Data for a good cause

There's a Badger hauler on my directional scanner, which I suspect is collecting planet goo. I won't chase it, though, as it is only glorious leader Fin making the rounds in our home system. But it means there has been no scanning done yet, our bookmark can lying empty, so I take my Buzzard covert operations ship out to look for wormholes. Finding a wormhole is pretty easy today, what with it almost jumping up and down for attention near our outer planet. But I am cautious to use the indefinite article now, never too sure about how many wormholes there may be until a more thorough check is made. And we again have a second wormhole in our home system today.

I am joined back at the tower by Fin, her chores complete, and we each pick one wormhole to visit and head off in different directions. I end up at our static wormhole, Fin at a K162 from class 4 w-space, and we both jump to the connected systems. Our neighbouring class 3 system is fairly standard fare today, although the three off-line towers must exceed some quota. There is an on-line tower too, with no one home, and scanning the system finds seven anomalies and seven signatures. Nothing extraordinary.

Fin's luck looks to be better, seeing on directional scanner a Viator transport ship, an Iteron hauler, and a tower. But even though the Viator turns out to be piloted there is no reason to stalk it, as the owning corporation is allied to us. At least they shouldn't cause us any trouble, I suppose. I suggest collapsing the blues' static wormhole for them, which may be ethically dubious but is far from an act of aggression. I would simply prefer there to be fewer complications for w-space movements, and no misunderstandings about our mutual standings.

As an Orca industrial command ship is pushed through the K162 to start the collapse I sift through the signatures in the C3. One wormhole is nice and obvious, and it turns out that all the remaining signatures are too weak to be K162s, leaving us with just a lovely exit to high-sec empire space. The high-sec connection comes with remarkably good timing, as I have only minutes earlier been contacted by a friend about selling him my accumulating datacores. That sounds good to me. Knowing that they will be put to good use gives me motivation to make another datacore run, an activity that can take a while to complete and not see profit for a while. But with reassurance that he is happy to buy all of them from me, even several hundred, and having an exit to high-sec, I think my evening is worked out.

I jump home, copy my bookmarks to share with Fin, and swap to a Crane transport ship. Even though I am jumping out to high-sec I expect some travel to be through low-sec space, and I know from experience that datacores are bulkier than I imagine, particularly in high quantities. I warp across the C3, jump to high-sec, and check my location. It seems I'll be hitting low-sec rather sooner than anticipated, as for a bit of a joke fate has put our exit on a dead end, high-sec island. My first hop is to low-sec, and it is two more hops before I get to high-sec proper. Still, it's a piece of cake in the Crane, the most difficult aspect of my journey being trying to work out the most efficient route between my four agents.

I give up trying to determine the shortest route between four points, mostly because my first leg is over twenty jumps regardless of the destination, and simply settle back to take in the scenery. There are no surprises for me along the route, the only hint of a gate camp being a single red skull in a Legion strategic cruiser who I blast right by. I hop from agent to agent, making it sound much quicker than the eighty or so jumps really are, as we negotiate prices for the datacores. I'm happy to give a discount to my contact and we reach an amicable contract price, although he is surprised by the almost two thousand datacores I've managed to accumulate since my last run. I am too, to be fair.

I contract the datacores in a high-traffic system that happens to be on a convenient path on my way back to w-space, and continue on my way. Another red skull sits on a stargate by himself, this one in a Zealot heavy assault ship, but that again is the only threat I pass by. I return to w-space, warp across the empty C3, and jump home. Mick and Fin have passed the time tidying the home system, activating all our gravimetric and ladar sites to mark them for disposal, showing how far we've come from our industrial roots. It's been a quiet but profitable night.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: badger, buzzard, crane, eve online, iteron, legion, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, scanning, viator, zealot