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Personal Log, Lt. Adele Mundy, TSN Eagle, 2nd Flt, 4LD
We’re on light duty, dammit. Meaning, Command wants to make sure we don’t harbour thoughts of mutiny, rebellion and piracy after our stint as fugitives. Apart from Cmdr. van Leigh, who can still be heard humming the tune of I Am a Pirate King to himself when he thinks no-one is in earshot (but these floating metal conglomerations we live in are terribly good at conducting sound, sometimes in the most unexpected ways), piracy was actually an image of what we were strenuously trying to avoid. Still, we have to convince Command not only that Capt. Xavier was right in his suspicions, and in acting on them to destroy the Weapon, but that all of us who followed him are still suitable TSN material, and aren’t going to start committing random acts of insubordination.
That’s my analysis of the situation, anyway. We’re under observation (we were actually told that in so many words by Capt. Evans). We have to be on best behaviour, and can’t be trusted with anything too sensitive in case we take it into our heads to break things we disagree with – this last bit is my interpretation.
Oh, and they took Rolling Thunder away from us. By they, I mean Command. It was on loan from the Ximni so we knew we couldn’t keep it, but quite a few people were eager to try out what the Ximni jump drive does, so imagine a group of children being told they have to give their shiny new toy back… No, Computer, not you. I know you can’t imagine anything.
We started out with sims. Funny how there were extra techs around the sim suites, just making routine adjustments and running diagnostics… Hallo, Security, we know what “under observation” means, you don’t have to skulk around trying to be subtle about it. But everyone pretended not to notice, because we also know that the one thing Security hate most is being noticed. By the way, if you’re reading this and you’re not future-me, hallo. I haven’t noticed you at all.
The first sim (I was back on Eagle, with Capt. Evans in command, Lt. Cmdr. Allard on Helm, Lt. Assassino on Tactical and Lt. Kennon Far on Engineering) was straightforward and quick, though it was plagued by repeated instances of lag and an assortment of annoying little technical problems, which I am sure are entirely unrelated to the extra monitoring that was taking place…
The sim left me with the memorable image of Allard flying at Warp 4 so we could reach the last enemy before the sim concluded, hitting an asteroid, and thereby slowing us down sufficiently so that our spread of four torpedoes, fired by Assassino, damaged the enemy ship enough that they surrendered as soon as I politely told them, I mean asked them, to do so. It also yielded the memorable admonition from the Captain, in debrief, “Allard, asteroids are not renowned for their usefulness as emergency braking systems”. I shall treasure his sage advice.
For the second sim we shuffled crews around a little (I ended up on Raven) so there wouldn’t be three new cadets on one single ship – from my own past experience as a cadet, even in sims, being surrounded by skilled officers contributes significantly to a cadet’s improvement; while, from my recent stints supervising young applicants, the greater the number of cadets on a bridge, and the greater their inexperience, the more difficult the commanding officer’s job.
We concluded the simulations by going back to Garion’s exercise – wave upon wave of assorted alien fleets attacking DS bases. It felt more like a test of endurance and attention span than skill, though admittedly I wasn’t making the decisions, merely providing the information they were based on. I definitely had the impression, from the grumbling and muttering both on Raven and Montgomery, that everyone was getting tired; but everyone stayed at their post, and only threatened Garion, the sim’s designer, with moderate, and mostly good-humoured, retaliation. So I hope the data those ever-present extra techs were collecting for psych-eval ends up showing that we are all of sound mind, or at least as sound as when we set out before our little adventure.
We were finally allowed to take real ships out on a real mission, though without Capt. Evans and Lt. Cmdr. Gebbens, who were both giving evidence in Xavier’s inquest. With Lt. Hall and Lt. Jr. Garion called to CIC, we had to leave Eagle in dock, and reassign crews to Raven, Montgomery, Phoenix and Dauntless. Lt. Cmdr. van Leigh came aboard Raven to take command, and we had Aramond on Helm, Max Power on Engineering (that never gets old) and Timonix on Tactical.
It was a straightforward patrol in Cronus sector, with the simple aim to check on activity in the sector; and we were reminded, as if we needed it, that under no circumstances was any vessel to enter Cronus Sector IX. We were also warned that pirates might have been attempting to salvage fragments of the Weapon, so we were instructed to intercept any we came across.
It turned out that there were, in fact, two pirate transports in the sector that had been doing illegal salvage, so we wanted to capture them, to use their salvage and any information they might be carrying as further proof in Xavier’s case. Of course, other pirate vessels tried to prevent us from doing that. We captured one transport; a late-fired torpedo from Dauntless took out the second transport just as it was signalling its surrender, but the Dauntless crew were able to recover her black box when they picked up her lifepods. We then escorted the remaining transport ship back, among much frustration because her jump drive was the most erratic I have ever seen, and her comms officer was, apparently, deaf, dumb, and obstreperous… All the same, we delivered the black box and the captain, and they should be providing Security with intelligence at this very moment.
The next crucial question for me this evening is: Benjamin’s, or Encyclopaedia?
[end log]
Mundy’s Log, supplemental:
I should have stuck with the Encyclopaedia, dammit. Dr. “Industrial Disease” Robinson was in the bar taking notes, I saw. That’s never good. Worse, we gave him material for his notes.Well, the night is yet young, and there’s a dearth of sailing boats on station. Computer, find latest references to Arvonians.
//“dearth” That’s a new word to me.
How come you didn’t use the memory palace this time? Last time you did use it, even though we were back on the station.
//It means “lack” or “scarcity”
I thought the sims and mission were uneventful enough that even if someone went snooping through the file, there wouldn’t be anything controversial in there. Then the bar happened… But Adele didn’t put any of the details in the supplement. If I add that (but it seems unnecessary to me, everyone can go to The Bar entry and read what happened, it’s more exciting and immediate that way, they don’t need it retold from a necessarily biased and limited point of view), she would do it through the memory palace.
//Yeah, I googled the word.
//Thought it was something along those lines. Interesting characterization. 🙂
//I thought you would, it was in case anyone else wondered, to save them the effort.
//Thanks. I know who she is now, I’m trying to show it without spelling it out.
//I managed to leave out the date (21516-2237) from the first line in the log post. If @admin could add it in, please?
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