Back home

"Sir, I think I have it. It's real faint but I have it."

With that one statement, we were now on our way out of Wormhole J56654.

"Feed in the probe results into my pod."

"Yes sir." The results streamed in bright, clear and full of glowing data.

"Shipman: your name?" I asked, my implants already sifting out the various frequencies and sorting them into order of importance.

"It's Midshipman Tu'challa sir."

Ah, I remember him, a Brutor like me. He shipped in from the home world four months ago. I think he has a mother and one younger brother. The rest died escaping to the Republic.

"It's Ensign Tu'challa now. Immediate field promotion."

I closed the link as I concentrated on two signatures, each about 15% in return strength. However, while faint, Ensign Tu'Challa had indeed found an unstable worm hole. From the data return, the worm hole had only just formed. A small probe was sent through and we waited eagerly for the results.

In the five days that we were in worm hole space, we had explored the entire system of three planets, nine moons, fifteen gas clouds, seven belts and numerous sleeper installations. Worm hole space was far from empty - it appears that large areas are inhabitated by some entity only just now awakening. The ships and drones are vaguely of an ancient design, Sleeper based ships, before the advent of FTL drives. Looks like they had found their way into worm hole space and had stayed here until we discovered them, tens of thousands of years later.

There's isk to be made here. Much isk in the clouds, in the rarer ores and in the newly discovered installations - automated stations left behind by the sleepers. However, for me - the isk would come from the those explorers brave enough to venture into these systems. I detected one pilgrim class recon ship on the third day but am sure that there will be more.

Five days ago, the worm hole that I used to enter this region of space started to decay. Against my better judgement I decided to stay an extra few hours only to see the exit rapidly decay and evaporate into the aether. So I was trapped until I could find another worm hole. Initially, I thought it would be easy to probe out another wormhole but the initial return was too target rich - I received about 25 signatures of various strengths from one area of the system alone. Then another 20 from the second planet. It took me and my crew about an average of ten minutes to properly scan down and map the signatures, so many hours were expended.

Still no worm hole however until this morning.

Into our fifth day and we were still here but now awaiting the return of what lay on the other side of this worm hole. The small probe came back and squirted the data back. My crew waited for my annoucement. The results flashed into me and after double-checking the return, I addressed the crew.

"Attention crew. This is your captain. The worm hole is viable but it leads into Empire space. Almost useless to us in normal times but we have no choice."

I considered my options but there were none. I was in a cheetah, fast enough to evade all Empire navies and able to make it back into low-security space unless I drew attention. The exit point was Khanid prime and it would be a full eighteen jumps back into the nearest friendly low-security space. I had to go through Amarr prime as well. That should excite the locals.

"All crew, battle stations and make the ship ready for fast running. Strap everything down, divert all power to the engines and thrusters."

There was a flurry of activity and within five minutes we were ready. Without delay, I jumped through the worm hole and was vomited out into a system in Amarr Prime. The warnings from the Amarr navy flashed across my GUI. If I was to stay any longer I would be webbed and then destroyed. I raced for the next star gate - having already plotted an eighteen jump journey to Amamake and then back into the relative safety of low-security space.

Thank goodness I was in the cheetah with its fast align speed. I couldn't warp under cloak but I was fast enough. After scaring a few locals, loitering at the gates, I made it Amamake and breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, I was relieved that I was in Amamake.

Next time: leave the worm hole space unless you have a pos and plenty of firepower to exploit the system.....