Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Tsuguwa system – Planet VI
Caldari Navy Assembly Plant Station
5 December YC 126
I unloaded the rescued prisoners at the Assembly Plan and didn’t expect any new missions from Purkkoken until he took his time to interrogate them.
“Aura,” I said, “can you take a look at that Winter Nexus do organised by the Institute?”
“I have already done that!” she answered brightly.
I should have expected it.
“And?”
“It’s wonderful! Every day, if you just simply board your capsule and do nothing else, you’ll get a gift!”
“Nothing else!” I grumbled, “And what about all that dressing and undressing, to say nothing about washing off the pod goo? I spend half my mission time doing just that. And that’s not taking into account the time I walk to the docks!”
“Well, since you are already in the pod, why don’t you just claim your gift instead of playing they-want-me-undock-again old fart?”
I scowled at Aura but opened the Neocom window with daily gifts. They weren’t too bad, actually. I got a crate of Yoiul’s Ascent fireworks which I planned to fire up on the New Year Eve, and a 50K skill injector. Not that I needed it right then – I already had a six million-SP stockpile of those injectors – but you never know when you need one in a hurry.
“Hmm… If they give injectors every day, it may be worth a trip to the docks,” admitted I, “What else is there?”
“They also have a lot of challenges for which they give Winter Nexus points. The challenges may be lucrative on their own, but if you earn a certain amount of points you will be given a reward.”
“What kind of reward?”
“Oh, all sorts: SKINs, injectors, PLEX.”
I raised my eyebrow, “This sounds promising, especially injectors and PLEX. What do they want me to do?”
“If you just go to the Agency window and select Winter Nexus in Encounters…”
I opened the window. First thing I saw was “Combat introduction” challenge which required me to enter a WightStorm Forward Base. The recommended ship was a battlecruiser!
“There is no way I am going to those bases!” I said emphatically. “Even if I had a battlecruiser and skills to fly it, I don’t have any experience. Risking several hundred million ISK to loot a few millions from the pirates is just stupid.”
Aura looked at me with disappointment, “What? No battlecruiser?”
“No battlecruiser,” I affirmed.
She sighed, “Ok, how about the Exploration Introduction? It should be right up your alley.”
The challenge was to enter a WightStorm Comms Relay.
“I guess,” I said, “it has to be scanned first.”
“Yep,” confirmed Aura.
“And, if you’ve noticed, my Cormorant is not exactly fitted for exploration. I’ll have to rely on the kindness of strangers in Herons and Buzzards to get there.”
“So what’s the problem?” Aura asked innocently, “With seven guns and a kind word you can get further than with just one gun.”
I sighed, “I shouldn’t have told you that saying.”
“You can always get your Buzzard from Saisio. It’s just a few jumps away. If you forgot, let me remind you that there is life outside Okela constellation.”
“I’ll think about it,” I muttered. “What else?”
“There is also target practice,” said Aura and giggled.
I looked at her suspiciously. Then I read the description in Neocom – I was expected to fit a festival launcher and hit a non-capsuleer ship with a snowball.
I gave Aura a long and hard look, during which she squirmed uncomfortably, and finally said, “You know what? I never liked that Saisio Customs Agent on Nomaa gate.”
“Yeah!” cheered Aura.
“But I don’t have a festival launcher on me, nor the snowballs for that matter.”
Aura smiled at me sweetly, “Captain, you might have forgotten but your Buzzard in Saisio is already equipped with a festival launcher loaded with snowballs.”
“Really?” I said with genuine surprise, “Well, in such case I just hope that the snowballs have not melted away since I docked there.”
“They haven’t. Before we undocked I asked the maintenance crew to put them on ice.”
“You are a treasure, Aura. Let’s go to Saisio!”
I have to say that the list of challenges also contained “Mining introduction” but both of us pretended it was not there. The smell of fresh paint still lingered in the pod goo after all these years.
The trip to Saisio was uneventful except for strange white fluffy objects which the corvette shed during gate jumps.
“It looks like your Ibis has got dandruff,” tittered Aura.
“I’ll ask the dock crew to wash it with anti-dandruff shampoo,” I quipped and laughed imagining the look they would give me.
Lonetrek region – Okomon constellation
Saisio system
In Saisio I boarded Nosuri and felt nostalgic, looking at spare probe launchers and ‘hugs’ in its cargo hold.
“Those were the days,” I sighed remembering Signal Cartel, and undocked.
The local channel brought another wave of nostalgy – there was a blue-balled pilot, Armian Fera, who was a member of Signal Cartel. I saluted him in the chat and warped to the gate.
At Nomaa gate, I was immediately scanned by the customs agent. I replied by targeting him. There was a five-second pause after which a low rumbling voice said, “You might want to rethink that, son.”
Aura and I exchanged a mischievous look… and I activated my festival launcher! After the first hit I was immediately yellow-boxed by every CONCORD ship in the vicinity… Seconds flew by, my snowballs smashed against the hull of the customs agent but nothing else happened.
Finally, the agent bellowed in the local, “CONCORD, are you going to do anything about this blatant assault on a government official?”
There was a strange sound in the local, like someone trying hard not to laugh, then a female voice said, “Officer, we have a supply of warm blankets onboard, in case you find yourself overwhelmed by the elements.”
Aura gesticulated wildly, pointing at the Winter Nexus achievement dashboard and, at the same time, making a cutting gesture with her other hand. The dashboard showed “Challenge completed” message against Target Practice challenge. I deactivated my festival launcher, looked back at Aura and we burst out laughing.
“That was… satisfying,” I gasped between paroxysms of laughter.
