Young identifies an inadequately-shielded local network. This lends weight to assault bravo, with ship and boading pod over the mass driver, AKVs over the habitation.

M+80 hours: On approach the inhabitants assert that an attack will bring on the destruction of the mass driver, needed for course correction.

Marvin penetrates the network, and suborns the LAI controlling the mass driver.

We take up a drift, Alacrity on the mass-driver side and the AKVs over the habitat. While I conduct a tissue of negotiations, we launch the boarding pod and open fire as the laser towers come on-line. Counterfire is ineffective and the RATS squads remove demolition charges.

Further resistance is brief and ineffective. The prisoners having been secured, Middie Addams requests and receives permission to land, a first for this class.

Lives saved today: somewhere between eight and ten billion depending on how quickly an emergency neuroscanning programme could have been initiated. That’s more than a billion per sapient crew member.