Only being able to carry two spare bombs in a Manticore limits the operational utility of the stealth bomber. A bit of welding should help me carry more and be effective for longer.
It works like a dream, as long as I never need to manoeuvre.
Or Music of 2010, part one (continued).
Casey Dienel's dreamy vocals open White Hinterland's second album Kairos. The soaring calls of Icarus echo before being repeated over a thumping drum and pulsing bass rhythm, creating a different dynamic to the piano-based folk music of previous works. The juxtaposition of soft, comforting vocals against more stripped-down and heavier music than normal works remarkably well for White Hinterland. And the changes continue in to second track Moon Jam.
Where Icarus introduces the new White Hinterland, with Moon Jam the drum track gets more mechanical and a synthesiser drones around a riff as Casey crafts amazing vocals above it all, pulling us deeper in to the glorious marriage of styles. There is a keen ear at work, not just understanding how best to combine the different sounds but also understanding how to use the dynamics. The full power of the song comes not when all the instruments are playing but when they are removed for the bridge. Hearing Casey sing 'life without a moon and stars/is no life at all' fully in the foreground and with her wonderful choice of pauses makes me tingle every time.
Icarus and Moon Jam are amazing songs by themselves, but they also peform a valuable service to the listener. By the time we come to third track No Logic the combination of a deep bass rhythm, odd percussive effects, and powerful yet soft vocals seems perfectly natural. Now we can sail through the fabulous Begin Again and Bow and Arrow fully immersed in White Hinterland's world, revelling in all the looped vocals and unusual background sounds.
Then the distinctive beat of Amsterdam kicks in, giving a couple of bars to prepare for Casey's vocals. It is such a simple song and fairly short, only two verses and a repeated chorus, but the real joy is how the song ends. The music is stripped down as far is it can go without disappearing, then whispered much more quietly than the rest of the song. The intimacy of the outro is made more poignant by the final lines of the chorus, 'what were you trying to tell me?/I could not make it out', almost begging us to listen more closely to hear the secret. And it's worth being somewhere quiet to hear Casey's beautiful refrain.
Kairos still has four tracks left and after the layers of looped vocals of Thunderbird the more traditional and soothing Cataract embraces us. The song is delightful enough to start with but at the turn we get another wonderful refrain. It is difficult to be repetitive without becoming boring but Casey manages it almost effortlessly here. The same lyric is sung with just enough changes to keep it interesting but few enough to make it emotionally charged, whilst expertly gauged pauses in the music punctuate the passage, gradually fading in to noise antithetically to the lyrics in a way that accentuates the message.
Huron keeps the music emotionally engaging, more layered vocals almost haunting the song by the end, before the album closes with Magnolias. I was looking forwards to Kairos when I heard that White Hinterland had a new album due, but I never quite expected it to be so different and with it so powerful. Even with a more minimal sound there is so much to listen to and be drawn in to, and Casey Dienel's vocal and musical talent remains extraordinary. I have been listening to the album regularly since its release a few months ago and I am still finding new depth to it. Kairos is a beautiful album.
I'm not quite sure what I'm seeing. I've just ganked two ships mining gas, only podding one of the pilots because the other got away, and now a Nidhoggur carrier has appeared on my overview. I think this is the first time I've seen a carrier being piloted in space and am not quite sure what to expect. Indeed, I finish looting the second gas miner wreck before deciding that perhaps I should warp my Onyx heavy interdictor out of the pocket. As far as I can tell, the carrier hasn't taken any aggressive actions yet. Apart from being a carrier.
I warp out cleanly, the carrier's fighters launching around the Nidhoggur as I leave. But my colleage in the Lachesis recon ship is rather more fearless than me and has charged towards the carrier. He announces he has the Nidhoggur 'pointed'—its warp engines disrupted—and that he is shooting its fighters. I turn around at the wormhole and head back. His ship is more fragile than my HIC and if he is confident in tackling the carrier then I can at least provide what support I can. Besides which, the Ishtar heavy assault ship and Drake battlecruiser that weren't in time to shoot the miners have now arrived. And a couple more pilots are preparing ships to come and help shoot a carrier.
The Lachesis pilot seems to be okay. I activate the Onyx's warp bubble when I return and trap the Nidhoggur, relieving some of the pressure from the recon ship, and our combat ships start shooting. Unsurprisingly, the carrier can easily repair any damage we can do to it but at least it hasn't called in reinforcements yet, if it can. We need to deplete its capacity to repair, which means neutralising the energy in its capacitor. The carrier is under control, letting some pilots return to bring more appropriately fitted ships. Three battleships help us shoot and neutralise the carrier but it still isn't quite enough. We can only hope that we can maintain the damage and energy drain longer than the carrier pilot can repair, but after a while the Nidhoggur disappears. He must have logged off, probably causing his client to crash to keep his repper modules active. It's not a kill but I'll take it as a small victory.
