Superior Sleeper Cache
Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Nourvukaiken system
25 December YC 126
Patrolling Okela constellation, I came across a cosmic signature with a very low signal strength in Nourvukaiken. When my probe constellation was down to 0.5 AU and still I could not identify it, I knew it had to be a sleeper cache. Sleepers had storage depots all over New Eden but the emissions from their installations were so low that it took advanced skills and equipment to pinpoint their location, which I had. The smallest 0.25-AU standard pinpoint formation revealed the cache to be of Superior variety.
I whistled, “What do you think, Aura? Is it our lucky day or are we about to lose the ship?”
Aura shrugged, “May be both. Wanna try extracting all that juicy blue loot?”
“Let’s do it!” I agreed enthusiastically. “Check Sleeper research notes on UniWiki, while I pin down this stubborn signature.”
I manually squeezed the constellation into a tighter ball and was rewarded with a green line on my probe scanner indicating successful octangulation. Having bookmarked the cache location I jumped back to Tsuguwa, boarded a Heron specifically prepared for such occasion and flew back to Nourvukaiken.
Aura, in the meantime, completed her research and reported the findings, “We should be able to hack three rooms out of four.”
“Why not all four?” I asked curiously.
“Not in a Heron. In the last room you need a ship which can tank 2000 DPS.”
“Wow! What kind of ship can do that?”
“A strategic cruiser or a battleship. Nestor was mentioned.”
I gasped, “That’s quite a step-up from a humble Heron! That fourth room must contain riches beyond my wildest imagination to justify such expense. Anyway, we aren’t going there now, so tell me about the first room.”
“I’ll tell you when you get there. It’s much easier to show you the points of interest on the screen.”
“Do I need to fit the tank before entering?”
Aura shook her head, “No, you can change your fit when you are in.”
As there was nothing else to discuss, I selected the site’s bookmark and warped to my new adventure.
Hyperfluct Generator
The entry had a usual Hyperfluct Generator which I hacked with a data analyzer. When the rift appeared I entered it and in a few seconds found myself in a pocket called Solray Power Terminal. It had a couple of space rifts, a power plant surrounded by a dangerously looking grey haze, and several storage depots within that haze.
Solray Power Plant Room
“All the goodies are in those depots,” said Aura, “but the solar flares emitted by the terminal are highly damaging. The flares are caused by a frequency misalignment. If you align the terminal properly, then the radiation will drop to a manageable level.”
“And how do I align it?”
“See that Solray Observational Unit? It has a frequency disc. You need to hack the Unit, extract the disc and place it in the matching container – Radio, Infrared or Gamma.”
Solray Observational Unit
“What happens if I fail the hack?”
Aura shrugged, “I don’t know. It’s not mentioned in the records.”
I grinned, “Then there is only one way to check,” and approached the Observational Unit.
“Hey, you aren’t going to fail it on purpose, are you?” Aura said, alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” I laughed, “I am after the loot, not discoveries.”
The hack went smoothly and I became an owner of Infrared frequency disc. That ownership quickly came to an end, as I placed the disc into the Solray Infrared Alignment container after which the intensity of solar flares visibly diminished.
Solray Infrared Alignment Unit
“Well, that was easy,” I said, willing the Heron toward the Terminal with all the juicy containers.
“Where do you think you are going?” Aura asked in astonishment.
“To hack the depots. You said yourself that the solar flare damage would be manageable.”
“Get back immediately!” ordered Aura, “It is manageable but you still need an active tank to manage it. This is the time to fit your shield booster and extender.”
“Aye, aye, Mistress Aura,” I said with mock obedience and returned to the rift.
There I deployed a mobile depot and, while it was anchoring, hacked a depot which was between the two rifts, outside the solar flare area. Then I replaced all modules in mid-slots except the Relic Analyzer with shield modules and flew to the nearest depot in the danger zone. As soon as I entered the haze, I felt a little discomfort all over my body – a sensory feedback from the capsule indicating environmental damage. At the same time the HUD started running damage notifications which amounted to 15 DPS. I turned on the shield booster, and the unpleasant feeling subsided. I’ve watched my shield damage level, confirmed it was not growing, and devoted all my attention to the cans. Mostly the defense systems had a red core and I had hard time hacking them without the additional virus strength provided by a Tech II exploration frigate like Buzzard. The good thing was that failing a hack did not cause any harm – I could repeat it as many times as I needed and there was no danger, as in lower-security systems, that I would be dropped on by an unpleasant personage.
Solray Aligned Power Terminal
“That wasn’t too bad,” I said contentedly, looking at the loot in my cargo hold, when I finished hacking the last can. “Where to next?”
“The next pocket is called Mine Room, but the Eve Uni academics discourage frigates from going there. It is possible to get away with the loot but a failure will cost you a ship.”
“Is there another option?”
“Yes, we can go to Sentry Room. Even if you fail a hack there, you will still have a chance to escape.”
“Okay,” I nodded, “will I need the tank for it?”
