Crossing paths with a scanner
19th May 2011 – 5.49 pmThe wormhole's moved today, so much for it being static. I'm back to scanning for its location before I can jump in to our neighbouring class 3 w-space system, where I find myself revisiting the home of the mighty ducks. It looks like I won't have a hunting ground today, except one of the towers I have listed in my notes should be in range of my directional scanner and it doesn't show up. Warping around finds the second tower to be in the same place, but not owned by a corporation I recognise, making it look like our new friends have moved on from this system already.
Being able to hunt in this class 3 system would mean more if there were ships around. But having no one around lets me scan without being detected, and I can bookmark the fifteen anomalies and various mining sites at my leisure. It is only after bookmarking a handful of the gas and rock mining sites that I realise their abundance is probably more an indication that the occupants don't mine much and I am wasting my time resolving them for potential later ambushes. It's time to ignore ladar and gravimetric sites and concentrate on locating wormholes. I resolve one wormhole that has a chubby signature, making me think that it's a K162, only to find it is the system's static exit to low-sec empire space, and it's the only connection present.
Jumping to out of w-space sends me to the Black Rise region, and although I'm only six hops from Jita the route would take me through Tama, and I don't fancy running through any gate camps right now. I scan the low-sec system for further wormholes but only find the one other signature, which turns out to be a radar site. It's better than nothing and clearing it should give another slight boost to my security status, so I get my Tengu, slap a codebreaker in place of a shield hardener, and leave the wrecks of the puny rats in my strategic cruiser's wake. I recover a user manual and a BPC for an esoteric tuner data interface from the cans in the site, which is okay but hardly exciting.
I drag glorious leader Fin out to low-sec, getting her in a Noctis salvager to see if we can earn any kind of iskies from our time, as I turn around to head home. The C3 remains quiet as I warp across it, but jumping in to the home system sees an Anathema covert operations boat sitting a dozen kilometres from our static wormhole. I try to gain a positive lock on the cov-ops but it evades my Tengu by cloaking, and as I don't have any warp disruption modules on my cruiser I am not too bitter about that. But it looks like we have a new wormhole connecting in to our system, and I warp home to park my Tengu and switch ships. I want to find the new wormhole but I also would like to catch the Anathema, so I board my Malediction interceptor and warp to our static wormhole.
Fin's coming back from low-sec in her Noctis as I land on the wormhole, and she reports the Anathema sitting on the K162. I was too slow getting back to our static connection, and Fin can hardly engage the cov-ops boat in her unarmed salvager, so she jumps home as I jump out. There is no sign of the Anathema or scanning probes, and jumping out to low-sec sees no pilots there either. Coming back to the C3 sees the Anathema now on d-scan and launching probes, and a quick sweep of d-scan and a hunch makes me think he's incautiously chosen the star as a location to launch his probes. I fling my interceptor towards the star only in time to find the probes right where I land, but no sign of the Anathema.
I leave the Anathema to scan for now, on the assumption that he has to head back through our home system, and loiter in my interceptor on our static wormhole. Fin is working to remove the assumption, boarding her Buzzard cov-ops and scanning our system for the inferred K162, which she finds with ease. The wormhole comes from more class 4 w-space, but jumping through sees no sign of occupation. More scanning resolves another K162 leading back to another C4, at which point Fin returns to sit in an Onyx heavy interdictor at the wormhole with me. With two more wormholes bookmarked we can try to catch the Anathema on our static wormhole and continue backwards for further chances if he escapes our clutches. We're back to waiting again.
Mick arrives and we give him a sitrep, his curiosity then sending back through the K162s to what turns out to be the Anathema's home system. He finds a tower with three industrial ships in its shields, the Primae, Mammoth, and Iteron all unpiloted, and the corporation matching that of our target pilot. There's no activity in that C4, though, so Mick comes back and through our static wormhole to reconnoitre the C3. There is no Anathema and no probes, and jumping out to low-sec finds no pilots either. We're waiting for no one again. We disperse the camp and find it is too late to start a new operation, even to shoot a few Sleepers.
As there is nothing else to do this evening I quickly pop out to the C3 and then to low to sate my own curiosity. I'm a little surprised to find the Anathema pilot staring at me in the local channel in low-sec, just me and him. I hold my session change cloak and jump back to w-space as soon as I am able, heading home to the newly reformed camp on our static wormhole. I fear it is going to be ineffective again, though, as I was just as plain to our target in the low-sec local channel as he was to me, and if he had any notion of who I was he would turn around again and wait a bit longer. Indeed, a second check of the systems by Mick shows the target to have scarpered.
It's a shame, as our timing was just a little off. Just five minutes either way would have either seen the Anathema return or the hopefully benign face of Mick in appear in low-sec instead of my own. But now we really don't have a target. I take a quick look through the connecting class 4 w-space systems and, apart from the riddle of their now being a Loki strategic cruiser and Hound stealth bomber in place of the Primae, yet still no pilots, there is nothing to report. It's been another quiet evening of waiting for nothing.
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