We have some big ships in the system and, back at the wormhole before we jump out, I remind the fleet that there is a tower devoid of defences here. Out of the spirit of adventure, or spite at the carrier pilot's disappearance, the fleet warps to the tower and starts shooting. It is only a small tower and may well be possible to destroy, although even if we can overcome its shields the tower will enter reinforced mode if it has any strontium in its fuel bays. But if the owners haven't bothered to configure any defences maybe they didn't think strontium was necessary either.
As the combat ships shoot the tower I am asked to return with my Buzzard covert operations boat and scan the system for wormholes, to help ensure our safety in the system. Shooting a tower anchored to a celestial object makes us rather easy to find. I scan the system and find two wormholes. One is the system's static connection, the other is a K162. Both connect to other class 5 w-space systems, like this one, and both wormholes are reaching the end of their natural lifetimes. We should be relatively safe. I park my Buzzard again and swap for a Drake battlecruiser to help shoot the tower.
Our Lachesis pilot is not moving from the ladar site where the Nidhoggur both appeared and disappeared. He knows that if the carrier returns and warps to the tower it will be able to repair in short order any damage we can do to the tower, negating our entire assault. If, however, he keeps his Lachesis nearby and can lock and point the carrier if it returns the carrier will remain neutralised. He's pretty smart sometimes. His theory that the carrier will return to repair the tower seems to be confirmed when a pod warps in to the ladar site and out again, no doubt checking to see if it is safe for the carrier to return. Our pilot also wonders if perhaps the carrier has the tower's supply of strontium in its hold, another reason why the corporation wants to get the carrier back to the tower.
Shooting the tower is slow. Its shields are slowly depleting, although our damage drops slightly when one of the fleet's drones drifts too far and is caught inside the tower's shields, shutting the drone down completely. 'If anyone asks', the owner says, 'this is an innocent drone recovery mission'. It is as good a reason as any and we keep shooting. The tower's owners don't seem particularly uspet that we are shooting them, but it doesn't look like they have any ships to attack us with. The only ships inside the tower are a hauler and mining barge and there is no ship maintenance array. Perhaps all their combat ships are in the carrier's hangar and another consequence of having their pilot off-line is that they cannot retaliate to our threat. It is beginning to look like even more of a mistake to have warped the Nidhoggur in to the ladar site.
A voice pipes up in the w-space local channel, 'you need just 24 hours for fun', probably referring to the length of time a tower stays in reinforced mode and no doubt pointing to the futility of attacking a tower in w-space with its volatile connections. But it is more likely a bluff. The fleet is about to reach the peak recharge point of the tower's shields and if we can overcome that we will soon see just how vulnerable the tower is. The capsuleer who spoke in the local channel warps in to the ladar site and out again, still hoping that they can get their carrier back, as the tower's shields hit 30% strength. Then 28% and lower. We have enough firepower, the shields are going down. All that remains to be seen is what happens when we inflict the first point of armour damage, whether the tower has any strontium in it or not. The shields go down to 26% and keep falling, and we strike armour.
The tower enters reinforced mode, but only for four hours. There is some strontium in the tower's fuel bay after all, but far from a full load. Even so, it looks like it will be enough. We may have the firepower and the active wormhole connection, but the wormhole could be collapsed, or just threatened. We could keep a scanning boat in the system and find a way back to k-space for our fleet after destroying the tower, with a second scanning boat at our tower also finding a way in, but we're not quite that dedicated. It is also late already. In four hours it will be the wee hours of the morning. The fleet heads home.
It was an exciting evening. Engaging a Nidhoggur carrier and then laying siege to a tower, whilst maintaining firm control of the system. Perhaps if the tower had no strontium the position of the defenders would have been different but our fleet was capable and ready to attack. I look forwards to more adventures like this!
The wormhole's dead, long live the wormhole! Our static connection is collapsed after the neighbouring system has been plundered and I arrive in time to help scan the new constellation. The replacement static wormhole is easy to find and jumping through to the class 4 w-space system presents me with an almost-clear return from the directional scanner. Aside from the expected celestial bodies there is also a lone Myrmidon battlecruiser, given the name 'A Gift from KAIRS'. Using d-scan to get a bearing on the ship, the Myrmidon appears to be near the first planet in the system, and warping to the planet shows the ship to be unpiloted. It looks like a gift.
We have a capsuleer available who can pilot a Myrmidon and he comes to collect the abandoned ship. The fitting is reported to be a bit of a pig but that can be altered, and it is still a free battlecruiser. I would normally wonder why Kairs left the ship behind but I'm not really that bothered and get back to scanning. That there are no anomalies in this class 4 system may prompt colleagues to collapse our wormhole again, but I press on anyway. With only a few signatures to resolve I should get the next wormhole soon enough and give myself another system to explore. But instead I find rocks, rocks, a radar site, and a magnetometric site. I have already double-checked that I didn't accidentally pass through a K162 again, so the wormhole must be the final signature in the system.
