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‘So anything to report, I see the ship is still remarkably undamaged since I signed off last night, and by the way, good morning.’ Captain Rham Ferat said as he circled the tiny bridge of the Edge-rider, and settled into his favourite chair at the back. The two others turned and gave a nod of acknowledgement, this was an indicator of a situation that had gone past normal formalities.

            ‘Actually we have a rather little crisis on our hands, from no less than fleet intelligence itself’ Genevieve said, turning her complex flight chair towards the now seated captain, her immersion headset lifted to show her face.

            ‘Do tell, we have heard nothing from them, at least not anything interesting since our assignment to this region two weeks ago, what do the desk captains want now?’ said the captain without turning his head from the new readouts.

            ‘Well it all revolves around an incoming ship, the Noctilucent, which is approaching this system, and should pass the frontier in now eighteen hours and fourteen minutes. However this is not what fleet intelligence are concerned about, by all measures the ship has been running silent for over a month and a half now, and although this maybe in the craft’s mission guidelines, fleet intelligence tends to fret a bit, especially as the mission was only meant to be three weeks long.’

            ‘A little mysterious I agree, is there more?’

            ‘Oh yes, plenty’, she started to command a suitable map on the one of the larger displays, ‘the ship left the inner frontier heading towards Derusai, and has now entered on our side, proximal to Gadarren, which would have required circumnavigation of the federation’s space, and as the craft has been rather silent no-one knows the route it took. The other major point is that the ship has just only started transmitting its ident on its approach to our space now, which fleet has confirmed is genuine, but all other communication channels that one would expect to now have re-opened as it nears friendly secure space, remain closed.’ Genevieve had during the update swung back to the console to send the relevant logs to the captain’s station.

            ‘Mosa dear, I have not heard from you yet, have you anything else to add, ship file, our own action?’

            The hulking figure of the tactical officer was silhouetted by her surrounding displays, ‘The Noctilucent is quite a perfect little craft, it can basically outdo anything we can do on the Edge-rider, especially running. It has got a whole range of cloaking equipment, its armament is lighter than ours, though military speaking we are about on the same level.’ Mosa spoke in the equally calm and quiet voice the captain had used to address her.

            ‘I don’t like the sound of that, do we have to intercept?’ said captain Rham

            ‘I very much doubt that, our orders are to provide escort, and to try to open channels to her, basically to ensure her safety till she comes to her destination, or she starts talking, however if she stays quiet after intercept we are to suspect as rogue, especially if she comes in cloaked, then we have to use any measure to bring her sub-c and de-cloaked.’

            ‘That does not sound particularly better, are we able to intercept and halt her, we don’t have to weapon our way through this do we?’

            This time it was Genevieve who replied this was strictly back in her field, flight.

            ‘I am afraid captain, that if she comes in at full pelt and under cloak, the best we can do is to work out whether she had passed us, because we can’t outrun her, nor can we precisely locate her.’

            ‘And fleet intelligence is aware of this?’ the captain replied in a tired voice, it seems as if this day would prove greatly tiresome, despite the fact he had woken up ten minutes earlier.

            ‘Quite so, though the general impression is that it is better than nothing’