-[  ]-

Captain Rham had spent an agonizing half hour over breakfast trying to decrypt the senseless logic of fleet command’s report, and more importantly how best to respond to the situation. He knew that they have to the federation tactics department, but this was simply not done in most cases, it has always been the role of the ship’s crew to decide what to do, and send the results back. He was trying to word out his ideas so he could run them past the crew before sending to fleet intelligence. He could leave it no longer.

            ‘As I see it, we really can do very little to help if the craft is rogue. If the craft is compliant and friendly, we escort and open comms, and provide any other service. If the ship runs in fast, that is faster than we can manage, but has cloak down and open comms, this to is alright, we pursue, and inform to our limits, then decide form then on. If the craft comes in fast silent and cloaked, then we pursue and try to open comms, and bring down the craft to sub-c, I have a few tactics to work that one out I want to run those by you Mosa. If the craft comes in slow, quiet and cloaked, I think we’re in trouble, again we try to open comms or if this fails, render craft compliant. Anything else we will decide on the spot. How does that sound?’

            The words came out in a rush, there was an immediate silence on the bridge as the crew, including the elusive François the ships engineer. Everyone was trying to work out in their own personal way what these set of events meant to them, and foremost in this was ‘is this going to be a terminal move?’ and secondarily ‘why did I volunteer for this?’ but someone had to break the tense silence.

            ‘I don’t think we can think of anything better’ François said to the silent relief of the rest of the crew ‘however… I don’t think any of us like the idea of bringing down a ship.’

            ‘I think we all share that opinion, but we have to see how it goes’ the captain replied, he sighed and put a hand to his face, ‘but in my opinion the chance that we will have to engage in combat is rather slim. Have we got any more information on the craft, anything that can help us prepare tactics?’

            ‘I am afraid that the craft has been running through deep interstellar space’ Genevieve replied, graphics flashed on screens, the bolt straight line of the approaching craft speared between other lines and points ‘this might prove a little bit of a problem, as no one has had an accurate fix on where they are for a long time. The arrival time remains unchanged, but there are quite wide error regions on this, the ship also is traveling uncloaked but fast, also it is keeping itself quiet, no communications’ the last part was set at a displeased tone.

            ‘I think we can take this as positive news, uncloaked probably means friendly, but I still think we will have to employ aggressive tactics’ replied Mosa ‘I have looked over your suggestions captain, but I have some other plans with this information’ she brought up her plans on the holographic viewer that occupied a broad table in the center of the bridge, coloured icons flashed in the air. ‘The heart of my plan is to lay a series of drones along the Noctilucent’s flight path, each of these drones will carry sensors to verify her course when under cloak, but also a Graser, the polarized gravity from these devices are less than our own hull mounted devices, but should be enough to slow her down enough for us to intercept’ while she spoke the simulation ran over and over showing how the drones would coordinate to slow the ship down.

            ‘And we have the relevant equipment on board François?’ the captain said.

            ‘Yes’

            ‘Anyone got any points to make?’ spoke the captain.

            It was Genevieve who replied ‘I presume those drones will only fire if we confirm the ship to be potentially hostile.’

            ‘Yes they are completely under our control’ said Mosa ‘No damage will come to the ship if they fire, but the craft will be unable to move fast, however I suggest that we move the Edge-rider ahead of he drones this will allow us to have a little time before we have to use the drones, I suggest we move out from the Oort cloud, ten AU from the drones, after of course we have deployed them.’

            ‘One question please’ it was François who asked ‘if the ship is hostile what is to stop it shooting our drones when it gets stuck by their ordnance?’