Null-sec to null-sec to null-sec
16th April 2014 – 5.47 pmScrew the Sleepers, a statement more meaningful were there many left in our home system. I paid my dues to maintaining our presence in w-space yesterday, culling plenty of the drones to help keep our wallet healthy with ISK, and today I am off exploring. Our neighbouring class 3 system seems like a good place to start, what with it being through my only choice of wormhole, so off I go.
Our static wormhole turns out to be not such a great choice of direction after all, an empty return from my directional scanner almost making staying at home preferable, particularly when there is only a single, moonless planet out of range. But our neighbouring system is often merely a gateway system, a link to further exploration. I launch probes and scan.
Thirteen anomalies, eleven signatures, and an exit to null-sec to hunt down. Great. Gas, relics, gas, gas, gas. So much gas. No one's been through here for a while. That weak wormhole is almost certainly the K346 I'm expecting, so I warp directly towards it. Yep, it's the exit, and probably the only wormhole I'll find amongst the weak signatures. I ignore the rest and head out to null-sec.
I'm spat in to a system in Cobalt Edge that lacks pilots. I shall rat and scan. I can just about manage that, with two rock fields and one extra signature, and all looks rosy. A rock field presents a rat battleship, and the signature resolves to be a wormhole. But the joke's on me, as it's an S199 wormhole, leading from this null-sec system to another null-sec system.
Well, wormholes are better than stargates, so I jump through to appear in Feythabolis, alone again, but this time lacking signatures to scan. I try to rat, a cruiser being plenty in a system where I'm not scanning, and I suppose it's either hop a stargate or head home and collapse our static connection. The former's easier than the latter, and I like to follow the path of least resistance.
A ratting Tengu strategic cruiser and Machariel faction battleship look interesting on d-scan, more so when they don't appear to be bugging out, rather less so when no anomaly matches up with their location. But I have a signature to scan and can get out of d-scan range of the ships, so launch probes and use the ratting ships as hunting practice.
I assume my targets are hiding in a despawned anomaly, and may not be expecting my combat probes to find them quite so quickly. I get a decent bearing and range, cluster my probes around where I think they are, and scan. It's a good hit on the Machariel—it would be embarrassing if it weren't—and almost resolve the Tengu's position. I send my probes back out of the system and warp in to see what's happening.
Ah, the pair are in an 8/10-rated DED site, which explains both why there isn't an anomaly visible for the site and why they aren't running. Well, the second bit is only explained when I drop out of warp near an acceleration gate, a ratter's version of the discovery scanner for d-scan. You can't get through the gate cloaked, so anyone coming for you will be made obvious early enough for you to escape. Fair enough.
Ignoring the ratters I scan the signature in the system. It's a relic site, how dull. Hop a gate, move out of bubbles no one's monitoring, and scan three signatures whilst ratting. Gas, wormhole, wormhole. Great in the scanning interface, not so great when one wormhole is a dying outbound link to class 5 w-space and the other is dead-on-arrival empty space. Hop a gate. No pilots, three signatures again. Data, data, data. Worse than relics.
There's one more system to complete the circuit. Hop a gate. No pilots, four signatures. Data, data, wormhole, data. The wormhole is another S199. Ha bloody ha, space. Still I go through, because why not, and appear in Stain this time. Again I'm alone, with two extra signatures to scan. Okay, I'll do it, but this is definitely the last system. Relics and more relics. That's it, I'm outta here. At least the Sansha battleships give me a good light show before I leave. Thanks, chaps.
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