T minus: 61 hours 45 mins (approx)

Down time moves along with the same inevitability as work time.

Profit Margin sits on the ice, in her new location, which, apart from the lack of huge, hulking wrecked starships, doesn't look a lot different from the old one.  Such is the monotony of sight-seeing excursions on small moons.  Ore hound is parked nearby, a concession to the fact that this world's gravity is so pitiful that a ship has to use thrusters to keep itself in synchronous orbit.

Both ships are currently partialy buried in drifts of ice crystals.

Jockram is sitting in Profit Margin's crew lounge, having crossed over from his own ship.

"The way I see it, the big problem with staying hidden here is that it might make it hard to see the Swordies arriving, if we're below the horizon when they get here.  Banster's working on a solution right now, something that'd let us stay hidden, and still see, bur so far, he's made no real progress... "
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:08, Sat 06 Oct 2007.

“Well, we are not far from the horizon here, nowhere is on this rock, it would be a simple matter to pop up for a quick peek with passives and just hope that we don’t get spotted. Stripping out one of the sensor arrays and installing it in some sort of remote housing is probably a bit beyond us, given the time scale.”

“Any way, for what I had in mind, it might not be necessary.”

Jago reaches over to top up the other captains glass with an amber liquid that had been far to cheep to be what it implied on the label, but was a reasonable substitute.

“The thing is to get the timing right, and that's just down to cairfull calculation.”

“At the moment, they don’t know that there are any ships out here. When the small one arrives we pop out of nowhere and give it a hard time. The bigger ship is thirty hours behind and can’t help it, but it’s got bigger, longer range weapons than us or it’s little brother and it can sure as hell take revenge. The Profit Margin will of course run away from a from the big bad Swordy warship, back to our 'ice ball' hide out, where we can play tag and try to off set better weaponry with better manoeuvrability, and of course where you guys are waiting with your mining laser to dig for molybdenum in it’s power plant.”

.

"That might work.  My only worry would be that, once they get closer, the dead Leviathan might attract some notice, and put them on the alert before you get a chance to do anything." Jockram says, thoughtfully.

Tylen had returned to his cabin and rested, it had been a long day and he wanted to be sharp it things were to get hot later. Having slept, he rose, excercised an then took a quick shower. dressing in one of his customary red tee shirts, tan pants and his disreputable boots, he buckled on his pistols and went down to check on their 'Guests'.

Having stayed up a bit later than most and been up earlier than most - call it habit - Yasmine Crow looks up from her cup as the captains talk.

"Hey, boss, I have been thinking...  Yeah, I know, I got a headache from it, but anyway...  I got this idea that might work.  What if we hide and let them start to refuel, and then we pop out and simply allow our missiles to 'drop down' on them.  Not only will we have gravity on our side, making it hard for them to avoid or shoot down our little gift, but they won't be going anywhere very fast once they are down there.  And mishaps during fuel scooping happens, so the other one might just repeat the dance if we do it right."

"In addition, I was think that maybe Sassy, together with Banster of course, can throw together some relay station for our sensors, so we don't have to keep peeking out constantly.  Worth asking, at least.  When it comes down to it, all we need to know is when they go for the dip, and then move in, so it does not require a full sensor array," she suggests and sips while she allows her idea to sink in.

Shui contents herself with bringing the ship's occupants (crew, passengers, and prisoners) food and beverages, while busying herself in near-obsessive preparation in her office/lab/sleeping quarters.  With her own gear neatly packed, she goes over her checklist again and again, knowing that if they engage the incoming vessels, there will likely be no time to search for supplies.

Saskia considers the plans being proposed.  "I can rig up a sensor relay, easy enough, as long as Yas and Tylen don't mind giving up one of their missiles to do it."

"Strip out the warhead, or leave it in, doesn't matter.  Take the active sensors offline, and you're left with whatever it uses for passives.  Most likely thermal and radar tracking.  Then drop it in space, without triggering its motor.  Set it up so that it shares the same orbit as this moon, and stays a couple of thousand klicks out."

