Approaches, Astrogation, and Artillery

Posted on Sun Jun 30, 2024 @ 6:37pm by Captain Jason Faulkner & Lieutenant Elijah Cooper & Lieutenant JG Adrian Hayes & Lieutenant JG Francis Rossi

916 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: One Giant Kaboom
Location: Astrometrics Lab
Timeline: MD 03, 1100

The astrometric and stellar cartography lab was one of the larger rooms of the ship, located a couple of decks below the bridge towards the rear of the upper teardrop. It was dominated by a circular table that was also a holographic projector - a good one, without the tendency to glitch out and fuzz like the ones Starfleet had tried out for communications at times. At the moment it was displaying a map of the system they were headed toward.

"Gentlemen, I've brought you here because we need to plan our approach to Karbin," Faulkner said to his tactical, engineering, and flight control officers. "I would prefer not to pull a Pike and show up in the skies to cause a planetary panic."

“Now, where’s the fun in that sir?” Elijah asked. “Seems to work out okay for Pike so far. Do they have satellites that might be able to detect us entering the system? Any indications of defense systems?”

"That's one of the things we'll need to work out," Faulker said. He gestured towards the map, and with a few fingers swiped highlighted the main homeworld, its moon, and the next rocky planet out. "The last detailed survey was in 2251, almost fifteen years ago. At that time, the Karbels had technology equivalent to mid-21st century Earth, or 18th century Andoria. Ion drives, primitive fusion reactors, no artificial gravity. They'd established permanent outposts on their moon, several space stations, and had an expedition in progress on another planet. Unfortunately, we lack exact data on progress since then. We have some long-range scans from the USS S'Harien, but they're an engineering ship without any experts or time to do a detailed analysis."

“We could polarize the hull,” Elijah offered. “On my last ship we used rotating EM field to shield us from Orion pirates.”

Francis entered astrometerics, PADD in hand. “Sorry, was working on the imbalance in the starboard power converter. Did I miss anything?”

“Just trying to figure out how to approach without getting ourselves caught. I suggested a rotating EM field and polarizing the hull, anything else you can think of?”

Francis thought for a moment. “Rotating EM pulse should do the trick, assuming their technology followed the same path as ours. Polarizing the hull should an effective measure too, though that’s a more long-distance fix than anything.”

“It would help to know what we’re dealing with,” Elijah said. “What about a probe?”

“We’re going to have another problem too,” Francis said. “What if someone looks out a window? Sure, we might be able to fool their sensors but we can’t make us not look like an alien ship.”

"Window, telescope, it won't make much of a difference," Hayes chimed in, picking up on the engineer's point. It was an issue that he'd been mulling around even before the meeting had started, but he still hadn't managed to come up with a concrete answer for it. "The only thing that's going to help us in either regard is physical obstruction," he continued, "but, as you can see, we don't have a lot of options..."

Faulkner nodded. The inhabited planet had a couple of mid-sized moons, but those had a few satellites and lunar domes. They were sparse, but they were there.

"That said, I do think there are a few possibilities if we expand our prospects to more of the outer system." Hayes paused and keyed a command sequence into the terminal interface. A moment later, the holographic image of the planet shrank as additional bodies came into view. "We'd be close enough that we could still run scans using our own sensors, launch and recover any probes we might want to deploy, but far enough out that the chance of anyone spotting us visually would be much lower."

"That would make sense," Faulker said. "They don't seem to have a permanent presence in the outer system, and we could potentially hide the ship around these gas and ice giants or their moons. Or even inside the atmosphere, as long as we're careful not to get too deep in the atmosphere or gravity wells. If we take steps to reduce the ship's reflectivity during our approach and time things right, we should be able to hide before anyone has a chance to spot us. After all, while the ship is large, as an ancient philosopher once said, space is big. Really big. Mind-bogglingly so. It's easy to forget that in an age of warp drive and faster-than-light sensors."

"I can have the EM field set up in an hour, two tops," Francis said.

"Good, that'll give us plenty of time to test it before we arrive," Faulker said. "Hayes, Cooper - we'll want to chart the location of all of the Karblel spacecraft in the system so we can plot our approach. I'd also like you to estimate how easily they might react if they do see some kind of blip on their sensors and do try to come check it out. What can we do to prevent an unexplained sensor ghost from turning into a media sensation?"

“The EM field should help with that too,” Francis said.

Faulkner nodded. "Alright. We'll focus on that and making sure we've got a good entry vector and escape routes to avoid direct visual observation. And Francis, make sure our hull's prepared in case one of those hiding options involves entering one of the gas giants. Let's get to work."

OFF

 

RSS Feed