Feels good to be running missions again.  Less aimlessness, more focus.  Yesterday’s mission was a bit eyebrow-raising, but it seemed straightforward enough.  Equip my ship with a Civilian Scavenger, head out to a wreck at given coordinates, and retrieve the wreck’s black box.  Bring it back, bam, done.  Easy, right?

The rewards were a bit out of this world.  74,000 ISK, which is a little higher than normal.  That’s the bonus payment, though.  The primary payment is another Burst class frigate.  The Agent’s acting all sketchy, too.  I have to get to it first, he says.  The Angel Cartel pirates are looking for the black box, and its contents can’t be made public, he says.

I hesitated for a moment.  Did I really have a choice?  If I turned him down, I’dnever get any more missions.  I know I’m still too green to be trying to mine or pirate on my own.  I’d get my capsule handed to me.  So, I accepted.  Only took moments to re-fit the Wolf Walker and head out to the coordinates.  When I came out of warp, there was one Angel Cartel rookie hanging out.  Probably keeping a lookout while the real pirates were on the way – his ship registered as a rookie, and hew as easily dispatched.  The scavenging took a while – I need to get better at that – but patience made it simple.  Took the black box back to the station, picked up my new ship and my ISK.

Should keep my eyes open for anything related to this mission, I think.

Next mission was a simple mining run.  I re-fitted my Miner 1 and headed out to the mission’s coordinates.  Good thing I’d started the mining track earlier, eh?  Angel Cartel pirate decided to interrupt my mining cycle and got blown up for his trouble.  I have to admit, these Titanium Sabot rounds were a good purchase.  Once my cargo hold was full of cartel loot and veldspar, I headed back to the station for reprocessing. Finished the mission, and sold the extra minerals from my salvaged loot and extra veldspar.

I need to train some prerequisite skills before I can start training up my salvaging.  That skill has me rubbing my hands together and cackling.

After a destroy-the-pirate mission and a courier mission, that Advising Agent was tapped out.  He sent me to a friend at Ryddinjorn, but I’d already let a mission from him lapse, so he wasn’t interested.

Once again, I decided to give the Agent Manifest a try.  Maybe my standing had increased enough after the last couple of missions to start getting missions again.   I tried the first one, and BAM!  Mission!  Another courier mission, and through space that doesn’t go beneath 0.9 security.  Cakewalk.

I’m thinking that I’ve got my foot back in the door with the Agents, and I should be able to keep repairing my standing.  I’m hoping that it’ll be enough to complete all of the Advisory missions.  As I understand it, at that point I’ll join a Corporation or I’ll start taking story arc missions.

Can I join a Corp and still progress through the advisory missions?  I wonder.