"We pick up telemetry from it, on a low power tight beam signal, just the way it normally works.  Instant frelling spy satellite."

“Excellent Saskia’s, go for it,” Jago says without hesitating, “but try not to use any parts that we can’t afford to abandon. Perhaps you could leave the warhead in and add a remote firing system of some sort, just on the off chance that it becomes useful.”

“I like the idea of hitting them while they are diving with their fuel scoops deployed, except that it will take us away from the snow ball, and I was kind of counting on Jockram here being the ace up our sleeve.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to surprise another ship in space, in the ordinary way of things, it takes hours to move into firing range. The same applies if they spot the Leviathan on the surface, the first ship is going to see us coming any way, and the second will be able to analyse it as it chases us back here, either way it will serve as a distraction, nothing more, that might even be quite useful.”

“Computer, what’s our approximate flight time from this moon to it’s primary, and also from this moon to intercept ship ‘A’.”
’

To travel from current location, to the upper reaches of the planetary atmosphere, following optimal course, at best acceleration: 7 hours, 51 minutes.

Flight time to intercept Ship A, at closest approach to this moon: 7 hours, 19 minutes, assuming target ship does not alter vector.

“Thank you computer.”

“Seven hours is plenty of time to make preparations, if I were him I’d abort the refuelling run and head back towards the other ship, which is probably what will happen if we reveal ourselves too early. Still, how long does it take to make a refuelling run, any chance that we could catch them on the way out I wonder?”
_.

"Well, as I figure, we can hide in the gas giant, and rise up when they enter.  They will be nearly blind, as we would be if we did not have our little Sassy Spy Satellite," Yasmine suggests in order to cut down the amount of travel.  "That means they may not even notice us as we gain altitude enough to literally get the drop on them, and the other ship may, as I said before, even not realise something went wrong other than a mishap during refueling."

“Sadly Yasmin, it’s to late for that, they would see us move the moment we burned main drives, the only don’t know that we are here if we stay quiet and still behind the snowball. Actualy, we have no guarantee that they haven’t already spotted us.”
_.

"They might, or not.  No way to know, but, they might also think we are simply refuelling, like they are going to.  We are no big ship either, so what threat could we pose, eh?"

"If need be, we can always fire something later to give the impression that we are running away, or exploding or whatever.  We can't exactly surprise them from where we are anyway, can we, so why not cut down the distance while we can?" Yas replies, rather cutting down on the amount of time before the actual combat than wait nearly 8 hours to intercept them.

"Whichever way you go, there's still plenty of time before a decision has to be made." Jockram interrupts.

"If you want to intercept them, you'll need to launch about fourteen hours before they hit the clouds, so roughly... forty-seven hours from now.  Main problem I see is that they have seven hours to let their mates know that there are ships here."

"If you want to hit them as they refuel, you have choices.  First, you can follow them down, but not too closely, and just dump everything you've got onto them, from above."

"Or... second, you can wait until this moon passes behind its primary, then run across there, using the giant for cover.  After that, just lurk below the cloud tops, the way an SDB would." the miner looks from face to face, around the room.  Then, "There is a third choice for an atmosphere attack, though.  Combine the first two.  We go across and lurk in the clouds, and you follow them in.  As they descend, we come up, and once we're above them, we drop everything on them with you.  Except the coffee maker.  We may have crappy coffee, but it's all we got."

He looks at Saskia, "Whichever way you go, we'll need the remote eye though, so Saskia needs to start work on that, at least."

Yas grins and waves a finger at Jockram.

"That third option about hitting them on refuel is what I am talking about, although you did actually mention the moon as a cover," she chuckles and then says, cradling her cup protectively, "Well, we ain't gonna be dropping no cocoa either, so there..."

Jago shakes his head to try to throw off some of the confusion, “fourteen hours? It’s only seven hours to an intercept.”

