Find and forget
20th January 2013 – 3.51 pmThree signatures. One gas, which I know about. One wormhole, static. One unknown. But is it 'unknown'? No, it's more gas, leaving me just our static wormhole to explore through. Or not, as the bastard's at the end of its life. I bet some blues came this way, opened our connection, then left it in a state of decay just to piss us off. And probably stole something on their way home too. Still, it's possible the wormhole has enough life left in it for me to kill it without getting isolated. Let's see, shall we?
My directional scanner is clear in C3a, as I make the first jump in a massive industrial command ship, which should keep me safe from unwanted attention, as long as the wormhole lives naturally whilst I shove a loving pillow over its face. And it does, as a Widow and two more Orca trips collapse the wormhole and leave me in the home system warping away from empty space back to our tower. I hop over to my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser and scan for the replacement static connection. There's no place for sentiment when killing wormholes.
The second C3a of the evening also shows me nothing on d-scan from our K162, which is odd. A mere six weeks ago there was a tower that should be visible from my position. A passive scan revealing a single anomaly suggests the system is probably still occupied, though, and warping around confirms this. Occupation, but no activity. A pair of empty covert operations scanning boats sit inside the tower's force field. But rare is the day that a single w-space jump will find action, so I launch probes and look for the next system in the constellation.
Eight signatures offer nothing interesting until the last two signatures throw up two wormholes, the static exit to low-sec empire space and a nifty K162 from class 2 w-space. I could get the exit system first, but I'm going to live stupidly tonight. Dangerously. I meant dangerously. Jumping to C2a has a Hurricane battlecruiser and Corax destroyer on d-scan, along with four towers and a distinct lack of wrecks to indicate anything happening. But although sweeping d-scan around the planets gets a rough idea of where the towers are, the ships don't show up. There are vulnerable in space, somewhere.
I warp out, launch probes, and warp back to start looking for the two ships. And I re-activate my cloak, which is a good idea when being covert, although this step should preferably be done outside of d-scan range of the targets and not several seconds after having warped back close to their position. Just a tip. The Hurricane and Corax don't appear to be spooked by my Loki being near them, which either means they aren't paying attention, or they are bait. I won't know until I locate them, so I start hunting their position. I get them in a tight d-scan beam, about 1·2 AU distant, and arrange my probes suitably.
Hullo, one last broad sweep of d-scan shows a Loki newly arrived at a tower. I ought to show some caution, I suppose. I call my probes in to scan for the pair of ships, and get a solid hit. But they aren't in a ladar site, harvesting gas as I originally suspected, but sitting on a wormhole. I warp in to take a closer look, dropping short because of the circumstances. The pair are at the system's second static connection, which leads to high-sec, and the ships are slowly circling it. I'm tempted to take a shot at them, the Corax in particular, but with such an easy escape route available it all seems rather pointless, for all of us.
I'll head back to C3a, get the low-sec exit system to give me an alternative route home, and then consider engaging the Corax. That sounds like a plan. I return to C3a, cross the system to exit to low-sec, and appear in a faction warfare system in the Black Rise region. A quick scan turns up no additional signatures, which, combined with the late hour, gives me little option. I won't crash our static wormhole again, as that takes time, so I may as well see if the two ships on the high-sec connection would like to play.
Back in to C3a, across it again to C2a, and before I do anything foolish I take a couple of minutes to locate all four towers. Finding them finds the Loki, which naturally is piloted, nestled inside a force field and not really looking like he's ready to cause much mischief. I think I can see what the Corax is made of. I warp across to the high-sec connection only to find that the ships have gone, even if they are still in the system. And, thinking about it, that wormhole looks much like one leading to class 3 w-space and not high-sec.
Ah, right. It seems that I forgot to bookmark the second static wormhole after I scanned its position earlier. I neither bookmarked it from the scanning interface, or after I warped to its position to reconnoitre the ships. That was a bit of an oversight. And I don't really care to hunt the ships again, or be overly overt in my intentions to find their location now, which makes this game over, man. Game over. I'm heading home to get some sleep.
6 Responses to “Find and forget”
Hey look, Retribution graphics! They had to come eventually.
Finally! First I was counting days and then weeks while waiting for the new graphics to show up. Was almost thinking you had photoshopped your screens just to hide the true delay.
I even threw in one of those new Corax destroyers to make it all seem more plausible.
I have to admit I did look up the killboard to check the actual delay without trying to watch any spoilers:)
That's cool. And just because you may see a Noctis kill, that doesn't mean you know how we found it, what risks we took, or what happened afterwards.
And for every kill we make, there are probably 15-20 other ships that we either cannot quite catch, severely outnumber us or kill us.