Finding the w-space Phantasm
4th May 2014 – 3.43 pmI leave the hot system behind me. Well, cool system. It was hot earlier, and there is certainly some activity happening, just nothing I can see. Frankly, that's not a great kind of activity to be involved in. So it is that I jump through the wormhole home and head towards our static connection, hoping that our neighbouring class 3 w-space system holds some unmonitored promise.
Updating my directional scanner from our K162 sees a tower and a few ships. The Tengu strategic cruiser and Sabre interdictor are fairly normal sights, but the Phantasm cruiser isn't. Indeed, the rarity of the cruiser in w-space piques my interest enough to check back through my records. Noting that my previous visit to this system was about six months ago lets me find the relevant journal entry. It is the same Phantasm cruiser.
I wonder if the Phantasm gets taken out of the tower, as I warp to where it inevitably is floating unpiloted inside a force field, the tower unsurprisingly in the same place. The other two ships are empty of capsuleers too, and realising that any minor sensation of excitement was only caused by jumping to a system I've visited previously causes my energy to wane. I've been to many systems more than once.
There doesn't seem to be much potential in the w-space constellation. There is a poor high-sec connection behind us, combined with possible threat, and I know that this C3 will exit to low-sec, so replacing Fin's lost Loki strategic cruiser doesn't look likely. Well, not with that attitude. Scanning is easy, I can at least poke for the U210 and check for possible K162s in low-sec. Bridging the k-space gap often stumbles in to activity. I warp away from the tower to launch my probes.
A blanket scan of the system reveals thirteen anomalies and twelve signatures, and sifting through them initially identifies a relic and data site. It's a slow start. A clump of signatures speeds up the process—gasgasgaswormhole—and from there I get in to a decent groove. Second wormhole, two more gas sites, another relic site, and one last gas site, as I land twenty-seven kilometres from the U210 and an Astero frigate.
My combat probes showed me the ship in space as I finished scanning, and now my overview tells me what the ship is. I'm too far to engage the Astero successfully, and crawling cloaked towards the frigate doesn't get me appreciably closer before it jumps to low-sec. That's cool, maybe he'll come back polarised. I make my way to the wormhole and loiter. But he doesn't come back.
Never mind, let's see where the Astero came from. I warp to the second wormhole to see that, ah, I've found a dying K162 from null-sec. The frigate actually could have come from low-sec to start with, and has simply headed back the way he came. I return to the U210 and exit w-space for low-sec, and seeing no sign of the Astero makes me think he really isn't coming back. Fair enough.
Not having a target I appraise my new situation. I'm in a system in Khanid, with a small trickle of pilots coming and going. A couple of extra signatures are visible, but scanning them only resolves a pair of relic sites that I'm not interested in. I think I should take the hint. There's nothing out here for me tonight. I turn my Loki around and head home.
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