Missing ships heading home
10th October 2012 – 5.42 pm'Let's kill the Nemesis.' Ah, good point. I was going to call it a night, but Aii reminds me of the stealth bomber sitting a hundred kilometres from the local tower in our neighbouring class 3 w-space system, abandoned and apparently unwanted. Of course, my having just popped an Iteron hauler collecting planet goo may have discouraged the locals from trying to recover the Nemesis, particularly as my ship systems crashed and revealed my own stealth bomber sitting ten kilometres from it. But as we're leaving, we may as well leave the system clean.
I am close to the Nemesis in my Manticore, and Aii can get closer in his covert Tengu strategic cruiser by warping to me or to the bookmark I share with him. He chooses the bookmark, not quite knowing where my cloaked ship is. Before we light up the bomber, I caution him against staying decloaked for too long, as I remember painfully losing a Tengu to tower defences before, particularly as we are simply shooting an unpiloted ship, so to help I lurk with the intent of target-painting the Nemesis so Aii's missiles hit for more damage.
Aii's lined up, we're both ready, so we go for it. Aii decloaks, I decloak, lock, and paint the Nemesis, and wait for Aii's recalibration delay to end. Now the missiles start flying. And, for some reason, my shields start dropping. It seems that the tower dislikes me, but not Aii. Maybe because I shot one of its owners. Whatever, I'd better cheese it. Thankfully, I positioned myself to be mostly lined up with a moon, just in case the worst happened, and I warp away from the Nemesis with a minor bit of armour damage, as the still-unharmed Aii turns the stealth bomber in to a wreck. He's fine.
I warp back and loot a nifty covert operations cloak from the wreck, bouncing out again as Aii destroys the wreck to leave no evidence of our being here. Job's a good'un, it's time to go home. I warp to our K162 and jump home, moving away to cloak as Aii reports a Legion strategic cruiser on our wormhole. That's odd, as I didn't see anyone. The Legion cloaks as Aii jumps home, but maybe we can tempt the pilot to show himself again. I go to our tower, take the time to repair the Manticore's armour—partly so that it isn't forgotten about, and partly to soak up some polarisation time—before boarding our own stealthy Legion to see how daring the other one is.
The Legion hasn't jumped to our system, as Aii has been watching, but maybe he was concerned about polarisation effects too. They should be over now, so I return to C3a and sit on the wormhole holding my session change cloak. There is no sign of the strategic cruiser, and probes are visible on my directional scanner for only a few seconds. Then again, that's all it should take, as there are only two signatures in the whole system. Eventually, my session change timer ends and I have to recloak, and I imagine seeing a Legion to go with the Tengu would have the single pilot less than likely to engage now.
I think we'll only see the Legion again if he has friends to bring, which I almost put down to paranoia but know that it is more based on experience. Either way, I may as well check the static exit to high-sec to see if the Legion comes this way, but warping to my rough bookmark made earlier shows that the wormhole must have been really close to the end of its life, as I end up in empty space. I return to our K162 and call Aii to come in and scan for the new static connection, which he does, and just when I don't think we'll see the other Legion again and stop paying attention he jumps back to our home system.
I alert Aii, asking him to return to our K162 and hold there, as I desperately fiddle with jumping through the wormhole to give chase to the Legion. I don't think I'm that slow, but after a couple of minutes of sitting in wait in our home system I have to admit that the Legion has moved away already. Maybe he is a pilot from the class 5 system connecting in to our home system and is getting home late, which he'd have to be as the K162 was EOL when I found it an hour earlier. Or maybe he was scanning for the replacement high-sec connection in C3a to guide a colleague of his home, which seems about right when an Ishtar heavy assault ship warps past Aii in C3a to our wormhole.
Again, I'm not paying full attention to what's happening, which is embarrassing but it happens, and don't decloak before the wormhole flares in front of me. By the time the recalibration delay from decloaking is over and I can start locking on to the Ishtar the ship is close enough to being in warp that I can't stop him. It looks like he heads towards the C5 K162, and I follow, as does Aii, but neither of us are quick enough to stop him, or even to see him jump through the wormhole.
But the HAC drops off d-scan, and it seems a fair assumption that he was heading this way, as was the Legion a few minutes ago. And that looks like all the ships that are coming this way, which I take to be a good situation. It's certainly better than provoking an escalated response, anyway. Aii scouts the other way again, reporting C3a and high-sec to be empty, and a fearless Fin jumps through the EOL K162 to a clear d-scan. I think that makes it sleep o'clock.
2 Responses to “Missing ships heading home”
that was a bit wasteful, no? Why not steal the nemesis? possibly provoke a little corp drama (I know a SB is not worth much but you never know where the lamas are.)
Neither of us could actually pilot the Nemesis. Being Caldari, we didn't realise you needed to train skills in order to fly ships.
I like the idea of not knowing where the drama llama is. Kind of like w-space's lack of local.