My first battleship
5th November 2010 – 5.00 pmFortune smiles on us. A route to empire space is found right on our door-step, a K162 found in our system that connects us to high-sec space, and the exit system is only four hops from Jita. I have a plan for bringing my ships back in to w-space, but having the wormhole bridging empire space and our home system directly makes it obsolete. I can simply send my pod out and pilot ships back, just as other corporate colleagues are doing, without a concern for w-space ambushes. I get nekkid and make my first jump through the wormhole to high-sec empire space.
The first ship to collect is my Falcon recon ship, if only because it is the closest, only a few jumps away. I already brought in my Crane transport ship, which was the only other ship I got in to that station before the exit wormhole I was using collapsed. Another station holds more of my ships nine jumps away, which is a reasonable journey to make. My route also passes through Jita itself, heart of all trade in the known galaxy, and I am tempted to treat myself to my new expensive and useless toy. But I must focus on the task at hand. My Falcon is brought back and I stow it to get naked again, heading out for my next trip.
Nine jumps through Caldari space gets me a Guardian logistics ship, which I consider to be rather important for out continued Sleeper operations, and a second round-trip brings back the Bustard, pausing briefly in Jita to fill the transport ship with some consumables. I am a little bemused to see the Caldari Concord cops sitting on the high-sec side of the wormhole home, until I find out that one of our allies is wanted and they followed him there. The space police are only after their man and aren't causing any trouble otherwise. I also notice that the wormhole has now had enough ships pass through it to drop its mass allowance by half, which I take as a sign to get my new ship whilst I am conveniently close to Jita.
I park the Bustard and once again warp around with my pod showing. I make the few short hops to Jita, traffic control remarkably responsive even with over a thousand pilots in the system, and dock to see my ship waiting for me. I couldn't resist. As I was making the jumps to and from the other stations I had the market window open and was buying the ship and fittings as I travelled, multi-tasking my way across the region. Now all I have to do is assemble and fit what is effectively my first battleship, a richly satisfying process that ends with me slipping my pod in to the black ops Widow.
I give my Widow the name Neko Ninja and launch it for its maiden voyage, revelling in simply flying this gorgeous craft. I have to wonder how often I'll actually get to pilot the Widow for more than space displays, but I had the iskies and motivation to get the skills, so here I am. The first flight isn't long, though, as I still have other, more useful ships sitting in empire storage that can be moved to our new class 5 w-space home, and I simply take the Widow back to the wormhole, jump, and warp to the tower, where I park it with little ceremony in a ship maintenance array. I take a little time to marvel at how good the light of the C5's star makes the Widow look, though.
Back to the task at hand, I return to empire space and make the nine jump journey to the station where my Tengu strategic cruiser waits patiently. I realise on the trip home that the Tengu is another gorgeous ship, which is handy as it really helps make bearable the montonous system jumps, as I spin my view and ogle the engineering magnificence of the ships. The Tengu returns at the same time as a corporate freighter enters the high-sec exit system, dropping off a whole bunch of ships in the station there. I split my time between picking up my own ships, from nine jumps away, and those from the freighter drop. I bring another Guardian in, along with a Basilisk logistics ship which only I am able to pilot out of the currently available pilots.
The freighter brings my Cormorant destroyer salvaging ship too, in which I stuff a Zephyr prototype scanning boat to save a journey. I also need to watch polarisation effects, as docking, boarding, and returning can make the jumps through the wormhole close enough together to polarise my pod, which happens once. Making my way to the station nine jumps distant doesn't carry that concern, though, and I am able to make two more trips there to bring back my Sacrilege heavy assault ship and Onyx heavy interdictor. And that's it for now.
My Curse recon ship and Damnation command ship are eighteen jumps away, and perhaps a better exit will present itself soon. The majority of my ships are now in our new home—the smaller-hulled interceptor, stealth bomber, and assault frigate returned inside an Orca industrial command ship—along with some good utility ships. And as most other pilots have their combat and utility ships brought in too, it looks like today's lucky connection will see us begin to be productive in our new home.
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