Put a probe in your probe

While chatting with a very experienced spacefarer I heard tales about treasures of immense value hidden deep in space. So deep that they would have to be probed out. Using scan probes would require skill in astrometrics. Eager to get quick results I tried to use the on-board scanner equipped on every ship. I warped to planets and scanned the surroundings. I found nothing but didn't give up. I jumped to another system and went through the planets there. On the second planet my scanners picked something up. A serpentis den!

I warped in with my rifter and found 2 destroyers, 2 frigates and 2 heavy missile batteries. They were too much for a very agile but somewhat flimsy frigate and I had to warp off quickly. I fetched my reliable thrasher and tried again. Howitzer artillery easily took out the ships, but more appeared as soon as the ones present had been dealt with. This time it was cruisers and an assortment of frigates. With my shields completely gone and the missile batteries still firing holes into my armor I had no choice but to warp off. After licking my wounds I warped back in and concentrated on taking out the batteries. I managed to take them out, but had to warp off again. Without the constant missile fire things were a bit more manageable, nevertheless there were waves after waves of Serpentis ships. I had to warp off countless times as the shield booster sucked my capacitor dry. The Serpentis cruisers used sensor dampening which didn't help either. After the ships stopped coming I counted 22 wrecks total and 9 of them cruisers. There was no doubt this scanning business would beat ratting in an asteroid belt, hands down.

After training astrometrics I fitted my rifter with scan probe launcher and some core scanner probes. With my skill level I could only launch 4 probes at a time, but it was enough to find some looted serpentis explosive debris. In that desolate site I found containers which could be accessed by using the salvager on them. Value of the salvage was about 1.6 million ISK. Easy money. But to really cash in on scanning I would need much more skills - hacking and archaeology to access different types of containers and astrometric acquisition, pinpointing and rangefinding to reach results faster and more reliably. Easy way to better results would be to use a ship with bonus to scan strength of probes. Minmatar have the probe. Funny...

My first real kill

I shot Svenja Hodenmumps yesterday. Earlier she had shown up red on the overview so I was fairly certain she had stolen loot from me. I thought to return the favor. Only later it occurred to me that Svenja might have just shot at someone innocent and gotten criminally flagged by that transgression. Whichever it was the kill was justified. Besides, she was a Caldari. Obviously she had it coming.

Svenja was mining into a jetcan with someone who was in an osprey. The only container there belonged to her companion so I was forced to steal from him. I took an insignificant amount of veldspar and warped away in my rifter, ready to give it back should he prove to be a reasonable guy. Svenja evemailed me almost instantly and arrogantly threatened to kill me if I did that again. I snickered and replied that she would have to catch me first. I waited for the aggression timer to end, browsing the web to pass the time. Before undocking I quickly checked ship details about cormorant and osprey. It didn't seem they would pose a serious problem.

I returned to their mining spot. Foolishly they had not abandoned it. She hailed me by targeting my ship. I orbited at a distance, gauging their ships. Svenja had rail guns and mining lasers. I closed in on their jetcan and the guy in osprey targeted me too. Unreasonable. The container belonged to Svenja so I grabbed some ore to get aggression. She opened fire immediately. Big mistake! I locked her while moving into a close orbit, activated the warp disruptor and returned fire. Her shields went down fast, but armor seemed to hold a little longer. For my surprise her friend attacked me despite the fact that we were in high security space. While I reduced the cormorant into metal scrap I got to watch concord do the same to the osprey.

Their failure was entertaining, but I was not finished yet. I think I got one of those notorious Sebiestor cruel streaks... eventhough I barely received any damage to my shields I felt their audacity to actually shoot at me was completely unwarranted and should not go unpunished. So I looted their wrecks and transfered all the ore to my own container. I went to drop the loot to the station and returned to check if they were either dumb enough to try getting the ore back or bold enough to try getting revenge. Svenja was there, in a pod. I scared her off by target locking the pod. Her companion came back in a badger but dared not take any ore while I was still present. Victory tasted sweet however small it was.