Quoted By:
>Straight towards the planet
“Although the NOVEMBER RAIN was chiefly designed to strike static targets, she does possess a modest – and replenishable – supply of scout drones for anti-ship operations. They are excellent examples of cutting-edge hardware: high-gain optical sensors and a miniaturized ELINT system stuffed into a beetle-like shell of EM-absorbent metamaterial. Fast, efficient, and almost impossible to detect.
After spending a few hours reviewing my ship-board sensor readings, I decided to fire one probe directly at MIZAR-9 – skirting its feeble magnetosphere by only a few hundred thousand kilometers. I picked up the source of the scan gratifyingly quickly – first through the probe’s ELINT array, and then on visual pickup a few days later.
It was a ship. Destroyer sized, at roughly a fifth of the RAIN’s tonnage. A collection of oblong hull-sections and sweeping, transparent struts supported by a central drive column. The design was alien. But – hopefully - not alien enough to fall outside the tactical assessment I have prepared.
If I wish to approach MIZAR-9, I have several options:
>LURE. Scouting drones are equipped with a small broadcast unit capable of emulating radar pings and other suspicious EM phenomena. By setting up a ping well outside of the dwarf planet’s orbital radius, I can draw the alien destroyer out of position. This may be especially useful if I wish to launch a strike on the planet afterward, but it will inform the enemy that SOMETHING is wrong.
>EVADE. The destroyer is orbiting far too close to the planet to have full sensor coverage. If I maneuver the NOVEMBER RAIN inside the dwarf planet’s sensor shadow, I may be able to listen in to their communications without attracting much notice.
>STRIKE. The destroyer is already within missile range. I will launch a simultaneous strike on both the ship and the planet. While the information I will be able to collect may be limited, the element of surprise will likely ensure the success of my strike."
- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2241, DEC 20, PERSONAL JOURNAL
[EMPIRE INTEGRITY: 100%]
