RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 6] A Closer Inspection

Ramiro sat through the discussion the crew was having quite interested in what the crew thought. Even though, he decided to keep quiet until the Taisa mentioned improvements. He inclined his head slightly and said, "If I may Taisa, even tough the bridge crew worked quickly and efficiently something I thing we could work on is independent 'reactions', if you will. The bridge crew should be taught steps that should be taken in each battle so orders don't have to be given as much. For example, the interdiction fields, secondary weapons, aether pods, and that sort of stuff. I believe that even though myself and Himeya-Hei did an excellent job of reacting of off instinct we should be trained in exact sequences we should be initiating things in and also any combat modifications that the Eucharis has that is not standard to a normal space craft."

Nika thought hard on improvements as Ramiro gave his comments.

"In regards to the damage the Eucharis sustained... we could have reduced it by..." She scratched her head, trying to put her sentances together, "Taking initiatives. The flow of command is important between the captain, XO, and the crew on the ship. However, in certain circumstances, crew members had to make decisions by themselves instead of waiting for the higher ups to respond."

The neko took a deep breath, "My point is that I should have fired the secondary weaponries immediately when the SMX gunships got in range, instead of waiting for Taisa's orders..."

AAR Display said:

Objectives:

1. Defeat simulated enemy squadron. (ACCOMPLISHED)

Sustains:

1. Effective weapons loadout
2. Crew redundancy / oversight from bridge
3. Plentiful and good communication

Improves:

1. Bridge crew training and autonomy / taking initiative
2.
3.

Click to expand...

Hanako updated the holoscreen, combining the two starship operators' very similar suggestions into one point. "I agree very much," she told Nika and Ramiro. "We need to develop a standard operating procedure for starship combat."

Hamada received the transmission from Jalen but, rather than repeat it back to him, she simply sent; 'Thank you for the work, and my apologies for the mistake earlier. You are authorized to close out the simulated damage on Hotaru-Heisho, and after that please report to the wardroom.'

Hamada finished off her tea.

'Taisa-san. The medical crew has finished and are on their way up.'

After securing all the medical gear and supplies, Sune turned to Miyazawa-Hei, "I am heading up to the Wardroom, see you there for the debriefing."

Sune then made his way out of the Medbay and through the corridors up two levels to the Wardroom. Once he entered the room; he quietly made his way to where the others were seated, he bowed towards the Taisa before taking a seat. Once seated he reviewed the display.

Sensing a pause in the discussion, he chose to interject his concerns. "Ketsurui-Taisa, if I may add two items from a medical perspective to the discussion. First ensure that all crew members are advised to provide the medical staff with all available pertinent information, patient name, and location a minimum. Time is critical when dealing with injuries and if the medical staff does not know where the injured party is, we have to take more time to inquire, especially in a situation such as this where telepathic communication would be unwise due to enemy detection. Which brings me to my second item, is there a standard procedure aboard ship to locate an injured crew member who is unconscious?"

"There is, sort of," Hanako told Sune, opening a second holographic screen showing the standard 7-Line Request for Medical Assistance. "Next time we should use this."

Junko fidgeted as her various shipmates offered their perspectives. The visceral rush of the combat simulation, with the alarms, orders, and tension, had brought a long suppressed part of her to the surface. Rather than the cold calculating demeanor that so frequently underpinned her superficial behavior, she was now reacting emotionally. And unfortunately, she was mainly feeling anxious.

Her shipmates may have had valid suggestions and areas for improvement, but all of them seemed minor compared to the way engineering had… well, the word failed, however accurate, was bothering Junko immensely at the moment. For what seemed like the thousandth time during the briefing she glanced discreetly over at Endoh. The neko still looked distracted much as she had during the simulation. Junko really had no idea what was distracting her, but at the moment, rather than dismiss the other engineer as a professional failure, she tried empathizing. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

But responding to the Taisa’s request for feedback was too strong an imperative for her emotions to override. Feeling thoroughly dejected for any ramifications that her speaking up might bring, Junko gathered her courage and looked her commander right in the eyes. “Ma’am, well, I think that engineering was clearly a failure point during the exercise.” She paused for a moment, cognizant of the attention of all of her shipmates, and then continued, still in a smaller voice than she was wont to speak in. “We were inefficient in reporting damage, regulating systems, and providing damage control. There was a break down in communications that was, well, unacceptable, ma’am. If the Taii hadn’t called down for action, we might have failed to do anything at all. We were a problem, ma’am. But…” She dropped her head for a moment. Looking back up, she tried to will the others in the compartment to sense her earnest intentions. “Taisa, I do not know how to solve the problem.”

