Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Dear Marlenus —

Still having a great time in 0.0. Since my last postcard, I’ve lost a covert ops ship and a couple more frigates, gotten podded once, and been in some fun (if usually inconclusive) fleet fights.

My Steel Fleet brethren, though, are strange bunch. They think nothing of losing two or three battleships a night in pursuit of mayhem — at which, they excel — but they shrink and quail from flying a 300,000 ISK hauler two jumps through 0.0 to clean up a mineral spawn. Today I was snooping around two jumps from our home system when I found a hauler spawn, three cruiser-sized haulers guarded by four cruiser-sized rats. When I announced this find in fleet coms, I was astonished to hear “naw, that’s too far.” Two jumps! In further discussion, these intrepid warriors explained that the two (then completely empty) systems were too dangerous for a hauler, we’d need to set up a fleet and get scouts out, and it wasn’t enough minerals to be worth the trouble.

Needless to say, my years in Ironfleet have trained me to view the world in a different way. “Well, then,” said the little red hen, “I shall simply eat it myself.”

I went back in a Rifter and killed all the rats. (If anybody had told me you could rat in a Rifter in 0.0, I’d have been out here long ago!) Got my first piece of truly excellent 0.0 loot when I did that — one of the hauler rats dropped a named mining laser upgrade (the “Elara” one) which is about a thirty million ISK module. Then I went back in my Mammoth for three loads of mixed tritanium and pyerite. In all this time and jumping, I never saw another soul in local. However, I was able to entertain myself by listening to the Steel Fleet boys on vent, who spent most of the same time sitting outside of “our” station, shooting each other and swapping insults.

All in all, a most productive afternoon!

— Jim

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Salvage Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.