The last signature is so weak it smells like a C5, and indeed it is. But it is a fresh smell of rose petals, as the wormhole 'has not yet begun its cycle of decay'. I jump through the pristine goodness to be greeted by only a single planet on d-scan. I bookmark the wormhole and warp away to explore the rest of the system. A tower and ships become visible on d-scan, although there are no tower defences. There is a force field, though, so it is not completely abandoned yet. Locating the tower and warping to it finds that it is as defenceless as the scan suggests and a Badger Mark II hauler and Retriever mining barge are in its shields. But I also see from d-scan that a Myrmidon and Apocalypse battleship are elsewhere in the system.
I get a bearing on the two distant combat ships by narrowing the angular resolution of d-scan, finding that both ships are likely at the same spot but not around a celestial body. There are no Sleeper wrecks visible and no other ships appear to suggest that these two are helping to collapse a wormhole. It looks like I may have found two more spare ships to collect. As the ships aren't near a celestial body I will need to launch combat scanning probes to locate their position in space and I warp away from the tower to prepare to scan. But I know that combat probes pick up dozens of signatures in any broad scan and I would rather not have to sift through the results to find what I need, so I spend an extra minute getting a better bearing and range on the ships using d-scan. Now having a good approximate position of the ships I launch combat probes and position them accordingly.
My first scan picks up the Apocalypse quite well and, assuming that both ships are together, I centre my second scan on that point. My scan also finds a wormhole nearby, which will save time after I've found these ships. My second scan gets a solid hit on both the Apocalypse and Myrmidon, and I engage my Buzzard covert operation boat's warp drive to put me within twenty kilometres of the two ships. I recall my combat probes, if only because I want to switch to core scanning probes for looking for wormholes in a minute. Or maybe I won't, as dropping out of warp reveals two very much piloted and active battleships. Luckily, I didn't warp close enough to get decloaked, and the two ships are in a harmless gas mining site. I didn't even think to check for ladar sites.
The ships must have only just started mining, as only now does a jet-can appear, serving as a handy reference to bookmark. My guess is that the Myrmidon is mining gas and the Apocalypse is acting as protection, although neither pilot can be paying too much attention as my ever-so casual use of combat probes apparently went unnoticed. But that works for me, already having signalled to colleagues and allies that I have found targets, and warping my Buzzard homewards. Back at our tower I copy my bookmarks and drop them in to the shared can for others to collect before jumping in to my Onyx heavy interdictor. A colleague gets his Lachesis recon ship ready and a second pilot will follow in a Harbinger battlecruiser.
No one else is answering the call for ships. I am suspecting we'll need to withstand an attack from the Apocalypse but I know that time is of the essence and move the small fleet out anyway. By the time we've jumped in to our neighbouring C4 an allied pilot is volunteering his Drake and as we reach the wormhole to the C5 another colleague appears and wants to join. Fly something that can do damage, I say, and he boards his Ishtar heavy assault ship and heads out, using the copied bookmarks and guiding the allied Drake as he goes. But the spearhead is already in the C5 and warping in to the ladar site.
We drop on top of the two ships and I activate my Onyx's warp bubble, trapping both ships. But it also traps us, the thirty second activation time hopefully not a problem should the Apocalypse start shooting. It doesn't. In fact, it starts to crawl away, tring to move out of the warp bubble. The Myrmidon is our primary target and is quickly popped, the pilot podded for good measure, but as soon as I see the Apocalypse make a break for the edge of the bubble I am following. The warp disruption field generator—the HIC's 'bubble'—affects velocity-boosting modules and even with my reheat engaged the battleship is getting away. But with the Myrmidon destroyed our firepower is switched to the Apocalypse, as well as the Lachesis ship's own warp disruption effects, and the second battleship is popped. Now just outside the bubble, his pod flees.
Looting the wrecks is enlightening. The Apocalypse wasn't protecting the Myrmidon, both ships were mining gas. Our assault was a straightforward gank. But both ships also were fitted with a warp core stabiliser each, making them less susceptible to warp disruption effects, so it was good that I brought my Onyx. It was all over rather more quickly than I expected. And by this time the rest of our fleet has jumped in to the C5 looking for a fight. Even though I wasn't sure what we'd be fighting I feel a little guilty for getting the hopes up of the fleet. That is, until the Nidhoggur carrier appears seventy kilometres away from us and launches its fighters.
Knowing the static wormhole is being collapsed makes it easy to find the new one. I launch probes from my Buzzard covert operations boat and perform a scan of the entire system prior to the wormhole's implosion, ignoring every result. Once the wormhole collapses I repeat my scan, the new wormhole being the only new signature in the system and thus the sole signal returned on the second scan. I resolve the signature and warp to it, looking for another exit to k-space for allies to bring in some battleships.
