TGoaW-62

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==Chapter 62 - The Glow of a Worm inside a Child's Eye==
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Coast Guard 11012 out of Newtown Square...
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Leutnant Bianh Vu Dao's mission was 'seeding' detectors along the coreward front, and setting up relays. As a result, most of her missile munitions were replaced by satellites with short burst boosters.
The strategy was something originated by the Coast Guard, not AFFC, office on Spider Moon, but the equipment had a minder from LIC with a team, and that team replaced most of her gunnery rates and some of her Marines.
The detectors were pretty simple things, you plant a relay, with its powerplant, in a slow neptunian orbit, with the detectors laid in pattern near the zenith and nadir points of a system. An Emergence signature can be picked up from background, and if it's strong enough, or big enough, it kicks a transmission to the relay by tightbeam, the Relay, then records the data and kicks it by the black-box on board to the next system's relay, which kicks it to the next system, which ends at Spider Moon.
"Not as fast as an HPG, but it's still faster than waiting for refugee ships to show up" was the rule. The process, in turn, was supervised by the guys from Intelligence.
The goal, was twofold: one, to have an alert line in case another Clan shows up to join the party and open a new front, and two, to start working out a back-trail to where these bastards had come from in the first place.
The mission profile and duration meant that "Special Taskforce eleven" was sneaking in near, and possibly in-TO, enemy held space, and that the mission meant occasional rendezvous with tenders and sustained deep space operations that aren't 'healthy' for Dirtyfoot personnel.
Personnel, like the gaggle of LIC tech-specialists and their bodyguards currently occupying able spacer berths on her ship, and the other eight Sampan III Class Cutters in the taskforce.
Frictions, seemed inevitable to her. Dirtyfeet who didn't finish the Spider Moon course tend to have sloppy, planet-bred habits-the sort that can kill you, and your shipmates, and the poor dumb bastards can't help it.
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