Log Matsiyan 15417

[Matsiyan]

Personal Log, Lieutenant-Senior Conrad Matsiyan, XO TSN Hunter, 4th L.D.
Stardate: 15417-2237

Not sure who I hate more today, the Ximni or van Leigh.

The shift had access to a good turnout of 28 officers. Cadet Trueman passed his exam and was promoted acting Ensign. The call for new Duty Officers went out.

Orders were to exercise sims while waiting for a diplomatic mission to meet with the Ximni in Krisenda to find out what was behind last shift’s surprise engagement. Sims were to focus on the revamped fleet formations documentation.

I don’t remember much of the sims, partly because of what followed during the mission but partly because of towering indignation.

Hunter was operating quite smoothly, except that Commander Tuor was having to do some extensive reworking of his console interfaces and so gave me command.

Toward the end of the first sim Hunter completed one engagement and was ordered to assist Phoenix in engaging an Arvonian Command vessel. I informed Phoenix we were entering her combat area and closed on the target as rapidly as possible. As we arrived the enemy surrendered. Van Leigh took to inter-ship broadcast and cursed us out for asking for surrender.

I was momentarily flabbergasted. Why would anyone continue to endanger their crew longer than necessary? We had no intel that the enemy crew were duplicitous or in possession of information that would endanger USFP citizens if leaked. As demonstrated so clearly in our recent engagements in Euphini, showing clemency to the enemy can have enormously beneficial collateral effects. A disaffected faction of Kraliens is now assisting our N’tani allies. Not to mention that with Unuk vessels, someone’s family or childhood friend could be aboard.

I saw to the security of the immediate combat zone and the safety of the ship before I went on inter-ship and told van Leigh in no uncertain terms that I train my crews to honour surrenders and disengage as is TSN practice. With the pace of interstellar war, it is often hard to disengage fast enough after a surrender is offered and it is all too common for a surrendered vessel to be destroyed by ordnance in flight or the next cycle of the primary beams. So it takes some practice to untarget, route power away from beams or manoeuvre away in time to honour the surrender.

I was shocked by the naked bloodlust in the utterance and by the arrogance that implied regulations were less important that scoring sim points.

That was all rather overshadowed by the events of the mission. Escorting the diplomats to Krisenda Command was uneventful bar the usual need to sweep for pirates. With the excellent Beaumont at the helm, newly promoted Ensign Trueman took a turn at weapons leaving Cr00ve on his Com specialty, with him and the captain covering Science between them. I slipped back into the Engineering room, with a warm sense of nostalgia for Lancer’s cramped spaces engulfed by those humongous engines.

We were standing down when a scramble order came through reporting Ximni forces threatening industrial bases in the next sector. Sure enough there were and we swept into action operating as smoothly as in the first sim, though we lost Trueman in the shuffle and had Cadet Bubba take his place at tactical.

With the light shields of the interceptor we are always dancing with the right moment to withdraw versus pressing home our powerful attack. We had been chasing a pair of Xim fighters off a base when a Ximni vessel jumped right next to us and got a lucky shot through our rear shields, already weakened by the fighters. That took out half our warp capacity. Figuring we didn’t need to move far to shoot back, we engaged as quickly as we could but with failing shields and the saucer front starting to take damage we had to get out of there. We escaped engagement range of the Ximni by routing power to the reduced warp drive, but a Skaraan intercepted us and their first shot took out our drive. I routed all power to the impulse drive hoping we could stay clear until help arrived, but the scarlet just kept flaring across the boards. Structural integrity was compromised and the skipper had no option but to abandon ship. I vented the warp plasma so she had less chance of vaporizing us as we fled and then I dove into the life pod by the engineering boards together with half the nearest DamCon team.

Raven did us the kindness of retrieving our lifepods and minimising the time we spent wondering if anyone would be able to. I barely had time to brew espresso. Hell, I wasn’t going to waste it before we ran out of oxygen and it kept us alert. It calmed me down to have something to do, even if it only meant a sip each for the four of us. Ridiculously comforting to know that little thing made it all the way across Terran space from the Paragon colony. My great uncle brought it back for Grandmother. He was Chief Engineer on one of the early Earth Company ships. He knew how much my Grandmother loved her coffee, made just the way generations of her Italian ancestors had made it. When he encountered that subculture on Paragon that was dedicated to living in the style of 20th Century Italy, he thought it irresistibly cute and thought the little Moka pot was at least useful as a souvenir and not just clutter.

Another layer of patina to every time I make coffee.
*lights out*
[End log]

• This topic was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Matsiyan. Reason: Spelling

[Xavier]

//An interesting log, as always. It is the sbame the TSN Hunter was destroyed in battle. It seema an unlucky set of circumstances which resulted in destruction.

[Author]

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