Narrator:Our favorite squad of mercenaries is crossing 25 kilometers of snowfield.
Narrator:Their Captain waits with the rest of the company just over the horizon*, a pocket warship known as the Serial Peacemaker and two platoons of "Smash and Grab" at the ready and hungry for action.
Narrator:(*Note: Picture is not to scale)
Narrator:Meanwhile, enough thousands of light-years away that real-space causality yields the word "meanwhile" irrelevant, their fabber and their U.N.S. friends sit peacefully in a bubble of teraport-interdicted space just over fifteen light minutes across.
Narrator:That distance is significant. Observers that far away will be unable to resolve the fabber, the Destroyer Athens, and the Frigate Sarasota without resorting to active scanning.
Narrator:It's a great tactic, provided your enemies are looking for where something is.
Ob'enn Officer:I've found them.
One of the nanoprobes pushed into a no-teraport field.
Ob'enn Officer:That field is large enough that an object the size of the foundry, placed at the exact center, would be all but invisible without active scanning.
Ob'enn Commander:You've had a stroke of luck, then?
Ob'enn Officer:Luck is for amateurs. This was the inevitable result of a properly executed search.
Narrator:It's not a good approach when they are smart enough to look for where something could be.
