Meanwhile I get in Artemis, my cloaky Tengu, and run through C4a to C3b and start searching it. It has a lowsec static, which I find. 6 hops to Jita, which is kind of nice. But three hops of that are lowsec. It will probably do in a pinch. But I hope for better. Jayne has scanned out by now, getting the static as his very last sig. 17 jumps to Jita. He starts warping, lacking better destination.
I ignore some gas, then resolve two more wormholes. One's a highsec. Huzzah. It comes out somewhere in Amarr space, which is only 10 hops from where Jayne is. Double huzzah. Jayne sets course and in due time gets back in.
The unexpected has set us back on time. Still, lacking alien pilots to engage, we have several options for PVE tonight. We have two anoms in our system that we need to run, because they are getting old. We have our static connection to C3a, which is unoccupied save three dead towers. It has only its lowsec static, so it would probably be pretty safe. And we have C4a, a C4 system with many sites including some Frontier Barracks. (Yes, I've already activated all of them.) It has a tower to watch, as well as its connection to C3b. We'd be stretched thin. Fortunately, just about at this point another corpmate logs in. Now we have the manpower to run C4b and be relatively safe.
We start discussing doing sites in C4b. I am sitting there watching the tower. Before we can finish deciding where to run sites, what's this? Three Golems log in together, at the tower.
I relay this info to my mates and all thought of PVE vanishes. Instead we start considering if we can take three Golems, assuming they start running sites. I quickly bookmark every anom in C4a, starting with the Barracks. We wait a minute as they do nothing. Then two more Ravens log in. This is looking a bit much for three of us. Still, let's see what they do. Maybe we can at least gank a Noctis under their noses.
One of the Ravens reships into a Buzzard, and warps off. Leaving the system or scanning? I watch dscan. Probes. Scanning it is. He may resolve our wormhole connection and jump in to see what is there. We get ready for that, with a dictor and an interceptor to try to decloak him. Ganking a Buzzard isn't much as PVP goes, but we are pretty green and we'll take what we can get. Now we do what hunters have to do a lot of: wait. These guys evidently don't probe too good. There are just four sigs, which any competent prober in a Buzzard should be able to get in a few minutes. After about 5, the probes disappear, and we start getting hopeful. Then they reappear. Oh well.
I move to watch the C4->C4 wormhole, to try to give as much warning to the other side so we can get a dictor bubble off in time. I keep the tower in a narrow dscan beam so I can see both locations, alternating narrow beam to see what is at the tower with 360 degrees to watch the probes. Eventually the probes vanish. Well, now's the time. Here, buzzard buzzard buzzard.
It does not come. Instead a Raven disappears and a Kyrie appears. WTF? A "Kyrie"? Oh, it's one of the Industrials just-renamed in Odyssey 1.1. A "Kyrie" is the new name for what was formerly a Badger Mark II. This is good: it looks like some planet gooing is planned. (Or a supply run.) Via the magic of tight-beam dscan, I see the Kyrie has left the tower!
I warp back to the tower, to get eyes on. Jayne goes to reship into his Hound. (Our third guy has no cloaky in wspace, so he gets to watch our side of our wormhole. Dude, get that thing up here!) Jayne transitions the wormhole hoping not to be seen. Now I try to figure out where the Kyrie went. Before I can do that, he returns to the tower. I watch eagerly... and he logs out.
Rats. Did they see the Hound? Well, let's see what they do. Before I get too disappointed, one of the Golems turns into an industrial I recognize as such, a Bestower. I can't imagine they'd do that unless they did not see Jayne. OK. This time, we are in position.
I want to see what the Bestower is doing, so I use the Look At function to zoom in on it. This is sweet. I can see it perfectly. Not moving. Then, it moves, and starts to align. You can move around the camera when Looking At things, so I twist the view around "behind" the Bestower and I can see exactly where it is aligning: Planet V without a doubt. I tell Jayne this and he throws it into warp. The Bestower warps. I decide a bit belatedly to whore, and I also warp to planet V. (I lose a valuable moment picking out the right POCO on my overview -- don't do that next time.)
As I warp, Jayne is saying that the Bestower is there. So I uncloak and start getting ready to lock. Jayne is too far from the enemy for his warp scrambler to work and says that; I start locking when suddenly, no target. Huh? Jayne has ganked the enemy in a single volley. (Third WTF moment of the night.) Now we both try to lock the pod, but neither of us is sensor boosted and we both fail. It warps back to the tower, followed closely by me, cloaked. Jayne grabs the loot: two Cargo Expander IIs for us!
Now I sit and watch the tower some more. We want to see what, if anything, they will do. Nothing right now. We examine the killmail: well, we know why the thing died so fast. The Bestower was not fitted with anything except cargo expanders and cargo optimization rigs. No shield extenders or hardeners, no damage control, no warp core stabilizers. Guys: get an Epithal!
They sit around for a while, then gradually all of them log out. Except one, who gets into a Tengu. We are briefly excited again: maybe he has the notion to do unto us! But, no. The Tengu sits doing nothing.
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| Sepsis Morsil exacts vengeance upon me |
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