Scanning, fuel, and Sleepers

7th October 2011 – 5.27 pm

It's so much easier to know you're isolated when you only have to count up to one. The sole signature picked up on my scanning probes in our home w-space system must be the static wormhole, confirming I'm by myself again. It's lonely out in space, as a famous man once spoke over another famous man's music. I should find someone to shoot. Exploring beyond the light-grey yonder in to our neighbouring class 3 system sadly doesn't help with that mission, with a tower and nothing else visible on my directional scanner from the wormhole.

Launching probes and performing a blanket scan of the C3 finds nothing of interest. The single anomaly and eight signatures indicate tonight's exploration could be rather dull indeed. I locate the tower and sit outside it as I scan, hoping for a pilot to make an appearance. It's mostly rocks and gas out there, of course, accompanied by one radar site and one wormhole. Today, the wormhole is the last signature I resolve.

The exit from the C3 leads out to high-sec empire space, and I jump through to find myself in The Forge. How cosy. I'm still ten jumps from Jita, but being in the same region somehow makes me feel closer. It's probably worth a trip to the trade centre of New Eden, as my recent fuel run forgot that we also need CPU food, my scribbled note on my dash only reminding me how much of each type of power grid fuel I can cram in to a Crane transport ship. I make a similar calculation for CPU fuel and head back home for the Crane, one trip probably enough to keep the tower running for a while longer.

I could probably take some Sleeper loot out to sell too, to defray the cost of the fuel, but I need a Fin to help me price the salvage and artefacts. Or I could forget about Sleeper loot entirely until I exit w-space again and decide to simply head forwards to market. I also find out that this high-sec system is a one-system dead-end island, the only stargate available leading to low-sec. At least it's just one jump through low-sec to get to contiguous high-sec, and I'm in the Crane, so it's no problem. Not only that, I find some heavy water for sale closer to me and cheaper than Jita, with only a couple of low-sec hops standing in the way. Easy peasy, I'll go there.

My glorious leader arrives and starts collapsing our static wormhole. ...with my knowledge, I should add, not to get rid of me. Our neighbouring system is dull and the operation to collapse a wormhole can take a little time. I get back with the Crane, transfer some water to the tower to keep the CPU running and the rest in to storage, and then swap in to my Widow black ops ship to finish the wormhole off. Fin does a bit of maths and calculates one set of jumps between us should be enough, and it is. The wormhole collapses with both of us home, safe and sound.

A quick scan confirms that there is still only one signature in the home system, the new static wormhole, and we leave it unvisited. There are a few profitable anomalies we can clear here before we need to look abroad, and better we make ISK from our home system than tourists. We both board our Sleeper strategic cruisers and sweep through three anomalies easily enough. We then sweep through them a second time in Noctis salvagers, looting and recovering the wrecks, bringing back a decent haul of a third of a billion ISK in profit. Even with a lack of targets, it's been a pretty good and varied evening.

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