I approached the wormhole cloaked and took a reading. My systems reported it as roughly stable and leading to known space. Excellent. The exploration team had been operating in the alien system for almost two hours now, and the wormhole we’d come in through was already beginning to show signs of decay.
“Found another way out, if it comes to that,” I reported on the comms, “says it leads to high-sec, gonna check it out.” I willed my engines into life and eased my anathema closer to the quivering tear in reality, dropped my cloak momentarily and slipped through.
On the other side the sky looked very familiar… familiar.
“Son of a bitch,” I activated the cloaking device as my alarms began to bleat warnings. I was deep in Amarr high security, I was in the Gallente militia, and the navy was on its way.
“Cloaking device has failed Madame, something is jamming us,” Aura said in her usual calm tone as an apocalypse exited warp 40km in front of me. I made a feeble attempt to get back into the wormhole, but it seems that this was also out of the question. I needed to get to low sec, and fast, but wasn’t entirely sure how to get there. I aligned to the only station in system, initiated my warp systems, then closed my eyes, sat back and took a deep breath.
The flimsy anathema pulled itself into warp just as the last of its armor evaporated into space. Moments later my ship was docked and a repair crew was busy putting its armor back on. While the navy may not have liked me, Carthum still owed me some favors.
“Aura dump everything but the cloak and propulsion systems, I’ll have someone come pick them up later. Let’s just see if we can get the ship out of here in one piece.” I remained in my pod, watching with camera drones as the various analysis modules were carefully removed from the hull and stored. Finally, a robotic crane removed the crate from my cargo hold, full of materials and information looted from the sleepers.
I had considered having someone come to pick up the ship as well, but decided against the idea. Without it’s probing systems or analysis modules, and with an empty cargo hold, the anathema was relatively cheap. Most importantly it was fast to align and very fast in warp, and while the navy wouldn’t shoot at my bare capsule, any enemy militia would. I checked my navigation computer, I’d be in low sec in 5 jumps. I could make 5 jumps.
“Bring us out of dock, Aura. Then get us aligned and in warp immediately. I’m locking the first leg of the trip into the autopilot now.”
As I undocked I got the standard message from the navy, they were on their way, but I’d be long gone by the time they arrived. My ship swung around toward the outgoing jumpgate, it’s speed increasing rapidly toward the warp threshold.
And then I hit the station.
I rapidly cancled warp, fired up the microwarp drive and manuvered manually around the random bit of protrusion in my way, then punched warp again. As my covert ops frigate sublimated around me, I couldn’t stop laughing.
God damn station got me.
I redocked, had my pod loaded into the complmentary imparior, and made the entire trip back to Gallente space without incident in a rookie ship.