Hauling haulers
18th May 2013 – 3.49 pmNo one's home, but a bookmark has been left for me. It looks to point towards our static wormhole, which ostensibly should save time. I'll still scan, of course, as new signatures could have cropped up, but if I get the expected number of sites it will be trivial to check that the bookmark remains relevant and warp quickly to the wormhole. So, naturally, nothing is as it seems.
There is just the one signature in the system, but it doesn't correspond to the bookmark. Our static wormhole has been opened, collapsed, and replaced, one way or another. But no matter. I have probes out and I was going to resolve the wormhole anyway, so it's not like this is a major chore that will have me rage-quitting. An empty neighbouring system won't either, as that's pretty normal. Plus, the class 3 w-space system only looks empty from the K162. There is more space beyond the range of my directional scanner.
Launching combat scanning probes, blanketing the system, and warping to where a tower should be has my cloaky Loki strategic cruiser ending up still in empty space. How can my notes from seventeen months ago be wrong? It's mind-boggling. Still, along with eleven anomalies and seven signatures are four ships, so I warp across to another distant planet optimistic about finding occupation. And I do, I think. Or not. What? There are three Bestower haulers and an Imicus frigate out here, but I can't see a tower. And not just a lack of force field, or hangars, but switching views sees nothing but planets, moons, and the ships floating freely.
Warping to a particular moon finds the ships, all empty of pilots. I can pilot them all, so there's little point in destroying them just for the fireworks, but it would be prudent to scan for other wormholes before I try to take them home, in case someone else is watching too. The odds are pretty slim, but I'd rather not end up as a humorous tale of coincidence in some other capsuleer's journal. Scan, scan, scan. Gas, gas, wormhole, rocks, gas, gas. Okay, it's just me and the static exit to low-sec, which I'll assume to be closed. Let's grab some new ships.
I could fly to and from our system a few times, or I could be smarter. I have Orca powers, and the industrial command ship can carry ships in its own hangar. Making one trip should be better than four, particularly with polarisation concerns when making multiple jumps through a wormhole. I dump my Loki at our tower, grab the Orca, and head back to C3a to scoop everything in one fell swoop, just as my glorious leader comes on-line. That's good, as she can make up for my embarrassing ignorance.
The Orca's hangar isn't as big as I imagined. Or Bestowers are bigger than I think. I throw one of the haulers in to the Orca and try for a second, but it won't fit. I really should learn my ships at some point. But all is not lost. Fin can help bring the ships home, which will reduce time lost to polarisation delays, and I can still squeeze the Imicus next to the Bestower, reducing the total number of trips by one anyway. It's not quite as smooth as I'd hoped, but we recover some plain industrial ships and a crappy scanning frigate for... some purpose. Explosions may have been better.
Okay, now what? 'Should I put an Orca through the wormhole?' We may as well. Anomalies are starting to build up in the home system again, and the last time we waited a couple of days to clear them ourselves they were stolen before we could. But not the Orca. I should jump a Widow through first, to prove the wormhole's mass. And the return trip by the black ops ship drops the connection to half mass. One more jump by each of us should kill the wormhole, which, after one more delay for polarisation effects, it does. Now for the explosions.
Starting a little later than usual means I am comfortable only clearing a couple of anomalies, but any ISK we can generate helps. All goes smoothly too, Sleepers blowing up all over the place and our two Tengu strategic cruisers barely getting their shields scratched. Salvaging the wrecks brings home rather more than we average too. Three hundred million ISK of loot is a good result for clearing a couple of sites of Sleepers. That should help me feel less guilty about spending so much time looking for other ships to shoot.
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