Empty ships and null-sec rats
18th August 2013 – 3.37 pmSo I don't come home with a tower. But that pretty much describes every day, so I don't think I should be judged for that. Sure, I could have destroyed the tower, after blowing up the Impel transport that carried it, but sometimes the lure of bringing home something so impressive overcomes the desire for explosions. Either way, I've exhausted my options in this direction, so head home and swap back in to my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser.
Luckily, all the action so far has taken place down one arm of the current w-space constellation, back through a K162 from the home system. The class 3 system through our static wormhole remains unexplored, giving me another avenue of interest, and perhaps more mayhem. And jumping to C3a for the first time looks promising, with a tower and ships visible on my directional scanner.
The Onyx heavy interdictor I could do without encountering, but the Magnate and Imicus frigates are eminently catchable, and a Covetor mining barge is always a pleasure to destroy. Of course, this assumes that any of the ships are piloted, and with any luck I can find that out quickly, as my previous visit to this system was only three months ago. My notes should be current.
Should be, but aren't. Still, with one tower gone and another erected elsewhere, the one tower that remains constant is the one that holds all the ships, so it is straightforward to warp directly to it and see that, yep, all of the ships are empty. There's not a pilot in sight. Even exploring finding a third tower, bubbled trapped but no threat to my interdiction-nullified Loki, doesn't find any pilots, leaving me to scan for wormholes. I can do that.
Eight anomalies, seven signatures, and amongst the gas pop two wormholes. It's almost exciting to think I could stumble in to more activity this evening, until I actually reconnoitre the connections. The static exit to low-sec is expected, the K162 from null-sec k-space a disappointment. I'm a persistent bugger, though, and won't stop here. After exiting to low-sec and a system in Solitude I turn right around and head to the null-sec system, this one in the Cobalt Edge region, to rat and scan.
No one shares the system with me, thanks local comms, so I launch probes, warp to a rock field, and multi-task. One drone battleship is blown up, one extra signature resolved to be a weak wormhole. That sounds fancy, and the outbound connection to class 3 w-space will do just fine. Naturally, jumping to C3b sees a tower and no ships, and performing a blanket scan reveals four anomalies and four signatures. And a ship.
And a ship? I need to find it! I warp in the direction of the approximate blob my probes indicate, bringing me in to d-scan range of an Iteron hauler. It could be collecting planet goo, or it could be in that second tower. I won't know until I get closer, and even when d-scan puts the ship and tower together the hauler could still be preparing to goo. It's only when I drop out of warp outside the force field of the tower and see the Iteron empty that I give up catching it near a customs office. Oh well.
Whizzing my probes around the system resolves two wormholes again, and again I get a disappointing result of the low-sec static connection and a null-sec K162. Well, I'll try to make the most of it, and jump to null-sec to appear in The Spire, with one extra signature, so I can repeat my rat-and-scan that I hear is all the rage in Cobalt Edge. The signature is just a combat site, the rats just cruisers. Well, that looks like sleepy times to me, so with only a pause in the first null-sec system to pop another battleship I head home to go off-line.
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed.