“I don’t think the captain is going to want to risk having the Icarus waiting around to receive the broadcast from the drone, verify it, and then try to accelerate to transition velocity while only having the passive sensors to detect incoming threats,” Washburn said as she followed along after Graham motioned to her with his free hand.

“My thought is to program a com drone to listen as the Jacobson relays the data it collects in a single burst, then transition out of the system to get the data to New Sierra,” she continued. “Actually, the intel would beat us back by more than a week.”

“Two problems I see right away,” Graham said as he ushered her into his office and out of the noisy engineering bay. “We have no more point-to-point drones left aboard, and the standard com drone doesn’t have the fuel to make it from here to the DeLonges System. The best we could hope for is that, barring any interstellar obstacles, it makes it back to the Juwel System and relays the data through the standard network.

“Second, the com drones aren’t designed with this sort of tasking in mind. While it has the requisite receive and transmit hardware, it doesn’t have the computational power to set it adrift with the sort of intricate programming it would take.”

“So … back to square one?” Washburn looked crestfallen.

“No problems are insurmountable, Lieutenant Commander,” Graham smiled. “Just difficult. I think the idea is solid, but we’ll need to bring more people into the loop before presenting this to the captain. Commander Severn down in Flight OPS will need to be included as soon as you can manage it. We’ll need to coordinate between his department and mine to see if a drone can be modified to do what you want it to. The Jacobson is no issue … those little beauties are so flexible it won’t take but twenty minutes to program it for the mission.”

“I’ll get everybody moving right now, sir.” Washburn was already standing up. “Captain Wright won’t want to be sitting in this system any longer than she has to.”

“We’re agreed there,” Graham nodded his head. “She won’t risk this ship for something that can be obtained by the CIS later as a worst-case scenario. I’m putting myself at your disposal, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Thank you, sir,” Washburn said, already through the hatchway.

****

“How quickly can this be accomplished and what percentage do you give it for success?” Celesta asked, clearly skeptical.

“Two days with all hands on deck.” Commander Graham shrugged. “After that, the whole thing is fairly straight forward. I’d say we have better than an eighty percent chance that it goes off as planned.”