Captain William Hawkes, USN
USV Venture CG-35, D-424 Star System, Unknown Territory
It was a quiet day aboard the United Systems Vessel Venture. They were two weeks out of Liberty Naval Station on an Exploratory Patrol, a relatively new type of deployment for the United Systems Navy as they now actively sought out contact with other civilizations following the passing of the Exploration Act by Congress. When the Navy had subsequently looked at potential platforms for carrying out that new tasking it had quickly become obvious that the Fleet Cruisers would be the most practical. Battleships and Carriers were too valuable to be used on such a mission, and their value would require a full escort even if they were used in that fashion, destroyers were simply not suited for that kind of work and frigates were too small and lacked the range required for exploratory missions. Thus the Fleet Cruisers, which were powerful and large enough to take care of themselves but numerous enough to operate independently (even whilst providing three vessels per Carrier Group to escort the Carriers that served as the Navy’s primary offensive expeditionary arm, but were ultimately not as valuable in the grand scheme of things as them or the Battleships that served as the Navy’s primary space superiority arm. As a result in the past few months over two dozen U.S. Fleet Cruisers had been deployed and a similar amount were preparing for an Exploratory Deployment.
Captain William Hawkes was a career naval officer, he had joined the United Systems Naval Academy at eighteen and entered the fleet four years later as an Ensign. Qualifying as a Space Warfare Officer in good time he had progressed respectably through the ranks, being one of the first of his Academy Class to qualify as a fully-fledged Tactical Action Officer, he had gone on to command a frigate and a destroyer before being promoted to Captain late the previous year. He had been offered a command of either a Battleship or a Fleet Cruiser due in part to his stellar performance in his previous commands (it was unusual to get command of a Battleship immediately on promotion to Captain). The prevailing opinion in the U.S. Navy was that the Battleship was the more prestigious command, but upon hearing of the Exploration Act finally making progress through Congress he had snapped up command of a Cruiser, believing (correctly) that there would be a whole lot more chance to distinguish himself on an Exploratory Mission than sitting on his ass aboard a Battleship in the Core.
Now Captain Hawkes sat in his at-sea cabin (which it was still called due to tradition) looking out the viewport at the pure bright light that characterized slipstream. The viewport was darkening the light somewhat, looking directly upon it was asking for one’s retina to be burnt out, and it was sat that staring at it for too long could cause a person to go mad. Captain Hawkes however found it relaxing. Although these Exploratory Patrols were exciting and full of potential, they were also a sizable logistics challenge and created a great deal of paperwork, all of which naturally came through him as Commanding Officer. But then it was just one of those things that came along with the prestige and privilege of command, besides at least once underway it tended to drop off somewhat. But command of a U.S. Warship was arguably one of the greatest honours a Vitozen could have, and the sheer amount of responsibility being vested in the Captains of these Fleet Cruisers constituted an immense professional compliment.
Hawkes glanced up as the 1MC, the primary shipwide communications circuit, buzzed into life with his presence being requested on the bridge. Finishing off the work that he had been doing and logging off of the system he stood up and headed out onto the bridge. As normal the bridge was a place of quiet work, there was nothing particularly exciting going on so there was no need for raised or urgent voices, just a routine slipstream transit. Given that they were not at any sort of combat alert all of his people were wearing much the same uniform as he was, specifically the Service Khaki, a uniform that had been worn by the United Systems Navy (and its ancestral predecessor) for a very long time, it didn’t offer any particular protection nor was it tremendously formal, but for normal duty it was more than sufficient. The Bridge Duty Officer surrendered the command chair and took his position a short distance away as he made his report.
“We’re coming up on the exist point for the next system, Sir,” the Duty Officer, reported.
“Alright, make the pipe,” Hawkes instructed and watched as the Duty Officer informed the crew via the 1MC that they would be emerging from slipstream. “Raise shields.”
