Log Quinn 6216-2237

[Quinn]

Personal Log: Lt. Jr. Quinn of the TSN Hydra (CM-008), 2F 4LD
StarDate: 6216-2237

I was surprised to arrive in the galley for the shift today and have Lt. Greybeard run up to me and pin the the Assistant Duty Officer badge to my chest before returning back to the gaggle of cadets huddled around the galley entrance. Although Greybeard and Aposine still had this shift left as DO and ADO, Aposine was unable to make the start of the shift. That meant that the brass decided to move up my appointment as ADO to this shift, though Aramond won’t start his tour as DO until next shift.

Between helping Greybeard orient the fresh meat and reminding the other officers to update their personal terminals to the latest security protocols, I was quite busy before falling in for the pre-shift briefing.

Roll call is strange when you’re the ADO, because when everyone else lines up by rank and then by alphabetical order, I am supposed to stand next to the DO right below the senior officers. The strange part, however, is that the ADO is still supposed to sound off in order as if they are standing in their usual place, confusing everyone involved. Maybe I’ll suggest to command that we have the ADO sound off at the end, right before the DO reports the division’s readiness. At the very least that should avoid some of the confusion.

Nitpicking aside, we received some good news during the briefing. After a full investigation of Lt. Cdr. Del Pino’s comm activity, he was found to only be negligent when it came to the USF security breach, not complicit. I was relieved to hear that he was unaware of the malware that had used his command privileges to nefarious ends. He was fined and reinstated to active duty, but without his promotion seniority.

When we got aboard the Hydra for the first simulation, Cdr. Verok remarked that he always seemed to be called away for clerical duty when the Hydra experiences her strange occurrences, and I suspect that isn’t a coincidence. Lt. Jr. Matsiyan and I tried to bring him up to speed on the latest, and Del Pino explained how he had been as surprised as everyone else at his arrest.

While I’m sure Del Pino was sad to see his seniority gone and his pay docked, he seemed quite happy to be out of the brig and back on the Hydra as XO and science officer. Matsiyan looked somewhat relieved to hand back the XO pin back to Del Pino and return to his engineering station, though I think I picked up on a slight sigh of sadness as he realized he might not get another try at command again for a while.

Ensign Cessna was on comms as usual, and we picked up one of the cadets I mentioned earlier to hold down the weapons console. Cadet Blaze was a fresh-off-the-shuttle shade of green, but was eager to learn and picked up operations fast, after a slight hiccup in our first simulation. It seems that due to the declaration of war, the Academy may have rushed the senior class of cadets to graduation without teaching them the dangers of deploying mines while traveling in reverse. Regardless, Cadet apologized profusely, and more than made up for his mistake with his subsequent performance.

During that first sim, Matsiyan discovered an interesting tweak to the simulation parameters made by the techs. It seems that our energy batteries have a much lower tolerance for being over charged, and develop a runaway heat issue after picking up more than one anomaly. Cdr. Verok had me circle our target fleet at warp 4 before closing in for the attack to burn off some of our excess energy, but I accidentally sped right into another anomaly, making the situation worse than before. What are the chances?

Luckily the simulation ended before any damage could be done, and our subsequent simulations went much more smoothly. During the next sim I received a message from Lt. Jr. Fulvus on my personal comms and I was excited to hear that he was on-station and updating his security protocols so he could join us after our simulation. While I felt guilty having Cadet Blaze bumped to another ship on his first shift, it was a rare treat to have the full permanent bridge crew of the Hydra on board for our mission.

We were assigned to patrol the Arietis system with the Raven and it was a good thing we had the full crew, since we ended up needing all the experience we could muster. We arrived just in time to face off with a large USF fleet that was pushing into the Arietis system, trying to gain a foothold in one of our interior systems.

We scrambled to protect the TSN bases, while Del Pino and Cessna attempted to direct the allied ships in the sector to hold off the advance. They were little more than a picket force, however, and seemed to be receiving conflicting orders on their tactics, making them no match for the Unukalhai. We lost a station and over a dozen allied ships before we were able to turn the tide and push back the invasion. The Raven’s and Hydra’s holds were full of friendly life pods when we returned to Atlantis Command.

The last action of the shift came in the form of a hybrid patrol and simulation, a sort of wargame that had the whole fleet actually flying through the Atlantis system fighting off simulated enemies. I suppose Command wanted to keep a presence in the sector, but was afraid that a boring patrol might dull our reaction to an actual threat.

Cdr. Verok was in command of the fleet and seems to be getting a lot more comfortable delegating responsibilities to other battle groups. The Hydra was mostly on our own, softening up heavy fleets for the rest of the fleet to mop up, but the distress call from the TSAF Bath broke up his intentions pretty quickly. At first we weren’t sure if the distress call was simulated or real, so Cdr. Verok had the rest of the fleet keep the simulated Unukalhai at bay while we took the Hydra in to investigate.

It turned out to be a real distress call from a TSAF cargo ship, carrying strategic materials for the war effort. Their navigation was stuck at a constant speed and heading and they had also launched life pods, but when we brought them aboard, they were empty. We later learned that they had been hauling medical nanites that were destined for the Hydra, but the nanites went rogue and played havoc with the ship’s systems.

We were soon back at Atlantis Command at the end of the shift, but there was still much to be done. While Matsiyan and his engineers inspected the ship from stem to stern for any signs of rogue nanite infection, I was reviewing security logs, looking for any sign of an intrusion. While it’s possible that the requisition for the tainted nanites was made back before we discovered that Del Pino’s account was compromised, I fear that the USF might still have remote access to the Hydra’s internal network. We may not be out of the woods yet.

Lieutenant, Junior Grade Quinn
Helms Officer
TSN Hydra (CM-008)
2nd Fleet, 4th Light Division

• This topic was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Quinn.

[Matsiyan]

// Awesome log. Very nice tone. You absorbed a lot more of the Arietis situation than I did! Glad to see we are both concerned about Hydra’s security.

[Aramond]

Heh, gaggle of cadets.

It’ll be good to have you as my ADO, Quinn. The fact that you have some experience now with the new cadets is making me more confident as well. I’ll be seeing you at 19:30.

[Blaze Strife]

Thank you for not firing me out of the airlock (simulated or otherwise), sir. I shall try hard to never again make a major mistake like that.

[Quinn]

No worries, Cadet, you can’t learn everything from a textbook! There’s a reason Academy cadets go through on-the-job learning before getting their commission to Ensign, it’s the best way to learn.

[Author]

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