Log entry of Acting Ensign Feil,

Recorded to blackbox recorder from cockpit of Wing Commander Fighter-TSN Dauntless(CV310)

It’s been a hell of a week. Before I get to the big changes, I was worried that I might see even less of the Flight Deck. While on the Station, I over heard two of the higher ups talking about keeping the Dauntless in dock more and getting more versatile ships.
This was in light of the Eagle and Lancer being disabled on the last mission. I guess the idea is that specialist vessels have more weaknesses in a fight.

Personally I think such incidents could be avoided by a bit more time on the sims against Caltrons. They are giving us the most trouble lately and the sims are normally softballs to warm us up.
I mean, seriously, Kraliens? Give me an up to strength Wing of fighters can we could destroy two Kralien fleets even with Torgoth re-enforcement in under ten minutes, travel time permitting.

What happened next distracted me from worries about my career as Dauntless Wing Commander.

We were all made to watch the news to see the report on Xavier, as well as some of what is going on in our corner of space.
The News was mostly about Xavier and how he’d dishonored the TSN but their were related stories about the military weapon contractor that was working on the W.M.D that took out the sector after the Caltrons popped out of a space hole to wreck the Eagle, Lancer, and Excalibur, getting a trillion dollar defense contract, and that the 4th Light Division of the 2nd Fleet was under investigation. Hooray.

After all this the fleet was organized for a simulation. The Dauntless was sent out and once again I requested to be Wing Commander. Commander Verok allowed me the honor, as usual. Though, I did ask him if that could be made my permanent assignment. As I’m the only one who ever volunteers and don’t yet have an assignment, he told me to put in the request and he’d see that I was made a part of the Dauntless crew.
I was joined in the flight deck by Cadet Hanz, I gave him the call sign “tulip” but that might be changed later.
Most of the sim was spent with me quizzing him on the particulars of his specialization, Weapons, as well as telling him the ins and outs of Fighter basics and basic protocol and tactics.
This was because the simulated enemies were Kraliens and the Dauntless on its own tore them apart before we got the order to launch.

Once the sim was done we went to the briefing room and learned new information from data that Xavier had passed to Captain Evans.
It turns out the defense contractor that was just awarded the trillion dollar contract were trying to get information to create their own or take control of the Caltrons.
Turns out their weapon test, which Hall explained to me was some kind of cascade resonance bomb, rumored to be based on research from Black Mesa, functioned as intended.
They wanted the Caltrons to show up when they did and it was suppose to scour the sector clean.
If I know anything from literature, its the stories of man’s hubris trying to control things he shouldn’t and/or can’t control.
And that’s what these assholes intend.
There is even more to the story. The Caltrons are sentinels from some war eons ago. The scuttlebutt was they just kept fighting as they were programmed to, even fighting their creators.

Armed with this knowledge and the fact that Xavier likely would never make it to trial and instead “die in an escape attempt”, the whole division decided to mutiny to save our Fleet Captain, prove what was going on, and stop the madness before it screwed over everyone.

The crew of the Lancer had to come onto the Dauntless as their ship was till in dry dock for repairs and we hadn’t the time to wait.
It wasn’t all bad though, I got to watch some senior officers squirm at being in the Flight Deck. Apparently being down here with the grease and busy, hard working crewmen that keep our fighters ready and able is uncouth.

We were informed that an old Dreadnought, the TSN Montgomery had escaped the scrapheap and instead been hidden in a nebula in case of a rainy day. The forecast predicts flooding.
Some of the Lancers officers were briefed on the Fighters if they needed to sortie with me and Hanz but that never happened. We made it to the Monty, I barked at them to board their shuttle, and the shuttles ferried the crew of the Lancer to their new home.

After this it was an exercise in controlled combat. We were constantly going against other TSN ships and having to disable instead of destroy. This is tough for Fighters as they don’t have a way to modulate weapon output.
Hanz and I only sortied a few times. Mostly to destroy Skarran escort ships. Those were free game.
We were unable to recover Xavier. Seems like they might have pulled a switcharoo with him during transport. That or the old man bought the farm.
If he’s still out there, we’ll find him.

The whole fleet had a moment of concern when the TSN tried to remotely change the command codes of all the ships, effectively locking out every console and station and leaving the vessels idle.
Our Engineers and Science officers proved to skilled though and they were unable to insert control. But once the Dauntless was back up the auto-production started.
Replacing two fighters that had been lost to Skarran fire and re-numbering thew current fighters to include the new ones.
This also over wrote the not yet saved information from the black boxes and made my and Hanz’s performance up to that point lost.
Because of that I don’t have the numbers from our sortie, the record would have been incomplete.

Two observations from the Flight Deck is we are still being launched either too far away or not close enough. That Goldilocks zone hasn’t been found yet. And the Mallard fighters need an upgrade to their boosters. I was trying to chase down a Skarran that was making a run at the Dauntless and I couldn’t catch up.

Some of the ship commanders wanted to search for Xavier but Captain Evans ordered that we get to Hjorden gate before the TSN locked it out.
The fleet encountered some resistance at the gate but was able to get through it and the Hjordens were willing to take us in.

Now so far from our own friendly space, which isn’t that friendly anymore, I’ve tried to distract myself.
My PT options are limited. I’ve mostly been practicing Kung Fu in the Flight Deck when no one is around or riding a stationary bike while listening to my romance novels on tape.
I checked out what the Hjordens consider a gym. It would be a parkour runners dream playground, but that isn’t for me.

Slate said she’d be willing to become a pilot on the Dauntless. Two down, two to go.
Now to see if Mundy can help me encrypt this for extra security.