A Scout Almost Ganked

Another weekend day, another day scanning out.  Our static is still open from last night.  I head down the chain in my Manticore.  It is not the best scanning platform, but I am hoping there will be no scanning.  Most likely I will have to rescan out at the last link, a C2.

However, in C4b, just one hop down the chain, the static wormhole is gone.  It should have lasted this long; someone must have popped it.  I still want to scan out, so I set about it.  This is easily done in this system, since I know the other signatures from last night.  There are only two new sigs and I rapidly find the static.

Now I enter the next system, another C4.  All is quiet.  According to wormhol.es, it's got a C3 static, so that is good news for scanning out.  Six sigs.  I search them down and find the static.  I enter.  On the other side of the wormhole is an anchored bubble.  Hmm.  That's odd, especially since it does not overlap the wormhole.  I move off as normal, and start scanning. 

There is a highsec in the system according to wormhol.es, and I mean to find it.  A few sigs, and I do.  I warp to it, and find another anchored bubble.  Again, it is not really in the right place.  Weird.  Now I duck out into highsec for five minutes.  I bookmark the entrance so corpies can get in if they want.

I head back in, and then warp across the system to the wormhole up to C4b.  I hit the warp bubble.  Not a big deal.  I slowboat around it and jump.

Trouble.  There is a Sabre at the wormhole.  He's heard me jump, so, I am probably not going to be able to warp.  He'll bubble.  But I'll try, anyway.  I keep at 20 from the wormhole, and fire my afterburner, then immediately cloak.  He does not instalock me, so that is nice.  But he puts up a bubble, so my warpoff fails.  He burns straight at me.  I am going to be decloaked, so I head back at the wormhole.  Got to get to the other side for round two, if I can.

I uncloak.  He locks me up, and gets a round or two of fire into me.  My shields are blown down to about 20%.  And I jump.

He'll be right through, but a bit behind me.  This time I am pinning my hopes on warping ASAP.  I order a warp to a celestial and cloak.  I turn, and he is through.  He fires a bubble and I warp.  Or rather, I guess the reverse, because I definitely warped. 

I am safe.  Whew.  But I have a problem.  I am still here, in this C3, and I don't want to be.  I want to be upstream, but the Sabre is still there between me and there.  I can't get past him safely.  My plan is to warp back and see what he is doing, and wait for him to leave or make a mistake.  But I cannot even warp back to look at the wormhole in complete safety.  With a bubble there to drag me in, I might end up decloaked.

How to get out?

I pull up the system map and have a look at the system.  The wormhole to highsec is almost straight "down" from the wormhole I got jumped at.  I did not see how the bubble was, exactly.  But I can guess that it has been placed inline with the warp to or from highsec.  (That's why I hit it warping from the highsec wormhole.)  So, if I come in from the side, I will probably not be caught in the bubble.

I warp to an outer planet.  Then I warp to the wormhole at 30km.  Let's see what happens.  I land on grid about 25km from the wormhole, and I can see I was right.  The bubble is down "below" the wormhole, in the direction of the highsec wormhole.  However, the Sabre is still there.  So, even if my polarization had faded, which it has not yet, I am still not too keen to go for it.

As I am pondering what I might do to escape, I notice that there are faint weapons noises.  Why are there faint weapons noises?  Ah.  The Sabre is shooting the anchored bubble.  I guess it is not his after all.  Well, that will be helpful for me later on, perhaps.

He completes the task.  Then I get some luck: he warps out, downward, probably to highsec.  I don't have to be invited twice.  Even though my polarization is only half gone, I think this is my best chance.  So I bounce off the closest celestial and warp back to the wormhole.   Then I traverse the wormhole and get off it and cloak, and I am happy and safe again.  Whew.