Staying on the inside
27th July 2011 – 5.12 pmWhy am I waking up in a class 3 w-space system? It must have been quite a night. Ah, now I remember, we were waiting for a scout nine jumps from home and the universe disappeared. Rather than stay up far too late in the hopes of dashing back home, and because I feel rather safe in my scanning strategic cruiser, I accept my fate of staying in this fully scanned C3 with a history of the occupants harvesting gas to pass the time. Yeah, it's pretty bleak to lurk undetected in a system where you can ambush pilots who think they're isolated from everyone else. That is, as long as they wake up and do something.
A Buzzard covert operations boat is sitting piloted in one of the two towers here and doesn't look to be particularly active. The C3 is large enough for me to warp away and launch scanning probes, after which I throw them out of the system to perform a blanket scan with the probes not visible to the local's directional scanner. The results surprise me a little, as yesterday's fourteen anomalies have already been whittled down to three, and one new signature to resolve. Perhaps the locals have already done their Sleeper slaying for the week and aren’t going to come out again, but I can continue to hope. I leave scanning the new signature for now.
As I keep watch on the tower, the Buzzard warps out. It looks like he’s headed to the exit to low-sec, which I scanned yesterday and reconnoitred when waking up to find it available but reaching the end of its life. I follow behind the Buzzard, not intending to reveal myself just yet in the hopes of bagging a bigger prize, and see him jump out to empire space and return a minute later. Ah, he’s brought a friend back, piloting a Punisher frigate. It’s still small fry and my choice to remain hidden seems sensible, particularly when an Abaddon battleship warps to the tower and it looks like the system is waking up.
Sadly, nothing happens. Despite teasing me with industrial ships and some warping around, no one goes out to collect planet goo, harvest gas, or mine rocks. The ships only warp between the two towers, and even when arrays are taken off-line and stowed the tower itself is not stripped down and unanchored. None of the pilots do anything more risky than warp from inside one force field to inside the other. And when the wormhole to low-sec collapses of old age and breaks its hip, the Buzzard scans at a rate that makes me wonder if maybe she too has fallen and can't get up. I give up watching these pilots for now and get an early night, hoping for better and brighter prospects tomorrow.
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