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Personal Log, stardate 27816-2237
Lt. Cmdr. Aposine, TSN Lancer, 2nd Fleet, 4th Light DivisionAposine’s Wild Ride just came out of its third consecutive shift. It’s been so fast and unexpected that I feel compelled to commit it to the written word.
A recap: Two shifts ago, on stardate 13816, an award ceremony was held as admiral Coates, commander of the 2nd Fleet, found some free time during his campaign in the Sierra system to distribute medals. Secretly toying with the possibility of receiving a DSM, I had made no attempt to hide my anticipation for this event. So imagine my reaction when the admiral himself pinned a Naval Cross to my chest. I was completely overwhelmed; I can’t recall much else than my surprise at just how heavy the thing was, and me suddenly noticing that I’d forgotten to swallow for several minutes.
Right at the start of the following shift, 20816, I was promoted to lieutenant commander with an unexpectedness that would make the Caltrons shrivel up and die from shame. After being showered in honors I was now being entrusted with great responsibility. The details surrounding my promotion is still an almost complete mystery to me; I’m not sure what I’ve proved or when I’ve done so, and I hadn’t applied for an XO position either, yet here I am now, first officer of the TSN Lancer as well as a member of the inner oligarchy that rules the 4th Light Division with an iron fist. It saddens me that I won’t be able to spend as much time in the galley with the junior officers anymore. Well, for all I know they might be celebrating that fact.
Stardate 27816-2237.
The senior officers’ meeting drew to a close and the duty shift was about to begin. My commanding officer, Captain Jemel Eahain, had not appeared, making me the acting commander of the TSN Lancer. Wow, that didn’t take long. Third shift of this insane roller coaster that seems to only go up.
Lt. Cmdr. Allard was busy repairing a critically overheated console somewhere, so I became the very first officer to report in. After the row call, Ens. Draeco was promoted to lieutenant junior, and Allard finally showed up.
Since the recent crew reshuffle the Lancer has only had a single officer assigned to her; Lt. Jr. Morlock, who has been the one operating the Lancer’s incredible weaponry since the very beginning. For this shift, acting (?) duty officer Wade and returning assistant duty officer Braddock assigned to the Lancer the engineering specialist Ens. Xiph and a fresh graduate named Donovan. We were also joined by Lt. Snr. Leonard Hall, the previous XO of the Lancer, which was a bit awkward since I had kind of supplanted him. Donovan’s primary expertise turned out to be science, so it was primaries for everyone on the bridge – except me, of course. I was gonna sit in the chair. I was hesitant to actually place my butt in it until word came that the first simulation was about to commence. I felt so tiny and out of place sitting in that chair right in the middle of the bridge, even though the bridge itself is confined. I don’t think I put my back against the backrest for the entire duration of the exercise, as if the chair at some point was gonna grow teeth and devour me.
The exercise focused on a new set of tactics, namely the use of taunts in coordination with close formation assault. The general idea is that one ship acquires tango and positions herself on the opposite side of the enemy fleet while the rest of the 4th Light Division does its thing against the enemy’s collective sterns. The exercise went through several iterations as it turned out to work differently in practice than it did on paper. Overall, it was a success. Let’s hope the simulation software hasn’t overestimated the stubbornness of our enemy, not to mention their lack of “hindsight”.
A randomized siege defense exercise followed, and all went smoothly. Then the moment finally came. I was going to command the Lancer on a mission, and not just any mission, but the long anticipated expedition beyond the no-man’s-land of Cronus and into the Erebus system. For all intents and purposes an invasion of sovereign Kralien space, although sovereignty can scarcely be said to matter to a species who think they own the entire galaxy and everything in it.
Mr. Hall left the Lancer for C&C, so I got the bright idea of operating helm while in command. In hindsight I’m glad that I made this decision, but I sure as hell don’t recommend it. As soon as we crossed into Erebus, Kraliens and their allies came for us by the thousand, and the Lancer was ordered to deal with a murder of Skaraan present in the sector. This quickly turned out to be too much for the Lancer to handle on her own, and so we had no choice but to keep the enemy distracted until the Horizon joined in. After this initial stage of chaos, Lancer spent most of the time dividing up fleets for easier digestion by the rest of the 4th.
The sector was cleared and all of its bases secured without major incident, whereupon we transitioned into the next sector and things got really, really, really busy. There was like half a fucking million enemies all over the place, launching in huge fleets from the half-dozen or so bases in the sector. For reasons I cannot imagine, they were accompanied by Caltrons. Every base seemed to have its own Caltron primary stationed at it. Good luck to ONI on figuring that one out.
