Going home

I'm isolated from the home system, and still doing what I do best. I scanned from high-sec to w-space, found some ships shooting Sleepers, and ambushed their salvager. I didn't get any loot from the wreck, having to evade a battleship responding to the mayday a little too tardily, but I think I can still make a bit of profit. The locals of this class 3 w-space system look to have reacted to my actions, but by mobilising scouts and combat ships. They are leaving the other two cleared anomalies alone. I can score some of the loot left in the Sleeper wrecks.

Not that there's much loot in the Sleeper wrecks, of course. And the anomalies that the locals were clearing were only protected by a single battleship amongst the cruisers and frigates, so there are really only a couple of wrecks worth looting. At least, when considering the risk of getting another Loki strategic cruiser caught and destroyed today. I'll just pluck the most valuable loot from two wrecks than worry myself sick by picking through all the wrecks for scraps.

I have monitoring positions made in the anomalies already, so I warp to them to check first for obvious ships in the sites. It looks clear, but I still can't see cloaked ships for some reason. Or maybe that's been fixed and I can see them, which means none are here. That sounds good to me, so I warp to the first battleship wreck, transfer the loot to my hold, and warp out again. That's one site done, for a measly seven million ISK or so, which I repeat for the second site and battleship wreck. Fifteen million ISK is not much of a return, but it's better than nothing. Now I should think about leaving the system.

Rather than head back the way I came, which is from a boring class 2 w-space system, I may as well scan to look for more connections in this C3. And my probes picking up just a single signature is interesting, as that must be the static connection, and I didn't enter through the static connection. Indeed, warping back to where the K162 I used should be sees only empty space. I doubt the C2ers crashed the wormhole, so it seems that some of the ship movements I saw on my directional scanner when waiting earlier were the locals finding and collapsing my route back.

The lack of K162 isn't really a problem. I am already isolated, so couldn't have got home that way. And I know that this C3 holds a static wormhole to high-sec, which makes exiting safe and the destination system relatively convenient by default. It reinforces my earlier concern that losing my scanning ship had the ambush gone wrong would have left me with nothing to do but self-destruct my pod, but all went well. I just need to resolve the static connection and leave the system. Even the warp bubble on d-scan that obviously guards the exit to high-sec doesn't bother my interdiction-nullified Loki. But plans rarely proceed as expected past the first item, and this one is no exception.

Not only have the locals crashed the K162 behind me, and bubbled the high-sec exit, but they have stressed the wormhole to critically destabilised levels. There are also ships milling around, in and out of the large bubble encapsulating the wormhole, probably waiting for me to make a mistake. Now, a critical wormhole doesn't prevent ship transit, but if the locals have a big ship waiting in high-sec for a command, and I am unlucky or careless, then they could call that ship through the wormhole to kill the connection just as I try to exit. That would leave me staring in empty space, in a warp bubble, decloaked for galaxy to see. That would be bad.

But I am over-thinking the situation. I can get on top of the wormhole before needing to decloak, and can jump immediately after decloaking. Even pilots with the best reflexes cannot transmit information across channels quickly enough to beat that. I think. So I warp out, bounce off a planet, and return to the wormhole, where I crawl the last few kilometres, decloak, and jump through. The wormhole survives the transit and spits me out to high-sec, where no one from the C3 awaits. I think my earlier death got to me there a little, combining with some uncertainty to make me fear the worst.

I'm in a system in the Bleak Lands, safe and sound, and my glorious leader has come on-line. I think I'm going home. I warn Fin of the class 4 w-space system that held the earlier hostiles, but her entry to C3a is unimpeded and warping to where the wormhole should be shows it gone. All looks clear, letting Fin exit through C3a's static wormhole to low-sec to bookmark the other side of the wormhole. I should have done that myself, which would have saved this hassle, but maybe I'll learn from my mistake. It's nineteen hops through stargates to the exit system, which I start to make as Fin scans low-sec to look for a better route. I've done the same before, and that way lies madness.

I hop, hop, hop through stargates, transitioning from high-sec to low-sec with hardly seeing another capsuleer. The odd low-sec system along my route is also completely free from other pilots, so I stop to look around the rock fields for a rat to pop. I take care of passers-by, but that's what they mostly are, and a few rat battleships explode to my guns as I steadily make my way home. I meet Fin one system away from the one holding the wormhole to C3a, and we go the last hop together. All is quiet in the class 3 system, which is just as well, as I've had a busy day. We jump home, hide our ships, and get some shut-eye.

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