Plausible/Deniability

[Crash Calestorm 0]

To quote an oft used line from the ancient Earth literature texts, the game was afoot.

 

The USS Comanche Creek had made it halfway around the perimeter of the asteroid ring, and continued to launch and detonate low yield probes just at the edge of the field; Calestorm refused to plow straight through the field, phasers and torps blazing.

 

She wanted to draw out whoever was hiding within the asteroid perimeter, on Starfleet Border Patrol terms.

 

The air wing patrol squads that had been dispatched and ships forward sensor scans were only having minor luck penetrating the asteroid field; the still active minerals located within the jagged rocks were preventing full scale imaging.

 

They were getting a faint reading of some sort of large structure located within the perimeter of the large field, and that was to be expected. There were a few dozen fly by night space stations scattered throughout this section of the Outer Rim, constructed by civilian contractor companies to mine within the asteroid fields. The outposts would be in operation anywhere from one month to one year (or more) and then the workers would move on from the stations once the field was mostly depleted of the resources.

 

These pre-fab mining platforms and stations were never intended to last indefinitely, though like 20th century automobiles, the structures had a way of surviving under the ministrations of the determined. Civilians, pirates (such as the Were-Wire Shadow tribe and their financial backer), mercenaries, the Orion Cartel, would then claim the sundered mining platforms and administrative space stations as a frontier base of operations.

 

In the past, there had been incidents with the Klingon Defense Force claiming one or two of the mining stations located along the Borderlands, the section of space long disputed between the Klingon and Orion governments.

 

Crash stayed seated in her command chair and turned towards the communications station; she resisted the urge to pace about the bridge again, though a small devil may care smile lit her features.

 

“Lieutenant, let’s throw some plausible deniability into the mix as well. Send out an automated message on the non-encrypted channels – “To all ships and travelers within the area. This is a representative ship of the Coyote Mining Corporation,” – Admiral Coyote, who had ghosted onto the bridge a few minutes prior, snorted softly at the fictional company name and Cale gave a friendly wink to her commanding officer – “we are testing a grouping of asteroids for possible mineral count. Please maintain distance from the blasting area.”

 

…the game was afoot…