This is not what I had in mind when I said I wanted an early shake down cruise. This is not my idea. For starters it's 3 hours earlier than the launch window I requested. For seconds, it's the wrong side of the planet to jump to Jinx and for third I got a message, from the Imperial Navy of all things, to "scan and report, engage targets of appropriate size, evade others. Weapons free." That means any thing not transmitting imperial or Darrian id codes that I think is small enough to shoot at eats lasers and/or missiles.
"Boats, would you be as so kind as to prep the surveyor for personal transports?"
"Lance Sergeant Hester, please have the away team report to the boat bay, assist, if needed Mr. Higgs, and stand ready for launch. You may stand by in the surveyor or in the bay at your option."
"Medical stand down, but stay put."
"Guns, stand down one turret of each type, slave to active turret. Rotate gunners on the half hour. We are at weapons free, however wait for my command."
"Engineering, prep for non linear maneuver. After than make sure the J-drive can take a crash jump."
"Helm, plot alternate jump to 876-574."
"Scouts, launch a triplet of drones, give me a triangle deployment about a half light second out."
I got my reports back then I changed over to all hands, "Crew, despite what you might think, this is for real, not the start of the shake down, so let's stay collected. For all I know this might be a Navy drill that we got tagged for being a mixed crew."
After about an hour, scouts reported in.
"All hands, now we wait and see why we are here."
No comments:
Post a Comment