Monday, February 27, 2012

Shake down cruise? Well, sort of.

A patrol cruiser from the naval base arrived to act as a relief in place. We were given orders to return to the naval base for new loaded out.

A way larger than normal group of yard apes were waiting for us when we docked. At least I assumed it was larger than normal, having never docked at a navy base before. Both Bosum Higgs and Lt. Urdar looked a bit stunned by the size of the shore party, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was larger than normal.

They removed all our missiles. Replaced them with 200 smart missiles and 100 nukes.

Nukes.

Scout ships don't carry nukes. We do now it seems.

While I was dealing with this little detail, I was given an order packet from the Scout base.

Once the load out was complete, move to jump point Zulu, then jump for Ake (Foreven 3238) verify status of previous IISS survey [D5356AA-8]. If post jump system analysis of ship's systems showed major issues I was to return to base, otherwise to proceed at my own choice of next planet fall on the primary mission.

Given Ake status as a Imperial client state, little change in the survey is expected. Low gravity world, fairly dry, breathable, if thin, air. Near terminal nutcase in charge. Port, such as it goes, is Imperial, going with their client status. Don't think I' going to allow shore leave, for starters with a law level of 10, the odds of NOT having at least one crewman arrested is as near as damn all is nil. While not the wild unknown, it's not Imperial space, exactly, which makes it technically an operational jump, not a "crew and ship effectiveness evaluation cruise" to use the formal term for shake down cruise.

I decided to treat Ake as world where first contact would not be needed but a full survey was needed, to test out all ship systems.

As a closing note, we were to consider Imperial designed military craft not transmitting Imperial code 4 or Darrian code 3 as "hostile" and to take action as need to protect ship. As of this time there were no Imperial naval ships in the Urnian sub-sector, but there was at least 2 Darrian tasks forces operating there. Darrian vessels were to be considered as Imperial for all reasons having to do with intelligence or classified material.

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