Now that Wanderer is in orbit, Brent can maintain communications using the two mines all the way to intercept.

"There's nothing out there except that one active transponder," Gareth says.

"The missiles are powered up and ready, as is the laser," Joxe reports from Engineering.

"I don't know about you all, but I'm hungry," Naimh says. "I'll fix a late lunch if anyone wants it."

Over the laser link:

"The old people called our home Sittahr. Uh, the computer says it's on that profile, whatever that means. Yes, my cousin is here with me. It's just the two of us. There are only two beds, anyway. Are you going to hurt us?" The girl's voice sounds frightened.

"Can I talk to her?" Melanie asks. "I think we're about the same age, from her voice."

"They could be faking it," Gareth warns.

Melanie shakes her head. "Maybe so, but the faker would have to be really good."

Brent acknowledges the responses from the crew.  He smiles over to Niamh. "Lunch would be good.  Set two extra places as we may have guests from our friends over there."

He listens to the response.  "Good, we should intercept in roughly two hours." Brent shook his head.  "No, we're not going to hurt you at all.  We want to rescue you and get you to a safe place and then try to bring you back home."

Turning to Melanie he nods.  "Go ahead, see if you can calm her down and see exactly what happened."

180-1402 1800 Local time

As everyone eats lunch and reports back to their stations, Melanie keeps up a conversation with the inbound ship. In summary, the ship has two teenage girls aboard. They were exploring an old Imperial building, and they found this ship in a hangar or storage area.

There were two robots there, but only one still worked. The door in the belly opened when one of the girls touched a square next to the door. They climbed in, and the ship took off on its own and came here. When they questioned the computer, it told them it was following it's instructions, but refused to say more.

The girls are named Eleni and Radshir, with Radshir doing most of the talking. They are from a large family whose main business is wine making. Their ship reaches turnover right on schedule and starts decelerating for orbit insertion, and Wanderer executes it's own turnover maneuver to match velocities with them.

At ten minutes to intercept, Gareth lets out a puff of air. "Should we bring up the active sensors?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:53, Sat 16 May 2020.

Brent considers their options as they approach the ship.  "Go ahead and give it a quick ping Gareth.  Keep it as direction as you can but let's get a good lock on them."  He calls over to the ship.  "Let your computer know we are going active with our sensors for a moment to confirm your course."

"Okay," comes the reply.

"Going active," Gareth says. He leans forward a bit as the data changes on the display. "Wow, I'm not getting much back. Maybe they have some sort of stealth coating or shape. With their drives pointed at us, I'd expect a bigger target."

Brent looks at the sensor data.  "That is very odd.  Can you make out what class of ship this might be either from the active or passive sensors?  Can we pick them up yet on the optics?" He poked around a bit.

Gareth shakes his head. "Not yet. Even a large ship would be invisible at this distance. Do we want to train out the laser, just in case?"

Brent estimates that they should get a visual on a ship their own size or larger in about five minutes, at a range of 15,000km.

Brent considers the options.  "No, I'd rather not do anything that might be perceived as hostile by that ship's computer.  Go ahead and train out on them but I don't want to stay active."

Gareth does as he's commanded, and Wanderer continues to close with the inbound ship. After another five minutes, Gareth takes a breath. "Holy crap, what is that?" He puts an image up on Brent's display.

OOG: Look in Dropbox for it.

Brent leaned forward and shook his head.  "I have no idea what the heck that might be."  He distributed the image through the ship.  "Joxe, do you recognize this?  Gareth run it through the computer for anything like it."

"What *is* that," Joxe asks.

Gareth runs the query and grunts in mild surprise. "That, ladies and gents, is a jump runabout. It's high tech, as it's the smallest hull the Imperium made for starships. Says here it's a six-ton displacement hull. There's no other data, though."

"I've seen one of those," Naimh puts in. "Some Imperial dignitary had one at a starport when I was there. You have to be rich to own one, as they can't carry more than two people, supplies and baggage."

"Could it be armed?" Malcolm wonders.

"I don't think they'd have room for a hardpoint, nor the power to run anything that could hurt us," Joxe says. "Brent, the data I have says it can jump two parsecs at a time."

Melina chimes in. "We can't just leave them, right?"

Brent shook his head.  "Well, I would not have expected anything so small.  I've been doing some reading on Jump drive engineering and theory and I thought the minimum size of a vessel that could manage a Jump field was much larger." He shrugged and smiled.  "Of course I'm reading the basic texts..."

When Gareth and Joxe chimed in Brent leaned forward and looked intensely interested.  "So small, high tech and Jump two?  This would have to be higher than the tech level 12 we are dealing with now, right?"  He nodded to Melina.  "No, we can't leave them even if there wasn't anything of interest in their ship.  We'll rescue them and examine their ship and take them home.  There may be more infrastructure from where this ship came from that would bear salvage."

