Stupid or Fearless

A C6 system connected to my system last night, and I scanned it down then.  I found some good gas, a Vital Core Reservoir, and I sucked gas for 20 minutes until the sleepers came.  Today, I am eager to go get some more of that tasty C540.   But with the passage of 10 hours, it's wise to look around first.

I reenter the game in my Manticore, and first update my own system.  There's a new site, which turns out to be gas.  OK, first I'll check out C4a.  Last night it had nothing going on, and I hope to verify that again today. 

I warp to the wormhole, and sure enough I land not on it but at its signature location.  This means that nobody has been on this grid since downtime.  That's what I want to see.  I jump in, look around, and find nothing different.  OK.

Back home, then onward into C6a.  I warp to the wormhole, noting that this one has been activated since downtime.  Hmm.  I jump.

A dscan from the wormhole shows nothing, but then it is way over at the edge of a rather large system.  Last night I bookmarked the one local tower, so that's the place to look.  I warp to it at 70 km.  As I get close, I dscan.  There are four ships on scan: a Megathron, an Anathema, and two Covetors.  All thought of gas is gone.  Are the Covetors out in space?

I land on grid, and sure enough the Megathron and Anathema are safe within the POS forcefield.  Both are manned.  The Covetors are not here.  Could they really be mining in an open system?  In wspace?  I get dscan going and quickly find them in an ore site.  Yes is the answer. 

Easy.

I warp to the ore site at 10km.  There they are, very close to each other and also close to a can they are mining into.  Looks like an easy kill.  A trap?  No, not those ships.  I think these guys are just stupid.  Or fearless.

I am 149km from the can, so just a tiny bit of movement and I can warp to it.  I turn opposite the Covetors and move a bit.  Now I can warp to the can at zero.  I can and I do.  No fancy moves today. 

I exit warp close enough to one of the Covetors that it decloaks me.  That's fine; I was going to uncloak by hand anyway.  I get my systems on, locking both Covetors.  I put my warp scrambler on as I am locking, but not my painter and torpedoes.  Once both locks complete, the scrambler gets one of the Covetors.  I open fire (and paint) the one I don't have scrambled.  I hope it won't warp in time, and it does not.  Boom, gone.  I attempt to lock the pod, but it does warp in time.

One down.  One to go.

Now for the second Covetor.  Torps and painter on.  Dscan shows no change; I doubt they'll try anything with a Megathron, and if they do I can leave faster than he can lock me.  After a few rounds of torps, boom again.  This time the pilot is not so fast, and I get the pod locked in time.  I send him back to highsec.  Ha ha!   I scoop the corpse and a few bits of loot that fit (there are huge chunks of plagioclase that don't).  Then I get away from the wrecks and rocks and cloak.  Aaah, safe again.

Now I watch on dscan as the three remaining locals sit at the their tower, trying on various ships.  I am hoping they send over a Miasmos or something to try to fetch their ore.  But they don't.  These guys are stupid, or fearless, mining in an open system.  But not that stupid or fearless.

After a while, I get bored.  I warp to the outer planet and launch probes, then back to their tower to watch them as I scan.  Fortunately I have Tripwire, so I can ignore most of the sigs that were here last night.  Even so there are four new ones.  I set to scanning.  

It appears that they have noticed the probes.  They get into different ships.  Then one by one, they log out.

As I scan I warp around to wormholes as I find them.  I find three.  The first is a K162, highly disrupted.  Hmm.  The second is a small wormhole, outgoing. 

The third wormhole is another K162, also highly disrupted.

Wait a second... these guys may not be as stupid as I thought.  They disrupted all the wormholes except a small one, and that one small wormhole is outgoing.  They may have seen it appear, and intentionally not opened it.  Why didn't they disrupt the wormhole to my system?  ... Or did they?  Did I enter the system through a highly disrupted wormhole and not even notice?

I warp over to my wormhole.  Yup.  Highly disrupted.  Who's stupid now?

(I explore through EOL wormholes all the time, but rarely through highly disrupted ones.)