“If you can magically increase it to 70,000 EHP, then by all means. Otherwise, I suggest you just get your normal exploration fit.”
I flew back to the mobile depot, changed the fit and stored all my loot there, as all that talk about failed hacks and lost ships made me nervous.
“So, how do we get to that Sentry Room?” I asked.
“You need to go through the rift near the Gamma Ray container,” pointed Aura at an object on the overview.
I followed Aura’s advice and soon found myself staring into the barrels of half a dozen sentry guns.
Sentry Room
I froze and whispered to Aura, “They don’t look friendly. Why aren’t they shooting?”
“They will, as soon as you start hacking the cans.”
After a few seconds of us looking silently at each other, I prompted, “But…”
“Ah, yes,” Aura resumed her lecture, “but there is a way to destroy them. See that Remote Defense Grid Unit? If you hack it, we can make one of the sentry towers friendly to us, and it will attack the other ones.”
Remote Defense Grid Unit
“And the others won’t fight back?”
“They will.”
I grimaced, “Then our friend will not live long enough to destroy the remaining five.”
“Aha,” Aura exclaimed triumphantly, “but we can also hack Sentry Repair Station so that it repairs only our tower. Then not only the friendly tower will be able to withstand the damage, but the hostile towers will not be repaired when they get hit! The only trick is to hack the Station before our tower gets demolished.”
I looked at the tactical display – there were about 20 clicks between the Unit and the Station.
“I guess, that’s where the MWD will come handy,” I murmured and willed the Heron cautiously toward Remote Defense Grid Unit.
I stopped 5,000 metres away from it to minimise the distance I would need to travel to the Repair Station, and started hacking. The hack was not particularly difficult and soon I discovered the red core with my virus having enough coherence to destroy it. I mentally prepared the sequence of commands that I would need to give the ship after the last hit on the core. It was vital to issue those commands in quick succession so that we could reach the Repair Station as soon as possible. I took a deep breath and directed the virus to deliver coup de grâce. At that very moment I was pushed off balance by Aura’s cry.
“Go! Go! Go!” she yelled excitedly.
I ground my teeth and growled, “Darrrling, be quiet! I am trying to concentrate here.”
Aura looked guilty and clasped her hands over her mouth.
Giving her a withering look, I started sending commands to the Heron: approach Sentry Repair Station, turn on microwarpdrive, turn off microwarpdrive, target Sentry Repair Station. The time slowed down; every second felt like an hour while the frigate slowly turned toward the station and started accelerating. The microwarpdrive kicked in with a whoosh and I felt a mighty kick, propelling the ship forward. The nearby objects in my field of view started moving backward faster and faster, and I was overjoyed with the progress when suddenly the ship slowed down. Panicked, I looked at the HUD to check what was wrong, then inspected the overview and found that we were already more than halfway through to the Station. Now I was afraid that we were moving too fast and would overshoot it. But there was nothing I could do – the ship had already calculated the approach and I just had to trust it. Pushing the navigational concerns aside I concentrated on the distance indicator on the overview. As soon as it ticked under 6,000 metres I activated the data analyzer.
Sentry Repair Station
The hack was a bit of a blur. I had to balance the speed of my progress with caution. Once again I regretted that I didn’t fly a Buzzard which made hacking so much easier due to its virus strength bonus. Finally, I found a core and quickly hit it three time with the virus. The Repair Station’s cyber defences collapsed and I instructed it to stop repairing the sentry towers which were hostile to me, and only repair the rewired one.
“Did we manage it?” I asked Aura, feeling dizzy from the intense mental activity.
She smiled and pointed at the overview, “Take a look for yourself.”
My eyes scanned the list of objects on the overview and found a blue icon of Rewired Sentry Gun just as one of the red sentry towers blinked out of existence.
“It’s working!” I cried triumphantly.
Restless Sentry Gun
Then we sat for a while just watching how the rewired gun destroyed the hostile towers one by one. Finally there were no red icons left on the overview. The treasures of the Sentry Room were mine for taking. There were nine depots and I hacked them all methodically. Most of them had red cores and were tougher than usual. There was one can that I had to hack three times before I finally cracked it.
When I was approaching the last remaining depot, Aura cautioned me, “Be careful not to get too close to those plasma chambers, they are quite volatile and may explode.”
“Remind me, what is the safe distance?” I asked.
“It’s 7,000 metres.”
“Daaamn!” I cried, immediately willing the ship to stop.
When the Heron came to a rest, there were just 7,120 metres remaining to the plasma chamber.
Plasma Chambers
I exhaled with relief, “Aura, dear, you should have warned me earlier.”
She shrugged, “I thought you remembered it after we explored the Limited Sleeper Cache.”
I just shook my head with resignation, not wanting to continue the argument. Luckily, the place where we stopped was two clicks away from the depot which allowed me to hack and loot it without changing my position. As the last can was cleared out, I very deliberately instructed the frigate to limit the maximum speed to 50 metres per second and fly in a direction opposite to the plasma chambers. As we built a bit of a distance, I increased the speed and headed to the rift which brought me back to Solray Power Plant.
