“Captain, don’t forget to bookmark your exit before you warp away…”

Yes, thanks Allison. The scout co-pilot was getting cockier the smarter she got. While true AI was frowned upon by the empires (where frowns were expressed with tackle, neuts and missiles) Allison was damn helpful when she wasn’t being droll. Her creator, a mad capsuleer named “A Dead Parrot”, made sure she kept getting smarter - and smart-assier. I turned off her bookmark reminder, fully knowing it had saved my bacon on more than one occasion. I’d probably remember to turn it back on before I made a mistake. Probably.

“Captain, there is a rescue cache in this system that requires tending.”

I made a mental note (is there any other kind for a capsuleer?) to check the local ESRC cache. One of these days I was going to depend on those pod-saving caches. In my peripheral “vision”, Alliance chat slowly scrolled past, and occasionally an archive entry pinged as another Signal pilot recorded notes, observations and the occasional meme to the corp message collection.

As per usual, I was sitting cloaked in Anoikis (J-something-other, who can remember) fiddling with my scan probe configuration to get the last bit of signal strength needed to get the warp-in on one of the abandoned Blood Raider sites. How they ended up in W-space I haven’t figured out yet - it’s quiet (sometimes), but also makes connections with New Eden spotty at the best of time.

The GhostSight, a Helios configured for exploration, moved slowly on impulse engines. Movement made accidental “meetings” unlikely. Sure, I was cloaked, but capsuleer or not I’m still only human… yes, I forget to cloak sometimes. Staying moving is good practice.

While waiting for the scan probes to get into place for the next pass, a new conversion started on Alliance chat: there was a pilot stuck in an Anoikis system without the right probes. Idiot! you may think, but let me say this: let the pilot who has never left them behind when entering a new hole cast the first probe.

There are numerous ways to get stuck out here without a way back to K-space, so I wasn’t gonna judge the guy. Thankfully the SAR guys were on it already.

Channel Name: EvE-Scout [ 2017.04.22 00:08:42 ] KK > So never used Eve-Scout, how do I get help? [ 2017.04.22 00:09:05 ] Andrew Chikatilo > KK o/ what happened? [ 2017.04.22 00:09:46 ] KK > Was a scout for a fleet, hole collapsed, even though it wasn't EOL and I have no idea how to get home [ 2017.04.22 00:10:13 ] Anaro Goldrock > u got probes right? [ 2017.04.22 00:10:28 ] KK > Combat Is so I am having serious trouble getting sigs [ 2017.04.22 00:10:54 ] Anaro Goldrock > mmm [ 2017.04.22 00:11:01 ] Andrew Chikatilo > what's the system?

*Chirrup*

The sig I’d been scanning down hovered green in the corner of my visuals. I saved the location, spammed the D-Scan a few times, and checked my inventory. There was no rush to go anywhere yet, and it paid - literally - to have your ducks in a row before warping to/away from anything in W-space.

My cargo hold had 2 more sets of rescue cache supplies (it’s only a Helios, after all, and I needed space for sweet sweet loot). I wouldn’t need them here - Allison had already informed me that there was already a cache here that just needed to be checked out. I brought up the ESRC interface with a thought and ran a query for my current location.

Supposedly the cache was left 42000+ km off of the planet 6, aligned with… planet 2. I may have had a 50m ISK spacecraft at my disposal, and cybernetic enhancements, but I was still shite at landing at the right distance and alignment to find an existing cache. What - you try landing a shuttle on a pencil at 8AU/s! Before heading out to find the cache I dropped a message to one of the SAR pilots, asking to be kept in the loop on the rescue-in-progress. You never know when someone’s static is going to connect to the system you’re in, and perhaps I could help out.

*Birrrrrrrr*

I “heard” the chime and noticed a forwarded message in the system. More captured logs from pris and Vulgaro Sturnus. It seems Sturnus was actually in the system with KK, a very fortunate turn of events for the stranded pilot.

Channel Name: Group Chat (pris Naari, KK) [ 2017.04.22 00:36:00 ] pris Naari > Vulgaro Sturnus hiya, K is lost in 140752 trying to find your cache [ 2017.04.22 00:36:37 ] Vulgaro Sturnus > so soon? I just left that cache :) [ 2017.04.22 00:36:46 ] pris Naari > lol thats what i said [ 2017.04.22 00:37:07 ] KK > I'm at planet IX in the system and there is nothing on D-Scan [ 2017.04.22 00:37:10 ] Vulgaro Sturnus > KK if you want, I can come guide you [ 2017.04.22 00:37:50 ] Vulgaro Sturnus > Gimme two minutes to drop a cache and I'll be with you.

Some time later, I had given up on finding the local rescue cache (I said I was bad, right?) and was warping between bookmarked wormholes, noting the destinations on each before deciding where to commit to heading next, and decided to get an update on our pilot’s situation. Someone had forwarded some more logs from KK’s conversation with Sturnus.

[ 2017.04.22 00:38:07 ] KK > yeah if you can just get me into k-space I'd be awesome. I only have Combat Is and they just can't scan thing down in here [ 2017.04.22 00:39:04 ] KK > thanks :P this is a real lesson in being properly equipped [ 2017.04.22 00:40:12 ] Vulgaro Sturnus > I can take you to Thera or Dodixie. Both are 2 jumps away.

Man, this guy’s luck was amazing! I needed to bottle that for the next time I was in Jita. 2 jumps from either wormhole central, or a trade hub: about as fine a situation as you could ask for given the circumstances. I picked my next destination - a C3 - and warped to 0, feeling the odd tingle in my gut again as the GhostSight was pulled through the tear in space.

Check grid… Stratios at 0km

SHIT