Hamada watched Junko for a little bit. She had reviewed, briefly, the video and audio recordings from the engineering mainspace and had her own thoughts about what had gone wrong. They involved the relocation of certain personnel. That would come later, though. Now, she considered the character of the engineer in front of her.

"I think," she offered, "That you are correct. Judging by the performance of the engineering group, I do not believe that, as we are, we would be capable of sustaining a fight such as the one we just simulated for any length of time."

"As to finding some way to fix it," the XO continued, looking now to the Taisa and releasing Junko from her gaze, "I suggest we hire, train, or produce more personnel capable of damage control during combat. We can sail with the crew we have now, but the simulation demonstrated we are severely deficient during combat evolutions, and that endangers this vessel. If nothing else, we could request some personnel from the other ships in our squadron until a better solution comes up."

Beneath those words, a second conversation was also running.

'I saw what happened down there,' Hamada had sent to the engineer the moment her eyes left her, 'And you followed through. I am switching your watch stations. I think, if we acquire more personnel, the job will be made easier. You will likely be senior this time. From what I have seen, I think you can be trusted with this. Is my trust misplaced, Takeda-Hei?'

Hanako added "Damage Control / Engineering" to the "Improve" List, a grim look on her face and a telling silence on her pursed lips. Ready to move on her big golden eyes sought out a final addition to the list so they could finish the review.

Time has seemed to go by quickly; Lime was setting out the night's dinner on the serving line.

MENU said:

Cajun style catfish fillets
Popcorn Shrimp
Red beans and rice
Green Beans with Bacon
Macaroni and Cheese
Cornbread
Double Chocolate Cake

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Junko forced herself to continue looking at the Taisa as her face took on a grim bearing; when the XO spoke up, she was only too happy to look away. The Taii also seemed measured and stern in her tone, but Junko was less scared of overt disapproval from her. When the XO broke eye contact with her and looked back at the Taisa, Junko forced her eyes to follow. Expecting some damning pronouncement, the continued silence kept her captivated with worry. But even that didn’t stop her from flinching involuntarily and staring obviously at the Taii when she received the message. Still staring, despite the XO pointedly continuing her discussion with the Taisa, Junko gathered her thoughts and courage and sent back, “Ma’am, no ma’am. I sincerely apologize for failing to aggressively pursue the initiative during the exercise. I will do my utmost to fulfill your expectations.” The part of her that still considered all NH “humans” no more than weapons dismissed the hint of pleading as fake emotional weakness, but the scared little girl stayed frightened.

Sune looked at the volumetric display trying to think if there was anything he could add. Nothing more I can add from a medical perspective. he thought.

Sune turned towards Hanako, "Taisa, as I was not on the bridge, nor present when the debriefing started. I am curious, how was the the coordination between the Eucharis and the rest of the squadron during the simulation? Is there anything in that area that could be improved to increase the squadron's effectiveness?"

"I have not had any problems with the squadron. Standing orders for them are to amplify our firepower by targets the same enemy we do, and it worked well in this simulation," Hanako answered, wondering why the medic had reason to ask.

"In any case, I will add a the final area of improvement...speed. We should strive to be faster in acting and reacting. Our enemies will not wait for us...and based on what we saw in our last mission, we may be at war again soon." The Taisa turned to look out the wardroom's observation window. "This concludes the debriefing...you are dismissed for dinner."

AAR Display said:

Objectives:

1. Defeat simulated enemy squadron. (ACCOMPLISHED)

Sustains:

1. Effective weapons loadout
2. Crew redundancy / oversight from bridge
3. Plentiful and good communication

Improves:

1. Bridge crew training and autonomy / taking initiative
2. Damage Control / Engineering
3. Overall Speediness

Click to expand...

Sune was about to make a clarification to his question but before he could the Taisa dismissed the crew. He remained sitting for a moment to think. How frustrating, one of my questions was ignored, and then my question about the coordination was not really answered. And where is Miyazawa-Hei, she completely missed the debriefing. he thought.