Our expert scout is rather more thorough than me and he notices a second new signature in the system, one that wasn't here when he scanned a few hours earlier. He resolves that one to find a K162 wormhole coming from a class 2 w-space system. He jumps in to that C2 to explore whilst I am heading in the other direction, through our static wormhole to a C4. I've been in this C4 system before, about four months ago, and a corporation has staked a claim in here since my last visit. A tower now sits around one of the moons, an Imicus frigate and Iteron hauler piloted in the tower's shields. They don't seem to be doing anything.
The system itself is fairly dry of signatures. I soon find an incoming connection, the distinctive greys of a class 3 system bleeding through the wormhole, as well as the static wormhole also leading to a C3. I want to investigate what activity is occurring on the other side of the K162, which is agreed upon as long as I return to drop what bookmarks I currently have. This will let our scout head through the static connection to the other C3 and we can continue to split our efforts and explore in different directions. I copy the bookmarks to our shared can before returning to jump through to the class 3 system.
The wormhole drops me at a point in the system where the directional scanner is only in range of one planet and its single moon, and a tower is also visibe. Seeing the system is occupied with only a single moon on d-scan means I can warp immediately to the tower, after bookmarking the return wormhole. The Nighthawk command ship I spotted on d-scan is sat piloted in the tower's shields and is joined by a Cormorant destroyer warping in. I make a bookmark to the tower's location and warp off to the inner system to drop scanning probes out of d-scan range of the capsuleers here. But as I reach the inner system and start dropping out of warp I note that the Nighthawk is still visible on d-scan, outside of the tower, now accompanied by a Drake battlecruiser.
I wonder what the ships are doing, whether they are warping to an anomaly or a wormhole, and delay launching probes until I know. Instead, I activate my ship's on-board scanner, which will locate all anomalies within a limited range. The scanning process takes longer without probes but it presents none of the tell-tale signs of activity that probes would. There are loads of anomalies in here! I stay in the solar system map and adjust my view to be centred on my ship. I then rotate my view to position an anomaly in a direct line with my ship. With d-scan's angular resolution narrowed down to 5° I can quickly see if the Nighthawk and Drake are in a particular anomaly. Using d-scan in this way in the system map is awfully convenient and I am confident that the two ships are in one particular anomaly. I warp to the anomaly to find out for sure.
Yes, there are the Nighthawk and Drake, shooting Sleeper ships in the anomaly. I have targets! Neither of the capsuleer ships appears to be moving much and I carefully manoeuvre closer, whilst alerted colleagues start preparing a combat fleet. I get within ten kilometres of the two ships and bookmark my position, hopefully providing a good point to warp to for the fleet. I then warp out and head home to get my own combat ship. An ally already has his Onyx heavy interdictor ready so I opt for a Drake of my own to bring to the fight, its seven heavy launchers providing some solid firepower.
The fleet is ready, mostly battlecruisers. I volunteer a colleague to act as point, asking him to use his Arazu recon ship. It can warp cloaked to the bookmark I made to the Nighthawk and Drake targets and can make adjustments to position himself for the fleet to warp to. I don't want the Onyx to warp to the bookmarked location only to find that our targets have moved, perhaps allowing them to warp away. The Arazu pilot jumps in to the C3 and warps close to the bookmark I made, manoeuvring himself to provide a good reference to the rest of the fleet. The command comes: jump!
We jump en masse through the wormhole and the fleet warps to our colleague's position. The wormhole is out of d-scan range of the anomaly the targets are in so we have some time on our hands. And we drop out of warp on top of the Nighthawk and Drake, the Onyx raising its warp bubble to prevent them both from fleeing. The Nighthawk is called as the primary target and the fleet starts firing.
The Nighthawk has an immense shield. Our firepower is knocking it down but only slowly. I use my own drones to destroy the shield maintenance drones the Nighthawk launches, but this fight will take a while. CCP Claw must be lurking somewhere as a Nemesis stealth bomber of ours is quickly popped, probably for a non-Caldari ship violation. We continue our onslaught on the Nighthawk's shields, the Drake refusing to try to escape the Onyx's bubble in an opposite direction. It takes quite a while but the command ship's shields finally break, its armour and hull being crushed almost in the blink of an eye once the shields are gone. The capsuleer only gets a few seconds to see the wreck of his ship, the pod targeted and destroyed too.
Now we turn our attention to the Drake. Despite generally having an impressive passive shield tank the Drake seems flimsy in comparison to the Nighthawk. The battlecruiser explodes quite quickly after its companion, the capsuleer podded as well. The wrecks are looted, corpses scooped, and we warp out of the pocket to return home, our piracy successful. It is only as we are leaving that I see a diplomatic member of the fleet hinting at ransoming the Drake's pod. I tend to prefer to leave no one behind. Two ships, two pods. I hope it has been an exciting introduction for our pilots new to w-space.
