[snip]

The NL considered, “..Well it would be near impossible to launch probes and not get noticed, whether by the local colonial ships or that asteroid or whatever. It stands to reason they would likely have some manner of scanning at least within a close area of their ‘ship’. Hence their maneuvering to avoid the earlier asteroid we saw. Long as we kept the probes though further away and not obvious in scans we might be able to slip them by the intruder depending on cagey they are though..” He said.

GM CockRoach

Rand looked at the woman. “I know they will see it. What I am asking is if there is a way to deploy them to make our mysterious visitors think we are monitoring for pirates rather than watching them. Send out 4 or 5 of them, make it look like we are trying for N early warning system. They will see it, we don’t have stealth tech. I just don’t want them to think we are watching them, but further out.”

Yeoman Rand

Kovan leaned back, “Maybe we’re thinking too hard. When you think about it, we caught them through sheer dumb luck. The odds of us happening to be looking the moment they made that correction and to be paying attention enough to notice it odd? I don’t think one in million would quite cover it. They have the perfect disguise, why would they ever think we’re on to them? Hell, for all we know this isn’t their first attempt at this. They could have pulled this multiple times right under everyone’s nose.” Keep focused, he told himself.

He turned in his chair to lean forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “What if instead of sending probes or watching them. . . what if we set a trap for them? We know where they’re headed. Look at their ship, to make a disguise like that they must have sacrificed something and I’m guessing that cost came in power. I’d wager they could only afford impulse in that thing. Another ship could wait outside scan range, hidden by the curve of the planet and once they make their move that ship and us will spring the trap.”

Ensign ch’Sirhc COMMO/ENGR

Rand could see the theory in it. “But what other ship? One of the colony ships? You saw how they reacted to our comms. They aren’t likely to help, and if they do, make us compensate them dearly for it, and who knows what other political drivel they would stir up. Plus we can’t exactly comm them with the plan. It would take them too long to figure out your encryption. We need an exact plan and a way to convey it to Cmdr Alden.”

Yeoman Rand

NE Lessie back by one of the secondary security stations spoke up, “..Um....well maybe we should watch to see what happens? I mean there is still plenty of time till they got to do one thing or another before approaching Vok III. If there is a ‘mother ship’ likely it is a ship out past the system’s edge and normal patrol routes. Maybe we could do normal sensor sweeps under the disguise of ‘mapping’ the local area on short and long range scans at all ranges to fully ID local regional things? Like um....say other outer-system asteroids or comets? We could flag any that might be big enough to conceal a much larger ‘mother ship’ and follow up once we get an idea of what this intruder is up too?” She said.

GM CockRoach