[b]HSV Europa[/b]

“Attention on deck!” the XO boomed as the captain entered. The dozen senior officers stiffened into varying attitudes of attention. They looked exhausted and had every reason to be. If they looked rested on the eve of a shake down cruise Captain Marissia Renard would know the reason why and the Heavens help them if they didn’t have a good excuse. 

“At ease people,” she commanded, her voice containing the barest hint of Aldvinan accent, erased by long practice at the fleet academy.  The collection of officers around the table relaxed like an organic creature, datapads began to vanish as they realized the meeting was about to begin. She nodded approvingly; her subordinates saw no reason to stop their work simply because they were waiting for a meeting to start. She was a spare woman in her late thirties, her red hair closely cropped so as not to blind her in zero-G. With the deliberate long strides of a career spacer she moved to the front of the ready room, taking her seat beside Commander Emery, her XO.

“Group,” she began, the word keying in the command group commo circuit, some of her people simply couldn’t be spared for this meeting and would monitor it on the net.

“We have been assigned to Hegemony Deep Space Task Force 148, which, in order to save verbiage, I will henceforth refer to as force Tango.” The joke bought a polite giggle, the Hegemony bureaucrats thrived on alphabet soup.

“HSV Mictlantecuhtli, Mike element for similar reasons, has the flag. She’s a dreadnaught, Tetol class, I don’t know her commander but I expect to get personnel records in the near future. We have another cruiser the Nelson, the destroyers Vespera, Vulture’s Claw and Trapper, and the repair ship Resource under Captain Lee.” As she spoke each name a small hologram of each ship joined the others until they were swimming in a squadron in simulated space.

“I’ve served with Captain Lee before and he is as solid a skipper as they come. Lieutenant Patron, make sure you coordinate with him for any non standard equipment we might need, or equipment that we can use to convert fleet standard to fit this boat,“ there was a slight ironic tone to her voice and another round of laughter at ‘fleet standard’.

She turned to an extremely fit officer in gray battle dress.
“Colonel Cambden, you’ll need to get in touch with their Mike’s ground commander to coordinate the deployment of our marines. Ditto fighter control.”  Both officers nodded, although clearly they had both already done so of their own initiative. She leaned forward resting on her hands. She was proud of her crew and proud of her ship.

“Europa is a new ship ladies and gentlemen and there are plenty of people who look at new things with skepticism. Whatever happens on this cruise we are going to prove that this boat was money well spent and that its crew is the best the Hegemony has to offer. Clear?”
From around the room and across the comms came a chorus of Crystal, Clear, Roger that and a dozen other acknowledgements.

“Section chief I’ll expect your final reports by 0:300 Zulu and I plan to light the drives and be on station four hours after that. Make it happen boys and girls. Dismissed.”