Quick Study

Posted on Wed Feb 16th, 2022 @ 2:14am by

689 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Not All Changes Are Welcome.
Location: Dreadnought

Ayla leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. Still seeing the numbers of the reading that were pulled from the Agincourt as they slowly faded from view. She could find no fault in any of Marks actions as Captain. It was a raw situation going into.

The innocent bait of a disabled freighter to draw crew from a warship to lend assistance, spitting the crew up and command. Shields down and not on standby as regs required, was the only fault she could see. It happened to her a few times when she lived in another dimension and in command of a ship. It was a favored tactic of small forces against a much larger one.

She looked over the recorded flight path of departure of the enemy warship, working out the path of escape to prevent other ships from following.

Opening her eyes as her little claws tapped in commands to bring up the star charts of the area and began looking over the area in warp speeds distance that would allow quick escape and evasion to lose any ships following. Seeing the nebula at estimated distance of ten minutes of warp speeds even if the slowest of ship with speeds of warp 5 max was an ideal target to make a run for.

Ayla sighed at seeing the Nebula so close in an ideal location for the bait and ambush. There would be no way to even track anything in that morass of gasses, mini ion storms, electrical discharges between the elements. It favored the Fleeing, not the Hunters. The nebula covered a vast area that made searching it a hazardous prospect with an unknown enemy lurking. She would love to spend the time for an in-depth study. Nebulas were the birthing grounds for star systems and the rare elements that had commercial value.

With the Barham back in its hanger bay, it would nearly take an act of the deities for her to be able head back out to the scene and begin the hunt for the bad guys. As for the crew captured it would be nearly impossible to even find them a live or with sanity intact. For interrogations can get very nasty. Ayla blinked and thought of the effects of defeat on a commander to have been beaten and loss of crew he/she was responsible for.
The loss of morale and confidence ruined many good prospective commanders. She had lost a few battles herself and had lost crew to the enemy and in the end, herself had been captured. To apply herself in a non-combatant role that brought her here to this point in her life.

She slapped the console and stood up to stretch out the kinks. Her mind still raced over the situation. The popular route of ships through the area kept getting closer and closer to the Nebula as it was pretty stable, even with all the interior turmoil going on inside it.

"Bring up all pirate incidents on the screen and mark the area with a red diamond," She spoke out loud to use the vocal interface with the ship's AI. "Rotate the star map with the Nebula at center focal point."

She watched the display change. Shrink, then expand to encompass the various pirate attacks. Seeing that the Nebula was within 5 to 20 minutes of warp 5 speeds for escape. "Open small window with the size of the Nebula. In the Y axis, X axis and Z axis."

Ayla stepped closer to read the data appearing in the requested window. It was a very nice sized one that covered a vast distance, yet it wasn't a monster of one like the more known ones. This would be a blip on anyone's radar. Momentary study and then move on to the bigger ones. Or even overlooked.

Ayla looked thoughtful as she began her report, trimming all non-essential data into a report that would be easily read with all the appropriate diagrams with facts and trimmed down theories and speculations. If Captain wanted more, he could call her. She had a husband to help get his inner balance and confidence back.

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