Log Mundy, 23917-2237

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  • #26771
    Adele Mundy
    Participant

    Personal Log, Lt. Sr. Adele Mundy, TSN Sabre, 2nd Flt, 4th Lt. Div.
    Stardate: 23917-2237

    I don’t believe in hell, but, Voiddammit, the Division is currently going through it. What was supposed to be a quiet time relaxing in the Bar turned into soul-searching and trying to help Lt.Cmdr. Aramond and Lt. Donovan not come to blows over the loss of Lancer. Survivor’s guilt and PTSD are nasty beasts to wrestle with, and all of us carry our own ghosts, which, being incorporeal, blithely defeat the laws of physics, and end up being disproportionately massive. Look, I’m making metaphysics jokes, Computer, because. Because.

    And then we lost Viper. I can rationalise it: we’re still under strength, we’re missing most of our senior officers, the regular crews are split up on unfamiliar ships, we have a relatively high number of cadets serving on bridges, with commanding officers who are not used to the crews. But dammit, that’s not going to help the families come to term with the deaths.

    From what I can glean from Matsiyan’s impressions, there have been long discussions about officer promotions and ship assignments, but, from what I can see on the ships, nothing has come of them yet. Red tape will have its due, but when we start a shift with no Fleet Captain, all captains absent except Capt. Verok, no commanders or Lt. Cmdrs. except Matsiyan, we can’t help wondering if the Admiralty has forgotten about us.

    Perhaps that’s why we took extra time on simulations at the start of the shift: we only had enough personnel for three ships, and there was some creative shuffling of bridge crews. Yes, Computer, that’s my diplomatic term for “I don’t entirely agree with some of the choices made by the officer in command of the fleet.” Creative. Remember that.

    Our first mission took us to Volantis System, where Kraliens, both Zolmari and loyalist, have been making appearances. It seems that there is increasing unrest in Kralien space (I have been looking at all the reports, and the unrest correlates with the time when the Kraliens raided their relic out of the Hjorden station. I don’t like that one bit) and some ships are fleeing it. However, we can’t allow armed ships that are technically enemies into USFP space, so we were ordered to disable or destroy hostile vessels, but also offer them the chance to surrender first, and of course offer aid to Zolmari… enough to keep a Comms officer pretty busy just trying to work out who is who.

    We had Hall in command of Sabre, while I was XO and running Science and Comms, Yooey was on Weapons, Quinn on Helm, and Ironclad in Engineering. Capt. Verok was in command of Horizon and the fleet, and Lt. Beaumont was in command of Viper while Matsiyan was on duty in CIC. See what I mean by “creative”?

    There was a series of books, back in the 20th Century, where the first-person narrator, the handsome white male protagonist, described his dysfunctional family and their order of succession. Yes, he was a prince as well, Computer. Because entitlement. There were complicated rules of precedence and legitimacy, but what really struck me was the way he described his four sisters as “neither interested nor fit”. I always wondered who told him they weren’t interested in taking the crown. First person narrators can be unreliable; on the other hand, history is written by the winners. If this log is found one day as the only surviving documentation of this war, will that make me the hero?

    The action was concentrated in Volantis Sector 7, where Hegemony forces, Kralien fleets and USF ships vied for our attention. We engaged the USF ships — and dammit, I almost overheated the Comms console trying to get them to stand down. Some of them surrendered, there is that consolation. And one of them, dammit, one of them surrendered and we destroyed it anyway.

    Dammit. Pause, Computer.

    [pause]

    There were plenty of unarmed transports, too. My sensors read one hospital ship, one refugee ship, at least. And there were pirates lurking to prey on them. And there was one ship that started out reading as Hegemony loyalist, and changed its signal to friendly after its crew mutinied. Damn chaos out there.

    And that was nothing compared to the mission that followed.

    Hall was on duty in CIC, replaced on Sabre by Matsiyan. Quinn, Yooey and I remained at our stations, Ironclad was replaced in Engineering by Cdt. Maxwell (who is more than capable, and needs to take his exam soon); Capt. Verok remained in charge of Horizon, and Beaumont in charge of Viper.

    We were heading for Cerberus Sector 7 to investigate reports of a disturbance in the trade lanes — disturbance is something of an understatement, as we came upon pirates taking down our sensor buoys’ stealth systems. To make matters worse, a pirate transport ship had attacked and taken over Quesenc starbase, and taken Ambassador Estes hostage, threatening his life and the integrity of the base if we tried to intervene. They were hacking the sensor systems from the central relay on the base, which meant that our attempt at restoring them by deploying techs (escorted by marines) to the sensor buoys themselves were ineffective.

    Add to this the fact that Pirates kept coming into the system through the Arrin gate, so that we were constantly rushing to cut them off before they could go too far into the system, and you’ll have a sense of the sort of pressure we were under. And while both Sabre and Horizon were engaged, Viper got involved in combat with two pirate Axes, both of which had tractor beams. She was immobilised and destroyed.

    I got the Mayday signal just too late. The lifepods were scattering out from Viper, and we disengaged and flew to recover them. Horizon did the same.

    Hell. I don’t believe in it, but hell, Computer.

    While Horizon covered for us, we deployed our shuttle to dismantle the stealth systems from a couple of the sensor buoys, handed them over to the Engineering techs to adapt and fit into the shuttle itself, and then went to hide Sabre in the nebula nearest Quesenc, while the shuttle, covered by the stealth sytems and loaded with our marines, sailed in on a ballistic trajectory into the station, hoping to go undetected. It did, thanks to good tech and good luck. The marines went through the station locks and did their job admirably (casualty list is in the formal report, Computer), so the pirates were foiled, Ambassador Estes was rescued, and the sensor buoys are in the process of being repaired.

    Viper, however, is another matter. She was seriously damaged. At least she was damaged in our space, and the wreck can be recovered. Whether she can be salvaged and repaired is up to the engineering teams in the yards to determine.

    Casualties in MedBay are on the mend. We have the list of those who didn’t make it to the life pods. And there are wounds MedBay can’t do much about. I’m going to skip the Bar this cycle.

    Computer, play Verdi’s Requiem.

    [end log]

    #26773
    Nhaima
    Participant

    // never had the pleasure of Verdi’s Requiem, nor do I know it particularly well. Time to fix that, and thank you for the read!

    #26779
    Adele Mundy
    Participant

    //It has a particularly energetic Dies Irae. I once heard it live in the Albert Hall, with the London Symphony and three full choirs, and the phrase “it blew me away” is appropriate.

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