Not getting in the way of a roam
10th January 2014 – 5.43 pmTime to go exploring! The marauder experiment was... a success maybe? It wasn't a failure, because I cleared the anomaly and brought our pimped Golem back home intact, it just took a while to do. But one is enough for now, and rather than head back with my glorious leader to make more ISK I quite fancy seeing if we can find anything else to shoot. So it is with murderous thoughts that I warp to our static wormhole and jump to the neighbouring class 3 w-space system.
My directional scanner is clear from the K162 in C3a, a recent visit from only two months ago indicating a lack of occupation and exit to low-sec. Fair enough. I launch probes, perform a blanket scan of the system, and explore to look for any activity or changes. My probes reveal eleven anomalies and eight signatures, and there being no ships makes me assume there is still no occupation. But, paraphrasing slightly, assuming makes you look like a dick occasionally.
A tower has sprung up on the edge of the system. There's no one home, of course, or there would be ships somewhere. And as I locate the tower a new signature pops on the annoying discovery scanner. At least this time the signature is too weak to be a K162, as a subsequent blanket scan shows, so it is either a new site or an outbound wormhole that still offers no hope of catching pilots by surprise. Whichever it is, I can scan casually.
Four wormholes, two data sites, two pockets of gas. It's a nice collection when viewed on futuristic space paper, and I warp around the wormholes to see if the results match the expectation. The U210 exit to low-sec has the little demon of Heimatar visible, a K162 from null-sec comes from the Pure Blind region, a high-sec K162—completing the known-space triumvirate—looks like it comes in from the remote Everyshore, and finally I warp to a second K162 from high-sec, this one opened from Metropolis. It looked better on paper. Futuristic space paper.
I'll hit Pure Blind. Null-sec has better rats to pop whilst scanning, is more likely to be empty of other pilots, and the concentration of wormholes doesn't seem to change between security levels. Sure enough, no other pilots and one extra signature encourages me to rat and scan, but the signature is a data site, resolved before I find a rat I like the look of. Never mind, I shall abandon ratting and see what this data site can offer me instead.
I head home to grab a Buzzard covert operations boat, fitted specifically for hacking, and invite Fin to come along to help nab the spewed loot. It's not much of an invitation, like being invited to help move furniture, without even the suggestion of being offered a drink afterwards, but I offer it anyway. It's accepted too. There's not much else to do, frankly.
In the Buzzard, I head back across C3a to null-sec, jumping through a wormhole now wobbling away at the end of its life. I don't think I would have missed that detail before, so we have a few hours of life left in the connection, which should be plenty of time to hack one data site. I warp to the data site and scan each container in turn, tagging them with a priority based on the contents. We may as well go for the highest value loot first, in case we get interrupted. Now I cloak and wait for Fin.
My glorious leader headed out to high-sec to sell the loot gathered from our Golem experiments, which is a few hundred million ISK. Everyshore was tried, but it's rather remote from any buyers of Sleeper loot, so Fin went to Metropolis instead. On her way back, she sees 'at least two scanners in C3a, based on the number of probes'. Oh, 'and a Sabre'. The presence of the interdictor is interesting, as surely no one would use it to scan, which would make three active pilots.
Where have the pilots in C3a come from? Despite my loathing for the dumbscovery scanner it would be ridiculously pig-headed to ignore it. I'd rather it weren't there, so the information would need to be gathered properly, but I ask Fin how many signatures are in the system. There are the same as earlier. So the scouts are tourists or local. Fin wants to sit and watch for the ships, so rather than wait for her I decloak and start hacking the data cans.
Loot spews around me, I grab what I can, forgetting which type I should be aiming for again, as Fin sees more ship movements. The Sabre is on d-scan again, this time with a Pilgrim recon ship, Loki strategic cruiser, and Falcon recon ship. 'Looks more like a roam.' None pass her way, which has her sitting on the null-sec K162 as advance warning for me, but I bug out anyway when a new contact appears in the system and doesn't pass through. There is only one can left to hack and I marked it as the lowest priority for a reason. I'm okay leaving it.
I tell Fin I'm heading home, so she does the same. Fin gets through our K162 first, checking the system for ships and extra signatures as a precaution. There are none of either. Whatever the ships were doing in C3a they were probably not local—bouncing off the tower in my Buzzard sees no one there—and can't have come this way. I suppose they were bridging between low-sec, perhaps to high-sec. Whatever they were doing, they're gone, we're home, and that makes it fine to call it a night.
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