Sleepers and ore
8th May 2014 – 5.14 pmSome good anomalies have floated back in to the home w-space system, along with an extra signature. Is it another wormhole? Nope, the other signature is just a bit more gas, which should give us a closed system. I perhaps ought to turn some of those anomalies in to ISK, but that sounds difficult without help. Maybe I'll explore as usual. Okay, no, I'll attempt to clear at least one of the anomalies, make myself useful.
In to our tower, swapping my scouting boat for the Golem marauder, and check it's ship-shape and Bristol fashion. My glorious leader has adapted the fitting, adding more target painting than looks wise, but apparently it helps the efficiency of the cruise missiles. Let's see. I warp to the first anomaly, plant myself firmly in place with the bastion module, and start shooting.
Yes, this new fitting is pretty good. My missiles are wrecking the Sleepers, even the frigates not hanging around for too long. I make use of the mobile tractor unit in the Golem's hold too, despite doing so making me feel dirty. The wrecks are dragged to my ship, looted, and handed to my stationary marauder to salvage. I can pick up the loot from the MTU at any point too, leaving just about nothing in the site of any worth. The MTU over-simplifies making ISK in w-space, and I am only using it because it is too good to ignore.
The mobile tractor unit may sweep up with zero effort, but it takes a little time to bring each wreck to me one at a time. I'm not hanging around, somewhat vulnerable, waiting for it to finish, but instead scoop the MTU and the remaining loot, warp back to the tower, and return to the anomaly in a Cormorant destroyer to salvage old-school. All done, over ninety million ISK of loot dropped in to our hangar. Now to explore.
I swap back to my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser and warp to the bookmark I made of the scanned static wormhole. I remake the bookmark when I drop out of warp next to the actual locus of the wormhole, approach, and jump through to the class 3 w-space system. Updating my directional scanner on the K162 sees a tower and ships, a Venture mining frigate, Retriever mining barge, Prophecy battlecruiser, Orca industrial command ship, and Rifter frigate, along with a flight of mixed drones. It's not a coherent fleet, but there could be something happening.
A tweak to d-scan and I see that there may very well be something happening, given the small Sleeper wreck in the system. Sweeping d-scan across the ore sites sees the Prophecy and drones in one of them, where the wreck also happens to be. I go in to take a look. The problem, though, is that the discovery scanner is showing only two signatures in the whole system. Our K162 will be pretty obvious once its signature propagates to the local pilots, and I have no idea when that will be.
Actually, a different problem is that the frigates in the ore site will die to the Prophecy before I can warp back to our wormhole, let alone get to our tower to swap ships and return to this site. I'm not convinced my cloaky Loki will prevail over the battlecruiser, and the ECM drones he's using somewhat discourages me from engaging. But if he's clearing Sleepers from the rock field, maybe one of the mining boats will be coming here behind him. I'll find the tower and look for pilots.
The local tower is not where it was three months ago. That, or my notes are wrong. Either way, it slows down finding the occupation, and by the time I do there's no Venture or Rifter any more. That's a little unsettling, as I don't know if they've seen our K162's signature and swapped to ambushey cloaked ships or gone off-line. The Retriever and Orca are piloted and present, though, strongly indicative of mining about to happen. Indeed, the mining barge warps away, so I follow, back to my perch in the ore site, and assess the situation,
I see the Prophecy looting the Sleeper wrecks, the Retriever chomping on rocks. Or not chomping on rocks, but just floating in space near them. Hopefully that's a glitch with my sensors and not a sign of obvious bait. We'll see, as I'm going in, our K162 having been noticed or not. I give the command to warp closer to the mining barge, noting that it is far enough from the Prophecy for the battlecruiser not to be able to get involved immediately, and here comes Fin.
My glorious leader comes on-line as my Loki enters warp, a moment too late to cancel the command and refocus our attention on the Prophecy. I'd prefer to tackle the combat ship than the industrial one, but my warp goes a little awry and lands me on top of a rock. My cloak drops, the jig is up, and I'd better make the most of what I've got. I turn and burn towards the Retriever, getting a positive lock and shooting a few seconds before I can disrupt its warp engines. That's fine, as it takes longer than a few seconds for a mining barge to enter warp.
I watch for ships decloaking as I overheat my guns, but nothing comes. In fact, the Prophecy recalls its drones and warps clear, not wanting to get involved. I don't blame him. The Retriever starts to die, and finishes too. Pop! I aim for the ejected pod but am a second too slow, leaving me a wreck to loot and shoot. A chunk of spodumain is destroyed. Now to reload, re-activate my cloak, and return to the tower to gauge the reaction.
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