The neighbourhood has been mapped. A scout has been through our local wormholes and w-space systems, creating appropriate bookmarks and noting the presence of other corporations. We have three systems leading us to low-sec empire space and our alliance is in the middle of an operation to bring a group of pilots to our home system. The pilots want to bring in their battleships but the entrance to w-space is in to a class 1 system and the wormhole's mass limits don't allow for battleships to pass through. The plan is to bring the pilots in through the known entrance then collapse our static wormhole and look for a better connection through which we can bring the bigger ships.
I board my Manticore stealth bomber and copy the current bookmarks to my nav-comp. There are a couple of occupied systems along the route through w-space and although we are not expecting any trouble I would like to be able to provide some measures to disperse an attack. I prepare myself by exploring the systems so that I have first-hand intelligence about what is currently visible.
Our neighbouring C4 is empty of capsuleers and I jump in to the next system, which is an occupied C4. There is a bookmark to a tower in this system, which I use to determine levels of activity and it also handily avoids a warp bubble placed outside the tower. I also find that there is a second on-line tower in this system and locate its position, before finding a third tower, this one off-line. There are only three ships in this system and they are all unpiloted at the first tower.
I move in to the class 1 system and after clearing the wormhole I see it flare behind me! It's okay, though, the flare is caused by a fleet member heading towards the exit to low-sec to guide the other pilots in. I have bookmarks to two towers in this system. Checking the first tower reveals ten unthreatening ships, mostly industrial haulers and mining barges, all unpiloted. The second tower has five more unthreatening ships unpiloted. The system seems safe and I warp away from the towers to loiter on the wormhole connecting to low-sec space.
All the alliance pilots are guided in to w-space and back to our home system safely. And maybe just in time, as Russian scanning probes appear on one of my routine checks of the directional scanner. I try to narrow down their relative position but the scout doesn't appear to have found either the exit to low-sec or the K162 back to the C4, the probes not congregating closely at either wormhole. And I am called back home, as our static wormhole is being collapsed and has already been pushed below half its mass allowance. I return safely and change ships to help with the imminent scanning.
Our scout has eyes on targets, a Drake and a cloaking Tengu. Both are piloted and seem to be alert but are staying inside their tower for now. To get the battlecruiser and strategic cruiser to come out and play the scout has a plan. He swaps to a Proteus strategic cruiser and plants it casually—but not too casually—in orbit around a planet. But he isn't alone, my Onyx heavy interdictor and an ally's Raven battleship are sitting on the other side of the wormhole in to the system. If the bait is taken we can jump through to spring the trap.
Maybe the two pilots aren't paying any attention, sitting in the safety of their tower's shields. The Proteus lurks for a while but we get no reaction. Our time will be put to better use shooting Sleepers in our neighbouring class 4 w-space system, so we head back home and board our own strategic cruisers. We jump a Legion and two Tengu ships in to the adjacent system, warping to one of the anomalies present. Sleeper combat is quick and simple in a fleet of three Tech III ships. Our combined firepower easily punches through the Sleepers' armour whilst any one of our ships is capable of withstanding the combined incoming fire.
There is a fair bit of sub-warp travel needed between each wave of Sleepers, as they can appear over a hundred kilometres away and my heavy assault missiles only have a quarter of that range, but I use this time to reload. In fact, I find I have plenty of opportunities to reload when trying to get in to range of a the next target. It has been suggested that I use ordinary heavy missiles because of their longer range and it would certainly preclude my having to be so agile in combat. But even heavy missile launchers have to reload and I am merely shifting that time. There may be times when I am not shooting because I am out of range but, because I use that time to reload, when I can shoot I am shooting.
I also am quite enjoying the active state of combat in Pengu. I find I can't simply focus on the current target but need to bear in mind the likely following target, determining the best path between the two ships to reduce range difficulties whilst maintaining a good transversal velocity to mitigate incoming damage. Using the shorter-range heavy assault missiles not only increases my DPS but also keeps me more aware of my surroundings. And firing hundreds of missiles is a refreshing change from the months of piloting logistic ships in to combat.
The first anomaly is cleared. As this C4 system is occupied we don't want to leave behind our profit for others to claim and as I enjoy it I volunteer to salvage. I swap Pengu back at the tower for my salvaging Cormorant destroyer and sweep up the wrecks I just helped create. My salvaging is quicker than the strategic cruisers can shoot Sleepers, even with a fourth capsuleer joining us in his Tengu, and I drop the gathered loot off at the tower and return in Pengu to help shoot Sleepers again. A second and third anomaly are cleared, again after each one I swap to salvage before returning in Pengu to continue the assault. What an ideal afternoon... in space!
