Incursion Vector

022

[▲] INS Agamemnon, Caminha Waypoint

“You're shitting me.”

Lyall fixed her skeptical stare upon Captain Michael from her chair on her bridge, not quite willing to believe what the man had just told her. Or more so, she was not quite able to believe the wreck that had hobbled its way into their patrol sector and then been stripped of everything that looked like it could fire back at them was still capable of actions that qualified as 'maneuvering.'

"Flight Methuselah assures me they can get it done," replied Michael. "And I'm not betting against those marines. So where shall we put it?”

Stifling the prideful grin that was creeping up on her Lyall looked to her two battle group captains. Ever since Flight Methuselah had secured the bridge of the derelict ship they had been in conference as they received information back from the marines, debating what to do now that it wasn't going to be making its way straight towards the heart of the civilian fleet under their protection. "LeSaille, Santana. Suggestions."

"I suggest pulling Methuselah off that piece of shit and detonating whatever is left of the generators once Tiaha is at the next waypoint," replied Santana, his thick black eyebrows knitting together over his slightly crooked nose as he glared at what had to be an image of the derelict ship they had in their crossfire. "Obviously everyone on board has fringe psychosis. Download the relevant data we need to extrapolate a scenario to forward to tactical command and put them out of their misery."

LeSaille bobbed his head up and down from his own, much smaller bridge on the Anansi. Unlike the Agamemnon, his bridge crew was located in a ring surrounding him, and they were all engrossed in coordinating their patrol with the more touchy captains of the migrant fleet from what Lyall could see. There was an amusing and diverse array of annoyed and frustrated expressions on his officers as they tried their best to be diplomatic about telling dozens of different people, many of which were relying on centuries-old translation dictionaries due to the fact that every other ship in the fleet seemed to use a different dialect, that they were not being sized up for a rekindling of some holy war.

"I'm tempted to agree with Santana. I've seen rim psychs too many times. You can never fix them. You can only drug them and hope they don't start gnawing on the furniture."

She looked back at Michael's image in her display. As seemed to be his trademark he was coordinating his crew with little more than nods and hand gestures, most of which looked more appropriate for use on a baseball diamond than on the bridge of the fleet's most advanced strike carrier. "Lieutenant Ibrahim is sure he can't get anything else out of them?"

"Not the five they have in custody," replied the Heinlein's captain. "There's something they're calling 'the saved ones' the flight has yet to make contact with. I doubt they'll be any more sane, locked up in the subdeck as they apparently are.”

Lyall leaned forward and rested her chin on her fingertips. "I don't think Tiaha is going to take kindly to us blowing up this ship, even if it is part of someone else's migrant fleet."

"Then give it to them," scoffed Santana. "Let them deal with the cannibals.”

"We don't know they're all cannibals," pointed out LeSaille, then cleared his throat as he thought about his words. "Though it does sound likely."

"Let's put in a com to the tribal elders and bring them in on this," said Lyall. "I'd like to cover our asses and not piss off the biggest independent fleet in the galaxy while we have random hostile incursions going on." She nodded towards her two captains. "Blowing it up is Plan Bravo through Zulu, so Santana you find a way to do that while leaving the waypoint in place. I doubt that piece of shit has another FTL shift in it to get it far enough away for a meltdown but I don't want the thing in any salvageable pieces when we're done here."