment. Glorious leader Fin arrives and has no qualms about that, though. I jump home and copy my bookmarks to our shared can, whilst Fin collects some rogue mining drones that apparently didn't want to see the rocks go to waste, before going out to look again for our static wormhole.

I resolve the wormhole and, as it turns out to be our static connection this time, jump through to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system. Nothing beyond planets and moons is on d-scan, and I launch probes and blanket the system, finding three anomalies, no ships, and a bunch of signatures. My notes tell me I was here before, only a couple of days ago too. The promise of an exit to null-sec is discouraging, but I can look for additional wormholes and if I find only the one I can keep what must be the exit to null-sec closed, making this a good system to shoot Sleepers in.

Hullo, someone is talking to me in local. 'Hey, you there', says Diamond Benau, probably meaning me, as my scanning probes are all over d-scan, 'I need a hole out'. Haw haw haw, I bet you do! 'I'll pay a lot.' O RLY? I think we can work something out. This could of course be a trap, but it would be rather elaborate, particularly as I know this system to be unoccupied and leading out to null-sec. I am also prepared to set a trap of my own, alerting Fin to what's happening, and perhaps thinking about getting the Onyx heavy interdictor warmed up and placed on the home side of our static wormhole. I'll just negotiate for now.

I point out that this C3 has a static connection out to null-sec, but that I have a route to high-sec, luckily found via the C2 connecting in to our home system. I think an exit to high-sec is worth rather more than being dumped in to null-sec, and start sorting out terms. We bash out a deal, I see my wallet blink with iskies deposited, and get ready to drop the relevant bookmarks for this hapless pilot. I warp to a planet, jettison the copied bookmarks, and move away and re-activate my cloak. I am curious to see what ship is being piloted, so that we can prepare a proper welcome on the other side of the K162 out of here. A Cormorant destroyer appears to eat my can of bookmarks, which is a small enough fish to pop, but she turns out to be blue to us, part of a friendly w-space alliance. Aww, I have to call off Fin and—once reminded that I have been paid—happily refund the iskies, as blues don't pay blues for help.

There is a slight kink to the rescue plan, though, as the EOL exit is now gone. The wormhole really was at the end of its life. Fin finds this out too, having abandoned our attempt to make a capsuleer's day even worse and gone out in her Crane transport ship to buy fuel. That's okay, I already mentioned to the lost pilot that if the wormhole had collapsed I'd scan a new one, it being a static connection and all, and I simply head back to the C2 myself and scan again. All the signatures from a little earlier are the same, except for the missing and new wormholes, and I soon have the new exit to high-sec in front of me. I invite the blue pilot in to a fleet and instruct her to warp to my position, and she is quite grateful to see empire space again. That's my good deed done for the day year.

It can't have been good to be stuck in w-space with no way of scanning an exit. And it turns out the Cormorant was a salvaging boat, stuffed with over half-a-billion ISK of Sleeper loot! I ask how long she was stuck, wondering if she'd have to lose all that profit and a clone in order to get back to k-space. 'Only two hours', she says, making me care less for her plight. She kicked back with some reading material, checked d-scan occasionally, and got rescued within a couple of hours, and by a blue pilot at that! That's one lucky escape.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: cormorant, crane, eve online, iteron, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space