After refuelling in Bael, the Sosok jumped out.
Week of morris dancing
And arrived in Faisal. No sign of the Imperium destroyers.
Jump to Thanber. A week of rollerball disco.
In Thanber, sure enough, the two Imperium ships were here. Impetus was docked at the class-B star-port while the Hyperion was out at the 10-diametre jump point. There were a handful of merchants as well. The Sosok docked too.
The group reconnoitred about and established that doing anything to the Impetus was next to impossible. It was bathed in flood-lights all the time and someone in a vacc-suit going anywhere near the gun barrels would stick out like a sore thumb.
So they retired to their ship and had a good think.
A few hours later they took off and reported to the star-port flight control that they were going to do some prospecting out in the asteroid belt. A few days of travel, they got to the belt. Bobby skillfully manoeuvred the ship to capture a couch-sized asteroid into the cargo bay, then he navigated to a spot and released the rock such that its's elliptical path would hit the star-port in twelve days' time - at about 6km/s. After releasing the asteroid, the Sosok quickly headed off behind the asteroid belt, and then took a separate path back to the star-port.
Sure enough, a few days later alarms started to go off. Medium range scan had identified the asteroid and its imminent collision with the star-port. A rock that size travelling at that speed would all but destroy the star-port.
Both Imperium destroyers headed to the 10 diametre point and started long-range firing their beam weapons at the asteroid. It was smashed into little pieces - a cloud of debris - but still headed for the port.
When the cloud was two days' out, the Hyperion launched a missle and detonated it in the middle of the cloud. This made a neat hole, so that by the time the debris field passed the star-port, travelling at 6km/s, it was a huge ring. Crisis averted.
The Sosok waited some more days, and then went and scooped some bits of the debris field, all neaty tainted with weapons signatures from both Imperium destroyers, and even a missile signature too.
They jumped out to Faisal. This week was Learn a Language week.
In Faisal, a Zhodani laboratory ship was docked. It analyzed the bits of rubble and confirmed that the weapons signatures on the remains from the Retinae destroyed star-port did indeed match the weapons from these two Imperium ships. This information was sent to the main fleet.
A surprise was waiting in Faisal too. Cara, from the Entrope fleet, had used her furlong time to visit. She was waiting for Dick when the Sosok arrived.
