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[Happy Demon]

[Tina Murdoch]

"Y-you're... w-welcome."
Tina flips down her reflective visor, to hide her face.
"But... if you are to go parallel t-to the belt, that would mean cancelling our speed completely, and entering orbital velocity around the sun. We'll... have to check."
Tina does an astrophysics calculation, to see if such a course is possible with the current fuel level, and if it'll waste too much time.

[milo christiansen]

((For the return trip of course.))

"We won't be able to go quite parallel obviously, but a slow in and out weave across the belt would bring us back, hopefully without being too slow. I admit, I'm not very good at figuring orbits..."

[retromach]

In general, orbit height and orbit velocity are the same. At the range of the asteroid field from the star, you'd expect it to take three years to complete a full orbital scan. You're doing fairly hard burns to get the quick transit times you're experiencing, with Rigel Station in a slightly accelerated orbit a few light seconds closer to the star, it will move around the asteroid field in it's natural orbit over the course of a decade.

Tina played around with some designs, fiddling with figures. She spent most of the day on it before she realized that a permanent facility would have much longer transit times than a facility in the station. [Engineering 13]

Soon enough, the vehicle was beginning it's descent. The target area came into sensor range.

[milo christiansen]

"All right! Time for the fun to start."

Scan for hostiles!

[Happy Demon]

[Tina Murdoch]

"O-oh, right."
Tina uses the announcement system to message all the crew.
"W-we're getting close... to the target area."
Tina gets in the engineering seat, and straps herself in.
Tina scans for structures. It could help in the fight, like finding cover, or finding targets to avoid hitting with stray fire.
After all, there could be more artifacts.

[Kuma]

Sertan gets to the weapons system and prepares to fire on any hostiles in the area. "Weapons ready. I'll fire on targets as they're called."

[retromach]

The ship descended, approaching the asteroid field at a lazy 300 m/s. 800 km away, the sensors detected the alien presence. The ship would arrive at the edge of them in 45 minutes.

The sensors swept through the field, lighting up with hostiles, forming a 3D image in the central tactical console and beside every display. The ship identified roughly 2000 of the rushers, skittering and moving from asteroid to asteroid taking up defensive positions. There is an anomalous reading on the sensors, however. There seems to be a Castle Effect moving in among the aliens, roughly 20m in diameter. [Sensors 78]

[milo christiansen]

"Wooo, target rich environment... Glad I'm not outside. Anyone have a plan besides 'shoot whatever is closest/meanest until there is nothing moving'?"

[Happy Demon]

[Tina Murdoch]

"I-interference... detected. It's... mobile."
Tina launches two drones.
"Keep an eye out on the interference, whatever is emitting it, it's separate, so we could see what it looks like."
Tina sends the drones ahead of the ship and to the sides, so they could harass rushers that are taking cover from the main ship.
They will act as flanking snipers. Tina even changes their names to Flank 1 and Flank 2.

[Kuma]

"I'm opening fire as soon as we get into range. Can't think of any other way to deal with the rushers." Sertan will open fire onto the rushers when they are in range unless someone comes up with a better plan.

[Cynicalwhovian]

Stella, once she gets in range, will try to use a laser cannon to do much of the same.

[milo christiansen]

"Stella, targeting data headed your way."

Upload scan targeting data to Stella as soon as we are in range. ((Sertan has laser skill, right?))

[Kuma]

((He does yes))

[retromach]

Flank 1 and Flank 2 moved out towards their positions, unable to gain an effective firing solution until the round after next. [Drones 21]

Stella and Sertan opened fire with lasers, each controlling three from their consoles, tri-linked and strafing the asteroids. Stella blasted an ice meteor, filling her view with gas, but Sertan's found home, herding and moving down dozens of rushers, killing 40 of them. [Stella 27, Sertan 111]

Christian fed in sensor readings, updating targeting and movement positions. [Sensors 71, +10 dicetype next turn to attack targets of opportunity]

The ship plunged towards the asteroid field. There wouldn't be much more firing before you were in the thick of it.

[Cynicalwhovian]

"Should I halt and continue bombardment from a distance?"