Making an exit
30th December 2013 – 5.26 pmOur good anomalies have been swept away again. Oh well, if we couldn't get organised it's no big loss, particularly as we still aren't in a position to clear them ourselves tonight. They'll come back, just as the gas comes back. We have two new pockets floated in to the home system, which are the only two new signatures to be resolved, leaving me with a standard start to the evening. I resolve our static wormhole and jump to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system.
It's a standard directional scanner result in C3a too, with a tower lacking ships being all I can see. I launch probes to scan, revealing fifteen anomalies and nine signatures before focusing on each signature in turn. The first signature is a wormhole, but just a crappy K162 from low-sec empire space. The second is also a wormhole, an equally crappy T405 outbound connection to class 4 w-space, followed by a relic site and a third wormhole that's another low-sec K162. A bit of gas gets in the way of the static exit to low-sec, then a data site, and finally a bit of luck with a K162 from class 4 w-space.
I poke out to get the exit through the U210, pausing in the system in Khanid to pop a rat, then head to the only wormhole with promise. It's a sad state of affairs when the best wormhole is a K162, but apparently that's the way it's going to be. I warp to the wormhole to C4b without much sense of optimism, only to stop short as the connection crackles with a transit.
A Tengu strategic cruiser decloaks and warps away as the wormhole crackles again, this time bringing a Hurricane battlecruiser in to the system, itself warping behind the Tengu. It looks like they headed to one of the K162s to low-sec, which from its colours obviously comes in from Aridia. I wonder why they're going that way, and what they are up to. I dunno, but it's low-sec space anyway, which makes it weird to start with, and Aridia at that, far from any civilised space.
I'd be spotted in the local comms channel should I follow the two ships, so rather than head out I continue with my original idea and jump to C4b to see what they're leaving behind. Maybe if they report w-space as still inactive a pilot or two will get careless in their own system. Jumping in to class 4 w-space and updating d-scan in C4a sees four towers and three ships, and warping around finds the Loki strategic cruiser piloted at one tower, a Cerberus heavy assault cruiser piloted at a second, and the Mammoth hauler empty at a third. I don't think these two pilots will be careless.
The rest of this class 4 system is out of range of the towers, but exploring finds nothing and no one else, and a blanket scan has almost nothing under my probes. Two ore sites and one signature are in the system, that signature being the static wormhole I jumped through to get here. So what do I do? I could wait for the Tengu and Hurricane to return, jumping them on the low-sec wormhole in a suitable ship, but what if they don't return? Do I try to engage them in low-sec? Or maybe I should look elsewhere for more wormholes, with a couple of options available?
A Proteus appears on d-scan as I reach the wormhole back to C3a. That keeps me in the system a little longer, if only out of curiosity, and I find the strategic cruiser inside the force field of the same tower that holds the Cerberus. But not for long. Only because the Cerberus is swapped for a Tengu, warping out of the tower moments later towards the wormhole. The ship doesn't leave the system, though, lingering on d-scan until it returns to the tower a minute later, soon followed, on d-scan and then in to the tower, by the original Tengu and Hurricane.
All four pilots together at last. What hijinks will happen now? A third Tengu and a Buzzard covert operations boat appear on d-scan, and they too warp in to the tower. It looks to me like the two ships that went to low-sec were flying escort for the new Tengu to get in to w-space. I suppose it's lucky that I didn't try to catch them solo. And now I think it's time to leave, prompted by strategic cruisers swapped for battleships, a Megathron and two Dominices warping towards the wormhole looking less like they want to shoot Sleepers and more like they don't want their wormhole any more.
I warp to the wormhole myself on seeing a second Megathron heading that way, and when the first returns from C3a so soon after leaving this class 4 system it's pretty obvious this wormhole isn't going to be around much longer. I snake through the battleships and jump to C3a, leaving the activity behind me. At least it was the interesting option.
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