1100-036 2300 – VES Conference Room Aboard the Azhanti High Lightning, in Orbit Above Djinni

2300 – After a long day, Team Neural and Team Drone break up their work session in the conference room. Leah, along with most of the rest of the VES, go off to bed, while some of the team members look for a little recreation with the crew—

• Froge works himself into a card game with a senior engineering NCO Kyril and a starship drive mechanic Stavrij, in an attempt to determine why the Azhanti High Lightning is part of the Djinni task force. Froge tells them everything he can about the OoCP and the planetary surface without breaking in any confidences; Kyril and Stavrij are really unclear about the task force's mission, but are fairly certain the Azhanti High Lightning is there to defend Djinni. Froge hits his rack around 1100-037 0100.
• Martaan goes for a stroll down to the Marines' decks, and runs into Karla and Ambler, junior Marine officers who are checking their load-outs before leading two of the platoons that will be defending the Ancients' complex. Karla and Ambler, recognizing Martaan as a former Marine and a member of the VES, ask him for a sense of the battlespace, complaining that no one is really briefing them on what to expect. Martaan tells them a lot about the terrain, and gives them some valuable hints off the record as to what they should focus on. Martaan goes to bed around 1100-037 0000.
• Ujilka hits the gym, and gets in a 90 minute workout before going to bed around 1100-037 0030.
• Alric stays behind and comes up with a different approach to detecting cetacean neurology, using whale song analysis as a tool for locating whale singers, and as a result, the second alien species the Ancients have located on Djinni. Alric goes to bed around 1100-037 0000.

1100-037 0800 – 0900 Martaan and Alric wake early, and both find themselves in the gym nearest to the guest quarters, each practicing their swordsmanship. They challenge each other to a quick match of three touches-

• Martaan wins the first touch;
• Alric and Martaan each touch simultaneously during the second bout; and
• Martaan wins the third touch, and the match. 

0915 – 0930 - Froge wakes and around 0915 and does some PT. Leah wakes at 0930.

0930 - 1100 The VES essentially takes over the guest mess, as Alric and Martaan, Froge, Leah, Soto, Elwin, Pinkie, and eventually Ujilka, all take over a corner of the dining room and talk confidentially about what they've found out. The group consensus is that- outside of the VES— only a handful of very senior officers know what is really on the planet's surface, and therefore, what the task force's true objectives are.

1100 – 2300 – In the VES's shielded conference room, led by Madeline and Saeagang, the VES separates back into Team Neural and Team Drone. After a Herculean effort, and 11 hours of work, Team Neural manages to get a song-based cetacean detection model working that could be used through the An Lang's sensor packages. Likewise, Team Drone managed to assemble their crab-like drones, and then to test them in one of the Azhanti High Lightning's training pools. Much to their delight, they worked and moved very convincingly. With these two tasks completed, the VES is ready to try and detect both species of alien races, and to observe them using their camouflaged drones.