Scanning empty space results in a route
6th May 2013 – 5.49 pmAn early roam today halts before it even gets started. I forgot that I killed our static wormhole once last night, adding an hour or so to the maths for when the next one should appear. I didn't account for that, but the Sleepers built a tolerance in to their technology, so let's see. Nope, warping to the extant bookmarks sees that the wormhole is not dead yet. Okay, abort, abort. I'll return in a little while, as I'm not wasting time watching a wormhole wobble its way to oblivion.
Okay, the wormhole's gone. One good that has come from the connection lingering, and my waking up to see it, is that the replacement has a signature identifier that sticks out amongst the known sites, a vagary of the Great Galactic Reset. The same number of sites remain in the home system, so I resolve the static wormhole directly, and jump to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system.
I don't appear overly far from the K162 in C3a, which is good. A tower and a Mammoth hauler appear on my directional scanner, also good. And a recent visit, only five months ago, has the situation shaping up quite nicely indeed, except that the system was unoccupied back then and I don't have a location for the tower. But never mind, as spinning d-scan around in the system map shows the tower to be around a planet with a single moon, instead of one of the planets with many moons. Very nice indeed.
Circumstances would be better were the Mammoth actually piloted, but it floats empty inside the tower's force field. I was hoping for a nice and early gooer ambush. Maybe if I hadn't killed our wormhole last night and got in to this system earlier I could have killed a hauler, but idle speculation accomplishes nothing. Launching probes to scan does, though, and I start sifting through the eighteen anomalies and five signatures.
Scanning is easy. Five signatures isn't much to start with, and they are all chubby. Gas, gas, rocks, and static exit to low-sec. Done. The U210 wormhole is super-stable too, so I am probably the first to find it, not that that really means anything. Given the bland, grey colouring seeping through from the other side, it's no surprise to exit to Caldari space, in the Lonetrek region, where the local communication channel shows me some pilots, d-scan some probes. Are they finding anything?
Launching my own probes in to the low-sec system reveals a healthy eight anomalies and nine signatures, which looks promising for empire space. I drill down to each of them, identifying the signatures as rats, ladar, radar, ladar, ladar, ladar, magnetometric, magnetometric. That's quite a stutter the system has. And no wormholes, for those not paying attention. Well, no matter, simple morning scouting is complete. All sites in C3a are resolved and bookmarked, so I'll head home for now, grab a sammich, and come back later for some adventure.
Later comes, and later goes. I find some pilots in w-space, except they are Fin and Aii and turn out not actually to be in w-space. Fin's buying and selling, taking care of business, and Aii is picking up some non-exploded Venture mining frigates to improve our gas-harvesting efficiency. Scouting C3a has the same unpiloted Mammoth as earlier, and no new signatures. I could scan low-sec, but I don't want to be too disappointed in one night.
I still make myself useful. Aii is on his way home and, with a couple of low-sec systems to cross, Fin and I scout the stargates he'll be using. We watch the ships jump in, and then jump out again. The main excitement is seeing a fleet of almost twenty ships, pilots all flagged as suspects, enter the system and warp to the sole station, so you may understand why my attention wanders a little and I nearly miss seeing Aii and Fin warp back to the wormhole from the stargate.
Home and safe, there is chatter of crashing our wormhole to get a better constellation, which is soon forgotten when the Ventures are unpacked and fitted for sucking on the many gas clouds currently in the home system. Ventures, gas, industrialists. It was like they were meant to be together. It all results in good iskies for us all, but I think I'll leave them to it.
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