He went over to the buffet, picked up a tray and selected some of the shrimp, the green beans, and a piece of cornbread. He also got a glass of water and then made his way to one of the tables near the entrance to eat. He picked at his food rather than really eating it. This day aboard ship was definitely not going along the lines of what he expected. Deciding that he was not hungry, he took his tray to the scullery area and put them in the appropriate place for cleaning.

He then left the Wardroom, he returned to his cabin and changed into his exercise uniform. Then went down to the recreation room having decided that a couple of his more complex katas would help him focus. Once there he started the first kata.

As the debreifing ended, Nika mentally noted down two words, 'initiative' and 'speed'. With that done, she was about to go for dinner when the neko suddenly recalled something she needed to inform Hanako.

"Taisa, the SSS had replied to us regarding the discovery on HX-22. Due to the battle simulation, I had put it off until now. Will forward you the information once we are done with dinner." She sent an encrypted telepath message to Hanako as she walked up to the buffet, and picked out a bit of everything to eat. After that she would have to talk to Ramiro on their shifts for the night as well as send the info to the Taisa.

Ramiro listened carefully as the debriefing was concluded. He had agreed so far with almost everything that the rest of the crew had noted. He thought about this as he walked over to where dinner was being served. Alright, seafood! He hurried over, grabbed a plate and grabbed a little bit of catfish, but started loading his plate up with shrimp. Ramiro then skipped over to the macaroni and piled a bunch of the on his plate before carefully stacking the cornbread and cake on top of the pile. He then walked over to one of the booths in the corner and sat down.

Ramiro was just about to start eating when his comm beeped at him. He read through the message, not understanding a word of it, but noticing that it was categorized as 'distress protocol'. His mind started going everywhere as jumped up from the table, banging his knees into it. He ignored the stinging pain as he sprinted over to the Taisa. Once Ramiro was close enough so the others wouldn't hear he said, "Taisa, we intercepted a distress signal from the YSS Sakura. The message originates from HX-12 and looks to be either encrypted or corrupted. Either way I can't understand a word of it."

"The Sakura?" Hanako asked, sounding a little confused. "Do you mean the Sakura II? Or the original?" Hanako pointed to the YSS Sakura patch still sewn onto her uniform's shoulder. "The original Sakura was destroyed in combat the Mishhuvurthyar. What other details did we get from the message?"

Konoka got her food, muttering seafood-related curses. When Sune had gone on ahead of her, she'd walked right in to a piece of medical equipment, banged her head, and passed out cold, waking up to only catch part of the debriefing...from the doorway she'd walked into. Her klutziness was at an all-time high due to her preoccupation with a sense of ineptitude and replacement. Rubbing her sore head, she looked for Sune, and not finding him, tripped over the closest person's foot, falling with her face into their boot. "Aah...s-sorry! Very sorry, begging pardon....Oh dear..."

Then, she sensed a change in the room: Something foreboding had been said. It was more of the concerned-doctor-seeing-something-bad-ahead thing. "Bad luck is knocking at our doors...." she whispered, chilled. She got up, frowning, bowing, and staring around, looking for ways to figure it all out. This was not going to be a rainbow-sparkly-happy evening. Not at all.

"My apologies Taisa, it must have been Sakura II. I had Charisma relay the message to my personal comm." He showed her the message displayed. "Maybe you can get more out of it than I can."

Hanako's giant glassy golden gaze grabbed the man's mysterious mangled message. "Ke-M3-1c of YSS Sakura NG-X1-360," she read. "No, no, that is the Imperial Registry Number of the original YSS Sakura...and Ke-M3 is the nomenclature of a Kylie power armor. So we may be looking at a transmission from a power armor that was once stationed on my old starship. I am concerned about it possibly being a trap of some sort...but on the other hand I am curious and it might be a stranded Star Army soldier. Ramiro, alter course for HX-12 and have the squadron follow."

Ramiro stood and watched the Taisa ponder over the weird message. After he received his order he responded with a quick "Aye Taisa" and headed off to the bridge. From there he pulled up the star map, setting course straight for HX-12. He engaged the hyperspace drives and double checked to make sure everything was in order before heading back to the wardroom to finish his dinner.