Personal Log, SubKmdt. Adelaide Mundy, ISN Oblivion, 2nd Space Flotilla, 4th Hunter Group
Stardate: 6418 to 8418-2237

I have been endeavouring to determine what criteria led to the selection of officers from 4th Hunter who attended the training exercises in Beachwood Station. I am still far from a conclusion. Still, in case you need to go and look at our files to find out just what damage we might have done, here is the list: other than myself, the officers attending were: Kommandant Matsiyan, Intendent Vaj, OverIntendent Graybeard, Intendent Quinn, and Intendent Parra.

It was interesting to meet crews from other ISN divisions, all of them selected by the same unknown criteria that had brought us to Beachwood Station: ISN Hyperion has quite a reputation for its advanced engine; ISN Nereus had a young, somewhat unconventional crew, who decided to decorate their bridge with a bowl of petunias; ISN Normandy and ISN Gungnir’s crews looked settled and experienced; ISN Freya, often placed in battle group with Gungnir, had a crew of self-described Valkyries; ISN Hamilton, with her seasoned commander and young officers, traced her lineage back to the days of Terran nations.

We were encouraged to host officers from other ships and to take our places on other bridges too, during the exercises; I found my way to ISN Fulminata, and realised that Graybeard had preceded me, and was comfortably settled in her Engineering bay, where the crew had apparently fully adopted him as one of their own. Whether this was due to his judicious sharing of The Secret Engineer Stash, I can only speculate. I must add, however, that Fulminata’s crew struck me as… well, not officer material. Not because they weren’t capable — though, to be honest, during the exercise I spent aboard her, the only reason she didn’t go down in flames was because Graybeard was in Engineering, patching her up with his usual speed and skill — but because there was barely a trace of military discipline aboard. I mean, addressing the captain as “Boss”? It became apparent soon enough, that the crew was not, in fact, career Navy, but merely had papers qualifying it as a Navy Auxiliary. In other words, letters of Marque and Reprisal. Fulminata is nothing more than a pirate ship.

And oh, Well of the Furies drown her Science Officer! I was running Comms, sitting at the console next to this man, who was sitting there for minutes at a time, doing nothing but bantering with the captain, while there were unidentified ships on his screen… I would ask for information about the enemies, and he would ask me to wait for the scans to complete; Weapons would close in to engage with beams, ask for a frequency, and be told to wait for the scan to complete. I would have had him keelhauled, since we were on a pirate ship anyway!

Hyperion’s Science Officer, on the other hand, was a competent, friendly woman who always had the information I needed to get surrenders; and the crew seemed somewhat surprised that I did so. I’m not sure why; it was my job. And it kept us out of trouble a few times.

On ISN Xavier (they were all sim suites, of course, so we were given the choice of what to call them; it seemed appropriate) we met… well, I had never met him in our universe, but Parra, Vaj and Quinn had; I believe he was a Lieutenant when he left the 4th Light, but he was a Kommandant on this side of the mirror: Deane Geiken. He seemed quite at home among our officers. And we took advantage of the festive atmosphere and the full complement of crew to celebrate Vaj’s promotion to SubKommandant, and his new appointment as XO on Invictus.

One of the simulations provided for us included interactions with Argonian and Torgoth fleets, with the (surprisingly alien-tolerant) choice of siding with the former, and protecting migrating Xenos, or with the latter, and keeping to the terms of a diplomatic agreement. Each ship undertook this mission, and the separate outcomes were logged in to a database that then produced a scenario involving diplomatic negotiations, devolving into two murders and a declaration of war. And the opening battle in this war was the concluding simulation in the exercise.

We were placed in battle groups, one of four, one of five ships, and each group undertook the sim separately. Matsiyan was in command of ISN Xavier, and the ship was set up as a Dreadnought, so that we could have two Fighters to accommodate all our officers. I ran Comms, and the scenario turned into something of a competition between me and Mr. Julian, who sat at the Weapons console next to me, over who was getting more kills. Or, in my case, not-kills. He was very good natured about my snatching his prey from under his beam emitters a few times.

But my greatest triumph (and it was a sim, so I feel justified in gloating, for once) was the massive Kralien Inquisitor, a ship of a type I’d never seen before, armed with four formidable turrets, and a ridiculous amount of shields. And she surrendered. I believe there was applause on the bridge… She skulked away to the edge of the sector, then turned hostile again and resumed her attack. So our four ships resumed our attacks too. Her shields started showing damage… and I sent in my Strongly Worded Description of what we would do if she didn’t surrender. So she did. Again. But the weapons barrage was continuing, and she was destroyed anyway.

[end log]