Claiming another Gecko
22nd June 2014 – 3.35 pmI can continue the test flight of my new ship. Or help my glorious leader pop Sleepers in a closed home system. That seems a much better opportunity than pretty much any other w-space activity at the moment, rather depressingly. So, surprisingly, I can't be arsed to do anything but float in space for a bit. Still, there aren't many Sleepers left to explode, and once they're gone I find that old habits die hard. I warp to our static wormhole and jump through.
My directional scanner shows me a whole bunch of drones off in space somewhere in the neighbouring class 3 w-space system, with no ships and no tower in range. Switching filters shows there aren't any wrecks either, and with the drones not coincident with any of the ten anomalies I suspect they are floating abandoned on a wormhole. That's not terribly interesting in itself, but one of the drones is a Gecko. I think I'd like to find and claim that before anyone else does.
I launch probes and perform a blanket scan as Fin jumps in behind me. I ask her to look for occupation, given that I'll probably make myself vulnerable collecting the Gecko, and my blanket scan reveals two ships out by a far planet. That's a positive sign for occupation, and Fin heads out in that direction. 'Four ships', she says, an Armageddon battleship, Scythe cruiser, Taranis interceptor, and Venture mining frigate. That's peculiar, with only two ships on my blanket scan. Or I didn't scroll down the results. 'All empty at the tower.' Yeah, I didn't scroll.
I've got the Gecko scanned, along with the other drones. They're all together, and not on a wormhole. At least, not any more. Maybe they were and the wormhole collapsed, or it could have been an anomaly or other site that has since despawned. Either way, I am left with a small cloud of drones, one of which is still fairly costly. I approach it, drop my cloak, and scoop the Gecko. Done. Re-activate my cloak and jink. Are the Caldari Navy Wasp drones worth scooping too? 'Yah'. Okay then, I turn around and grab them as well. The rest are basic drones, and I ignore them.
Now to scan properly. Three gas sites, one data site, three wormholes. A K162 from null-sec is sitting at critical mass, a second K162 comes from high-sec Heimatar, and the static exit to high-sec looks like it goes to Sinq Laison. It does, but a system in Sinq Laison with no other signatures. Now that I have the exit, I can risk the critical wormhole, in case I finally find myself in Period Basis. No, not this time.
I'm in Branch, thankfully still sat next to a critical wormhole, sharing the system with four other pilots. D-scan shows me a Navy Vexor cruiser and Ishtar heavy assault cruiser, along with dozens of rat wrecks. It looks like both ships squirrel up, though, and there are no other signatures, so I head back to C3a. Fin's gone to Heimatar, found two signatures, and resolved two wormholes. She's headed to C2a, leaving me a class 1 w-space system to explore.
Out to high-sec and across to the wormhole, which isn't the K162 I'm expecting but an outbound connection. Oh well, all of w-space is rubbish, so what's the difference. I jump through to see what I can find, which is a tower and lack of ships on d-scan. My notes for C1a tell me of the high-sec wormhole, which seems about right, but they are wrong about the tower's location. Never mind, my notes can't be right all the time, particularly when the gap between visits is thirty months or so.
Warp, launch, blanket. Nine anomalies and thirteen signatures to sift through, nicely whittled down by identifying eight gas sites and one wormhole on my first scan. I like my skills. That leaves a second wormhole, some relics, and one more gas pocket to find, before warping to the connections. The first is an exit to high-sec that looks Forgey, and also like a static connection. Oh, right, I entered through an outbound wormhole. The high-sec nature and my expectations confused me. It doesn't take much.
The second wormhole is a K162, but just another high-sec connection, this time obviously from Lonetrek. I poke out to get the exit, in case it's useful, and do the same for C1a's static wormhole. That leads to The Citadel, not The Forge, but that's okay. It even turns out to be a minor shortcut for Fin, who has given up on exploring for the evening and is hopping stargates to collect a ship from space dock. I think that's my achievement for the night, that and the additional Gecko I claimed from the system. Let's go home.
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