Taking it out on a wormhole

13th September 2014 – 3.35 pm

A new signature in the home system is a rather unfortunate find. I may be coming back from a lacklustre scouting expedition, but I am returning feeling a little tired and wanting to head off-line. I know that I will be absent for a few days from now, though, and if this is a new pocket of gas I'd prefer it to be activated and gone on my return.

The signature certainly smells like gas when I perform a blanket scan of our home system, although I have to admit that I scout on instinct more than pure numbers. That perhaps explains why the signature resolves not to be gas but a newly spawned wormhole. I warp my Proteus strategic cruiser across to the connection, landing to see a K162 from class 3 w-space that I've probably got time to poke.

Jumping to C3b immediately sees a pulsar like our own. I think I'm in the wrong boat for this connection, but only if I get in to a fight. There is a ship visible on my directional scanner too. Only a Buzzard, though. If a covert operations boat can give me a run for my ISK, even shield tanked in a pulsar w-space system, then I need to rethink my fitting strategies.

The Buzzard is on d-scan with no sign of a tower. There's no sign that he's cloaking any time soon either, which is curious. The cov-ops remains on d-scan, remains on d-scan, and continues to remain on d-scan. Maybe I should launch probes and scan for his position. Or maybe the Buzzard will come to me, as I see the ship drop on to the wormhole and jump to our home system.

Watching a Buzzard jump past me to our home system

I'm clearly tired, because I know, given that my session-change cloak from the jump is still active, that I will be polarised if I chase the Buzzard through the wormhole. I know that the Buzzard will be able to evade the attentions of my relatively slow-locking Proteus without any troubles. I know that, because I've just missed another cov-ops in another system, and that one didn't cloak when it warped clear, so even if this one can't it won't matter.

Even knowing the disadvantages I face, my optimism is piqued by my fatigue affecting my reasoning capabilities. I jump back to our home system, polarising my hull, and decloak my polarised ship immediately, making myself vulnerable to get my weapon systems hot in a bid to make the Buzzard, a ship vastly less expensive than my own, potentially vulnerable.

The cov-ops doesn't shed his session-change cloak, but sits, weighing his options. He's going to run, it seems, and not jump. I get my targeting systems working, obtain a positive target lock, and start shooting. I'm shooting the wormhole, but that's got to be a little intimidating, surely. If you run, so the message will be heard, I will destroy your way home. Or the Buzzard will warp clear easily, leaving me to reload my guns on an empty wormhole. My polarised hull is okay with this.

I think I can leave my adventure here, at this point. There's little need to embarrass myself further, even when the Buzzard returns to the wormhole and jumps back to C3b just as my aggression timer ticks down, simultaneously announcing the end of my polarisation. I'm not chasing him again, but at least he's gone from our system.

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