Posted by Rear Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Conference Room -A, Staff Meeting
[snip]

As the crew sat and talked and hopefully wrapped up the conference soon the computer beeped and whirred waiting any further requested processing of information.

GM CockRoach

”whats the medical supply situation. I assume they brought some medics with them?” he asked looking around.

Doc Hudson
CMO

Querying the colonies personnel logs on hand they had a standard complement of medical and science trained staff for the colony’s safety

Cerny pressed a switch on the table, and the display changed to show a list of colony personnel sorted by specialty.

“They have a full staff, Doctor,” he said. “Which… well…” He stopped himself from complaining.

Myasnikov chimed in as well. “I know that it isn’t really my purview, but do we know why the colony has not checked in as normal? Were there any reports of unusual activity or anything?”

Myasnikov, Navigator

The likely simplist answer was the distance the colony was at and that no regular subspace transceiver had yet been installed to the colony for extreme range comms.

Amber was tapping out a query to the colony to see what their status was. She didn’t say they were on their way, yet. She wanted to know if a standard check in would be answered first.

Amber
Comms

A beep came back to Amber from the computer that her message was queued to send when they were closer to the colony as they were still out of range.

GM CockRoach

Cerny pressed another switch, and the display switched to a star chart that showed the relative position of the colony to the rest of the Federation.

“They’re far enough out that it still takes weeks for reports to arrive via subspace radio,” Cerny observed, in order to helpfully verbalize details thus far only present in narration.

– Ivo Černý, XO/CSO

Amber nodded to the CO. “He’s right, sir.” She clicked off the long distance comms. “It’s ready for transmission once we are closer.” Then she frowned. “But if they were checking in at regular intervals and it’s taken this long to realize they aren’t responding…just “how” long have they been silent and unknown?” It seemed like a stupid question once it left her lips and she bit her bottom lip a moment.

Glancing to the CO and XO respectively, she apologized. “Sorry… I am sure someone took that into account.” She fell silent and went back to paying attention to her console.

Amber
Comms

“I wouldn’t assume that,” Cerny said quickly as a wave of cynicism passed over his face. “I mean, you saw the conversation on the Bridge, right?” It was the most neutrally worded way he could think of that alluded to the Commodore being a tedious narcissistic bore who wouldn’t actually have that thought, without actually saying those words.

“If the arrival of their message is three weeks late, it does stand to reason that something could have happened to them… uh… two months ago? But if it was something bad that would have screwed up shipping or something else right? I mean, these people make interplanetary exports of milk. Typical time to market for milk is two days because it goes bad pretty quickly, some other planet must would have noticed a lot sooner if there was a problem than our Fleet Command or whoever reads these subspace colony reports.But I dunno if…” the thought trailed off as another one popped up.

“Wait… if we’re supposed to go to the edge of known space to drop off supplies and pick up milk from this planet, and then bring it all the way back here… how do we keep it from spoiling?”

– Ivo Černý, XO/CSO

Preservation of the milk and wine was noted to be handled by small cryo boxes for storage.

GM CockRoach

“Great…” Paul muttered and poured himself another coffee. “So now we’re glorified milk men.” He poured a second cup and arbitrarily handed it to the Security chief who happened to be closest.

Doc Hudson
CMO