Searching for some action

'Drake is at customs.' The burst of information as I wake up at our tower is brief but exciting, Mick tailing the battlecruiser in a class 3 w-space system to find it floating outside a customs office. He's a sitting duck, if you'll pardon the pun, but too much for Mick's stealthy strategic cruiser to handle alone, particularly if the piloted Raven battleship at the local tower is called in for help. But the route to the C3 is known and bookmarks are available, all Fin and I need to do is pick appropriate ships.

I find choosing the right ship is a bit like getting ready to go out, you can't just grab something at random and hope to get a positive reaction. You need to know what other pilots are flying, what we're up against, and what is actually available. At least it isn't a faux pas for two of us to turn up in the same ship. I decide to board my Sacrilege heavy assault ship, remembering it being recommended for a previous assault on a Drake, and Fin gets her own Raven ready, as much to counter the possibility of the other one as it is to pound the Drake itself. It looks like we're ready.

We're in our ships and about to warp out of the tower when the Drake turns and returns to his own tower. We remain hopeful that he'll come out and make a target of himself again, but he simply logs off. What a dick. Wallflowers Fin and I stay where we are as Mick looks for more targets through some unexplored wormholes, and we may be lucky still. A carrier is an ominous target, but we can't ignore the Thanatos and its fighters appearing on Mick's directional scanner in a class 4 w-space system. It looks like the carrier is in a simple anomaly, accompanied by a Dominix battleship, and Mick warps in to recconoitre only to find that they are blue, and allied to us. Spoilsports.

Mick tells us that the pilot is now in a Noctis salvager, the anomaly cleared and the wrecks being cleared up. 'Is the Noctis blue?', I ask, and am told that it is. Oh well, another opportunity we have to pass over, but there is another class 2 w-space system to explore. Rather than sit patiently waiting for reports to come I swap boats to be in my covert Tengu strategic cruiser, and head out to join Mick in his scouting. I warp across our neighbouring C3 and through a second class 3 system, where Mick had his sights on the Drake at the customs tower. I recongise this system too, it being where I ambushed an Orca industrial command ship only to be shooed by a Tengu and Drake, probably the same pilot. It's nice to see them again so soon.

I jump in to the C2, which has a couple of empty haulers sitting in a tower somewhere, and warp across it to join Mick on the now-resolved static link to more class 3 w-space. He jumps in as I am in warp, reporting one ship in the system and a tower somewhere. In I go! The system number looks familiar and indeed I've been here twice before, the last time only ten weeks ago. I have two towers listed in my notes and warping to one of them finds the Mammoth hauler that Mick's probe detected, and it is lacking a pilot like the ones in the previous system.

I take a moment to update my notes to reflect the now-missing second tower before we both head home. This C3 only has a connection leading out to empire space, leaving us the choice of watching empty space or starting a diplomatic mess. This is the way the evening ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: dominix, drake, eve online, mammoth, mmorpg, noctis, orca, penny ibramovic, raven, sacrilege, tengu, thanatos, w-space