Curious orange
26th May 2014 – 5.53 pmNew sites at home look tempting. It's a shame that the Sleepers sabotaged our Golem marauder, forcing it off-line shortly after it was warped in to an anomaly and reducing it to wreckage. Still, we can rebuild it. It just needs a few replacement parts. Until we get them, I scan the new signatures. A data site, some gas, and the static wormhole. All looks normal.
Jumping to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system and updating my directional scanner has all looking normal here too. A tower is somewhere, ships are nowhere to be seen, and one planet sits out of range. The odds of anything or anyone being out there are low, with occupation in range, so I throw caution to the wind by launching probes on the wormhole and performing a blanket scan before warping to investigate the far planet.
Hey, ships! Six of them appear on my blanket scan, along with eight anomalies and six signatures. D-scan shows me a Punisher frigate, Myrmidon battlecruiser, Iteron hauler, Heron frigate, Helios covert operations boat, and Navy Augoror cruiser, plus a second tower. Getting closer sees that all the ships are piloted and inside the tower's force field. Oh, except for the Iteron, which seems to have disappeared when I looked away.
The hauler remains on d-scan for a short while, disappears, and is gone from my combat scanning probes too. If he left the system, is he coming back? My notes say C3a has a static exit to low-sec, so that could be good for catching the ship. Despite the presence of the other pilots, I call my probes in to scan. I ignore the weak signatures, knowing that the U210 and any K162s will be strong, and find two wormholes and one gas site.
Reconnoitring the wormholes finds the expected U210, but more promising is the K162 from high-sec that's been stressed to half mass. That looks like the kind of wormhole an Iteron would use. The red colours bleeding through makes it look like it comes from Metropolis initially, but getting a bit closer sees the devilman of Heimatar. That sounds a bit remote to me, but I honestly don't know much about empire space. I'll just sit on the wormhole and wait for the Iteron's return.
Sit and wait, wait and sit. No Iteron yet. No nothing, even. Sod it, I'll poke through to high-sec and watch from the other side. At least that way I can see the pilot coming and try to time my jump to make good use of my session-change cloak, which has no targeting delay when dropped. That should increase my chances of a successful ambush on a high-sec wormhole. If anything comes my way, that is.
No oranges are in the local channel, so I return to loitering. I feel comfortable launching probes and scanning the extra signature in the system as I wait, confident that no pilots from C3a are around to notice my strategic cruiser on the wormhole, and few pilots in the high-sec system will check d-scan for probes. It's a wormhole, but still I loiter on the X702, waiting for the—hello, an orange has appeared in the system.
Full alert, Penny! I don't know the name of the pilot of the Iteron, but no other ships have come out and surely this is the same one returning. All I have to do is watch d-scan for an Iteron getting close and try to time my jump back to w-space soon enough so that he doesn't see me but late enough to be covered by the session-change cloak. D-scan, no Iteron. D-scan, no Iteron. D-scan, no Iteron. That doesn't seem right.
I call up information about the orange pilot and check the corporation. It doesn't match the occupation of C3a, and the orange standings are set against our alliance, not corporation. This is just some random spotting of a pilot who we have some mild animosity towards, not a local of the C3 system. No wonder d-scan wasn't showing me the Iteron. Okay, I can relax a bit, and maybe do something other than sit on this wormhole.
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