Log Nhaima, 31216-2237

[Nhaima]

Personal Log: Ensign Nhaima, TSN Raven, TSN 2SF, 4LD
Stardate: 11216-2237

The morning had quite an early start. Engineering had produced one of the first retrofit shuttles for deployment across the division, so I volunteered to take it out for a trial. It handled about as well as the sims predicted. That said, it was a bit slower than it sounded like Captain Evans wanted. It was a bit too sluggish, a bit too slow in the turn, and he said he didn’t mind stripping out some of the beam capacitors to free up power for redirection into the engine’s reaction chambers. Further revisions would be implemented.

Due to the length of the cruise, and the rightly identified slower speed of the shuttle, I didn’t hit dock until well after the division had been briefed. Flying through the checklist for powering down the prototype I swung by my quarters for a fresh uniform (Thanks again Lt. Blaze for help with that trick) and headed through the shortcuts straight to the ready room and paged the DO to inform him I was ready for assignment. Much to my surprise, I was still happily sent aboard Raven.

I had come in during the tail end of a drill. The Fleet Captain welcomed me aboard and directed the XO, currently Lt. Cmdr. Zelreich, to relieve him at tactical. Very lucky indeed. Others aboard included Lt. Sr. Mundy, and Lt. Jr.’s Quinn and Slate. There was a cadet aboard, but when the command codes switched then the security protocols engaged for some reason on his console and he was locked out. We attempted to provide assistance to help circumvent the lockout, but we weren’t successful. Hopefully a tech will be able to sort things out before the next shift. We continued with a second drill, one where I was able to fully occupy tactical rather than coming in the middle of a simulated firefight. I did better in the second drill, now that my head wasn’t racing with the rush of reporting for duty as quickly as possible.

Seemingly satisfied with the readiness of the fleet, we were ordered from our berths and into the Euphini expanse. There we were ordered to sector 12 and began a survey until a vessel, Horizon I think, was suddenly displaced about 40km away. This was investigated and appeared to be a stable, one-way portal through space though seemingly not also through time. USF forces appeared, including a few courier transports, and we engaged them. They seemed aware of these “jump points”, as the Fleet Captain and others took to calling them, and were attempting to take advantage of them to navigate the sector at high speed. We engaged them and resumed our survey of the sector until an unknown anomaly was detected in the middle of the sector. What looked like an artificial rift, it was a spinning matrix in space. Caltrons and other hostiles appeared to enter by way of this rift, though it’s effects were less obvious. Someone observed that the rift’s effect seemed to be periodic. It activated about every two minutes. Hostiles did not exit the rift every time it activated, but any TSN vessel in the subsector (designated Charlie-3), seemed to be flung through space.

It didn’t occur to me to log the location of Horizon and Excalibur the first time they jumped, but once the phenomenon began repeating itself I began a crude attempt at preserving the data. As uncomfortable as it was in a live-fire situation, I actually diverted some of the control space from my console…. the weapons controls if I’m honest, in an attempt to mimic the sector map and record proximity readings every time the artificial rift activated. I’ll include my mapping as a supplement. This was also around the time that I started running my mouth. I actually brought up performing a Monte Carlo simulation, using the sortied 4LD forces as experimental fodder to identify the nature of the rift…. I’m not sure stick jocks or gun bunnies are “supposed” to have a functional grasp on the theory of statistical analysis…. If the 4LD is really so hard up on boffins, fine. I’ll accept a transfer from flight status if that’s what we need. I’ll even wear the bloody white coats they seem to think is a part of their uniform if I have to… but I won’t like it.

Needless to say, the rift requires further investigation. Other ships have more sensor data which I haven’t had a chance to see, including the raw sensor log data. The consensus remained that the rift seemed to have a bias towards the Alpha-5 direction, though two dozen datapoints isn’t what I would call statistically significant-…… And there I go again. I really don’t want to be transferred to R&D…. Alpha-5 direction. That would put it towards Euphini sectors 17 or 18. I’m not really aware of what goes on there, but I can’t imagine it’s anything in particular. But if it wants to project in that direciton by default then it’s possible it could be a rift that we aren’t just accessing properly! Computer, access Stellar Cartography. Hmm….. Maybe we weren’t in the proper orientations? Computer, eliminate starting positions relative bearing -30 to +60 degrees from center of the artificial rift…. perform regression analysis on end points. Yes, override warning for sample set size…. That goes through the Arrin system…. and it would also intersect part of Kralien space. Unlikely, but certainly possible… Computer, archive current plot. Designation Bravo-Sigma-Oh-1. It would certainly be nice if we could use this rift to reverse engineer the parts we need for a proper jump drive…. and this time we’d have the ability to maintain it, too. But I digress. We recorded information until Captain Evans thought we weren’t producing anything that varied from previously collected data and the recall order was sent out. We returned home without incident.

There was the plan to massively shuffle the crews. Lt. Cmdr. Dante was even going to be handed operational control over the division’s resources for the training exercise, but then the command net went down. Might have been the strain from maintaining the connection through intra-space tunnels, but we were ordered to stand down. I noticed a small army of techs boarding Raven as I got to the docking pylon connecting her to the station. More things for them to sort out, in addition to the cadet’s technical malfunctions.

It’s been a while since I’ve had proper void under me and I’ve not been in one of the new tin cans… I’m feeling a bit more tired than normal. Nothing to report, status wise, with ongoing tasks. The only disengaging vessel I remember being responsible for incinerating was actually by way of a phase shock warhead and there’s not much you can do about that. Only sit and wait that their shields flicker back into existence before it hits their hull. There may have been others, but they didn’t send down their compliance before their reactors went critical or their hull breached. Cmdr. Verok’s project has had to wait, a few other things came up but I haven’t forgotten. And I suppose I need to start avoiding the cadets off duty. Lt. Sr. Mundy said that someone was going to resurrect The Pirates of Penwrath and someone seems to have pulled my college transcript. So stealthily the ensign creeps while all the cadets soundly sleep…… I’m never going to forget that one, am I?

Lights.

[Nhaima]

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Nhaima.

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