Galactic Empire in New World

Part 6 Chapter 8

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A few moments later,

"Not bad, we are already quite close to the 7th planet. It looks like we can meet our task schedule. What about the probe droid we're controlling?" asked Captain Calsa who was feeling good again.

"Nominal, captain. All data is coming in as planned. But we didn't find anything." The XO said.

"Hmm, I guess, we won't find anything. Finding out why the alien ship attacked us is not an easy task." Captain Calsa said as he stood up to go to the refreshment center to get a drink.

"Captain, look, we have an anomaly!" said the sensor officer while pointing at the large screen.

There was a straight line stretching from one edge of the screen to the other.

"All stop. What is it? Turn the ship's course, use the sensor package that is still functioning to analyze!" Captain Calsa ordered it as he hurriedly approached the large screen.

"Yes, captain." The helmsman said.

"The analyzer shows an ion trail, but navigation sensors and other standard sensors can't see it." The sensor officer said this after a moment of looking at his instruments.

"Why is that?" asked Captain Calsa.

"There seems to be an attempt to actively remove the ion trail from the starship drive. We can only see it because of the interaction with the solar wind and the strong magnetic field that the solar wind analyzer can detect. The other sensors can't see that." The sensor officer said.

"Can we zoom in on the ion trail? Or do we need to get closer?" asked Captain Calsa.

"Hold on, I'll try to zoom in on the ion trail." said the sensor officer.

For some time, there was no change on the large screen. This was because the wind analyzer was still trying to analyze the solar wind interaction data over a smaller area and with higher resolution. Suddenly the image on the large screen changed, and it appeared that the ion trail that seemed to be only one, was actually 14 in close formation.

"Isn't the number of ships attacking us 14? This is their trail! Contact command immediately to inform them of this!" Captain Calsa ordered.

"Yes, captain." The communications officer said.

"Can we get a sense of the direction the ships are traveling?" asked Captain Calsa.

"Yes, captain. We can analyze their distribution. The ones that are more spread out will take longer, meaning they will travel first. The ship will move towards the lower distributed ion trail." The sensor officer said.

"Good. Determine the direction the ships are coming from. Summon a number of our probe droids to participate in analyzing the ion trail. Request assistance from the command for more powerful military ships. Go to yellow alert." Captain Calsa ordered.

"Yes, sir." the XO said.

The 'Aurellia' corvette moved slowly towards the start of the ion train. Moments later, behind them were several pseudomotions showing a number of ships coming out of hyperdrive. A Victory Star Destroyer, 2 Battlestars, and 4 attack cruisers joined the 'Aurellia' to follow the ion trail.

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Several hours later, the small fleet arrived at an astroid orbiting the 7th planet. The astroid was irregularly shaped, approximately 60 km long at its longest point.

"Captain, the ion trail ends here. From the decay of the earliest ion trail, it seems that they arrived about three days before the 'Macross' arrived here." The sensor officer of the 'Aurellia' said.