Having a crack at a cov-ops
12th September 2014 – 5.59 pmLet's off-road! I swap back from Sleeper combat to my scouting Proteus strategic cruiser, sending it directly towards our static wormhole, which I hope I'm opening. Kinda. I'd rather it had been closed whilst I was shooting Sleepers, but not many newly opened wormholes catch other pilots unawares these days. Mind you, I don't suppose stale wormholes serve that purpose either, and finding targets is more about luck and other people's carelessness than anything. Yeah, let's off-road!
Jumping to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system doesn't see much more than bubbles on my directional scanner from the K162, although one object that catches my eye is a canister labelled 'sucky place'. That's a promising start to tonight's exploration. As there are no ships and no towers within d-scan range, I launch probes at the wormhole and perform a blanket scan of the system, revealing six anomalies, fourteen signatures, and no ships. Canister, I agree with you so far.
My notes for this system date back over two-and-a-half years, when there was no occupation and a static exit to low-sec. Adjusting my filter, I can see a lot of structures under my probes, but they are all clustered around the closest planet, easily covered by d-scan. The bubbles will be left over from an abandoned tower, I imagine. Swapping d-scan filters sees the off-line tower and defences, which I ignore. I also ignore the combat scanning probe on d-scan, once I realise it is mine. Our K162 is almost 6 AU from the nearest planet and high above the ecliptic plane, coincidentally keeping one of my probes in range.
There's no one else around to see my probe, luckily, so I call them in and start to scan. The system holds its allotted gas clouds, plus a few data and relic sites, and a single wormhole. I suppose I'm heading to low-sec to continue my adventure, and low-sec Lonetrek it seems, the greyness an obvious indicator of the Caldari region. The wormhole is in pristine condition too, having only just been opened by me. No one has been this way for over a day.
Exiting to low-sec gets me four hops away from Jita, which would be vaguely alluring if I weren't in low-sec and sharing the system with a dozen other capsuleers all probably wanting to kill me. Or maybe they're not, what with this being a dead-end system, and unlikely to provide much traffic for gate campers. Still, we have plenty of fuel for now, I can wait for a high-sec connection, and I can't think of anything else I want to buy.
There are two extra signatures to keep me engaged. Scanning them resolves two wormholes too. One is a K162 from deadly class 6 w-space—again?—the other an N944 wormhole to further low-sec space. I thought deja vu was meant to be interesting. Well, I'll hit C6a, why not. In I go, and I appear back in w-space just over eight kilometres from the wormhole, a reasonable sign of inactivity. Even so, there are core scanning probes visible on d-scan. Nothing else, mind you, and only one planet out of range.
As the probes are of the core variety, and won't detect my ship, I decloak, launch my combat scanning probes, and blanket the system. Twenty anomalies, fourteen signatures, no ships. My last visit was eight months ago, when there was no occupation and I resolved a static wormhole to class 4 w-space. Checking my probes for structures finds one, and just the one, a warp bubble. There is still no occupation.
Rather than scan to another empty system, I simply wait on the wormhole for a potential scout to pass me by. The probes disappear from d-scan, but no ships come my way. Not for a minute, anyway, at which point a Helios materialises on my overview. I look for him and find the covert operations boat crawling towards the wormhole. I won't catch the tiny ship, of course, but I will try. I will try on his return.
The Helios exits C6a for low-sec Lonetrek, at which point I throw a small amount of caution to the solar breeze and decloak my Proteus in anticipation of the cov-ops's return. The wormhole crackles once more, and here we go. And there he goes, the Helios aligning and, with a pop of his drive, accelerates in to warp barely fazed by my presence. Never mind, it was worth a go, particularly at this late hour when I'm unlikely to find anything else. As I've alerted whoever was active in this chain of my presence, I also have a convenient excuse to turn around and go home.
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