Posted by Gamemaster CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Bridge - Arrival To Vok III
[snip]

Kovan glanced over at Rand, “Have you and the commander been working on your secret communications skills?” It sounded like a code but it must have some kind of meaning to the two of them. Either way, Kovan was impressed by Rand’s ability to think on the spot and quickly make decisive decisions. “Either way our day is about to get very interesting.”

Ensign ch’Sirhc COMMO/ENGR

The only two people that would know what Rand was talking about would be Roman or Randy. Well she supposed others might, but she doubted they would expect to hear her speaking in code. The only other person on board that knew her secret was Kovan. She shook her head, “Not exactly, but close enough.” She switched to tradealogue, usung a Gaelic dialect that Kovan had made her cteate because no one else knew that.

“Probe is ready,” Morgan announced, “Ready to launch in three. . . two. . .” The entire bridge turned to the view screen to watch the probe eject from the ship and head out into the black. Then everyone turned back to their consoles to either study the data about to bombard them or prepare for their mysterious ship’s response to their probe. And though it was a long-shot, Kovan trained a sensor onto that ship just in case they decide to send messages out to any other ship that might be lurking out there. If they did then the Sentinel was ready to capture every word for study.

Ensign ch’Sirhc COMMO/ENGR

Rand still had the ear piece in, connected to the Commander as she turned to watch the probe and waited for the other officers to begin relaying the data.

Yeoman Rand

OOC: Double checking here, you launching just one probe to the asteroid ship or just one to the outer system area for a possible ‘mother ship’ or you doing one for each? Until clarified I’ll assume just one for the asteroid ship

With the probe launched it took a few minutes for it to get on station nearer to the asteroid ship. The ‘asteroid’ on scans by the probe were on first result fully given over to showing it was an asteroid made mainly of iron and other such general minerals like those around it in the belt. The ‘asteroid’ did not make any hostile or corrective movements when the probe was obviously when its range of influence by 200 meters or so.

Visual scans also showed what seemed a normal iron made ‘asteroid’. But it was finer details now up close which over the next half an hour gave little hints at the true purpose of likely some kind of really well made camouflaged ship. Someone had taken great effort to clearly build a ship as naturally as possible that even on a closer scan would likely pass for a natural asteroid at a quick glance. But being studied now as it was the crew could see small bumps or ‘crater’ holes which given their alignment were clearly carefully made RCS thruster jet holes which would account for the minute burn effect they had seen earlier by a freak chance. Given the positioning of these thrusters they soon could devise a rough shape of likely the ship in some form.

From what could be told someone had indeed at some point in recent months or a year or two at most taken actual local asteroid chunks from within his system. They had then carefully lined some kind of rough spherical/angular rectangular hull with said rock chunks, and taken extreme efforts to then build natural colored and rough shaped hull for everything else to maintain the rough spherical natural asteroid shape. Given the size output of the RCS thrusters and the rest of the structure probably there were at most 4 or so people if any on board the ship. There was no sign of defenses or weapons either at present nor the outlines of what might be considered such in the natural slopes of the rock. It was clearly though not capable of warp travel, nor likely of much more then limited sublight speeds if at all. Its destination was still it seemed either the sun, or if it made the course change to come the northern pole of Vok III

GM CockRoach

Rand listened as the information was relayed. So not anything more than what they already knew, or could surmise with the given data. She looked at Kovan, “Let’s send another probe out, into the field and see if someone is watching over them. If not....” she looked at Morgan at tactical, “Morgan can we tractor that thing?”

Tracy turned to look at her, “The Sentinel has 2 tractor beam emitters located aft dorsal and aft ventral on decks 1 and 12. The dorsal emitter is clear of the ship’s nacelle pylons for a full 180 degree area of lock. The 2nd emitter is located ventrally on deck 12 providing the same 180 degree area coverage. Both emitters have a maximum range of 10,000km, depending on local relativistic and delta-v conditions, as well as a towing capacity of 20,000 metric tons each. That 4 person ship is well under the 20,000 metric ton limit. Unless they did something to make the mineral composition of their hull heavier than anything we know.”

Rand nodded and looked back at Kovan, “If we don’t have a second ship to deal with, let’s go capture a fake asteroid.”

Yeoman Rand