A fourth anomaly is cleared and the Legion pilot offers to salvage instead, returning to swap ships whilst the final scattered Sleepers are destroyed. As it is the last site we are planning to clear for now we keep our combat ships in the pocket to help protect the salvager. It looks like we may need the protection as a Buzzard covert operations boat is briefly seen on the directional scanner, shortly followed by a scanning probe. Only one probe is needed to find all anomalies in the system in one scan and a single probe indicates a ship looking for anomalies—and any ships inside them—and not one scanning for wormholes. But our salvaging is smooth and efficient and we clear the site before we can be interrupted, getting back home with a total of a little over one hundred million ISK profit each for the evening.
Only one bookmark sits lonely in the can. It must point to our system's static wormhole but warping to its location puts me next to the cosmic signature and not the big sucky centre of the wormhole. It wasn't active, I have fresh systems to explore. I jump through to our neighbouring class 4 w-space system to find it devoid of capsuleer presence. Launching probes detects a suspiciously strong signature that I would normally dismiss as a mining site but turns out to be a fat connection to a class 3 system. Jumping through brings me to another unoccupied system, one that intelligence suggests holds a wormhole that connects to low-sec empire space.
With eight anomalies in the class 3 system I don't scan for the wormhole but instead keep it closed, deciding to bring Pengu out to shoot some Sleepers. There is a wolf rayet phenomenon in the system, which boosts armour resistances and reduces shield resistances—good for Sleepers, bad for a Tengu—but a strategic cruiser should still have little trouble overcoming Sleeper ships in a C3. I can at least try. I have no colleagues available to help so it will be Pengu versus the Sleepers.
I warp back to the tower, copying my newly made bookmarks to our shared can, and swap my Buzzard covert operations boat for the Tengu. I make sure my hold has plenty of missiles and head back to the C3. I check my shield resistances and they don't look great, but my tank should be able to cope. After all, Pengu has survived the firepower of Sleepers in a C4 anomaly. I warp in to the the first wave of Sleepers and even though I am webbed by the frigates, slowing my speed down considerably and thus making me more susceptible to damage, I barely have to run my shield booster to replenish my shields. Of course, I could run the booster permanently if necessary but I like getting a sense of what I can withstand.
The first wave of Sleepers is cleared easily enough but the second wave becomes embarrassing. I am left with two Sleeper cruisers both webbing me. My top speed has been reduced so much that the cruisers can maintain their optimum range, which is beyond the range of my heavy assault missiles. It's a stalemate. I have to warp out and try something different. I fit an overdrive module to boost my top speed but the cruisers only mock me further, showing how they have engine power in reserve to maintain their distance from my missiles. Maybe they can stay out of range of heavy assault missiles but ordinary heavy missiles fly for much further.
I refit Pengu with heavy launchers and head back to the anomaly where the two taunting Sleeper cruisers wait. This time their stupid insectoid systems get obliterated by the longer-range heavy missiles, my Tengu not even needing to move to rain fiery doom on both ships. The third wave of Sleeper ships appears and I keep my heavy missile fitting, destroying the webbing ships first out of spite. I target all the cruisers to leave the single battleship for last. With the wolf rayet phenomenon boosting the Sleeper's armour I am expecting the fight with the battleship to take a while by myself. I put Pengu in to a lazy orbit around the Sleeper ship and start shooting.
Eventually the Sleeper battleship explodes and I am left alone with a bunch of wrecks. It is possible to engage Sleepers solo in a wolf rayet C3 system but it is too slow to remain interesting for me. Instead of moving to a second anomaly I warp back to the tower to get my salvaging Cormorant to collect all the loot. I return with just shy of thirty million ISK in profit. But I also have a colleague arrive, who has his own strategic cruiser. With a second ship the anomalies can be cleared much more efficiently, which makes the investment in time more worthwhile. I am tempted back to shoot more Sleepers in my Tengu, now joined by a Legion.
The Sleeper ships are destroyed more quickly with two strategic cruisers. Being slowed down by webs is not as much of a problem either, as the Sleepers cannot web and keep out of range of both of us at the same time, so we don't have any of the problems I had earlier. Three anomalies are cleared quickly but I find I am running out of missiles at a faster rate than I expected. A rough calculation shows that Pengu can fire approximately six thousand missiles an hour. I need to buy some more. As it happens, the exit to low-sec space was found and opened earlier by my colleague, who needed to get another capsuleer back in to w-space, and the bookmark is available back at the tower.
As my colleague salvages the anomalies that we cleared I board my Crane transport ship and head to low-sec space, looking to buy missiles. The system the exit wormhole leads to is nowhere near any major market hub and it is too late in the evening to travel far, but I am able to buy and collect about fifteen hours worth of missiles for my Tengu. Getting back to the tower in w-space is a doddle in the Crane and I drop off the missiles before heading to bed.