“Yeah,” guffawed Aura, “I am gonna keep that querulous message on record and play it in the local every time that dolt scans our cargo!”
I claimed my points in the Neocom and the challenge was immediately replaced with another one – this time I had to hit a capsuleer with a snowball. Neocom showed that there was only one pod pilot on the grid – Teodor Hillannen in a Kryos.
“Hello, Teodor,” I said, grinning, and targeted the hauler.
I have to say that snowball explosions looked much better on Kryos than on the customs agent’s Merlin. The view was so entrancing that I nearly ran out of snowballs! Kryos, in the meantime, unhurriedly finished its alignment and warped away without giving any indication that our frolics had been noticed.
“I guess, he was just happy that it was not a hi-sec gank,” suggested Aura.
“Or he was flying on the auto-pilot and just slept through the entire proceedings,” I said, remembering Yakub’s failed delivery.
I claimed the reward and found that the next challenge was to hit a Wightstorm Relay Tower with a snowball. Now the only way forward was to scan down a Wightstorm Comms Relay. I decided to start from Tsuguwa as I wanted to drop off some cargo first. As always, hi-sec data site hunt was frustrating – every noob with a probe launcher was zipping between systems trying to find and hack the Wightstorm sites before others could lay their hands on the loot.
Tsuguwa had only one signature which turned out to be a wormhole.
Same result in Iidoken.
Nourvukaiken had no signatures at all.
Two signatures in Tunttaras disappeared as I was trying to scan them down.
In Ichinumi I finally found Wightstorm site only to watch it blink off the Probe Scanner window as I was about to warp to it.
“Geez, I’ve got really rusty!” I exclaimed, frustrated, “And, for that matter, hungry. Let’s take a break.”
After a lunch in School of Applied Knowledge station I finally hit gold! While I was eating, new signatures appeared in the system. One of them turned out to be Lesser Guristas Covert Research Facility. Any other time I would prioritise it over another site but that day I really wanted to find a Wightstorm Comms Relay. And you know what – the second signature was exactly it! I collected my probes and warped to the site.
The relay tower was located in the middle of a group of small asteroids which blocked parasitic emissions broadcast from the equipment. However, their configuration had shifted over time which allowed sensors to identify and locate this place as a cosmic signature. Without wasting time, I targeted the tower, shot a snowball at it and started an approach. As soon as I was in 5K orbit I began hacking. The defences were typical for a hi-sec data site, so I found and suppressed a 50-point-strong core very quickly. But even that brief period of time was sufficient for another capsuleer to scan down the site and warp to the grid. I expected the pilot to leave the site as it was already occupied but the blighter actually started flying toward the Comms tower! I was 5 clicks away from it, so I couldn’t immediately loot it. Willing Nosuri to approach the tower, I watched anxiously the other pilot rapidly approach it. Since the other ship was flying faster there was a real chance that it could reach the container before me. Not willing to use a microwarpdrive as I could easily overshoot my destination, I focused all my attention on Neocom. Finally, the long-awaited list of items in the tower appeared on the screen and I immediately gave a command to loot them all. Seeing that the container was empty, the other ship turned and warped off the grid without saying a word.
“Did you see that?” I fumed, “In my time it was considered rude to hack the site which was already occupied by another pilot, to say nothing about stealing loot from a hacked container.”
“Of course,” Aura agreed with a sarcastic smile, “Since you are the one who hacked it, you have the right to steal it first.”
“Yes,” I exclaimed emphatically but then the meaning of Aura’s statement filtered through and I said, “Wait, that’s not right.”
Aura just laughed, dismissing my objections, and pointed to Neocom, “Look, you have completed two challenges here.”
Indeed, hitting the tower with a snowball and entering a Wightstorm site were marked as done, and I claimed my points. A new challenge was to hack the tower.
“I have just hacked one”, I said plaintively, “Why didn’t it count?”
“Because you had to claim the reward to activate the new challenge,” Aura explained.
“I had no time for that! I was just trying to hack the tower before someone else took the loot.”
“Talking about the loot, why don’t we take a look at what you’ve got.”
I opened the cargo hold and inspected new items. There was all the usual stuff with an addition of 7th and 8th Tier Overseers’ Personal Effects, and Wightstorm Cetana Booster I. Altogether the cost was around 2 million ISK which was a pretty decent haul for hi-sec.
“You know,” I mused, “the loot isn’t too bad, but finding a site in hi-sec is a pain in the arse. With all that hype around Wightstorm campaign and the relative lucrativeness of the loot, these sites are scanned and hacked at a mindboggling rate. I don’t feel like competing with all those young guns. If I need money, I’ll just go exploring in Anoikis.”
“Don’t you need money?” Aura raised her eyebrow and added innocently, “For a battlecruiser, for example?”
“Aura, I have enough money for a battlecruiser but I can’t buy experience. It will have to wait.”
“Extra money never hurts. And while a battlecruiser may wait, that Covert Research Facility won’t.”
“Damn,” I cried, “I completely forgot about it! Let’s go.”
I warped to the station, unloaded the cargo and stripped all modules except an MWD and a Data Analyzer. Then I undocked and warped to the location, my heart beating fast in anticipation of a time-constrained hacking challenge. When I arrived to the Facility, I was greeted by a sight of a Caldari frigate wreck floating amidst a field of debris. The poor bugger who entered this site first either didn’t know about the explosion timer, or got too greedy and tried to hack more cans than he or she should.
I buried my face in my hands and muttered, “I’ve had enough. This is a fitting end to my exploration exploits today. Get us back to the station, darling.”
“Warp drive active, Captain,” replied Aura with a sympathetic smile.