“Even if she were spaceworthy, I don’t think even you could fudge the flight record enough to give the lieutenant her quals on a shuttle.” Eric paused, eyeing his junior officer with a suddenly sly look. “Not to mention that it’s a single-seater . . . Unless that’s what you were going for?”

“Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa . . .” Steph threw up both hands again. “Not with another officer on the same ship! I learn my lessons, boss!”

“You better,” Eric said sourly. “You almost got us fragged with that lovers’ spat between you and the dispatcher on the Reagan.”

“Swear to God, boss, not happening here.”

Eric looked the younger man over before nodding slowly. “Right. Well, you’re still cleared. Just wait for us to finish deep system scans. If we see even a sign of active Drasin presence, or anything else . . .”

“Got it, boss. System becomes a no-go zone.”

“If we see Drasin signs, the system becomes a war zone.”

►►►

► Long-range scanning across planetary distances took time, no matter what sort of systems you used. Tachyon-based detection was technically instantaneous, but it was very precise. That was a good 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.