Log Nhaima, 121116-2237

[Nhaima]

Personal Log, Acting En Ensign Alia Nhaima, TSN Raven, 121116-2237

What a day.

It began with reviewing once more the State of the Division report put out by Cmdr. van Leigh. I noted that Ensign Croove had been awarded a citation for his proficiency with communications and xenolinguistics, though I’d heard from Lt. Slate a fair part of the job boils down into yelling obscenities at pirates and Kraliens so that they ignore their better judgement or at tenured freighter captains who seem to have lost theirs 5 klicks short of a minefield. Be that as it may, he’s good at what he does and I’m always glad to have him on our end of the radio.

Then I noticed that the Viper needed a pilot. I had already put in for a permanent assignment, but assumed that the placement of an acting ensign who was only acting like a TSN officer instead of the up jumped militia stick jockey she actually is wouldn’t merit quick attention in light of the planned fuel refinery near the newly identified planet. I called up my inter-personnel comms and sent a message to Lt. Snr. Hall and Ensign Croove, the current ADO and DO respectively, to ask for a temporary assignment on the viper today since I had yet to be aboard and thought I should spend a shift blending in before I asked for them to be saddled with me on a more permanent basis. Much to my surprise, someone else brought up the current fleet assignment and whether or not they were on the rotation so I called up the current TOE from the datastores and much to my surprise I saw myself assigned to the Raven. A welcome surprise, of course, but one I hadn’t expected. I made my excuses and dashed from the galley to pack my kit up and transfer it onboard my new ship. The CWO informed me where my new quarters would be, so I deposited my gear and jogged back to the galley in time to follow everyone as we were called to action stations in the briefing room.

The order of the day were training simulations. First a standard warm up that went off without a hitch, followed by more specialized exercises. The first was a creation on the part of Lt. Snr. Hall, where the fleet would be required to face large numbers of enemy ships and likely need to engage in delaying actions while other parts of the fleet focused on burning down priority targets and those who had strayed too close to our immobile assets. While the Raven wasn’t ever engaged in a protracted defensive engagement, I think that’s because we focused more as a hammer while Lancer and Hunter harried and detained targets yet to be graced by Raven, Phoenix, or Viper‘s gentle attentions.

The second simulation was a practical on the matter of indirect methods for dealing with massive enemies. Instead of EMPs, nukes, hardened shields, and overcharged beam cannons, we were provided with mine fields and black holes and told to rely on those instead. Lt. Snr. Hall took command of the Raven‘s crew while taking the Excalibur out for another shakedown. All in all, it was an easy exercise since these are tactics the militias I’d served with prior to applying to TSN Officer Academy. I’d also been assigned as Chief Science officer instead of my more customary Weapons or Helm, but it’s a posting I’m competent enough with for such things. I have some homework to do on Stellar Cartography in case I’m required to provide astrogation for actual combat actions, but such things aren’t needed for training exercises.

On that note, other things I’ve noted that I should work on. The Raven‘s weapons complement is greater than on Horizon or Phoenix. As good as Croove is for convincing hostiles to reconsider their self-destruction, Raven can just as easily burn them down before notification can come down they’ve powered down and are withdrawing. I spend most of my time in the gunnery scope since I load weapons my touch rather than using the controls on my screen, so the only way I know they’ve surrendered is if they start turning. And that turning also looks a lot like the Raven maneuvering, or the target maneuvering/HET/warp/etc. The Fleet Captain says he doesn’t expect miracles and I very much prefer it’s them instead of us, but I would still like to improve my ability to discern whether or not a ship has surrendered from within the gunnery scope. Fleet Captain Xavier also orders Delta 3 more than Captain Fish, Commander Tuor, or Commander van Leigh had which means that live Pshocks in the air neutralize disengaging enemies as easily as anything….. Something to work on, in any case. I may have spent more time thinking about it than, necessary…. I don’t know. I should also continue working to maintain and grow my understanding of the more ‘esoteric’ orders within the TSN combat doctrine. “It’s no big deal about screwing up ‘Omega 2′” they said. Despite the fact that’s one of two questions that cost me a gold pin…. the other still amuses me. “I will not hit anything with my ship”…. Would have thought that obvious, but I still got marked down for it…. Right! Combat orders. The Fleet Captain at one point ordered an Omega-1, and at more than one point ordered Kilo-Delta-3. I knew everything I was asked to do along those lines, and I’d very much like to continue giving that answers. Now an Ensign, but study continues. I also feel like I should talk less regarding situational awareness on the flagship. More than once, I feel like the Fleet Captain was about to give an order after I broke in with new sensor contacts. That works better with the other ships, since there isn’t as much comms traffic, but I should probably curtail it when the flag is on Raven. At least until I’m more comfortable with the flow of the ship and they with me.