Finally, the two ships match vectors, riding in close formation about a hundred meters apart. Gareth had approached in a spiral pattern to map the ship's hull from all aspects.

"It's a real flying saucer," Veronica says with a laugh.

"And what is that?" Naimh looks over at her.

"It's an old Solamani legend from pre-space times about what vessels from other spacefaring species would be like. There was a library of old literature about it back home. My mother is a historian, and she loves that stuff. They looked like, well, saucers. Just like that runabout, in fact."

OOG: See Dropbox for another pic.

Brent shook his head.  "I knew that full Imperial tech was powerful but this is truly a demonstration of what they could do."  He looked closely at the vessel.  "Can anyone see a docking port?  I'd hate to have to make a full EVA to get aboard."

"It has a hatch in the belly," Joxe says, highlighting the gold-colored hatch in the imagery. "That's not an airlock, so we will have to dock with it. I'm betting that the girls don't have vacc suits, or probably don't know how to use them."

Brent considered the approach. "We'll dock then."  He flipped on the short range comm.  "You can probably see us out your window.  We're going to maneuver under the ship and dock at the hatch so we can come aboard and help."  As he waited for a reply Brent twisted the controls to bring them into docking position.

As Melina chatters with the girls, Brent and Gareth deftly maneuver Wanderer into position, with her starboard side airlock facing the smaller ship's belly hatch. Joxe and Veronica handle the docking tube that extends from around the ship's airlock, and, after some finicky adjustments, they make contact.

"Good seal," Joxe reports. "We're getting steering interlock cues through the interface, but we might not want to accept the interface request."

Brent knows that, without the computers' mutual support, he will have to focus to keep Wanderer in the correct position. Also, if the other ship rolls too quickly, he won't have the thruster authority to maintain a steady relative position, and he will have to disconnect the docking tube without warning. The good news is, the sensors can detect even the tiniest bit of relative motion and provide some guidance to help him maintain the correct position.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:42, Thu 28 May 2020.

"Roger, good seal.  Let's keep the connection distant for now.  I'll stay here of Joxe you and Melina want to go aboard.  Melina you can calm the girls and Joxe you can make an engineering evaluation.  Wear suits though just in case."

"Got it," Joxe says.

"Brent," Malcolm says in a carefully neutral voice, "maybe Veronica and I should go take a quick look before Joxe and Melina go across?"

Brent nodded. "Good idea Malcolm, go ahead."

OOC: I keep forgetting who is aboard...

OOG: Brent, Joxe, Malcolm, Veronica, Naimh, Gareth, and Melina. Wanderer has three bridge stations, two workstations in Engineering, a lashed-up comms/sensors station in the upper lounge, and a holo display unit in the main deck common area. Brent and Joxe share the port main deck cabin, while Gareth occupies the starboard cabin. Malcolm, Naimh, and Veronica have three of the upper deck cabins, leaving three unoccupied. Each cabin can accommodate two people, and each bed has a built-in low berth.

IG:

While Brent holds Wanderer in precise alignment with the golden ship, Malcolm and Veronica pull themselves through the docking tube, open the far hatch, and enter the tiny ship. They confront two frightened teenage girls clad in handmade, but ornate dresses. Veronica quickly removes her helmet, shoos Malcolm back to Wanderer, and asks that Melina and Joxe join them.

Joxe takes command of the ship, while Melina and Veronica help the teens into shipsuits. A few minutes later, Joxe confirms that the ship's datalink is safe to share data with, and initiates a link to allow the two ships to safely maintain their shared docking tube connection.

After the girls are dressed, Joxe opens a video feed so that Brent and the others can see each other. "Brent, this ship is, or was, brand new. It's only flown from Promise, where it was built, to Gorky, to Sittahr, and then here to Execute."

Brent waited as patiently as he could while his crew swept the other ship.  Finally when the data link came up followed by Joxe's confirmation Brent relaxed.  He checked for a moment about Promise and nodded.  "Promise was tech level 15 so that would explain the sophistication of the ship.  Can you tell any more about it's history or what would have prompted the computer to come here?"

"I found the ship's log," Joxe replies after a few minutes. "It seems that the ship's former owner was planning this trip when the attacks started. Someone took out the research station and flattened the starport and the larger towns. This ship, a runabout, it's called, was at the family's country estate, and it was apparently forgotten. When the girls came aboard, it, for some reason, decided to fly the planned trip here."

Brent kept his eyes on the scanners as the others worked.  He didn't want to get caught with their pants down while investigating this find.  He listened to Joxe and made up his mind.  "Let's bring her back down to the village.  We can cover her and then investigate a bit more while safely on the ground.  What is her fuel state?  I'm guessing we'll have to transfer refined fuel to her."

"We're right at a half-ton of fuel, which will give us another eight hours' accel," Joxe replies. "We'd need a ton to completely refuel, which isn't bad, considering we carry seventy-two tons. We will have to wait until we're on the ground to do it, though."