Quiet night of scanning
4th May 2013 – 3.55 pmSites have been sucked, or left to dissipate. None of my bookmarks remain current, giving me a blank slate for the night, but that doesn't stop a proliferation of sites since I last scanned the home system. Eight signatures await the attention of my probes, and as I'm in the home system it is prudent to resolve and bookmark them all. Gas, gas, gas, artefacts, rocks, databases, more databases. Plenty of Sleepers, no capsuleers. Oh well.
Jumping through our static wormhole to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system has nothing visible on my directional scanner, letting me launch probes and perform a blanket scan without anyone seeing. Being in an occupied but inactive system achieves much the same, though. A tower sits somewhere across the system, with a single ship floating empty in its force field, the Oracle battlecruiser unlikely to be doing anything alone here anyway. And a previous visit to this system means I know I'm looking for a static exit to null-sec. It sounds dull already.
Sifting through the twelve anomalies and six signatures doesn't give me any more wormholes beyond our K162 and the K346, so I may as well see where the exit takes me. Jumping to null-sec puts me in a system in a little-known region called Esoteria. You probably haven't heard of it. A couple of Tengus have, though, and are ratting away. Or were. The hipsters scoot back to their tower when I appear in the system. I won't catch the strategic cruisers, I don't care. I go home to collapse our static wormhole.
An Orca industrial command ship and Widow blacks op ship combined stress our wormhole to its half-mass state, which is pretty much by design. I reverse the order of the jumps for the second half, so that the more massive ship over-stresses the connection on my final return, which goes smoothly just as my glorious leader comes on-line. It's as if the first half of the evening hasn't happened. Shh, don't tell her.
I scan the home system again and pluck the replacement static wormhole out of the noise easily enough, having only recently scanned all the new sites, and jump to C3a. It's going to be one of those nights, d-scan showing me a tower with no ships. No one's present currently, but the locals must be busy bees, what with a blanket scan not picking up any anomalies. 'Why can't they be busy now, when we are here to kill them?' says Fin. Because they've got no anomalies, I'm guessing.
There are no anomalies, but ten signatures is plenty. I suppose they don't like sucking gas either. There's even more than one wormhole, two chubby and one skinny, which will be an outbound link. The chubby static exit to low-sec takes me out to Dead End in Genesis, where I resist the temptation to lick the monolith this time, and I return to C3a to examine the second chubby wormhole. It's a K162 from class 2 w-space. That's got to be worth a look. Hmm, a tower and no ships. Nope, maybe it isn't.
Back to C3a and on to the skinny wormhole, an outbound connection to class 5 w-space. That will give me as much w-space to explore as I can stand, which may not be much considering I've already scanned and isolated ourselves from one constellation tonight. But in I go, to a clear d-scan result. The lack of anything on d-scan can be attributed to the K162 appearing within range of only a moonless planet. The next closest planet is 35 AU away and also moonless, and it is twice that distance across the system. I launch probes, perform a blanket scan, and warp away to explore.
Eleven anomalies, nine signatures. No ships, no occupation. Maybe I should have persevered in C2a, as Fin scans there and finds a handful of K162s, but I have at least a static connection to find, and apparently a second wormhole too. Neither is chubby enough to be a K162, but I'm guessing one will lead to k-space, such is the nature of class 5 w-space, and indeed I end up with an exit to low-sec and the system's static connection to class 4 w-space. C4s are good, and continue the constellation, so in I go. And I see ships! Big ships! Big ships that are almost certainly unpiloted!
Yep, the Chimera carrier and Rorqual capital industrial ship are unpiloted inside the tower's force field, as are the Raven battleship and Onyx heavy interdictor. Still. Ships. A second tower is missing since my last visit, when we podded a Drake battlecruiser's capsuleer in our home system, after having collapsed their K162 to us, which I can only assume was the catalyst for their moving out of w-space. That leaves me little to do but scan. The first of seven signatures is a K162 from class 5 w-space that's at the end of its life, the second the system's static connection to more class 4 w-space. That'll do, as it's getting late. I recall my probes and jump to the last system I'll be exploring tonight.
How normal. A tower with no ships appears on d-scan, and there's not much space out of range. Well, there is, obviously, just not within the bounds of this solar system. The only notable aspect of this C4 is that despite this being my fourth visit to the system, the last was made almost three years ago. I've been in w-space for a long time now. And I've been in w-space for long enough tonight. I break my session cloak only to turn my boat right around, jumping back to C4a on my way to the home system. It's all quiet tonight.
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed.