Ignoring null-sec for only so long
1st March 2013 – 5.37 pmIt's been a few days since I was last in space. There are a few items of business to take care of before I can strike fear in the depths of w-space. Well, maybe the shallows of w-space, if we've only got our static connection to a class 3 system. We'll need a K162 to dangerous or deadly w-space to go deeper. Where was I? Right, deleting the old bookmarks, transferring the stale bookmarks to now be old, checking the corporate bookmarks, deleting the corporate bookmarks when they look a day stale too, copying the new internal sites that have been resolved, and, finally, updating my skill queue.
Housekeeping complete, I get back to standard operating procedure, launching probes and scanning the home system. Blimey, not only are there several known sites already but two more have cropped up. They are both gas sites—Aii really needs to suck more—which I can ignore in favour of our static wormhole. Looking next door, in C3a, sees a really obvious black hole, dominating space beyond my ship. I'm glad I spotted that, as I generally look in the other direction and completely miss the massive distortion in space-time. And despite many black hole systems being curiously unoccupied, this system has a tower.
The local tower doesn't appear on my directional scanner immediately. I have to look for it. My notes point me in the right direction but are a little off, as the tower sits one moon across since my visit three months ago. That's odd. Maybe I made a mistake when noting the location before, which seems more likely than a corporation stripping down a tower just to shift it a few hundred thousand kilometres. Regardless of their intentions, there's no one home at the moment, leaving me free to scan the five signatures in the system.
That weak wormhole will be the static exit to null-sec, then it's rocks, gas, and a suspiciously chubby wormhole that I don't get to resolve, as my Loki goes off-line. Stupid temperamental Minmatar piece of... A bit of percussive maintenance encourages the strategic cruiser to come back on-line, at which point I reconnect with my patiently waiting probes, and resolve the wormhole. It turns out to be an N968 wormhole to a second class 3 system, which is nice, and I ignore null-sec to explore more w-space.
From black hole to pulsar, the more ship-friendly system even has a tower on d-scan along with an Iteron. My notes from a previous visit twenty months ago guide me directly to the tower, to speed my disappointment in finding the hauler empty inside the tower's force field. I also see that this C3 has a static connection to null-sec, which whilst not exactly thrilling me doesn't actually stop me scanning. One anomaly is one more than in C3a, and eight signatures resolve to two wormholes, one nice and fat.
The K162 disappoints as much as the empty Iteron, being another null-sec connection, merely opened from the other side. I can't ignore null-sec much longer. The time has come to poke through and see what I can find in k-space. But as I approach the K162, my first choice for being closest to it, a Raven appears on d-scan. A piloted ship is interesting, even more so if the battleship intends on engaging Sleepers and making itself a target. But the Raven goes a few seconds later, not jumping past me, and leaving no trace that I can see. Fine, be that way. I'm going to null-sec to play.
The K162 in C3b sends me to the Syndicate region, in a system with enough other pilots to convince me not to bother scanning. Warping across C3b and exiting through its static connection puts me in Catch, again with obvious pilots in the local communications channel being enough to deter me from lingering. I have one more null-sec connection, back in C3a, and heading that way sends me to Tenerifis, with still more pilots. Okay, I'm definitely ignoring null-sec now.
I return to w-space, across C3a, and home, where Aii has woken up. I tell him to suck harder, and he graciously does, boarding a battlecruiser and warping to one of the ladar sites to continue harvesting gas. I can't really bring myself to join in, but that doesn't mean I can't be useful. I stay in my covert Loki, but launch probes and blanket the system. No new signatures appear, which means no new wormholes have connected to us. I sit on our static wormhole, monitoring it for ship transits, occasionally updating my combat scanning probes, doing my bit to keep Aii safe. No one passes me, no wormholes appear. But I can only do this for so long before it's time for a break.
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