Quoted By:
“A capable captain knows how to vary patrol patterns. How to work around sensor shadows, magnetic anomalies, and a range of other stellar phenomena that can attenuate – or completely obscure - the approach of a potential adversary.
Fortunately for me, the commander of the alien destroyer falls outside of this esteemed category. It took well over a week for the NOVEMBER RAIN to approach the boundary of MIZAR-IX’s gravity well. In that time, not once did the destroyer deviate from its original flight path.
It is too late now. My vessel is currently furnished with the best sensor shielding the universe had to offer: nearly a thousand solid kilometers of nitrogen ice and metallic rock. Even if the destroyer chooses to alter its course, I can continue to hug the dwarf planet’s sensor shadow with only a few short bursts of cold-thrust.
Here, I am also close enough to observe the planet with the assistance of the antique optical telescope stashed inside my personal quarters. I see twinkling shoals of spaceborne traffic drift in and out of the planet’s single colony. An old memory resurfaces. A good memory. Childhood trip to the Jovian lunar polities. A long chain of ice-haulers returning from the great belt, glittering like gems suspended by a thin necklace. One of the few memories old enough to escape erasure.”
- [UNSIGNED], EXECUTIVE AUDITOR, TRS NOVEMBER RAIN, AD. 2242, JAN 8, PERSONAL JOURNAL
