Bridge
“Um... Apologies... Give me a moment to get warmed up.” Wazu replied, keeping his hands by his side as he n turned to speak to the computer, Megami, can you please provide me the data related to this operation, sorted by relevance to the current operation and then by date.”
...
“Drei, please check the provided data against our search macros.”
…
Wazu would be skimming the information as it came up, mission profile, colony ships, where they were seen last, the general outline of the last operation. It felt a bit odd having so many people asking for his opinion again after being isolated for so long, but this wasn't the icy back waters of Ether, or the chilling send off from Erika... SAoY ships were usually such warm places.
“Hanako,” Wazu said, turning around in his chair to face the Shosho, “I think our best bet for finding these colony ships is to try and track them back to their source from Higaflann. If we go a few light-weeks out from the star system we can watch them arrive in-system during your first encounter. If they jumped straight here from the point where they picked up their colonists we can follow them right back... Hyperdrive, straight lines only, that whole thing.
We can then move closer to the system and watch them depart. If they skilled they will be using 2-3 jumps to mask their original departure point but if they got lazy with their random jumps we should be able to get a general direction in which they came and departed. That should limit our search area.
Assuming we do not get lucky, and if you are short on time, we can always just send one ship to every star within the search area and have them jump back after a quick scan. The target area will likely be defended so all they have to do is show up and let the...” Wazu's voice trailed off... he quickly looked back at his screens for a moment before turning back to Hanako, “.... the targets take a few pot-shots at them.
We can also rule out a few more options, NMX strongholds since they would likely not want to pick a large fight just to setup shop, barren worlds because they would need a place to stock up on colonist. I can work with your team to narrow the range of our search further based on a few assumptions and provide the relevant information to your ship,”
Wazu would pick up his datapad from the console, it was already getting a bit warm. He would press a few buttons and transfer a file over to the ship labeled “find_spacers” which would include the basics on setting up an array of ships to act as a large, long range, telescope to view events days to years after they had happened by exploiting relativity and the ship's own FTL drives to position the ship far enough out from the star system for the trick to work.
…
Wazu would then turn to the Chui nearby and reply in kind, “Good Morning....” He would look at her for a few more moments before slowly turning back to his workstation, “Megami... please open a text-chat to the relevant parties.” He didn't know these people by name, but for the time being he could slide around that particular issue.
…
“... And one more thing,” Wazu added, looking up from his console, turning back towards Hanako “We could broadcast a message in their general direction asking to talk. They may be willing to come to us once we are deep enough in their territory.”
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Text Message
As Wazu finished speaking, he'd send the following message to the team tasked with creating a search profile:
I am not certain what information will be useful in regards to these ships yet, so we should focus on what we can find out from the recorded data.
1)
We can work out the ship's propulsion type by watching the exhaust. If gravity is being manipulated we can just watch the ship's effects on the surrounding bodies. If they are using conventional propulsion their rate of acceleration should increase as they burn off fuel. If they are using Aether-fired engines then you will see the ship's exhaust remain constant along with its acceleration.
Once we have some images of the ships arriving in the area, we can compare their velocity and the mass and speed of their exhaust to determine how much mass they dropped off on the planet.
That gives us a good idea of the amount of supplies and colonists dropped off.
Observing that colony for the next few weeks should give us a good idea of their rate of growth.
2)
If we have a good scan of one of their people or if you broke one of their water-containers we could get a scan of the ratio of heavy-water to regular water. That should give us something to compare samples to, we might get lucky and find where they are sourcing their water.
Hull composition would be useful for the same reason, it might let us narrow down the search a bit further.
The same goes for their ship's engine exhaust, we should spectrograph it and compare it to what we see in other star systems. Again, we might get lucky and catch their engine exhaust long after their ships have moved on.
3)
We should also make a stop by Higaflan's surface. Those colonists will have useful
HUMINT and their electronic devices will certainly have useful data. I would like to be able to talk to them in person. Do we have a translator ready for their language?
4)
Current intelligence organizations may be a longshot, there are Nepleslians on Funky City who take deep space assignments who might know something about these guys and it is possible someone has come across similar ships before. We should check everything we have against existing data and try to use the intelligence you already have.
- Wazu