Staying for the Sleepers
7th April 2013 – 3.44 pm'I was just talking to myself.' Don't stop on my account. 'I did some maths.' For dreadnought building? 'Orca building.' Glorious leader Fin has been working on getting more profit out of our activities, and is looking to kill two birds with one stone. Why transport bulky ore out to empire space when we can turn it in to an industrial command ship, and fly that ship out to market to sell for more ISK than the ore is worth? Even with the godawful mineral loss from using a refinery at the tower, we'll be making enough profit on each Orca to make the industry worthwhile. And those profits will help buy the capital parts needed for a dreadnought, or maybe just a carrier. Or both. Both, yes.
Fin's currently chewing on rocks to help the plans along, keeping our static wormhole inactive as she does, but is nearly finished. I can cool my boots for a few minutes more, and just shoot the breeze in the meantime. It doesn't take long before the mining drones are recalled and Fin's exhumer warps back to our tower. The Bustard will be okay, right? I don't get an answer until I've jumped to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system, seen a Mammoth hauler, shuttle, and tower on my directional scanner, located them all, and found the ships empty. 'Yes', says Fin, wisely choosing to answer only after getting the transport out to collect the ore and back to the tower.
I had to locate the tower in C3a manually, despite a previous visit to the system less than two months ago. I think I jumped in to the system only to help crash our wormhole, so I don't even know what the static wormhole for this C3 is. The tower is guarded a little too. I manage to avoid all of the canisters pointed starwards, which could act as a decloaking minefield for the unwary, and miss by a few kilometres a lone outlier floating at a standard warp-in point for the moon. But no one's watching, just the tower defences, making me rather ambivalent to the risk.
Warp, launch, blanket. Nine anomalies and six signatures don't offer anything beyond the unknown static wormhole, although it's safe to assume it leads to low-sec Aridia, and a single magnetometric site sits amongst the gas. Shall we break out the Tengus, bringing our strategic cruisers in to pop Sleepers? 'Absolutely. Or is there a negative effect?' Heh, I think I would have oh, there's a cataclysmic variable phenomenon. The extra flaming balls of fusion should have tipped me off a bit sooner. But it should be okay. Cat-vars are friendly, right?
The cataclysmic variable affects the efficiency of local repair modules, but not remote repairs, which works for our paired Tengus. And as there's a magnetometric site to clear we weren't even thinking of using our local rep-dependent Golem marauder. It's almost like I know what I'm doing. And, this time, our plan works quite well, maybe because we did the same only recently. Two Tengus rip through Sleepers in the magnetometric site, and we leave the artefacts and wrecks for later, moving from that site in to the system's anomalies.
We need to be more cautious now, as anomalies can be found without even trying, but the system stays quiet as we clear one, two, three, four of our favoured type of anomaly, all that C3a holds. If we can sweep up the loot and take it home it should be a profitable evening. Back at our tower, Fin grabs a Noctis salvager, I a Blackbird cruiser, and we return to C3a to clear up behind ourselves. I get the Blackbird's rack of mid-slot analyser II modules working, cracking open and recovering the loot of three artefacts in a single combined cycle, as if they were normal containers. It takes longer to move between the artefacts, and the cruiser has a micro warp drive fitted.
I take the artefacts home and swap the Blackbird for a second Noctis, going back to C3a to help Fin salvage the anomalies. I don't do very well, getting the standard loot but meagre salvage, so it's good that Fin brings home the bacon. And we bring it all home, without interruption, to bag us over 350 Miskies in profit. Very nice indeed. And I think that's it for tonight. I didn't even find out the static wormhole type in C3a. Oh, except I did. The signature wasn't weak, like a K346 to null-sec, nor medium strength like a D845 to high-sec, making its chubbiness typical for a U210 exit to low-sec. And I bet it does go to Aridia.
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