CIC, Deck 5, WGS Ostara, somewhere in the Sigma Cluster
21/09/824 AS, 00:20 AM
"Three degrees starboard, nose up two." The voice of the Navigations officer repeated Nika's order in a whisper, while he entered it into the Navcon. The blue light in the CIC, coming from all sides of the room, made the situation almost surreal. The lack of shadows and the general silence, only interrupted by the occasional typing and order (and it's repetition) had been accompanying the operations in the past few days. The officers assigned to the room had begun calling it the 'ice palace', a reference both to the cold atmosphere, and to the person usually residing here, in the center of the ship. Today, however, was not a usual drill. They hadn't begun the day with deploying the spiderweb, and they had also not checked on any of the caches.
The officers in the room had quickly noticed that something was off when she had not, as usual, arrived alone, but flanked by Michael Wolf, the sole person on the ship that had been seen conversing with her outside of her official functions. His presence in the room could only mean that there was something different today.
This assumption had so far been clearly confirmed. For about eight hours so far, Nika had ordered course changes. The ship had accelerated to maximum speed, and then she'd ordered the engines to stop - they were only flying on inertia and the occasional thruster correction. It was obvious that she intended to keep the ship as quiet and low-signature as possible.
Nika Haupt sat in her command chair, eyes closed, and seemingly sunken in thought. Indeed, she had a different plan for this day. Drilling void combat would only get you so far, and with Anna Heinrich... Gone, she would have to act on her own, again. To her surprise, she didn't really mind that. On the contrary, For the first time in years, she actually felt free. There were no friends to hold her back, no superiors to order her around, no demands set towards her. Now, she would be the one making demands. This was her ship. Her mission. Her crusade.
CO's quarters, Deck 2, WGS Ostara, somewhere in the Sigma Cluster
07/09/824 AS, 11:37 PM
Wolf surprisingly found a lot of time to himself. Extend of his official duties were numerous adjustments to navigation he had to plot and confirm, issuing further instructions to the ‘new’ commanding officer who in turn made them a reality. Haupt fed and flourished on this type of power, he realized seeing as she continued to plot and issue what would go as far as the micromanagement of Ostara’s systems. She was becoming more and more dangerous in his eyes, the only difference being that her wroth was directed entirely on their enemies rather than them. He had no reason to complain.
It was ironic. Despite being officially an executive officer… the second in command of Ostara, he still occupied the captain’s quarters and Commanding Officer’s position on the bridge. Haupt preferred dark, deep reaches of the CIC, a place where she could plan demise of their enemies while giving Wolf free hand in doing what he loves the most: being at the helm of the warship, no matter its size.
Ostara’s moved on minimalistic momentum type of travel. They gained up speed by accelerating fully at the cruise engines and then put them on stand by mode. Most if not all warships preferred to cruise at nominal speed and fully powered across all waypoints: while less fuel efficient, ship’s commander had more tactical options related to movement: evading hostile warships and ambushes was as easy as simply pointing ship to another location without necessity of waiting for cruise drives coming back online. On other hand, they were also harder to detect with smaller energy signatures on long range scanners.
His attention turned to maintaining their fleet of starfighters. They took a beating from constant runtime and piling up maintenance they were not exactly capable of performing due to lifestyle of aggressive, opportunistic pirate. His Wraith could not be replaced so easily, same could be said about its equipment he bought from The Order at earlier date. The Order’s own neutron blasters were unlike typical armament seen on Rheinland battlefields and were surprisingly efficient to use.
Presence of Annika Haupt upon the bridge meant changes… big ones. Their new destination, Bautzen was recently liberated mining outpost from the hands of Kruger. People friendly to them took power in there, closer to Hessians than most Bundschuh operatives. It was a necessity to live at cordial bilateral relations with the moloch that Hessians represented. He heard that Anna Heinrich, their leader disappeared shortly after their meeting. He was lucky to sneak out of Army’s special operatives reach and avoid being framed for taking part of some anti-Heinrich plot. He escaped at earliest opportunity and flew straight to the last established rendezvous point to hide aboard Ostara again.
They were to re-enter Rheinland core colonies within hours.