Helping in spirit

27th July 2009 – 5.58 pm

A radar site is found in our w-space system and with enough pilots available to engage considerable Sleeper opposition we form a fleet and warp in to see what loot we can haul back. The Sleepers are quite keen to keep everything for themselves, which shouldn't be surprising as I suppose it is theirs to start with, calling in multiple battleships and some smaller support ships to fight us off. If the threat of massive DPS from the battleships isn't enough they even repair their allied frigates remotely, preventing our drones from making mincemeat out of the smaller ships in short order.

Regardless of the strength of the Sleeper force, our band of determined engineers vanquishes the hostile threat, leaving wrecks to be salvaged and databanks to be plundered. As one of our pilots heads back to the POS to change to a codebreaking ship I announce that 'I'll help', starting my ponderous Drake on its 50 km journey to the databanks. My battlecruiser isn't fitted with a codebreaker module capable of opening the banks but this is my first experience of a radar site. The databanks look like normal containers on my overview and, being the curious creature that I am, I want to get a closer look.

The codebreaker-fitted ship warps back in around the same time that my Drake finally gets within cracking range of the databanks. I try to open a databank normally but my on-board computer informs me of the cryptographic lock on the container, which satisfies some of my curiosity. I then sit back in my pod and watch in fascination as the codebreaking ship scans and unlocks the databanks, pulses of energy emanating from the relevant module.

It looks like the salvage boat is finishing off the last of the wrecks and the codebreaker has visited most of the databanks, and as I'm just loitering in the site I take my leave to warp back to the POS. 'Let me know what you got before you drop it in the hangar.' Who, me? Oops. I didn't think my offer of help would be taken seriously, but my over-eager scrutiny of the exotic containers, including diving under an obstruction to bump in to identical containers on the other side, was quite reasonably viewed as active codebreaking.

I try to clarify that when I said 'help' I really only meant 'moral support' and luckily it's taken light-heartedly, perhaps because we got such a good haul of Tech III goodies from the databanks. Maybe I was helping by channelling positive vibes after all. I like to think so.

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