Enemy connection
5th April 2012 – 5.32 pmIt's quiet out there. Not too-quiet-I'm-about-to-get-horribly-killed quiet, but Fin's connection is still less stable than an Amarrian ship's capacitor. I'm flying mostly solo for now, so hopefully I don't get too reckless in losing strategic cruisers. And it's not so quiet at home as to deny extra exploration opportunities, there being two wormholes to find once more. The static connection to class 3 w-space is today joined by a K162 from class 2 w-space. I am rarely able to resist jumping through to a C2 system, and today is no exception. Let's see what I can find.
My directional scanner shows me nothing from the wormhole in C2a. I warp out to explore, planning to launch probes at a less obvious position than an already-discovered wormhole, but bump in to a tower first. Not literally, but there's one around this outermost planet. It looks like the tower will be well bubble-trapped too, as there are bubbles and canisters littering d-scan. I locate the tower and warp in to one of the traps, which catches my interdiction-nullified ship by accident, although I miss bumping in to one of the cans scattered inside the bubble. That's good, as a Damnation command ship is piloted inside the tower's force field, one that belongs to a corporation set determinedly red to us.
I manoeuvre out of the bubble easily enough, noting the other bubble traps placed to catch ships warping in from different directions, and get closer to the tower. I can see that the Damnation looks to be running warfare links, which could indicate he is boosting the capabilities of other ships in the system. I bookmark a safe monitoring spot outside this tower and warp away to explore further, but all I find is a second tower around another planet, this one with five ships but no pilots, and the third corner of the system lies empty. That's okay, as this seems like a good spot to launch scanning probes.
My probes pick up five anomalies and six signatures here, and as the Damnation remains the only piloted ship in the system I am probably safe to scan most of the signatures without being detected. But that only holds true if the Damnation remains the only piloted ship in the system. I perform one last blanket scan before moving my probes to start resolving signatures, which I find to be a good check to do, and a new contact appears under my combat probes. The new ship looks to be at the second tower, so I warp across and indeed see a pilot turned up in a Purifier stealth bomber. I wonder where he's been, although as his vector suggests he's warped back from the wormhole to our home system I am more wondering how much he's seen.
Not long after the Purifier appears a Dramiel frigate warps in to this second tower to join him. The two ships don't really do much, but it's not their actions as much as their potential actions that concern me. The Dramiel warps away to the first tower, where a new contact in an Arazu recon ship appears shortly afterwards. None of these are ships for Sleeper combat, and if these enemies of ours already know about our system it's unlikely we'll have a particularly easy evening doing anything, even if it's just scouting. Jumping through wormholes can be a dangerous game sometimes. I think it may be best to go home and wait for the wormhole connecting our two systems to die. Better it than me.
I get home safely enough and spend a little time loitering by the K162. Nothing much happens for a while, until a Helios covert operations boat jumps in to our system. He then jumps right back again, showing a lack of interest that is almost insulting. But there is so little movement between the wormhole that I have just about decided to poke my nose through our static wormhole to C3a when the next ship appears, a Nemesis stealth bomber. He warps across our system, disappears for a couple of minutes, then comes right back again and returns to his C2. I suppose that means there's little happening in the C3 either. I'll go off-line for the night and look forward to a more Penny-friendly constellation tomorrow.
2 Responses to “Enemy connection”
Your blog is excellent, I read it every day. Thanks for keeping it going, your exploits inspire me.
Thanks, Dude, though I hope that hiding from a Nemesis is less of an inspiration than some of my other exploits.