The following is an in character “mission report” based on my experiences at Bridge Command, a London interactive theatre experience / video game / LARP.

While the description of events below is as accurate as possible to the events that took place at Bridge Command as a player taking part in a one-off performance, some changes have been made for satisfying narrative flow and to simplify sharing the story with a potentially unfamiliar audience.

I have not shared any information that would be spoilers for a first time Bridge Command attendee. My publicly posted logs will only discuss declassified special events and frontline missions, both mission types that are one-off bespoke missions and not repeated experiences. If you attend Bridge Command, you will not be sent on any missions I describe in public mission logs.

I am not officially affiliated with Bridge Command, and my mission log is not an official “canon” account of Bridge Command lore.

I joined the UCN, the United Confederation Navy, in the summer of last year on a whim. I knew very little when arriving other than that recruits would be going off into space to either explore, engage in diplomacy, solve mysteries, or fight pirates. All of it would be happening far away on the other end of space, and that was enough for me to sign up, inspired by countless years spent watching science fiction movies about life in the stars.

Most of my first year of deployments with the UCN are classified, unable to be shared with others. I write mission logs, but they’re written with an eye to not being read by anyone but myself and potentially the admiralty.

Things are different now. War has arrived, and officers broadly within the UCN need to be caught up to speed. As a result classification status is being lifted, at least within officer circles. 

I won’t be able to share my public logs for all future missions, but anything directly related to being on the frontline of the war is considered important to document, to improve broad awareness of progress across our many sectors of engagement. 

Anyway, hopefully I’ve made this a digestible enough place to start following my adventures as someone risking their life on the frontline. If you’re reading this as a new recruit to the UCN trying to get caught up on developments in the Adamas Belt,I wish you luck and hope this helps you get somewhat up to speed.

We’ve known for a while Wargames was coming. We could not have known how eventful it would become.

The Valiant Task Group arrived in the Adamas Belt a few weeks ago now, backup for the UVP war we all knew was inevitable. They arrived smug as all hell, and the hope was that by having us fight out our issues in some pretend simulated wargames we could get rid of some of the animosity between our fleets, and perhaps teach these new arrivals a little more about what combat out here in the Adamas Belt is like in practical terms.

If we kicked their asses and wiped the smug looks off their faces, it would be a nice bonus.

We all knew war was coming too. Back in October of last year I captained the Takanami during Operation Daedalus, where we explored the Nebula Barrens before stumbling upon a huge stable wormhole at its centre. Thousands of alien vessels poured out of it as we approached, showing zero interest in communication or diplomacy, and completely technologically overpowering us.

We were forced to fly the Warspite, our flagship vessel and hug for stellar navy deployments, into the wormhole’s centre and detonate its Gravium Oscillator, shunting us to a parallel reality where we had not yet kicked the hornet’s nest. It was the mission where Zyzyx Furlong died under my command. It was a harrowing day for us all. The spectre of looming war has haunted the Warspite Task Group since, as we rushed to form alliances and produce technology which might help us in the war effort. It was the mission that got me promoted to Lt Cmdr, but it’s also the reason for the patch on my right shoulder…

For Those Who’ve Gone Beyond.

We’ve since learned that these ships are piloted by an alien species, reptilian humanoids. They continue to seem uninterested in or incapable of communication or diplomacy.

I will request permission to declassify my Daedalus mission logs soon. It’s not strictly a frontline mission report from the war, but so much of what went down during Daedalus set the stage for the conflict ahead.

For a while now I’ve been working on a personal diplomatic project, a letter petitioning the admiralty to reinstate Letters of Marque, an old naval practice by which pirates could become privateers during times of war, ceasing pirate activity and supporting the war effort in exchange for certain commitments and material benefits.

I was told a vice admiral would be present at Wargames, and as such prepared the petition draft and brought it with me. As a member of the Diplomatic Corp of the UCN, it’s my job to be constantly looking for unconventional diplomatic opportunities, wherever they may arise.

