Buzzing a Buzzard
29th January 2014 – 5.27 pmIf I can't kill a mining barge, I'll vent my frustration by killing our wormhole. I take an Orca through to the class 3 w-space system and back home, the industrial command ship no doubt making a good dent in the wormhole's mass allowance. Next I take out a Widow black ops ship. I think. Traffic control strikes again, and the wait is long enough to encourage me to force a restart of my ship's systems. It will be quicker and less painful.
The Widow is back on-line, back on our K162. I try to take it home but end up staring at the wormhole again. Extreme close-up! So, after another forced restart, do I persist with this foolish endeavour? Of course I don't. ...should be my answer. Instead, I try once more, proving the scientific definition that insanity is doing the same action multiple times and expecting different outcomes. In this case, the Widow goes straight out to C3a, and comes straight back. Okay, then.
One more round trip in the Orca will collapse our wormhole, and I'm almost feeling positive about this. Right up until I force yet another restart when trying to make the penultimate jump. But now only one jump remains, and it's the one that will take me home again. If only I could keep my ship on-line long enough for it to even enter the emergency warp from coming on-line. Nope, another restart required. I should have quit earlier.
I'm back and surprisingly not caught and killed yet. I think that's proof that no one's watching this debacle. I take the Orca home and the wormhole, thankfully, dies on schedule. Holy crap, that was a chore. I'd give up and go off-line if all the aggravation weren't motivating me to do something with the new static connection that I just spent so much time trying to spawn. Scan, resolve, jump. Here we go.
Back to normal. My directional scanner shows me a tower and no ships, which at least means there's no one for the dickscovery scanner to startle this time. I dunno what's better, really. But anyway, I launch probes and scan, one anomaly and seven signatures holding a static exit to null-sec that sticks out nicely for being the only weak signature in the system. Are there any K162s? Gas, gas, gas, wormhole, and a Buzzard in the tower. That's bad timing.
I throw my probes out of the system anyway, in case the pilot of the covert operations boat was getting himself a snack whilst coming on-line and not watching d-scan, then realise I only have one more signature to resolve, and it's a chubby one. One scan, identify gas, recall my probes. Now to bounce off the wormholes to see where they lead. The Buzzard won't do anything. Or maybe he'll coincidentally warp right behind me to their static exit.
I hold my position until the Buzzard leaves for null-sec, then decloak my Loki strategic cruiser, burn to the wormhole, and activate my sensor booster. I'm hoping he'll come back soon, polarised, and have terrible reflexes. It's not soon, but the wormhole crackles when the Buzzard would still be polarised. And it's him. Sadly, he has fairly standard reflexes, and my sensor-boosted targeting systems can only manage to be a split-second away from locking on to the cov-ops before he warps clear.
A second Buzzard warps from the tower to the wormhole and jumps, but never mind. Even if he comes back polarised I doubt there's much more I can do that I didn't do to the first Buzzard. I leave the K346 alone and warp across to check the second wormhole. A T405 outbound connection to class 4 w-space. It's a poor option in itself, in stark contrast to times before the dumbscovery scanner, but given how the locals know where their K346 is without scanning I'm happy to assume that they are also aware of the T405 and have scouted it already. That at least gives me a reason to call it a night, if the late hour itself doesn't.
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