Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

It only took Nico a few minutes to analyze all of the relevant data and send Max a report on all of the possible locations that a direct route from this location would have taken the ships in the region and how far they could have made it, had they maintained the speeds that they were travelling at.

It all seemed relatively mundane at first, but then one of the ships caught his attention. The Warp Signature itself wasn't anything special, just a Warp 6 freighter, which was quite common in the region. It was the path that Nico had plotted that caught his attention.

According to the traces left behind, it came out of the Asteroid Field at less than warp speed and departed on a path that would take it into the star of an uninhabited system.

There was no logical reason to set that course. It would only lead to inefficient routing to wherever they were really going. But very few captains would willingly take a freighter through an Asteroid Field.

"Do you think it's a hidden base here in the Asteroid Field for smugglers? Or do you think it was a vessel dump into the star?" Max asked Nico now that she had finished her part of the analysis.

"That's unclear. I think we might be missing a portal signature. The problem is that either the ship arrived here through the portal well before it departed, or there is a portal technology that we can't properly detect.

Given the maneuverability of the average freighter, I don't think it navigated the asteroid field at all, so I'm currently searching and cross-referencing possible ways that a freighter could have arrived here without leaving a Warp signature."

Max looked over at Annabelle to make sure that she was still working on her assignment and saw the little Innu mouthing curse words at an algorithm that would give her the route that one of the ships in the region had taken, based only on the warp signature fluctuations.

For most species, that was way beyond her grade level, but the Innu had a way with technology, and Nico had given her the equations that she would need. She just had to apply them correctly.

Satisfied that the girl was taking her punishment seriously, Max began to check the asteroid field for signs of travel. Many power systems would leave some sort of path, either ionized radiation, expelled plasma, or lingering magnetic fields where the iron asteroids had been affected by their energy shielding.

What he was hoping for was something that would lead into the region and give them a clue to work with.

There wasn't much to go on, though. None of the signatures of passing vessels were recent, so if something had come out of the field and waited a while before moving on, the signs could have decayed past what they could detect.

"Miss Nico, I think I have it," Annabelle called out and held out her data tablet over an hour later while Max was finishing his search for hidden routes through the asteroids.

Nico took the tablet from her and tapped across the screen a half dozen times with a smile on her face.

"Alright, these are the lessons for the parts that you got wrong. Review them and then complete the incorrect questions again. I will mark them again when you've finished."

Max smiled at the desperation in the girl's look and the longing thoughts of running through the ship to explore every nook and cranny while eating cookies. It would be a while before she got to her snack and even longer before she could explore since it was still fairly early in the morning, but it wouldn't be too long before lunch.

"What do you think Nico? We're definitely still missing something." Max sighed.

"I think we should follow that freighter. It might not be related to our Klem infestation, but the timeframe is close, and the path is suspicious. I think it might have cruised here at less than warp and let inertia carry it along the path until whatever it was doing was complete. It might be a very normal smuggler, but those are good to know too."

She had a point. They were Reavers. If they caught up with some of the grey market smugglers and merchants, they could make some good connections to move human-designed goods.

"You have a point. We should have lunch before we go. Annabelle should be finished with her worksheet by the time we finish eating." He agreed.

"That's got to be a sentient rights violation. You can't just eat right in front of people like that, can you? Not while they're doing homework." She pleaded.

"I guess you should have gotten the questions right the first time." Nico teased, but when she returned from the replicator, she had three plates with her.

"You can put the work on hold and eat. Even prisoners get their scheduled meals, so a mischievous Innu who is in a lot of trouble when they get back to her mother will too." Max stage whispered as Nico put the plates down.

"You're enjoying torturing me. I'm certain of it. No wonder they say humans are scary." Annabelle pouted.

She wasn't wrong. Her presence made this research mission much more interesting. If it were just him and Nico, they would be so immersed in their work that they would only speak a few words an hour, but with Annabelle here, they had an excuse to do other things and wouldn't get so lost in their own little worlds.

Once the meal was finished, they set off at a moderate pace, as anything over Warp 10 would make it harder for their sensor processors to keep up with the incoming data and properly follow the path of the ship that they were following.

It was a cold trail, months old, so they weren't going to catch up to anything. They just wanted to know where it went and see if it ended up somewhere else that was on their list of suspected locations for launches of Klem Pods.