Wormhole Adventure: Moving In

The station was eerily quiet but for the buzz of something in the distance. I couldn't tell what it was, a machine of some sorts, background noise, just noticeable. Outside, the late afternoon dwindled in that strange old way, the sun baking the cracked walls of the old station, then as the afternoon died and the cold set in everything seemed, golden. A slanted golden sunlight on that familiar blue-green sky. It was all nice and homely, soft and warm.


So far away from the wormhole. That deadly black unknown. The cold. We loaded up for the long haul and we moved in the night like shadows in the rain, silent.

Combat ships ready, probers hidden, industrials sitting idle, salvagers tucked away, Orcas logged, a wing of pvp ships ready to sting. If only it was that easy.

The Wolf Rayet C4/C3 static was to be our home for the next month or so. Perhaps longer, we'd have to wait and see. We had plumped for an Amarr Control Tower Medium for the initial stages of wormhole life, with moderate defenses.

Home

We raced to the hole with excitement, leaving behind us all that we knew. Jumping into the unknown felt good, in a weird way. The excitement heightened by the fact that we were moving into an already occupied hole. The hole was home to a small corp of Russians. Over the course of the wormhole campaign we would get to know our neighbours very well, but for now they were but an enigma.


An eventful baptism to wormhole life. 

Our first entry point was Hakonen in the Lonetrek region. Duke had set up the shop earlier in the day and now all that was left was for us to trickle in at our leisure, like those shadows in the rain I mentioned earlier.

I was en-route to Ishomilken where I had a stockpile of ships. Hakonen not being too far from where I was going to be at, I decided to take the plunge there and then and send my trusty sidekick Saint to Jita to purchase some supplies in a rusty old Mammoth he had nearby. I knew this was a risk, tech1 industrials moving some expensive gear is a bad idea, but I wasn't going to worry too much. A short while later and a Legion was purchased, a salvage boat was bodged together, a couple of Wolfs and a Daredevil were in the hold and Saint would have himself a new Helios for his tour of duty down the holes.

I headed up from Ishomilken in a cloaky Proteus, scouting the potential in-gates for Saint as he traversed the high-sec super-highway in his ball of expensive rust. With it getting late in the Russian timezone the usual gates that were often camped by the locals were somewhat silent. I had a clear run to the hole.

But then ... with Duke reporting that the Russians had come alive inside the hole I decided to hold back for a little while. I stopped for a break in Hakonen. I was content. Everything was ready to go.


Refreshed and recharged from my break I decided to make my move. First I moved Saint in to have a look around in the Helios. Once the hole and the adjoining C3 seemed safe I assembled my ships in Hakonen and moved them in one by one. I jumped in the Legion and then the salvage Catalyst. I then moved the frigates in and then finally went back for the Proteus, right about this time Duke had to log off for the night.

I also took Saint back to k-space to bring in some cap boosters in his Mammoth as the Russians had all seemingly now logged off for the evening.

Lovely .... Saint was in warp to the POS.

I entered the password into the console for Saint to park his passion wagon inside the POS. I bounced off the shields ...


Oops I must have entered the wrong password. I typed it in again as I slowboated towards the safety of the glowing ball in front of me.

I chatted away to Crake who was on comms ....


"Heh this pos won't let me in"


"Oh shit I am scrammed, what the ? ....."


Panic crept in. Were they watching me? How embarrassing .... I played with the POS settings but nothing changed. I logged off. I ejected from the ship and jumped back in it and spammed warp but she would not let poor Saint go, like a rabid dog with a scissor bite she was hungry, but of course she had no teeth (we hadn't loaded the guns with ammo yet) and all she was doing was gnawing at me with her gums. I was her play toy, what a bitch, let go of me! I thought about boarding the ship with MB but remembered he couldn't fly the damn thing.

I aligned out. I had no prop mod ... I was webbed ... I was going 14 m/s or something. Painfully slow. Oh god ... I had to get 100km or so range.

In the end I rammed the shit out of that Mammoth over 100km with my 1600mm plated Proteus. Yeah it took a while but in the end there was a weird feeling of satisfaction as the stars of our new wormhole burned down on these two idiots trying to rescue some cap boosters and a Mammoth. I thought about how funny this would be if some random had caught the entire episode on camera.

Ram raider?

Once I was free I warped to a safe spot and ejected the cap boosters, took the keys to Duke's Iteron with MB and went and picked them up before parking it neatly where I found it ..... Saint took his Mammoth back to Hakonen and set fire to it in a ditch before jumping back into the wormhole in his Helios.

Later, after reporting the incident on our forums.

Quote
Duke Thunderhorse > This concludes our test of the Emergency Defense System. This was only a test.




So what went wrong? Turns out Saint's past crimes of whoring onto ratting carriers in lowsec had finally caught up with him and the POS was set to attack at negative sec status and once it had him in her gummy mouth she was not letting go.


Strange as all this might sound I actually got a kick from it.

Would the POS have actually let me log off or would it have perma-scrammed me? I dunno, but I am glad I eventually got my cap boosters in.

I logged off for the night in our new home.


To be continued ....



MB.