The Gargan battle fleet arrived at a solar system that was entirely unihabited, and rather boring. A pair of large gas giants orbit the small star. It was rather close to the Rarian home world but would take several days travel to get to the warzone. The battle fleet quickly scanned the system and found nothing. The Fuel tankers where dispatched to the nearest Gas Giant to harvest gasses to be used in the ship generators. it would take several days to fuel the whole fleet, but while they where fueling a few scout frigates where fully fueled and prepped to investigate the situation over Raria.
The general stood over an outdated map of the Rarian Solar system with several other officers from the fleet. "Gentlemen" the General started "we need to know the siuation over Raria. reports from captain Diarg seemed to show that the rebellion there was becoming quite heated the humans will not tolerate such impudence for long. They will likely have sent a battle group or several to either exterminate or bring them to heel."
the other officers silently agreed, the General was stating the obvious but it was still important. "we need to know what the situation is in orbit before we commit the fleet to battle. A standard scouting mission will be too dangerous, they can not know that we are out here at all. We will need every advantage."
Again, this was all obvious but they where not sure how to scout the system without the imperials at least seeing a scout craft that would quickly be identified as Gargan. Even the General stared at the map trying to puzzle through the problem. Once officer started slowly, as if he where still molding the idea into a concerete plan. "Sir, what if we use an imperal ship instead? some of the ones we captured"
The General looked at him for a moment thinking through the idea. "No, Their security codes and identifiers would be out of date. They would be viewed suspiciously, and alert the fleet that they where not alone out here... but.. If we take an imperal vessel far out from the standard FTL entrance and accelerate into the system hard before going dark we could get all the information we need at the edge of the system only seen as dark space junk. It would take some time to passively collet all the data we need but there would be very little danger."
The officers all thought hard, trying to poke holes in the plan and come up with better ones, but they where all at a loss. So the general decided that it was the best plan they had and theoretically the ship would only have to spend several days in the dark before it was far enough out to jump to a rally point without alerting the Imperals to their presence.
Captain Diarg was briefed about the plan. He would spend 36 hours inside the edge of the solar system and in passive sensor range, collecting information but two days of hard acceleration and drifting dark, and another day after the 36 hours drifting out of sensor range. The captain did not like the plan, as clever as it was, becuase if any ship got close enough they would ping him as a ship rather than a chunk of space depris. He had a solution however. they coated the ship in ice and rock before it started its accelerationa and drifting. Making the ship absolutly appear to even active scanning as a bit of space junk.
Captain Diarg left the battle group soon after and took an old imperial frigate, one that had been retired from imperial service nearly 60 years ago, and jumped the ship near the system but still in deep space, far from the sensor range of any known ship. Then they coated the ship in rock and ice, which actually made them easier to see, but it appeared as a lumpy bit of frozen rock. With very little time to spare they started the engines and burned hard, at the maximum acceleration the little ship could manage with the extra weight of its camoflage. It did this for many hours, reaching speeds that would generally be considered dangerous before going dark and shutting everything down except for the minimal required heat and oxygen required for survival, relying on the extreme range and their camoflage to hide their presence.
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@6slyboy6 I think ill need a post from you on how this goes and what i learn))