I stored all the loot in the mobile depot and turned to Aura, “Listen, about that Mine room. You said it was possible to run in a frigate?”
Aura nodded, somewhat reluctantly.
“Hmm…” I mused, “If we ever want to try it then now is just as good time as another. Even if we lose the ship, we’ve already got enough loot to cover its cost.”
Aura shrugged noncommittally, “It’s your frigate.”
“Alright, let’s go then,” I said excitedly, “How do we get there?”
The navigation was a bit fiddly, as I first had to take a rift to the Remote Reroute Unit and hack it. That allowed me to reconfigure destinations for all rifts on the site. Then I jumped back through the rift and took another one which brought me to… empty space.
“Are you sure we rerouted this rift correctly?” I asked Aura suspiciously.
She nodded confidently, “Yep, look at the HUD.”
The display showed flickers of light in the surrounding space as if the sensors picked up something but the signature was not strong enough to allow identification.
“So, what do we do next?” I asked.
“Just move slowly ahead. There must be a control station nearby.”
As I started crawling forward, one of the flickers on the screen solidified into an object labelled Remote Defense Grid Unit.
Remote Defense Grid Unit in Mine Room
“That’s it,” exclaimed Aura, “You need to hack it first.”
I cautiously approached the unit and injected a virus from the data analyzer. The cyber defense had a red core but I managed to hack it from the first attempt. I don’t know what I expected to happen next, but definitely not the minefield that surrounded me.
“I thought we would disable the mines, not activate them,” I complained.
“The research notes only explained how to reveal the mines,” Aura said apologetically, “Now, at least, you know the places that you need to avoid. By the way, a mine kill zone radius is 10 kilometres.”
“Thank you,” I said dryly, while examining the disposition of the objects on the tactical display.
A direct line to the closest can, a Pristine Storage Depot, was far enough from the surrounding mines, and I designated it as my first target. The approach was uneventful, as was the hack. I have looted the contents and turned my attention to the remaining depot.
“I don’t think we can fly directly to that depot,” I said. “The mines are too close.”
“How about flying around the minefield?” suggested Aura.
“Good idea,” I agreed, “Will take some time but we should get there safely.”
With those words I pointed the Heron in a direction perpendicular to the ecliptic and moved at full speed.
BOOM!
An almighty blow shook the ship, and I felt as if I lost a few limbs. When I recovered from the shock, I looked at the HUD and realised that I was flying in the capsule. Neocom helpfully confirmed my observation by notifying me that a kill report was available. We had lost the Heron!
I laughed bitterly, “You were right, Aura.”
“Was I?” Aura perked up.
“Yes, when you said that we could be both lucky and lose the ship.”
Aura suddenly looked alarmed, “About the luck, have you bookmarked our mobile depot?”
I nodded, “I did. Let’s get out of here and get another ship. Then we can return to collect the loot.”
While the capsule was flying back to Tsuguwa we discussed the incident.
“So, you said that the mine blast radius was 10 kilometres, but the closest mine was more than 20 clicks away. Was the blast radius larger than 20 km?” I asked.
Aura shook her head, “No, it wasn’t any of the mines we had on the overview. I’ve checked the logs and confirmed that the number of visible mines was the same before and after the explosion.”
“Hmm… That means that there still were concealed mines, even after we hacked the Defense Grid Unit. Honestly, I don’t know how it is possible to navigate that minefield. How much did we get from the Pristine Storage Depot, by the way?”
“About 5.5 million ISK worth of loot, but I am not sure it survived the explosion.”
“That almost covers the cost of the frigate,” I noted. “If we can get that loot then we can consider our excursion to the Mine Room a zero-sum game. It may still be worth exploring in future if the configuration of the Mine Room is the same in other Caches. Then we can just hack the Pristine Storage Depot and abandon the Intact one.”
When we returned to the site in the Cormorant and looted the Heron’s wreck, we found that the blue loot from the Mining Room survived the explosion, as did 3.5 million ISK worth of modules, which meant that the Mining Room exploration was actually profitable.
“So, what’s the overall revenue from the Superior Sleeper Cache?” I asked Aura, as we scooped the mobile depot with its contents into the Cormorant’s cargo hold.
Mobile Depot
“If you count just the market-tradeable items, it’s 142 million ISK. As to the blueprints,” Aura made a pause checking the contracts, “you can get at least 60 million ISK for them at the current prices.”
I nodded appreciatively, “Two hundred million ISK from one hi-sec site with the only danger being the automated defences… It gives me, you know, a warm, fuzzy feeling, quite different from what I experienced in the cold depths of Anoikis. I think hi-sec exploration is underrated.”
“Well, you have to consider that those Caches are considerably rarer than your typical abandoned pirate base,” Aura pointed out.
“True, true,” I agreed, “and also exploration is not my focus now. But if, while on a patrol, we spot one of those hidden beauties…” I made a pause and winked at Aura, “you know I won’t be able to resist.”
