Pleasure to miss you
3rd June 2013 – 5.49 pmI have limited time, but that won't stop me seeing what I can find to shoot. Scanning the home system and having a second wormhole appear in my results is a good start, as the K162 from class 5 w-space could be an indicator of activity. I jump through the connection to see what's there, with my directional scanner showing me only a tower with no ships. Of course, the ships are probably all stored in the ten hangars, which is tidy if a bit excessive, but as capsuleers are verboten from hangars there's no one home to stalk.
There's nothing else in the system that I won't find without probes, and with an also-tidy two anomalies and five signatures there isn't much to see with probes either. Still, a K162 from more class 5 w-space pops up when resolving each of the signatures, but moving backwards to C5b indeed looks like a backwards move, with nothing appearing on d-scan. There's more space outside of the d-scan's range, however, so I warp away to explore. I don't launch probes yet, as I consider it to be careless to launch scanning probes on an already known wormhole.
A tower pops up on d-scan as I warp around C5b, with an Executioner frigate and Buzzard covert operations boat also visible. Locating the towers kinda sees both ships piloted, except now the Buzzard is a Badger hauler. I'd wonder if I'd initially misread d-scan, but an update shows the Badger is a new contact and the Buzzard is elsewhere in the system, curiously uncloaked. I don't see probes being launched, though. Perhaps the Buzzard is scouting the route out of w-space for the Badger. I hope so.
I sit and watch the two ships. The Executioner moves a little, but does nothing of consequence. The Badger moves towards a hangar, and looks to my imagination to be taking his merry time loading up on loot and salvage to export to empire space. But the hauler's next movement, minutes later, is to swing around and point in no specific direction, and not towards the wormhole in particular unspecificity. It's a word. And hurry up, I need to go out.
Finally, the Executioner makes a new ship choice, swapping one frigate for another, and warps a Magnate to the wormhole. Or what I think is the wormhole. I follow, for want of a better target, only to see the Magnate not on the same grid as the wormhole but still on d-scan and launching probes. I don't have my own probes launched to quickly locate the frigate, so there's not much I can do. But I learn that the static connection from this system to C5a is now at the end of its life.
The Badger should still have plenty of time to get his loot out to empire space and return through the dying wormhole. But if he chooses to wait the few hours then I think I'm wasting my time here more than he is. I have a few more minutes before I need to go, though, and there may not be a better option to stumble in to through our own static connection, so I stay and watch the Badger a little longer.
A new contact appears, this one in a Cheetah cov-ops, and disappears to empty space. That was fun. But I don't understand why the Badger hasn't mov—oop, there he goes. The hauler swings around, clearly not going to the wormhole but a customs office, and I'm right behind it. Actually, I'm in front of it, impetuously entering warp before the Badger manages to. And, I suppose, I'm not even right in front of it, as I manage to choose poorly between two closely positioned customs offices. I went to one, and the Badger went to the other.
I try to chase the Badger between customs offices, but he doesn't want to play. The hauler doesn't loiter for long enough at his first choice for me to catch up, and disappears from d-scan and back to the tower instead of warping to another CO. What a poor sport. He may go out on a second run, of course, and I wait and watch a little longer, ignoring the new contact in a Thanatos carrier, but my time really has run out now. Which, I suppose, makes it good that I didn't catch the Badger after all. I head home, across a couple of systems, and go off-line without a criminal flag keeping my ship in space for the next fifteen minutes.
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