Being quietly productive
27th October 2013 – 3.48 pmHello, stranger! It's Fin, my supposed alternative personality. Why I haven't seen her in a while I don't know, maybe the meds were working, but she's back. I fear I've gone feral, though, as I leave Fin to check that our tower is still functioning and how to run our industrial endeavours, and concentrate on ensuring the home w-space system remains secure. Pretty much. Two new signatures are only relics and some gas, making the only connection our static wormhole to class 3 w-space. I'm sure Fin's fine, so I'll see what I can find elsewhere.
This C3 has a tower and ships, how novel. They are just two frigates, an Imicus and lesser-spotted Griffin, and without any probes visible on my directional scanner I am not assuming I'll get even luckier and bump in to a tower, ships, and pilots. To find out, I need to explore a little. The two towers from eight months ago have gone—well, they remain, but are stripped bare—but it's straightforward to find a structure that needs to be anchored in a moon's orbit. And, yep, there are no pilots.
Scanning in this inactive system reveals sixteen anomalies and six signatures, which are whittled down to two pockets of gas and three wormholes. That's a shame, as the anomalies in the system looked good for plundering, but it gives us further exploration opportunities. The static exit to low-sec is at the end of its life and leads to the Solitude region, a healthy K162 from low-sec clearly comes from Domain, and an excellent K162 from null-sec takes me to the the Omist region. Another one for my collection.
I'm alone in the null-sec system too, which makes it ripe for ratting and scanning. Okay, ratting, as there are no other signatures, but still I rat. As I let my strategic cruiser start the process of beatification against an Angel Saint I check my star map of New Eden. Feythabolis is close, astronomically speaking, and I could use an image of a wormhole in that region too. Maybe I should make the trip. I pop the rat battleship, let his friends get in touch with the Blood Pope for the canonisation of the departed, and start hopping through stargates.
It's quiet out here. I count the pilots along my seven hops, passing only two in total. Better than wandering in to a fleet, I suppose. And, now in Feythabolis, I start looking for and resolving signatures again. It's quite straightforward, as it turns out, as I pop another Saint in the first system in the region and scan three signatures, one of which is a wormhole. That'll do. The wormhole's even a K162 from class 1 w-space, so could offer me more than a simple image. Like an Enyo, perhaps.
The assault frigate jumps out to null-sec as I sit cloaked near the K162, pondering my proximity to Omist. I am right on the border of the two regions, which may affect the prominence of any visible nebula, both in the system and, therefore, through the wormhole. I should probably either head deeper in to the region, which I don't really fancy doing right now, or wait for a more serendipitous wormhole to connect me there. But, right, the Enyo. I didn't enjoy my last experience with one in my Loki, so leave it alone, but it's perhaps an opportunity missed.
So engrossed am I in my collection of wormhole images that I forget about wormhole polarisation mechanics. I could have easily engaged the Enyo on the wormhole and chased it if the fight went well, or fled through the wormhole if it went poorly, and forced his polarisation one way or the other. But hindsight is not the best process to use to make these decisions, and I simply wait and watch the frigate jump back to C1a.
The Enyo's gone, the wormhole remains. I think I'll capture an image from the other side anyway, at least as a placeholder, and I wouldn't mind seeing if the pilot thinks all is safe to collect planet goo or something too. Jumping to C1a has a clear d-scan result and the system feels familiar. My notes say this is my third visit, the previous time being nine months earlier, where the system was unoccupied and held an exit to null-sec. That sounds about right. Nothing is out of range, and there are thirty anomalies and ten signatures to poke quickly for K162s.
There's a K162, this one from class 2 w-space, and a weaker wormhole is a pretty neat M609 connection to class 4 w-space. But as K162s trump outbound links, I go to C2a first, where, along with a tower, d-scan shows me a Procurer mining barge, Retriever mining barge, Venture mining frigate, and Executioner frigate. One of these ships is not like the other. One of these ships just doesn't belong. But as there is only one anomaly in range, and despite it being an ore site, that none of the ships are there probably means they are all floating unpiloted inside the tower's force field.
I must be psychic. Locating the towers finds all the ships but no pilots, and the owner corporation doesn't match that of the Enyo. A second tower is elsewhere in the system, but it's bare and still doesn't match the Enyo pilot's corporation. There is obviously more to look for, but the evening's drawing on and I have a short trip through null-sec to make before I can get home. I resist scanning in this system but still poke my prow through the M609 in C1a, where d-scan shows me two towers and no ships. I've seen enough. I head back the way I came, this time seeing no other pilots along my null-sec route, and return home through an unchanged C3a. A quiet night, but quietly productive.
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