Opening a wormhole for it to be closed

13th March 2014 – 5.39 pm

Nope, nothing. Lurking by the K162 in our home system, which took back to class 5 w-space a few bits of metal that resembled a Noctis salvager and a thief in a Venture frigate, doesn't spit anything back at me. Not even a scout comes through to see what I'm up to. I'd say that makes it time to look through our static wormhole for more activity to interrupt, albeit with a mind as to what's behind me. At least it doesn't seem too threatening at the moment.

Now there's timing. I experience a cross-jump, appearing in our neighbouring class 3 system as a Buzzard covert operations boat jumps to our home system. Yes, I still hate the discovery scanner for making newly spawned wormholes so bleeding obvious. There's not much I can do about the scout, even if I thought I had a chance at catching him, so I just ride out the session change cloak, updating my directional scanner and checking my notes as I do.

A tower is unsurprisingly in the system, along with some more ships. Two Scorpion battleships, a Typhoon battleship, Drake battlecruiser, Brutix battlecruiser, Buzzard cov-ops, and Tayra hauler are all somewhere, and with no wrecks to be seen I can't make much of a guess as to how many pilots there may be. Ah, at least one more, seeing that the Typhoon drops on to the wormhole with me. I'm okay, I've moved and activated my module cloak, but I'm not sure I can say the same for our wormhole.

Typhoon drops on to our K162 minutes after its being opened

In come the other two battleships, both Scorpions following behind the Typhoon through the wormhole. I get the feeling they don't want this connection in their system and want to get rid of it, particularly when all three ships jump back seconds after leaving, warping away from the wormhole to a nearby planet. Well, they're polarised, I have some time to take a look at their tower.

I take a bit too close a look at the tower, dropping five kilometres from the force field. That could have been embarrassing. I see that only the battleships are piloted, so there are four capsuleers on-line that I know of, including the Buzzard, which for me only really means that their collapsing our wormhole will take a bit of time if they are only going to be using battleships.

The three ships warp out of the tower again, and with nothing better to do and no pilots left at the tower I follow behind to watch what happens. Our wormhole shrinks slightly when the Typhoon jumps out, causing the Scorpions pause. Maybe they are doing some maths. And although the wormhole definitely won't collapse with this pass, I should probably go back myself, definitely within the next five minutes.

Two Scorpions ponder the mass limits of wormholes

Five minutes gives me time to look around the system a bit better, my curiosity extending beyond this one planet that's within d-scan range. Nothing else? That was informative. Okay, let's go home and watch the collapse from the other side. I would be tempted to interfere, try to throw off their calculations, if I didn't know they had a scout on the other side no doubt watching for such shenanigans and other threats.

I return to the wormhole to see the battleships warp away, no doubt polarised, making it simple to jump home. I pulse my micro warp drive going through the wormhole, bulking up my Loki strategic cruiser by a probably negligible amount, the anarchist that I am. Strangely, doing so kinda works, as the wormhole drops to being critically destabilised by my jump. I'm not sure I particularly wanted that to happen, though.

I sit near the wormhole and watch for the next jump, hoping that the C3 locals will actually collapse the wormhole and give me a new one to explore through. But, of course, them leaving the wormhole in its half-mass state and coming back to see it critical probably makes them nervous to jump battleships through, and perhaps is even seen as mission accomplished for them.

I could finish the wormhole off myself, I suppose, but I still have potential hostiles behind me in C5a. Even if its doubtful that they are still awake, I don't like the idea of them watching the wormhole, hoping I successfully collapse it and catching me in empty space. Or of them seeing me leave and collapsing it themselves. Anyway, the C3 pilots started this, they should have the decency to finish it. Ah well. No kill, no exploration. This evening's been a bust.

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