[story][Fenspace Alternates] The South Is Rising, Someone Get A Hammer

[Cobalt Greywalker]

OOC: OK, compromise time. Let's go with my original distances (half AU up, 0.2 AU further out). At that range only the fastest Fen ships (0.18 C or above) would make it in an hour (I was originally thinking it was out of range of the DQS sensors). The DQS sensor triggers on arrival, but the distance means it takes twenty-ish minutes to localise. Thus, anyone out there would be well out of visual range (the cruiser being in stealth mode once it detected a civilisation) when it leaves.

The cruiser takes three days to reach max transmission range, and after Command absorbs the data tells it to head home while surveying for a nearby location suitable for a forward base. It takes about three months for said base to be set up, and for the base to deploy a probe off to Fenspace. At which point a bigger problem turns up requiring people and resources that would otherwise be used on the Diplomatic/Research mission.

Fast forward to two years after Event. Local politics has sorted itself out, Earth is recovering from the financial nightmare, and the Fen have finished the prototype Traverser ship. The ship goes off, does an analysis of the universe it arrived in, and comes back.

This trips the sensors on the TSAB drone, causing an 'Oh crap, we forgot about that!' in the Bureau and sees the mission actually turn up.

Of course, if we don't retcon the entire the entire thing.