The Lancer proceeded with the same tactics as in the previous sector, grabbing the attention of as many enemy fleets as possible and pulling them apart from each other while at the same time guarding the flanks of the other TSN vessels. The sheer number of enemy contacts made it impossible to acquire tango without getting close, so we kept slaloming between the fleets back and forth again and again. This resulted in a huge buildup of drones, and at several points we made a U-turn to clear them. At one of these instances the number of drones was probably big enough to spell doom for a fully shielded light cruiser trying to perform the same maneuver, and I basically asked for the impossible from Morlock. He delivered. I’m convinced that no greater chain of drone takedowns has ever been pulled off.
Another standout performance aboard the Lancer was that of Cdt. Donovan, who worked science and comms for his first mission. He was tasked with scanning all those countless enemy vessels and to divert their attention away from of the rest of the 4th Light Division. His role was mission critical and the load put upon him was enormous. The cherry on the top: It was not until after the shift that I realized that I had neglected to explain a lot of the brevity code to him, and that he had basically been operating through a language barrier.
One by one, the enemy fleets were annihilated, and their bases taken over by boarding parties from the other vessels. Everyone aboard the Lancer was strained. There had been some serious close calls, but thankfully no emergencies. The Lancer had survived her first mission under my command.
After the mission, there was a final simulation, in this case a human-directed exercise that had the 4th defend a bunch of defenseless and seemingly directionless civilian vessels from an onslaught of invaders. The Raven was retired for the rest of the shift, Cmdr. Verok of the Viper was made acting division commander, and the Lancer was joined by the highly noted Lt. Jr. Nathan Quinn. I assigned him to the proper console, and he sure lived up to his reputation. It was fascinating seeing this long-time heavy vessel helmsman steering the Lancer. Several comments were traded back and forth about her speed and maneuverability, and thanks to Mr. Quinn the subject of her fragility was only mentioned in passing.
The simulation was successful, and the 4th Light Division was dismissed from duty shortly after. Cmdr. van Leigh, recently appointed bookkeeper or something, has helped reintroduce printable service records for TSN officers, something that must have been discontinued before I joined. He’s currently compiling them on request and I’m considering getting one. Considering the recent developments, this would be the best timing possible.
The duty shift of 3916 is probably going to be more mundane, at least on my own personal level – the 4th Light Division will almost certainly be ordered further into Erebus, and we will be facing the combined armadas of the Kralien Defense Fleet and her allies, which might include the Caltrons.
// Thank you for writing this awesome log and sharing your roller coaster ride. And thank you for looking after Lancer and continuing her proud tradition of excellence. Thank you also to her crew members this shift for doing her proud. Congratulations! I can’t wait to be back.
//That was Matsiyan logging in through my account. The psychic link seems to extend to electronics…
Congrats and looking forward to rejoining the 4th Lt. Div.
Do you need a science officer on Lancer? 🙂The exercise focused on a new set of tactics, namely the use of taunts in coordination with close formation assault. The general idea is that one ship acquires tango and positions herself on the opposite side of the enemy fleet while the rest of the 4th Light Division does its thing against the enemy’s collective sterns. The exercise went through several iterations as it turned out to work differently in practice than it did on paper. Overall, it was a success. Let’s hope the simulation software hasn’t overestimated the stubbornness of our enemy, not to mention their lack of “hindsight”.
It occurs to me that only rarely have I noticed science feeding Comms Intel on ships. And it occurs to me as I write that the two positions are often combined, making that communication unnecessary….
//Oh! Something tells me we’re about to have some competition between Lancer and Phoenix to see who gets more surrenders, and who forces Hall to unsurrender the most.
//Vaj, using aggro as something other than a glorified delaying tactic is something relatively rare to see. The TSN has been slow in general to implement these things (it was barely done when I first joined, and some meassure of it was employed the year I spent with the USN), but when the group actually decides to try them seriously the results are amazing, and I suspect that’s because of the discipline and thorough training everyone gets. An obvious consequence is that coordination between science and comms is somewhat complicated, as they need information from each other.
//My preferred solution is to have them work together, scicomms being considered a single department with two consoles and two officers, but necessarily more closely related than helm and engineering, for example. But each team works differently, and sometimes is better to just let both of them know they can ask things from each other without the captain complaining.
// @mattssheep4 In my experience SciCom has always been the default and dedicated Sci and Com the exception. Like in the wacky Manticore adventure of 11616. Well, exception was taken to everything during that episode – read Mundy’s and Matsiyan’s accounts of it, they’re really amusing.
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