“The thing is, those ships know that they are not being chased so they have a bit of lee way. As soon as we move, they will know that we are here, no question. You can see them Jockram, and your sensors are nothing special, no offence, we are in their forward arc, they just can’t miss us once we fire the drives. There sensors might have been damaged in the fight, but that’s not an assumption that I’m willing to make.”

“We can’t predict exactly what they are going to do, but we can make some educated guesses, and they don’t include diving into a planetary atmosphere while there are unknown ships with striking range.”

“If we show to early, the lead ship will just head back towards the bigger one and come in as a team.”

“If we don’t give him time to do that, his options are limited, but he won’t be going down into that atmosphere. He will probably wait, and when we attack, try and fight a retreat back to the bigger ship.”

“We could try to bluff him into thinking that we are a harmless merchant, out here after fuel as well, but even if he believed it, he can still wait until we are out of the way before going in. More than likely, he'll hold off with he intention of attacking us while we do our fuel run”

“One thing you said there did strike a cord though Jockram, something I’ve discounted up to now as this moon orbits the primary in weeks not hours, (OOC, at least I assumed it did), but I’ve not actually run the figures.”

“Computer, from the point of view of those two sword ships, how long before this moon moves out of sight behind the primary?”

“If we can get to the atmosphere unseen, and in time, that changes everything.”
_.

"Fourteen hours.  It takes a little over seven hours to cross to them at their closest approach, but that closest approach to us happens when they're still seven hours out from the giant.  So we need to make our move about fourteen hours before they hit the clouds."

The computer responds quickly, 49 hours, 10 minutes, 22 seconds.

Jockram shrugs, "There's the thing that was worrying me, at first, but the figures look possible.  We don't need to move until a little over twelve and a half hours before they get to the giant, if we want to get across there first.  That'd put us in the clouds about five hours before them."

A little smile forms around the unlit cigar in Jago’s mouth, “right, that gives us two days get what we can off of that ship down there.”

“We spotted what seemed to be some life form in the ice,” Jago tells Jockram, “I don’t know if it’s dangerous. It did seem to be scared of Yasmin’s shadow which I took to be an indication of sentience.”

“Shui,” Jago asks, or uses the intercom if she is not there, “any results from those samples you took?”
_.

"Told you so," Yas says with a grin, happy to leave the numbers and such to those who clearly liked them.  It had not her job to come up with figures in the Marines, after all, but she had to come up with ideas for solutions quite often.

"Common sense, not sentience.  Self-preservation, like any critter," she then jokes about the thing feeling her shadow.  "Just like I want the low-life to scatter.  Not saying these were, but on the level they operated, well, plenty of folks operate too..."

Then she falls silent - for a moment, at least - as she enjoys her cocoa again.

Shui sits up in her chair when the intercom chimes.  Dozing again.  Shaking her head, she flicks a switch, responds, and listens to Jago's question.

"Of course, Captain."  The doctor activates her vidscreen, calls up the result, already parroting them off from memory.  "Most of the coloured ice seems to be frozen fruit juice from one of the broken containers.  Likely mango juice, genengineered - adapted to a foreign world."

She fumbles for her cup of tea.  Cold.  "One sample was blood, but not from any of the major races.  Minor race stowaway, or crewmember?  Possibly some kind of pest?  I cannot say."

"The other ice I collected was either water, or frozen gasses, which sublimated upon arrival on the Profit Margin" 

Sitting quietly so far, listening to the discussion, Conrad finally speaks up, "Oh, Yas, I got some information on that watch y'all found.  'part from everythin' bein' mirrored an' all, there was nuthin' strange 'bout it.  I found a good forty worlds in the Atlas with day lengths that match the numbers on the face, or small multiples of it."

He shrugs, "An' that was just for the Marches and the nearest three Imperial sectors.  If'n it came from outside the Imperium, then there's likely as many again."

"I c'n get the list, if'n y'all need it?"