Shut Out Twice

It's the weekend, and The Boy is busy with another boy.  A busy Boy means EVE time.  The weekend means I can interact unwillingly with a lot more people.  And this weekend in particular there is a contest on to score little blue loot.  Let's see if I can find something interesting happening.

I appear in my system, then set off down the chain of a C3 that connected to us last night.  It is EOL, but I have its approximate time of connection, so I have about an hour left before it might close on me.  I head in.

I look through the remains of last night's scanning, down a few systems then back up.  Nothing and nobody seen, except some probes.  I don't have the time to linger to try to figure out whose those are.

Last on my todo list is the home system of Sleeper Social Club, as it turns out, which I found last night and backed out of due to too many Sabres.  But this morning it is quieter, so I have a look around.  Strangely, there's a Retriever out mining by itself.  A trap?  Maybe, but I don't think so.  I am going for it.

I warp on grid.  It's 140km from me.  I have to back away from it just a bit, then I can warp to 10km to the asteroid it's mining.  It's orbiting the asteroid (movement is good!), but it so happens to be perpendicular to me.

New cloak effect in action.

It is easy to fly where it will be, and then (at 6km) I uncloak, lock, and open fire.

Boom.

It's over quickly.  The miner is alert and the pod flees.  I grab two Strip Miner Is as my well-earned loot, then GTFO out of the ore site and indeed I get GTFO of the system.  This is a large corp, presumably well-able to communicate so I won't get anything else even if there is someone doing something stupid.  Also I don't want to be trapped in here.

I head back up the chain and warp to C3a->C4a... heading home.  I land on grid where the wormhole is... or rather was.  No wormhole.  Oops.  I guess the timing of our bookmark was a bit later than I had thought.  Oh well.  I'll have to scan out of this chain, then scan out from my home with an alt.

I spend the next hour or two doing that.  I find a ghost site in a C1 with highsec access.  Ghost sites in wspace are rare and well worth doing on average.  So I remain in system to watch, as I switch monitors and get busy with Otto, scanning out.

I decide to take my ghostbusting Tengu.  It scans well, and I plan to take it across highsec to myself.  So I set off.  Scanning, scanning, over the bounding main.  Lots of scanning.  I find a highsec exit three jumps down our chain in a C2, but unfortunately it is some 25 jumps to where Von is.  Ugh.  I'll look a little more.  Hanging off that C2 is a second C2, with a lowsec static.  This one is just eight jumps to Von; I'll take it.  Unfortunately it is also EOL.  I'll try to make it snappy.

I warp Otto across highsec, meeting up in a station to hand the Tengu over to Von.  (Otto cannot use T2 codebreakers.)  Von returns to the C1, and the ghost site is still there.  Yay me.  I warp in to run it.  Scanning the cans shows a blueprint for a 'Magpie' mobile tractor unit, which is worth ~250m ISK.  I sweep across the minigame in solid shape, but I cannot find the system core!  Virus suppressor, crunched.  Now I have to start hitting firewalls.  My virus weakens dramatically... the core is not on the far side as is typical.  I start back filling, touching every node.  No luck.  Now I have to use my remaining virus strength attacking firewalls.  Finally I do find the core, with only two nodes left unknown.  But I cannot win because my virus is down to five strength.  Rats.

I move off, and the Guristas come.  Boom goes my can as I clear the codebreaker's range, then the Guristas apply damage.  This is all as expected.  My Tengu can tank it all easily, and eventually they leave.  I cloak and move off, no richer in ISK and poorer in time.

Oh well.  Sometimes you score, sometimes you get nothing.

Back out to highsec, and I give the Tengu back to Otto.  Then we burn across highsec towards the lowsec exit that is EOL.  Jump.  Jump.  Von gets ahead, so he is first to the wormhole... except, no wormhole.  Dammit.

My path to the other entrance is down to 20 jumps.  I start in on it.  Ugh.