Frontier Daze #31

 Dad,

 You've been busy around the fleet HQ, showing up for no-shows and other bung yakka, and I've been busy with the production side. How would you feel about shifting some of you planetary production to fit some other goals? There's a market oppo for punters needing heaps of synapses and gel matrix biopaste, and we could get there with a couple alterations to our pipeline. Just let me know, as I'm content downshifting the robotics production in favor of the other items.

The ongoing festivities give us some cracker loot when you scan the sites and can hack the cans. They're more elaborate systems to navigate than the regular data sites we find, even more so in our more lawless area of space.

I skirted a run-in with a hunter in Intakistan, and your guidance was priceless. Jumped into a system with one other punter, started scanning, and saw multiple sets of probes on DScan, so I knew this other punter was scanning the data sites. Also squizzed a Cheetah on the scans, so figured he'd be running the sites we had both just scanned, so I saved the locations and gated over to another system, to scan in peace.

Gate, warp to safe, and start more scanning, and this ratbag gates into the system too, and way too quickly to have been running/hacking the sites. What a bung deal. So I finish scans, and go back to the first system, and find the data sites still intact. While the system is mine (empty), I warp to the first site, first can, and start hacking (dreaming of dank lollies).

Finished hacking the first can just as my ratbag shadow gates into the system. I warped to my safe spot, and noted his Cheetah on the scans, and he left the system again. I jumped back to the site, started hacking the second can (which was an ugly, disastrous mess of spiky traps and herpes nodes) when he entered the system again. Giving up on the munted mess of a hack, I hit the safe again to see the ratbag shadow warping to the data site in a Wolf.

He was likely scanning down the sites to set warp-in locations, all to nail future explorers (like me). But, I avoided getting carked by your and dyadya Kartsev's advice. Events like these bring out all the scavengers, eh?

Good luck with the next fleet engagement, hope the next antagonist decides to undock.

Yours,

Wai