It was standard procedure, for obvious reasons, to raise shields prior to emerging from slipstream. It was considered unlikely to be engaged immediately after emerging from slipstream, and would only really be brought about if the people on the other side were trigger-happy, but no one particularly wanted to run the risk of getting hit by a fusillade of fire with next to no warning with their shields down, they could be crippled in moments, even with their armour. Besides, raising shields was probably the one thing on the ship that didn’t actually require anyone to do anything except press a few buttons and for engineering to keep an eye on the shield generators, which were spread across the ship for contingency. It was a good idea in normal circumstances, but Hawkes got the impression that on Exploratory Patrols like this one it would be almost essential, as they would literally know nothing about what they were about to transition into, even if it wasn’t into the waiting arms of some trigger happy gunners it could easily be into something just as bad, or potentially worse, and the last thing that the Navy needed right now was to lose ships (not that it liked losing ships at any other time of course).
“Execute transit,” Hawkes ordered.
At it’s Captain’s order the sequence of events that would take the Cruiser back into normal space. Firstly the Slipstream Drive which propelled them sent out a pulse that created a tear in th fabric of the slipstream, beyond which the starscape of normal space could be seen, and out of which the Cruiser shot moments later. As soon as they were clear the Slipstream Drive shut down and the sub light drives took over once again, whilst behind them the tear righted itself and space returned to normal.
“Full ahead, all engines,” Hawkes ordered. “Commence sensor sweeps, log everything in the system and start a track on anything of interest.”
“Captain, we’re receiving a message from Fleet Command,” Lieutenant Jane Saunders, the Communications Officer reported. “It’s marked as priority one.”
Hawkes frowned. It was not unusual to receive messages immediately after returning to normal space, primarily because communications were impossible when a ship was in Slipstream, but it was unusual to receive a Priority One message, especially when one considered that such messages were uncommon at the best of times. Such communications indicated that there was a situation requiring any ship receiving to immediately respond, no matter what else they might be doing, it took priority. Whatever was happening it wasn’t good to say the least, and had just put a premature end to the Venture’s current exploratory patrol. Within moments Hawkes had brought up the message on his Command Chair’s display and his frown deepened as he read it. To say that what the message entailed was bad was an understatement to say the least, it was bad enough that if it didn’t come to a happy conclusion could derail the entire Exploratory Initiative, Act of Congress or not. He tapped a few commands into his display and opened up the 1MC.
“Attention Crew of the Venture, this is the Captain. A few moments ago this ship received word that another Cruiser, the USV Discovery has gone missing. By all accounts contact was lost nearly five days ago and it missed a rendezvous yesterday morning, and has now officially been declared suspiciously overdue,” Hawkes said grimly. “At this point there is no indication of what fate has befallen the Discovery, however the possibility that the ship has been destroyed by enemy action is very real and as such all Fleet Cruisers beyond the U.S. Frontier have been ordered to assume a state of alert immediately.”
Hawkes paused to let this sink in.
“In addition, all ships have been ordered to converge on the last known location of the Discovery, which is only a few lightyears away from our own location, so our orders are to complete our sweep of the system and ascertain if the Discovery is here, before joining other vessels in searching this sector for our missing ship,” Hawkes continued. “I am sure that I don’t need to tell any of you how bad a situation the Discovery might be in, but I hope that they will be able to take some comfort in the knowledge that we, their brothers and sisters in arms, are looking for them, as sure as we would if we were in their place.”
Hawkes paused again.
“I know that this is not something that we were expecting to have to deal with, but by god we will do our best to find them and bring them home,” Hawkes finished. “That is all.”
Hawkes sighed heavily as he sat back in his chair as he closed the 1MC. No doubt there would be a lot of speculation, a Fleet Cruiser might not be a capital ship, but it wasn’t exactly insignificant either If the Discovery had been destroyed by enemy forces then there was something big going on. It would after all be the first time that a Fearless-Class Fleet Cruiser would be lost in combat with an enemy force, and a stark reminder of their own mortality, given that they were sitting about a ship of the same class right now. Of course it was entirely possible, and was what everyone hoped, that the ship was just experiencing technical difficulties that had knocked out both its communications and its propulsion, or at the very least that it had been destroyed by some sort of natural phenomena, either way the men and women aboard Venture had the duty to find out, no matter how hard it might ultimately turn out to be. If there was one thing that Hawkes could count on it was his crew, he might only have been in command for a comparatively short time but they had already proven themselves repeatedly.
