Reprocessing

It turns out I'd mined a lot more than I needed to in order to refine out the required amount of Tritanium. I saved the rest in case Messire Raennere asked me to make more items. The pay I've been receiving for each task has been about double what was in my wallet that morning, so as long as I'm judicious with my shopping, it should serve me well enough.

After so long spent shooting rocks last night, I was itchy to stretch my tiny wings a little. My Navitas, Pequeño Pescado, now being kitted with a mining laser, an afterburner that was a reward from Messire Raennere (of course, I hadn't the skills to use it; I had to buy the book, which set me back a good 20k), a shield-booster and a single electron blaster, also carries a single scout drone which I'd trained to operate just in time -- I was attacked by rogue drones while I was mining, and my little Hobgoblin made quick work of them. I've decided to name him Luciérnaga.

I checked my map to find a nearby system which wouldn't have so many people in it; Clellinon is perpetually crowded with new capsuleers and a few older pilots who seem to take perverse pleasure in reminding us that New Eden is a harsh and unforgiving place.

The map was a bit confusing at first: I had to request it to find Clell first, since all I saw at first was a mess of points and jump-lines. Finding the option to show security status wasn't too hard, or the option to show how many pilots were in each system. It was actually navigating the map which did my head in -- with the system populations shown, the shiny lights seem to overlap in ways which don't relate to the point's location in the map, leaving me growling as a system in the upper corner seemed to assume I wanted to view its details and the system I was actually trying to select remained blissfully unaware. Don't get me started on the sudden zooming in/out or the inexplicable tendency it had to radomly centre on another star I had no interest in.

Eventually I found a system a couple jumps away which wasn't so busy. I programmed the flight path in and went, warping to the last asteroid belt in the list once I passed the last gate.

Two Serpentis were there, looking a bit shifty. I do not regret what I did then, kicking the afterburner in and heading straight towards the closest of them; it was just like in the training simulators. He didn't seem to see me until it was nearly too late. His friend noticed, though! I think I rather caught them off-guard. I mean... this is a mining frigate. With... an electron blaster and a Hobgoblin drone. The pirates melted quickly as I circled them, not doing much more than nick my shields. They dropped some random modules I couldn't really use, but I kept the bits, thinking they might be saleable.

That had been fairly easy. What was the system security here? The description said 0.8. What would be the difference in another system with lower security rating? I destroyed another pack of three Serpentis frigs in the next belt in short order, retrieved the modules they dropped, then checked where the other gates in the system led to.

Ah-ha, 0.5. Let's see how much worse that is.

To make a short story shorter, I nearly got my Navitas handed to me by a pair of pirates in Tristans. I made it out with all my armour stripped away and a nick in my hull, laughing as my ship's miniscule capacitor ran out, leaving me in empty space 6AU from anything, and decided to quit while I was ahead.