Free Odyssey One 5: Warrior King by Evan Currie Page B

thing if you knew what you were looking for and where it was, but if you didn’t, it would take years to scan a system that way.
    Light-speed-based systems took longer, and you didn’t get real-time information, but they had a far superior range of resolution and you could scan enormous swaths of the sky very, very quickly.
    As soon as the Odysseus had transitioned into the system, the crew had begun compiling light-speed images of everything around them. Priminae technology made that somewhat easier than it had been with the Odyssey ’s reflected sensor sails. The warp field in front of the Odysseus bent light, thus functioning as a gathering system far larger than its actual physical size.
    The crew had to adjust for interference, naturally, but since that was predictable given the drive system the Odysseus used, they had pretty decent resolution.
    The entire system couldn’t be scanned in minute detail in anything less than several years, but for the most part that wasn’t needed anyway. First the astrometrics people just located all the large bodies visually and by their gravity effect. If everything worked out and there were no gravity anomalies, it was a fair bet that there were no active warp fields in the system.
    While that was happening, the radio frequency systems threw their entire feed over to the computer for pattern recognition, looking for any signs of broadcasting. Similarly, the tachyon scanners started looking for interplanetary-range FTL signals, and the rapidly assembling visual images of the system were pored over for anything that looked out of the ordinary.
    This was one of the Priminae’s outer colony worlds, and one of the first hit by the Drasin, so the scanners quickly found minor anomalies that brought their focus to the fourth world in the system. It was now a dead and crumbling mass of former Drasin drones, but none of them were remotely active, so the teams in charge of the system evaluation tagged the world’s orbit and moved on.
    Other than that one world, the system was largely unimpressive. The star was a red giant, and most of the planets were barren or gas giants, though there were hints of organic chemicals in the atmosphere of the fifth world. This was tagged as an item of interest and set aside.
    Hyperspectral scanners were useful for long-range analysis of such things, basically breaking down the incoming light that had passed through a planet’s atmosphere, or reflected off an interesting surface, and working out what wavelengths had been absorbed. Certain compounds absorbed very specific wavelengths of light, and so from light-minutes—or even light-years—away, it was possible to very neatly identify what exactly you were looking at on a molecular level, if nothing else.
    After three hours of skirting the system, nothing unexpected came back. The Odysseus came down from general quarters and settled in to complete the survey in a more relaxed manner.
     
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    ► Milla Chans stepped up the plank into the large shuttle, tapping on the aluminum ribbing. “Stephan? Are you in here?”
    Steph appeared from the front lock. “Hey Milla. I see you got the word.”
    “The system has been cleared, yes?”
    “That’s what the official card said,” Steph told her. “Captain cleared us for a test flight, so we’re going to drop deeper into the system, sling around the fifth planet, and meet the Odysseus around the elliptic in two days. Works?”
    “Yes. Works.”
    “Good. Preflight.”
    Milla nodded and moved forward, slipping past Steph and through the lock into the forward cockpit. He had signed out a Marine shuttle for the test flight, unarmed and stripped down for fast landing and even faster dustoff.
    He would have preferred one of the armed versions, just as a matter of principal, but Major McAllistair had something to say about that. The Marine in charge of the Odysseus ’ contingent was as much a stickler for procedure as Eric had ever been at his worst,