Top Secret

For the past week I've been working on an operation that required a certain amount of discretion, hence why my posting was more theory than practice. Now that the operation has been concluded successfully, I can divulge some details.

An associate of mine has a large manufacturing project that he has been mining minerals for in a quiet part of high sec. This area is quiet because it is a pocket of high sec isolated by a jump through low sec from contiguous high sec. He wanted to move the minerals he had mined from this pocket into regular high sec, then to another region where he wanted to take it three jumps into low sec.

And the amount of minerals he wanted to move? Over 1.2 million cubic meters. Yeah, not a job for your typical industrial.

Phase one was getting the minerals out of the pocket. There were three choices: 1) use regular hauler for umpteen trips, 2) regular freighter for two and a half trips, and 3) jump freighter for 4 trips. The jump freighter was deemed too risky as the area we were operating in was very concentrated with aggressive that would think of nothing of investigating a cyno beacon in local and tackling anything that came through. So we decided two quick trips during quiet hours by a regular freighter would be the best route.

With my associate scouting we carefully snuck the freighter through the low sec system four times over 3 days, not once having anyone so much as sniff at us. We canceled a trip on the second day when my associate saw a Raven wreck on the gate and some nasty battleships on the scanner. We weren't in a hurry.

Once the minerals were in contiguous high sec, it was a simple matter of moving them to the other region's high sec base. But now we had to get the minerals to the low sec station three jumps in. At first blush a regular freighter scouted by my associate might seem to be the most logical route due to the volume of minerals. However, faced with multiple jumps we were concerned not only with the next jump but what might be coming up behind us. And since it would require 12 jumps through low sec all told, the odds of someone seeing us and preparing a trap along the route were higher than the one low sec jump back in the other region.

It was time to make use of the jump freighter. With its ability to avoid any stargate jumps through low sec and the ability to jump right out of high sec to the target station, and that the larger number of low sec systems involved meant an easier time cyno-ing back to a system adjacent to high sec added up to it being a better choice despite the larger number of trips involved.

So one morning we got ready, my associate at the target low sec station to make one cyno, me with Kirith at the jump back point to make the return cyno, and me with Derranna in the Nomad. Even though it was a weekend morning, we never saw so much as another soul at either cyno point and after thirty minutes the deed was done, the Jump Freighter back in high sec, the fuel bill paid (10 milllion ISK) and I was on my way back to Gulfonodi.