Settling for a bit of high-sec

29th August 2013 – 5.57 pm

I doubt there is much more to see for the moment. I'm supposing that as the occupants of the class 4 w-space system connecting in to us were hauling planet goo through our home then our own neighbouring class 3 system is quiet. It's best to check, though. Besides, a w-space system can wake up at any time.

Jumping through our static wormhole to C3a sees a tower and Ibis frigate on my directional scanner, and a black hole pulsating away in space. I bet that made aligning a hauler for warp a lot of fun. I don't expect my notes from twenty months ago to be relevant for locating the tower, but as they list the system as having a static exit to high-sec it explains why the C4a pilot was keen to export his goods.

Launching probes to scan sees eleven anomalies and seven signatures, as well as a single ship that is the Ibis, which I find when I find the tower. The frigate is, naturally, empty inside the force field. So C3a is quiet by the looks of it. What do the signatures hold? I sift through them whilst sitting on our K162, although I am not expecting the podded C4 pilot to return this way any more than for the locals to wake up.

Wormhole, gas, relics, data, gas, data. That's it, so the only wormhole will lead out to high-sec, which I may as well check. The connection is healthy and leads to Domain, a mere five hops to Amarr. That's pretty convenient. Maybe I should take those precious metals out to sell. Then again, I hear there is a pirate stalking the w-space constellation. It may not be safe.

The K162 is the only signature in the high-sec system, which puts an end to exploration. Well, almost. High-sec is pretty safe, so it's worth hopping a stargate or two to check other systems for wormholes. I pick a direction and activate the stargate, appearing in another high-sec system, but one with two signatures to resolve. One is a combat site, the other a wormhole. It's a K162 from class 1 w-space too, which could have something soft inside to shoot.

Jumping to C1a sees two towers, no ships, and nothing out of range of d-scan, which is a little disappointing. The lack of any activity could simply mean I am looking for another wormhole amongst the three signatures, but not this time. It's just gas, gas, and the wormhole I used to get here. Okay, back to high-sec with me and on to another system. Three more signatures in the next system across give me nothing but a combat site and two data sites, but I suppose I could spare a few minutes to grab some crappy loot. Why not?

High-sec data site

I dock, refit my Loki strategic cruiser to add a data analyser, and go back to space to clickity-click on some boxes until some loot spews all over the space. Collecting the space spores in the two sites bags me a couple of ancillary armour repairer blueprint copies, three encryptors, and a bunch of junk. I suppose that's not so bad. But back to dock, revert my ship's fitting, and a return to exploration. I have one more system in the small ring of space that I chose to work through.

The remaining system has two signatures to scan, and both turn out to be combat sites. I consider poking in to one to see what's happening, but the acceleration gate doesn't like my Loki and refuses access. Fair enough, it's probably saving me from a bit of tedious shooting anyway, so I can get home for a sammich sooner. And going home has the high-sec wormhole of C3a now at the end of its life. That could be positive, as I can take long enough eating my sammich to give it time to die of natural causes, and come back with some new space to explore.

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