I feel like finding the w-space equivalent of a squirrel and punching it. My attempts to locate vulnerable salvagers only results in chasing my own tail, in-between far too many client crashes, and failing to recognise a juicy gas miner target has me kicking myself. But warping home perhaps finds me that squirrel, the shadow of a Cheetah covert operations boat lingering on the wormhole leading home.
I already know that my Manticore stealth bomber will not be able to lock the target before it cloaks, as even my Malediction interceptor cannot do that, neither will it get a positive lock and disrupt the engines of the Cheetah if for some reason my target decides not to cloak and just warp away, as I found out when chasing frigates recently. But for the first time this evening I have a target ship appear on my overview, and I would rather fail owing to technical reasons than my own ineptitude. I jump through the wormhole without delay.
My Manticore appears in our home system just as the Cheetah is entering warp. The cov-ops boat is not heading towards a planet and is certainly not one of our ships, so I assume it is warping to the K162 wormhole found in our system today. I give chase. I am already moving when I engage the warp engines and fortuitously happen to be mostly aligned in the direction of the K162, which thrusts the stealth bomber in to warp satisfyingly quickly. I drop on to the K162 moments after the Cheetah, and we both jump at almost the same time.
On the other side of the wormhole I spy the Cheetah and start rabidly clicking the overview. The first double-click of many on the overview sets my Manticore approaching the Cheetah and a sneaky press of the control key in the mix activates my targeting mechanisms. Running a finger over the control panel gets all my systems hot, although care is taken to avoid activating both the bomb launcher and cloaking device. And somehow, much to my surprise, the Cheetah is locked and its engines disrupted.
I have no idea why the cov-ops boat didn't cloak safely, as we are distant enough from the wormhole to do so. I am also not entirely sure why it isn't jumping back through the wormhole to disengage. 
But in all honesty I don't care, my torpedoes are slamming in to the tiny frigate-sized hull with impressively huge explosions and the w-space squirrel is just sitting there and taking it. A few more volleys chews through the shields, armour and hull, and the pilot's pod is ejected in to space. I don't need any encouragement to continue my attack and lock and disrupt the pod too. It doesn't last long against my torpedoes, even if I don't understand how the pod isn't able to evade my clutches, being even more agile than a cov-ops boat. It's all over. My Manticore is the only ship on the grid again.
I reload my launchers, scoop the poor capsuleer's corpse in to my hold, and loot the wreck. With the loot safely stored I destroy the wreck of the Cheetah and jump back through the wormhole, warping home to our tower. The loot I scoop is enlightening. Two modules not destroyed in the explosion are a pair of warp core stabilisers, designed to negate the effects of warp disruption modules by increasing the strength of the ship's warp drive. Checking the kill-mail shows that the stabilisers were fitted in the low slots of the Cheetah, giving it a warp strength of three. I think I now understand what happened.
The Cheetah pilot probably didn't cloak because he thought he didn't need to, being able to escape safely even if targeted and disrupted. He may then have wondered why his ship wasn't warping away from my Manticore, perhaps even thinking that he was the victim of a system bug, mashing his warp button to no avail. It wouldn't surprise me if he then just gave up and sat in his pod, wondering just what was happening. At least, until he woke up in a station somewhere in empire space.
My Manticore is fitted with both a warp disruptor and a warp scrambler. The scrambler is a short-range module that not only disrupts the target's warp engine but also any micro-warp drive fitted, thus greatly reducing a target's escape speed. The disruptor only disrupts warp engines but works from a greater distance than the scrambler, making it useful for targets I want to bomb first or those unlikely to be fitted with an MWD. The warp scrambler has a disruption strength of two, the disruptor one. Engaging the Cheetah on the wormhole, I just happened to be in the kind of mood where I turned on all my modules, regardless of their effect, as well as in range of both the disruptor and scrambler. My modules' combined disruption effect was three, countering the carefully considered addition of the warp core stabilisers on the Cheetah.
I suppose the kill is lucky. But there is a reason why I have both the disruptor and scrambler fitted, even if I never really intend them to be activated on the same target at the same time. I think we make our own luck. At least my blood-lust is sated, which lets me rest easily for the night.
There are a bunch of bookmarks waiting for me, including one to a 'heavily inhabited' class 2 w-space system, as a colleague describes it. He wants to shoot some of the occupants' ships but none of the caspuleers are coming out to play, frustrating his efforts. Instead, he warps his ship to all of the anomalies in the C2, activating them, before taking a break. I launch my Manticore steatlh bomber and take a look around today's local w-space systems for myself.
A class 4 system connecting in to our own is my first destination, a system it turns out I visited about five months ago. The C4 was unoccupied previously and now has a tower present, but the lack of ships or activity has me returning home and jumping through our static wormhole to look for life to extinguish. Our neighbouring C4 is empty but has an extra wormhole connecting to it, the static wormhole to a C4 accompanied by an incoming connection to the class 2 system my colleague mentioned. The C2 sounds like my best option for activity and I jump through to investigate.