Even as his crew speculated about the immediate implications of what they had been told, Hawkes considered the bigger picture. When it came down to it the United Systems had not been in a full scale war in a very long time. Sure they kept in practice through border skirmishes and the on-going campaign against pirates and other criminal elements, but it wasn’t quite the same as a full-blown war. It ad been the long-standing policy of Presidents and Congresses alike to seek a primarily isolationist stance. The recent upsurge in piracy as well as the increasing number of alien visitors in the fringe had begun to change that, as the Exploratory Act had shown, but it would still take a while for everyone to get used to it. And god forbid if they actually found themselves embroiled in a war, it would almost certainly be a learning experience for everyone concerned, and would either make or break the doctrine and policies that the United Systems Armed Forces had been working under for a very long time. Of course in the long run that wouldn’t be a bad thing, it would just be painful that so many people would have to die for it to come about.
Hawkes glanced up as Lieutenant Commander Jason Crenshaw, the Venture’s Operations Officer, reported as he looked over his display which were being constantly updated.
“Sir, CIC Is reporting that we’ve got a contact on the sensors, its still too far out for then to estimate its size or strength but its definitely there and its definitely heading towards us” Crenshaw reported, as the Operations Officer he was responsible for building the picture around the ship primarily through the CIC. “It does not match any signatures or configurations in our database, so CIC is marking it as unknown contact Alpha One.”
Hawkes frowned and considered for a moment.
“Weaps,” Hawkes said presently, referring to Lieutenant Commander Steven Cooper, Venture’s Weapons Officer. “General Quarters, if you please.”
“Yes sir,” Cooper nodded, activating the 1MC and as the GQ alarm began to sound he made the fateful announcement that no one in the Navy enjoyed hearing. “This is not a drill, this is not a drill, General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations.”
General Quarters was not technically only for combat operations, it was often used if the ship was facing an environmental hazard or some other form of danger, but for the most part it was to get the crew to their battle stations. At General Quarters all of the ship’s weapons were manned and backed-up, damage control teams mustered and prepared to respond to any damage and the ship generally secured itself for combat, slamming down blast doors and emergency forcefields to ensure that even fi there was damage it wouldn’t gut the entire ship. It couldn’t be maintained forever of course, but whilst it was being maintained the ship was as ready sit would ever be to defend itself.
“Ship is secured for combat, Sir,” Lt. Commander Cooper reported a few minutes later. “All energy batteries and arrays are fully charged, missile cells and torpedo tubes are fully loaded and the shields are at full readiness.”
“Excellent, work up some firing solutions for that ship , we’re too close to where Discovery went missing for my liking,” Hawkes replied crisply. “Communications, send a message to Fringe Command informing them of our situation, get it off immediately.”
Hawkes leant back.
“Ops, keep an eye out for any other contacts, I don’t want to get caught blindsided,” Hawkes added. “Alright Comms, open hailing frequencies.”
Hawkes settled back into his chair. The visual hailing channel would be zoomed in on his upper half, standard procedure advocated not giving any more information about the bridge of a U.S. Warship to potential hostiles. It would show Hawkes, a handsome middle-aged man wearing various uniform accoutrements that told of a distinguished career. Aside of course from the pair of Captain’s Eagles on his collar he wore the Space Warfare Badge, which indicated his qualifications as well as a Command Pin, a laurelled star, as well as several rows of medal ribbons. He waited until the Communications Officer gave him the nod before speaking.
“Attention unknown ship, this is the United Systems Vessel Venture, identify yourselves and state your intentions.”
