Disclaimer – Everything either does belong to Joss or it should. I’m just borrowing his shiny ‘verse for a while.

The 21st Lancers belong to the British Army so I’m borrowing them too. I hope they don’t mind.

Thanks to CastIronJack for Beta-Reading.

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IAV Pen Lung – Drifting – 2520AD

The standard Alliance Navy VLA was a very effective piece of hardware but its sheer inconvenience meant it was rarely deployed upon a line warship. The principle was very simple, several hundred autonomous drones launch from the host ship and deploy into a regular formation many miles across. Each one carries a full sensor suite and sends it’s telemetry back to the host.

The trick is that a computer then sorts this data and fills in the gaps between the drones based on an interpretation of the slightly differing signals from each, a system called an interferometer based on some fairly complex mathematics. The principle was being used in astronomy since the 20th Century and worked very effectively. When you came down to it you were basically creating a virtual sensor equivalent to a single dish often tens or hundreds of miles wide.

Needless to say this system cannot be used while underway and it takes some time both to deploy and retrieve which is why it is rarely used. The sensor suite on a ship of the line is usually more than adequate for the task at hand and by deploying Patrol Boats and Aerospace Fighters in patrols a single ship can more than cover its own area of responsibility.

However if you’re trying to track down fugitives in an area several times larger than the whole of Alliance Controlled space you need something with a bit more reach so the Pen Lung was outfitted with a VLA pod that was affixed somewhat crudely in its Captains opinion to one of its main towers.

‘Sir the Very Large Array has completed its sweep. Initial analysis of data shows evidence of three possible positives on our assigned target.’

Captain Huaquing frowned. ‘Can’t you do better than that?’