I've been in this C2 before, only a fortnight ago. Presumably the towers are in the same location after only a short period, but the two bookmarks made by my colleague that I copied send me to unexpected destinations, making me wonder if my notes were inaccurate. A bit of warping around and use of the directional scanner shows my notes to be accurate but now incomplete. My notes guide me to two towers as expected, the bookmarks send me to two more, and a fifth tower is also found in the system. It is indeed heavily inhabited here. But there are almost more towers than ships in the system and none of the ships are moving.
I passively scan for some of the C2 system's anomalies and bookmark their locations in case the inhabitants decide to leave their towers later. But nothing much is happening here and I have at least one more system to explore, so I warp back to the wormhole to the C4. I see a Cheetah covert operations boat at the wormhole but he cloaks before I drop out of warp, leaving me no option but to continue along my way. I jump through to the C4 and continue on through its static connection to another class 4 w-space system. The system is unscanned and I ensure that I bookmark this side of the wormhole so that I can return, then check d-scan for occupancy.
My notes show that I have been in this class 4 system before too. D-scan doesn't show the tower that I have in my notes, the capsuleers apparently having moved on. But what I see is more interesting: Sleeper wrecks and a Catalyst destroyer. A target! I activate my on-board scanner to search passively for anomalies, hoping that the site is still active and I can catch the Catalyst unawares. As the thirty second scan progresses I return to check d-scan and see a Myrmidon battlecruiser now in the system. He may be protecting the Catalyst or returning as part of a fleet to battle more Sleepers. Either way, the system looks active.
I get quite a few anomalies returned from my ship's scanner. To try to find the Catalyst—and now also the Brutix battlecruiser and Thorax cruiser—I stay in the solar system map to use d-scan. I can align my current position with the green scan results highlighting anomalies and get a precise determination of a ship's presence in each anomaly in turn. If I find the Catalyst I can engage it immediately, if I find other ships I can bookmark a point in their current anomaly and wait for the Catalyst to come and salvage after they leave. But, try as I might, I simply cannot locate any of the ships.
I try scans from different positions and warping to potential anomalies despite unfavourable d-scan returns, but simply find no ships anywhere. It isn't helping that opening the system map has a tendency to crash my client, losing the positions of the anomalies, potentially making my ship visible on d-scan, and wasting time having to restart. A single crash is irritating, continued crashes are incredibly frustrating. Having the client crash when hunting targets doesn't make me want to take time now to file a bug report, I just want to get back in to space so as not to lose the opportunity. But after the eighth or so crash I realise I am not likely to be successful in my hunt and report the problem.
I am back in the class 2 w-space system and, surprisingly, so are the Brutix, Catalyst, and Thorax. I doubt my ability to find them but I have another idea. If I can't warp to them maybe they'll warp to me. I go back to our tower and swap the Manticore for my Onyx heavy interdictor. I can plant this on the other side of the wormhole and catch them in its warp bubble when they jump out. I have my doubts, though, and instead set up at a point seventy kilometres from the K162 coming from the class 2 system, in a direct line to the C4. They can fly in to me here instead. But I still have doubts, mostly that they could easily burn out of my warp bubble and warp to safety, my Onyx not being entirely effective as a single ship in this situation.
Then it dawns on me that the ships I've seen in the other C4 are not heading out in my direction anyway but through another wormhole in the system. I have been wasting more of my time. In a last-ditch effort to salvage the evening I change ships again, swapping to my Buzzard cov-ops to scan for wormholes in the active system and hope to find the pilots active in a connecting system. The Catalyst and Thorax have gone when my Buzzard jumps in to the C4, the Brutix still around. I assume he is collecting some metal scraps, left behind from salvaging, in a jet-can or two also seen on d-scan.
I launch probes to begin scanning for wormholes. Another jet-can then appears on d-scan, which can't be right. There are no wrecks visible, so there is no reason why the Brutix should be jettisoning items. Unless my evening's incompetence is being further compounded, which it certainly looks like when I realise the Brutix is mining gas. He's in a ladar site and is a viable target! I can find him by getting a bearing on d-scan and locating the site. At least, I could, if opening the system map didn't cause yet another client crash.
I return in time to see the Brutix gone and an Iteron in the system, no doubt collecting the gas mined judging by the disappearing jet-cans on d-scan. My probes perhaps have caused the miner to wisely halt his operation. What a terrible evening. Failing to find salvagers to ambush and client crashes frustrating me whenever I try, not realising for far too long that the ships are not travelling in my direction and sitting in an entirely ineffective ambush as a result, then being oblivious to fairly obvious signs of gas mining before having a final client crash scupper any chance of regaining some dignity. I've had enough, I'm going home.