On haulers in nullsec

I’ve been hearing alot of complaining about the freighter requirement to establish something or other in nullsec, w/ people pointing out the freighter ganks n such, and other people scolding the first group of people for complaining or something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention.

My knowledge of this situation is hindered somewhat by my brief stay in nullsec being brought to an abrupt end by 40 AAA dreads taking all of my alliances PoSes down in one fel swoop, which was followed by me running 2 itty Vs out through 6 red nullsecs at the request of a corpmate. Lost one, got the other to safety.

Anyrate, sometime before every tower we owned and a few we didn’t were put into reinforced, and i lost an itty trying to get the more valuable pieces of equiptment through nullsec, I had just received my first WH check from the last week of mining, totaling at 350 mil. This was put into sharp perspective by the last ship I had bought, my first hulk, taking me a month of ice mining to afford. Ironically, the first thing I bought was a hulk, to replace the hulk I had lost a few days before, in WH space. This left me with approximatley 270 mil, and I was still reeling from how much it was when alliance chat lit up with the words:

“lol who wants to buy a rigged orca 250 mil”

The lol was a little jarring, but I immediately replied that I was extremely interested and would like to buy it. I was informed that the orca in question was 12 jumps deep in nullsec space with 6 of said jumps being in red territory, and the system it was being held in was having the crap beaten out of it by said reds who hadn’t appreciated our occupation of what was apparently their space. Anyway, being the stupid, stupid idiot that I was and with an extremely loose understanding of just how slow and cumbersome orcas were, and with no ability or close friends able to fly the orca, I agreed.

My alliance mates, being smarter than I was, recognized my stupidity for what it was and suggested kindly that they would only sell it to me if I had an orca capable pilot at the POS where the orca was located. After asking in alliance for about an hour, I found an orca capable pilot and we made the nullsec jumps, all of which were empty. Once we got there, I contacted the corp that was selling the orca, and was informed bluntly how much of an idiot I was. The CEO told me, kindly, that I should try and scan a WH exit, because it would weigh too heavily on her conscience to sell me an orca and watch me lose it between the pos and highsec. Since I was in a tech one frigate that had basic scanning equipment fitted, I reluctantly agreed. After I informed the alliance friend, he said that he was going to bed and would be back at 10 the next morning, this being at 11 o’clock at night. He left, and so I started scanning, with a tech one frig w/ frigate at IV, with basic probes, and no astrometric skills beyond astrometrics III. I found nothing in the system w/ the orca, and so decided to scan the adjacent system before I fell asleep for the night. Half an hour later, I was sleepily scanning down the first sig I saw when I realized that it was a wormhole.

Barely containing my shock, I warped to the wormhole to find it was a lowsec WH, one jump away from highsec. Silently cheering, I asked in alliance chat if anyone was online that could fly an orca or was in the corp that was going to sell me the orca.

No-one fit either category. After half an hour, one of the members from the corp logged in, but lacking an orca pilot I could do nothing. Silently saddened, rationalizing that the WH would vanish come downtime, I went to bed irritated. When I woke, I logged on and warped to where the WH used to be, saddened that I would have to scan again.

It was still there. With a good 14 hours left until it popped. In joy again, I asked in alliance and…..

No-one was online. Again. After another hour rationalizing on what to do and which trickster god was screwing with me, the man in control of nullsec operations for the alliance logged on. Since we were in the middle of slowly evacing all ships through the pipe of reds, morale was low. I immidiatley private convod him and told him in no uncertain terms that there was, quote, “ a %&#$ing worm-#@&%-hole that’s a straight %$&#ing shot to saftey”. He replied, in no uncertain terms, that that was #%&@in awesome, and he got his corp mates online to continue evacuations, starting with their orca. He consripted me to help, and I webbed the orca through the WH to highsec. Cheering to ourselves, we systematically began getting all the ships out of danger. 2-3 hours and most of the ships we could reach later, someone from the corp w/ my orca finally logged on. We brought him through the WH, loaded the orca up with various ships, and rammed that thing through the WH to safety. three hours later, we had all of the ships and half the PoSes moved out and were all feeling pretty pleased withourselves, until the next day, when AAA ran a fleet of 40 dreads in and steamrolled the remaining PoSes, which was kinda demoralizing. Fun fact, the ship and all my scan ships thereafter are named “Lucky bastard”, after this and another time when I scanned a neighboring C5 and a highsec enterence that lead to our corps normal space HQ in under 10 minutes through sheer random luck.

Anyway,  this may be a noobish statment, but how hard would it be to find your nullsec system, scan a WH in either that system or blue territory (I really, really hope that you have at least one or 2 corps that call you friend nearby or your stay will be a short one indeed), link that WH to highsec and just go through there?

Funny coincidence, I can actually fly that orca tomorrow after months of training my hauling alt for it. Sweetness!

As a related story, it took me the better part of 9 hours to get the remaining itty V to safety as I would wait with my alt scouting one system ahead, and only make the jump once both systems were clear of reds.

As a closing note, the WH was already activated when I warped to it, as there were neutrals in local as me and the orca pilot made to the PoS.