Kotori's eyes returned to Mara. "What does it look like out there?"
Mara turned back to her displays. "Well, it's a fairly spaced out star system. The star is a F-class yellow dwarf. There are four planets: the first is 0.6 AU away from the sun, is terrestrial and has an atmosphere... though the volcano and greenhouse effects makes it a lifeless, unhabitable sauna with lots of tectonic activity. No moons."
"The second is 3.7 AU away from its sun and is pretty much your typical, crater-infested airless rock that happens to be big enough to be called a planet. No moons here either."
"Then, we have lots and lots of smaller floating rocks between 4.1 AU and 17 AU of the sun... which is a whole lot of asteroids. We have about 12% of Type Cs, 29% of type Ss and 16% of type Ms. The rest are actually in a pretty big patch of asteroids which emits high enough radiation to mess up with our sensor reading: I'd bet most of them are Type Ms and would probably be good for mining if our instrumentation would work around there."
"The third planet is a rather cold gas giant - can't really blame it: it's 29 AU away from its star. It's sort of bluish, has a ring system and about 54 moons which I won't detail."
"The fourth planet is 36 AU away and terrestrial dwarf. Moons around the third planets are actually bigger than this one. Tourists would probably go there for ice skating... since what this small thing has in abundance is ice." The sprite turned to look back at Kotori. "We have Star Army ships. You want me to list them? Registry code, name, everything?"
"Only by type and affiliation," Kotori replied.
"All of them are from the 5th Fleet. Most of the ships that left Taiie ended up here I guess, and they all somehow scattered in the system."
"Fold problems?" The Taii asked.
"Probably, seeing I wouldn't want to drive an Odori in an asteroid field with radiation like this one. We have 4 Irims, 10 Odoris (I think), 1 Noujou - that's a Novacorp agriculture ship, and two Hummingbirds with Katsuko colonies." The sprite transmitted a tactical view of the system, which showed another formation of vessels which were moving in to assist the ships caught up in the asteroid belt. "And that's the Kinkou carrier group, which includes 9 battle-ready Irims and 12 Yui scouts."
Apparently, their fold troubles were shared. That probably was an after-effect of the Anti-FTL field Melisson's vessel had used back in Taiie. Kotori ran her fingers through a lock of hair that spilled over her shoulder as she considered the system's map and their situation until she finally nodded to herself.
"Alright, the forces the 5th XF sent can probably get them back to Vaalad safely. Yukari, make us go into silent running while we deal with the engine trouble and try to see if you can have the IES check for mishhuvurthyar hyperspace communications - Taiie's only about four light years away and we might get something. Also have it keep an ear out for Star Army communications - I want to know if the other part of the rescue vessels experienced the same kind of trouble with their fold systems."
Kotori stood up and gestured to Mara. "Mara will handle things here on the bridge. I want us - along with Yukisato-san and Saito-Hei - to go to the science lab and see if we can dig something out of the PANTHEON database that could be related with this so-called "Amaya's gate".