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Personal Log, Lt.Jr. Adele Mundy, TSN Hawk, 2nd Flt. 4LD
13216-2237Just when you thought it was safe to get back on shift… I was early for roll call, too, thinking I’d have time to double check my comms set-up. But The Powers That Be decided to send us upgrades to be field tested. Dammit. Now, don’t get me wrong, new toys are fine, and we’ll be putting them to good use as soon as we know they integrate nicely with the existing systems, and won’t make things explode around us; but the immediate result of the upgrades was that the Duty Officer and his assistant were running around handing out data pads with the upgrades, and we, in turn, were running around trying to persuade our consoles that they weren’t going to be utterly superseded by the shiny new toys, and therefore that they didn’t need to go off and sulk in virtual corners.
Yes, Computer, that means you.
Had it been up to me, I would have had the upgrades installed between shifts, to give all the engineering crews time to test everything to their satisfaction; but ours not to reason why. I have to admit that I came perilously close to grabbing a very large axe and heading down to the computer databanks to give it a reprogramming it would never forget…
Yes, Computer, that means you as well.
The things that prevented me from giving full vent to my frustration were: the sight of Aramond and Quinn rushing around trying to get everyone sorted out, as more and more officers turned up to roll call and had to be coached through installing the upgrades; and the clear sense of Matsiyan’s frustration as he sent his tech crews crawling around wiring conduits. I mean, he had three cups of coffee. Three. And knowing how difficult it is to get the good stuff shipped out here, that tells you it was a real emergency situation.
Our senior officers had the good sense to let the Division iron out the first few kinks in the new systems through a couple of exercises, and I have to admit that I have lost track of the number of malfunctions, systems crashes, and other excitement that was going on. I was on Hawk, at the Weapons station, and because we had Flt. Capt. Evans on board we were hearing more comms than usual about what was going on in the fleet, and I think it can just be summed up as frantic.
Things to bear in mind: there’s a new kind of torpedo that does plasma shock damage and seems most effective on enemies whose shields are down; and there are new frequencies added to the science sensors, which enable us to scan space anomalies and detect whether their energy can be used by various ship’s systems – that could be potentially lifesaving.
And then, when the sims were over and we were waiting to be assigned to a mission, there was that strange episode in the Mess Hall, when people were asking me what the hell I was doing wearing an Admiral’s uniform… I wasn’t, but everyone was adamant that’s what they saw. I didn’t want to bring Great-Aunt Adelaide into the conversation, so I made a joke of it, and ordered everyone to buy me drinks – some of them even did… I’m blaming Morlock’s holographic projector, it must have malfunctioned with all the chaos of the data transmissions that was going on. Perhaps he feels comfortable enough among humans now that he won’t need to use it any more.
The mission was a patrol in Atlantis system, first some pirates near Bydderlyn manufacturing platform; and then, more unusually, a number of biomechs attracted to the denobite at Victor refinery, which were dealt with by Lancer, Hydra and Phoenix. Biomechs are somewhat mysterious still, and seem to operate at an instinctive level. I have read reports that in the Euphini Expanse they had been known to attack a gate as it came into operation, leading the xenobiologists to speculate that they might be attracted to a particular energy signature. I wondered if the biomechs communicate with each other, and if so, how – we were to find out later that some of them are indeed capable of at least rudimentary interspecies communication, so it seems likely that they communicate in a more complex way among themselves.
The Division intercepted a Unukalhai raid; as is now protocol, when Unuk ships offer to surrender we demand they evacuate the crew to life pods, which we collect, and then destroy the ship. The pods were delivered to DS91 – yes, I checked, and no, he’s not among them – and we may find out in due course whether the prisoners had any useful intelligence.
There was a disturbing occurrence as several pirate ships decloaked inside the perimeter of our weapons platforms, but once they were defeated we continued our patrol in Sector 1, near the Titan Gate.
That was where we found a large number of biomechs inside a nebula: most were Stage 1, which are uncommunicative and seem mostly harmless unless attacked; one of them, however, was a Stage 4, and I was rather surprised when I read my comms console translate a message from it. The first few lines were garbled and unintelligible, but the final part of the message read: “Freedom Curious Tolerate”. Naturally everyone on the bridge started debating whether that was a general statement of intent: “We’re free people, just having a look around, we’ll leave you alone”, or a request: “We’re curious about you, will you leave us alone?” or a proclamation of their highest values, “Freedom, Curiosity, Tolerance” (which would be rather nice, so I don’t hold out much hope), or random chance, or something even more bafflingly inexplicable.
And yes, I did try to hail them, but the only options available were: “Hail”, “3.145926535”, and “please communicate with us”, and they got the same “Freedom Curious Tolerate” response. Dammit, Computer, after a couple of centuries of First Contacts, you really don’t have any better alien contact protocols?
Lancer seemed to have some problems during the mission, in that her rear shield generators were underperforming, though they registered as 100%; once she was docked and the crew could make a thorough inspection, they found that half the nodes in the shield array were gone, though the computer did not show them as missing. There is suspicion that the computer was reprogrammed to show nothing was amiss, and more talk of sabotage, of course.
Then we were sent on an exercise to try out the ultimate new toys: fighters. And though I was assigned to fly one, mine didn’t even launch. At which point only my officer training stood in the way of me having an epic tantrum. I shall refrain from further comment, on the grounds that swearwords of adequate power and severity haven’t been invented yet.
[end log]
// OOC game continues: spot the references to Earth culture in Mundy’s logs.
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