Shallow in EVE

I.

I managed to find a buyer for my system.  Part of that is the rock-bottom prices I was offering for it and its contents.  I think a big part was luck.  In any case, thank you Stabs for the suggestion to post on the forums... that's where the buyer came from.

The buyer -- call him Vlad -- is Russian.  We quickly agreed on the general parameters of the deal: he wanted all the stuff I was selling, and the price was right.  OK.  I gave him the "trust me" option, or using an escrow service.  He chose the latter.  I went with CAPLF WH Sales -- ingame channel with that name -- and got an immediate response from Lucius Arcturus, their main guy.  Great.  Emailed him, ccing buyer.  Got it all set up in a few minutes.  A few hours later, escrow was set up and we were ready to start.

Then the work.  First I scanned out late at my night, hoping to get in Vlad in his early morning.  That did not happen, but I gave him the chain in email by specifying the signature tags.  (Took me a while to think of doing that.)  He got himself in using this information, and safed up.

In the morning (mine that is), Vlad was on and so I set my forcefield password to let him shelter in my small POS.  Then I put the large POS he was buying, and some fuel, in one of my Iterons and handed it over.  He flew off and onlined it.  I took over a few loads of basic POS defenses and such so that he would not be vulnerable, and an POS storage, then I logged off to work.

Over the next day we pinged back and forth.  Vlad would empty out Iterons full of stuff into his storage, then leave the Iterons out in his forcefield where I could grab them.  I'd grab them, fly back to my POS, load up, then fly back and eject.  We never overlapped in time again.

II.

Tonight I am almost out.  I am done with handing stuff over.  I have only a Manticore and an Iteron V left in my POS bubble, which is completely empty otherwise.  The Iteron V is there to carry out the last bits of stuff, most particularly the POS itself.   I can't take down the POS yet because I need to protect the Manticore.  I need to find a way out before I can proceed.  Scanning time.

I scan out my system.  Or really Vlad's system now.  The C5 is EOL still there from this morning.  So, I am headed out through C4b.  It has dual statics, C3 and C5.  The C3 has a good chance to be useful.  Unfortunately, there are 19 sigs.  Also lots of an anoms.  It looks like an abandoned system, but dscan shows a live tower.  Huh.  Well, at least they don't appear to be very active.  Nothing to worry about.

I set to work scanning.  Most of the sites are gas and quickly ignored.  I find the C5 but I don't instantiate it.  No need for that unless the C3 does not pan out.  The second to last sig I scan is the C3.  Go figure.  I complete the scanning (gas), then warp to the C3 and jump into C3a.

Tripwire show that C3a has a lowsec static.  This is not ideal, but good enough for my purposes.  Also it has only 8 sigs, which should be reasonably fast to scan.  I set to scanning.

The lowsec static has a bubble anchored on it.  Strange; I have not seen anyone at a tower.  I'll have to blow up the bubble if I try to get out this way.  But I've also found a K162 to C2, so I'll put off checking lowsec until I go that way.  C2s which connect to C3s tend to have highsec statics.  I finish scanning, then warp to the K162 and jump into C2a.

C2a has a lot of towers on scan.  Mostly small Caldari.  They appear to have the system moon locked.  Also there is one ship on scan, but it's a Nidhoggur.  There are planets out of scan range.  Normally I'd warp around to look, but in this case I am not hunting.  So I fire probes at the wormhole, then cloak.  The system has only two sigs, which must be its statics.  I am at the O477; the other wormhole will be a B274 to highsec.  Yay.  I find it in two scans.  It's in dscan range, so it's safe to warp over.  I land on grid, bookmark it, then head out into highsec.

I appear in Seitam, which is in Amarr space.  There's one station in system.  (Stations!  Weird!)  I warp to it and dock.   Then I ditch my Manticore and head back upstream in my pod.  I have no trouble on the way, but I do see some new ships in C2a and probes in C3a.  Ugh.  Likely I was seen, and a pod moving up or down a chain is an good sign that there will be more traffic.  Well, I'll be boring for a while back home.

III.

Back home.  I warp to my POS, then jump in the waiting Iteron V.  I offline the tower and then cloak about 3000m from it.  Can I offline it cloaked?  Yes.  It takes 15 minutes to offline a small tower.  I wait.  Actually I play games on my phone.

20 minutes later, I remember about EVE being in a parlous state.  So I uncloak and scoop the tower, then I warp to a safespot and cloak again.  Now I am done here, except getting out.  C2 may be hot since they probably saw the pod, so I'll go do other things for a while.

An hour later.  Time to head out.  I warp to the wormhole out.  Goodbye, J213139.  Then into C4b, and on to C3a.  No probes here now.

I jump into the last system, C2a.  Uh oh.  There's a ship at the wormhole.  Frigate.  Ares.  What is that?  Uh... assault frig?  Not sure.  At least it's not a Sabre.  If he cannot bubble, exactly what he is does not really matter.  He can cross jump as well as I can, even if I can get back to the wormhole.  And the fact that he's here at all suggests eyes on the other side.  So, forward.  I order a warp to the highsec wormhole.  I uncloak, and of course the Ares locks me up.  Warp disrupted.  Uh oh.  My shields start to drop, though my buffer is decent.  Two new enemies uncloak; a Purifier and something else.  Not good. 

Good try.

I start to think about ejecting before a bubble shows up.  I mouse over my ship, about to command it.  Then... voom.  I warp.

Ah yes, I have triple warp core stabs.  Saved me.  (Bring a bubble, guys.)  I drop onto the highsec, and the Ares is there ahead of me.  But he cannot stop me.  I jump, and I am out.

One of them follows me out.  I wait around to see who it is.  The Purifier.  Eventually he uncloaks and we just look at each other.  I align to the local station (Stations!  Weird!).  But I don't leave.  Instead I say "Nice try!" in local.  (Local!  Weird!)  I don't know if he sees it.  I wait, kind of hoping for some reply.  But eventually he locks me up, and I realize that I have 400m in stuff on board.  It is doubtful that he has a cargo scanner... and doubtful beyond that that he will go for it in highsec.  But why take chances?  I warp.

I am out.  Really truly out, for the first time in over a year.

IV.

There's more work to do.  I head for Amarr, which is five jumps away.  Carrying 400m in an Iteron V would be too risky in some places, but this is almost all 0.8 and above, and it's past primetime EU hours.  Should be fine.   I make it.  I contract all the stuff to my Jita alt, then grab a shuttle and head back to the station where I cached my Manticore. 

Five jumps later.  I get in my Manti, which feels safe and good.  Then I put the shuttle on the market for a large markup, and exit the station.  I'll go back into wspace and...

No, I won't.

I don't have anything to do.  Nowhere to be.  Nowhere to go.

What's next?