TSO 3: Recovery from the Wreckage

As you lift off you engage cloaking As soon as you gain altitude your sensors detect multiple teams crossing the small moon. Though the cloaking field will strongly hide your direct presence secondary effects are often harder so you try to fines the ship systems to minimize your signature to the scanners the teams are obviously employing. The Salvage ship seems to be following the teams on the ground, staying just below the horizon with a relay drone between them and those searching ahead. You will need to get into the jumble of the asteroid to make any inert disguise work but if you disable cloaking and stealth you could instead alter your ships appearance and signature just long enough to confuse the other force.Tell me which systems you are using and roll accordingly.

As you ease away from the planet you watch as the ground teams converge on your previous resting point. The ship quickly moved onto an intercept course with you initial launch vector but your efforts to minimize the ship signature allow you to drift beyond the small moons gravity and then, after hours of tense waiting, you move to mid range sensors.

You drift along and after ensuring your stealth systems are both functioning well you engage low level thrusters as drifting would require weeks of time to reach even the closest section of the rings. Keeping your power output low you near the rings as you watch the salvage ship scour the area.

Unfortunately HAL reports that the salvage ships increase in activity has drawn the attention of another ship. When the ship first appeared on your sensors it was uncertain where it was hading but during your time drifting it became all to clear it was heading for the moon. You watch as the salvage ship hurriedly deploys several shuttles and others on the surface of the moon move together with them to retrieve all the patrols on the moon. With a blast of maximum thrust the salvage ship dives straight for the gass giant only to be replaced by a larger and deadlier ship that deploys several smaller strike craft.

There is no detailed records of this ship in your database but its energy output matches some recent traces of ships moving in the inner part of the system. Though you are far from the carriers it has launched about a dozen of the striker ships who are moving into a search pattern. By this point you have almost reached the rings and you quietly move into the edges.
One more stealth test with any changes to you plans

As you watch the salvage ship fly off and the carrier start to sweep the area you figure if you can get out of the proximity of the carrier you will be able to fly under stealth to any point in the system and remain unseen by both ships and their escorts.

Minimizing your signature as much as possible you are nearly within the ring when the nearest ship suddenly turns and heads directly for you!

You doubt they have a good reading but something obviously got their attention to get them to change corse. The other two scouts and carrier have not made any moves yet but the fact the closest one has raised shields and is powering weapons as is bears down on you makes it clear that they are preparing for a fight. By your approximation you will be well within the rings asteroid field before the closest scout is within weapons range but if they somehow pierced your cloaking then it may be enough for them to retain target lock. Fortunately even if they call reinforcements you have at least 3 minutes to deal with the closest ship, though evasion or combat, and hide again from the sensors of the other ships.

You fly deeper into the field before you find a n astroid large enough to land on, place the bomb, and fly off again. Meanwhile the closest scout as begun randomly blasting any large astroids as it begins sweeping the area. Fortunatly thoughj a couple get close none of the sots are a direct hit and you slip deepter into the ring and outside fo the scouts weapons range. Moving deepter you soon reach the midle and pass through the ring. Now clear of the carrier and its scouts you are free to head aywhere and are feeling less comfortable hanging around the gass guant with all the recent activity.

As you slip away you bomb donates with a much larger explosion than a simple asteroid would. The bomb is not quite large enough to replicate a typical ships fuel exploding and the before will be lacking but that will take time for the scout to discover.