The mission in of itself was relatively unremarkable, save an ambush that either destroyed or critically damaged both Lancer and Hunter–
Computer, pause log.
Playing the fleet comm logs over again, I suppose it’s the latter considering they were able to bodge the ships into working order and return to the sector command post for repairs. Also in listening to the comm log over again, I heard Cmdr. van Leigh challenge Viper and Raven when they approached the convoy near the planet after we concluded securing the sector. I had heard the challenge during the mission, but didn’t think much of it at the time. ‘Sorry but we’re extremely bored’, the commander said. I was focusing on my engagements and watching the sector map for new enemy contacts. I’m not sure how long they had been left on escort duty… It’s possible they had been left on too long and were a bit stir crazy, sitting on unexpended ordinance? I guess those questions will be left to the senior officers.

After the mission, orders were to run a war games sim. We were authorized to select any class of vessel within the TSN. Lt. Cdr. Allard took command and originally tried to requisition a missile cruiser but it had already been allocated so he opted for a minelayer with one of the experimental TSN jump drives. The militia I’d served with had liberated a few Ximni jump drives, so given my familiarity I was asked to take the helm. I explained my customary protocol to Chief Engineer Toro who understood immediately, and we set out. Not as aggressive as we could have been, but that’s probably for the best. Especially given what happened. We had jumped to the forward defense base, ringed with mines, when a massive dreadnought with an IFF freq corresponding to the Phoenix complained of a bad weapons lock and four missiles flew through the black towards us. I think we managed to jump away from that one, but shortly enough the Phoenix was back. I started another jump routine thinking we could get away quickly enough, but Ximni tech is still far better than the current Terran counterparts. The jump drive didn’t spool quickly enough, and I was far too focused on evading the inbound missiles instead of simply bracing to survive them. We died. C&C brought our ship back online, and the Phoenix found us again. We died. Once again we were resurrected and given clearance to engage the rogue Phoenix to destroy her. Our best option was to try a jump mine run. Phoenix bore down on us and we performed a short hop within one klick of them, right about the time they fired their next Omega-2. On the plus side, they didn’t survive it either. In further incarnations of the engagement, we hardened our shields to survive the incoming blast but were unable to effectively mount a counterattack much to the crew’s frustration. Somewhere along the line, I’d stopped giving recommendations and started giving orders. Lt. Commander Allard ordered us to direct our consoles to a different ship. He’d found another dreadnought, much like the false Phoenix and brought it online. We used it to hunt down the other and eventually destroyed it. Those dreadnoughts don’t handle well at all, but they have lots of ordinance. Enough to keep the ship going in case it’s running low on energy. Enough mines to try and disable your target, powerful beams to knock their engines offline, and enough nukes to render it to glowing dust when it can no longer warp away from the incoming warhead.

I don’t know why it happened. I’m not sure how to fix it. I’ve only been here a few months. Many people have been here for years. I want to help with things, but I’m not sure how beyond not being a problem myself……

Differing degrees of target aspect shifts and its meaning, attack patterns, moderating communication. Justifying what trust has been entrusted to me. Things to work on. At least I have a place to keep these things. My personal pad was getting full.

Lights.
Recording off.

[Blaze Strife]

//Always nice to see new logs pop up! Very well written, I must say. I’d be glad to read more of those. 🙂

//One mistake, though: “Lt. Snr. Hall and Ensign Croove, the current ADO and DO respectively” It’s the other way around. 😀

[Matsiyan]

// very nice. Thanks. It is great to have an idea of what happened when I am away and to get to know another officer. I particularly liked the militia background hints.

[Aramond]

//Sad days that you won’t be joining us on the Viper. But the Raven is a fantastic ship, so you should enjoy yourself there.

[Adele Mundy]

//Thank you for the log, it’s helpful to have a sense of what happened during a shift I had to miss, and it’s also a wonderful way to begin getting to know an officer I haven’t served with yet. I hope to meet you in the Bar some time!

[Author]

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