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Personal Log, Ensign Adele Mundy, TSN Hawk, 2nd Flt. 4th LD
Stardate: 51215-2237Well, whether it was space-flu or crew rotation, there wasn’t enough personnel to fully crew Hawk, so I was assigned to Lancer for the training missions – a whole new bridge crew to listen to, and Matsiyan down in Engineering, so I was still getting the lag effect, psi being faster than sound and all that, but at least the voices of the rest of the crew were actually being transmitted by vibrating air molecules rather than via Matsiyan’s perceptions…
The ship takes a little bit of getting used to – no ordnance of any sort! And each captain has his own preferences about what he wants to hear from Science, but that’s what these exercises are for. It was actually remarkably easy to settle in, the crew are so in tune with each other.
I was a little reluctant to relinquish Science for the second exercise, when the arrival of Ensign Assassino meant we had a full bridge complement (Cmdr Jemel Eahain in command, Ensign Morlock on Weapons, Lt.Jr. Aposine on Helm, and of course Matsiyan in Engineering), but I suppose my primary is still Comms, though I’ve been busier with Science for the past several missions. It rather brought home how much my attention has been divided between the two stations, and I think, in retrospect, the Science console has been taking priority. This is understandable, Helm needs bearings and ranges (Aposine was circling around in an unusual way at the beginning of the exercise, leading the captain to enquire if he was drunk…), and one needs to be constantly scanning for hostiles; but it leads to messages from stations and TSN civilian ships being lost in the chatter. So I made a point of relaying messages, and I made sure that when we wanted to lead enemy ships a merry dance, their attention stayed on us. And I’m beginning to get a feel for how many hits it takes before they’ll take my polite requests for surrender into consideration. Or perhaps I’m getting the Voice modulation right.
By the third sim, the whole process was going quite smoothly, Engineering was settling the new energy matrix, Helm sobered up… And then we were called into the briefing room.
The mission was an asteroid survey. Cerberus System is still in disarray after recent action, with several installations lost or damaged, so that TSN Command is looking for additional resources. The survey, in Sector 5 in Prometheus System, was intended to find mineral-rich asteroids, take core samples and convey the information on them to a nearby industrial base, with the aim of sending out mining ships to the appropriate asteroids. They would then extract the mineral resources, the industrial base would process them, and the materials would be used for base reconstruction.
In order to fulfil the industrial base’s requirements, we would be looking for some particular mineral composition in the asteroids, and in order to determine their suitability we would be scanning them on different frequencies in sequence, then relaying the information to the C&C. I was looking forward to the challenge of working with the Weapons officer to determine the lowest frequency for beams to hit the asteroids in order to penetrate through the different layers – it seemed reasonable to suppose that different mineral composition through geological layers would require careful monitoring to adjust to the most effective frequency. I was considering how to configure the console screens so that I could scan and also input the information we would obtain into the required format.
Then I was assigned to TSN Hydra. Which would not be any sort of a problem, normally, but Hydra has no beam weapons, and therefore could do no asteroid scanning.
And I missed the bubbly on Lancer for her maiden cruise – of course Matsiyan produced a bottle of bubbly from some secret engineer stash, it seems an unspoken part of Engineering duties to supply the bridge crew with festive beverages… And of course I know about it. Matsiyan was inordinately proud of himself, I could hardly miss that strong a sending.
The initial part of the mission was simply travel, with occasional defensive action against pirates. This made me realise that Hydra may have no beams, but she does carry an impressive amount of ordnance; and how important it is to scan whether enemy vessels have enhanced anti-torpedo and/or anti-mine shields, because in that case we had to call on Lancer. On the other hand, Lancer has impressive beams, but no ordnance, so ordering her to soften up a group of ships with an EMP is not going to work. Hydra and Lancer together, however, make a fine team if they coordinate.
As a side note, when travelling in formation, I find it amusing that Hydra‘s Engineer (in this instance, Lt. Kennon Far) needs to keep the warp engines at 130% to keep up with the formation leader, while I hear Matsiyan telling his captain that Lancer is ticking along at 50% so that she doesn’t run past… It’s a strange partnership.
And another amusing note, as Lt. Jr. Greybeard asked me to find out what ordnance the science base could supply after our engagement against the pirates, I told him they had 38 torpedoes, and he remarked that would nearly bring us back to full complement. Compare and contrast to the earlier exercise on Lancer, where a friendly ship gave us two torpedoes in gratitude for some logistics assistance, and the crew joked about how we’d be stepping over those damn things in the companionways for the rest of the cruise, if we’d been on a real mission rather than a sim.
Coordination with Lancer was required to stop the large fleets of Torgoths and Kraliens who attempted to interfere with our mission; then we finally settled into surveillance mode, watching out for any pirates while the rest of the ships worked on surveying the asteroids.
A total of six asteroids were successfully scanned, the information was sent to the industrial station, and it was reported that the mining crews will go to work. And I have to find some meditation soundtrack to try and shut out the smugness emanating from Matsiyan as Lancer’s crew reported how well she performed in her maiden voyage.
[End log]
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