HMMS Broadside Day 313

Personal Journal Serene Falk Captain, HMMS Broadside

Mission parameter – Hunting Ghosts

Classification – Secret (Captain’s eyes only)

Today was better, although “better” has become a relative term aboard the Broadside. The AI Bonnie has, for reasons known only to her fractured personality core, elected to sulk in near-total silence. No unsolicited commentary, no passive-aggressive system alerts, no eerie half-hummed lullabies bleeding through the comms at 0300. For the first time in days the ship actually felt, well manageable. Not calm, never that, but at least functionally coherent.

Clyde took full advantage of the quiet. And with Bonnie withdrawn, he resumed primary navigation control, running manual confirmations on every jump vector and drift correction. I could almost feel the relief in him if that’s possible. The crew followed suit. Efficiency returned in increments, engine checks completed ahead of schedule, patrol rotations executed cleanly, even the mess hall reported no incidents worth logging. Small victories, but in this sector, hey, we take what we can get.

As per war footing protocol, two Firestorm fighters remained on continuous patrol. Rotations every six hours, no deviation. It’s exhausting for the pilots but today justified the strain.

At 1420 ship time, Patrol Wing Delta reported a visual anomaly approximately 3.2 million kilometres off our port trajectory, initially flagged as debris scatter. Our standard procedure would have been to mark and bypass, but something in the pattern caught their attention. Too structured. Too deliberate.

They were right.

And what they found was the remains of the fleet carrier RMS Penrose.

“Although remains” feels somewhat insufficient.