Morning in the ‘hole, and with the wardec over and mining ops closing down, I’m ready to explore our connection to class-two wormhole space. Sounds great, except for the fact that our connection leads to a very alert system. In the ten minutes during which our wormhole connection appeared in their system, I jumped through, passively scanned, and located a few of the (many) online towers, the locals have detected our wormhole entry point, scanned it down and — just as I land outside one of their more heavily populated towers — warped off toward it with a number of pointy ships.
I’m concerned about imminent invasion, and fly back to the wormhole to see what’s going on. On scan, I spot a Raven-class battleship, Manticore-class stealth bomber, and Heron-class frigate (probably the ship that scanned down the hole in the first place). While I watch, the space around the Raven distorts, and the ship is sucked through the hole into our system. Not good.
But not as bad as it seems, as the Raven returns to the system less than a minute later — barely time to have even a cursory shufti, let alone any kind of serious recon — it looks as though the locals (no strangers to PvP shenanigans) plan to slowly close the hole with repeated jumps back and forth with the Raven.
Actually, I spoke too soon; as I watch, the Raven is joined by a Dominix, Scorpion, Magathron and two Typhoon-class battleships. It looks like they’re going to close the wormhole fast. I’m a bit surprised at the sudden arrival of the BBs, but given that the system (itself a class 2) has a persistent connection to class 4 wormhole space where battleships are far more useful ships to fly, the fact they have so many on hand isn’t as odd as it seems at first.
The big ships fumble around the wormhole for a few minutes, looking unsure of themselves and generally confused, compared to the speed of their decisive arrival, but I believe I can reconstruct the conversation that’s brought them to this point.
Scout: We have an inbound wormhole!
Everyone: Where? What’s going on?
Raven pilot: I’ll take a look… yeah. Nothing over there but deathstar towers, and no sleepers. I’m going to collapse it.
Everyone: I HAVE A BATTLESHIP! I WILL COME HELP!
Raven pilot: No, but…
Everyone: *arrives*
Raven pilot: *sighs* Okay, let me do the math…
Slowly, jumps start to happen, but I remain cloaked up with an eye on the wormhole. I don’t know if I’ll get the timing right, but given that the other exit from this wormhole is to highsec, I’m not terribly worried in either case.
My patience pays off, and the moment I see the wormhole become critically unstable, I warp directly on top of the connection, my velocity bumping the Dominix battleship to the side, and jump through, leaving our brief neighbors on the wrong side of a very unstable hole with no viable way to pursue. Works for me.
Em and I decide to leave critically unstable wormhole alone for now, as we both have places to be. Hopefully, there will be better options when we return.
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