I arrived in the mess hall of the Warspite, the UCN’s flagship Sword Class Cruiser in the Adamas Belt. It’s its own ship, and a hugely powerful one at that, but it’s also the docking base for the smaller vessels I’m typically responsible for crewing. On larger missions it serves as a tactical operations base, as well as featuring a bar for off duty officers.

A projector had been set up, shining a real time war map down onto a table in the Warspite’s mess.

Some discussions in the bar indicated that my crew of 13, Red Watch, would be serving under Ben Rhydding as our Captain, and taking the Takanami out during the wargames exercise. It’s a little slower at maneuvering than the Havock, but can take more of a direct beating. It’s my preferred vessel for deployments where able, mostly because I think placing Nav and Helm officers next to each other is far more sensible than having them half a room apart. The havoc’s layout essentially needs a human Sat-Nav to shout right across the room, rather than lean across to a pilot and whisper directions. Makes for much worse bridge discussion discipline.

Randolph, leader of the Valiant Task Group, eventually arrived alongside the Vice Admiral to greet us, and supposedly wish us well before Wargames began. He was just as smug as I remember, with this ridiculous sense of self confidence about his “inevitable” victory.

I shouldn’t be surprised, this is the man who I first met having received a tour of the Havock, and commenting “They managed to give me a tour successfully. I know it’s only a straight line corridor, but I still expected them to get lost somehow”

Right?! Total dickhead.

Once Randolph left Captain Taylor, leader of the Warspite Task Group, got everyone’s assembled attention.

“Wargames exercises, despite what you might imagine, often don’t actually test the combat capabilities of fleets – More often than not they reinforce presumed results and existing war strategy dynamics”

“After Daedalus, I sent all our collected UVP data to the admiralty. A few weeks before Wargames I did the same again. It seems that neither the admiralty, nor Valiant Task Group, bothered to read any of what I sent them”

“Unfortunately, we’ve been set up to fail, to be the losing side for these Wargames. It seems these are designed to be a farce, an exercise in making the Valiant task group look as impressive as possible to those funding their integration into our fleet”

“Many ships from the Warspite Task Group have been put on patrol duty today during Wargames, with Valiant not asked to commit any of their vessels. This leaves our fleet with roughly 50% the number of vessels of our “opponent” for the day”

“The admiralty wants the Valiant Task Group to feel strong. I think they need to be taught a lesson, so I’m flipping the script”

“We are playing the enemy force in this wargames exercise, a position designed to lose. They don’t know I’ve been working hard to emulate UVP combat abilities and tactics to the best of our ability. We’re going to make them face a version of the threat that lies out here, and show how a small force can be enough to overwhelm a fleet if they’re not prepared”

“The plan from the Admiralty is for Wargames to last 3 hours, and for us to lose. I plan for it to be over in less than 1 hour, with us victorious”

“Our ships are set up essentially like an old game of laser tag for this operation – It’ll appear we’re shooting each other, with ships surrendering when rendered virtually disabled. However, the emulation will take into account the full capabilities of the ship in question, it’s not a predetermined emulated power set”

“I have an experimental red masahirite crystal some of you may have encountered, which can be used to overclock the shield strength and beam damage of one ship in the fleet. I have something adapted from a UVP that we’re calling UVPherite, which can overload a ship’s power systems and increase their beams targeting range, and we’ve managed to restore a Jump Drive to working order, allowing a ship to jump up to 600 units across space instantly, rather than travelling at warp”

“The with our shields more robust, weapons stronger and useable at longer ranges, and the ability for our vessels to appear suddenly out of nowhere, we can give the Valiant fleet a pretty decent sense of what combat with UVPs is like”

“In terms of allies, I’ve been working to bolster our numbers beyond what Valiant expects. We’ve got the Terran Novans (space hippy farmers) and IMC (miners) to lend us a hand in the plan I’ve been concocting”

“Additionally, the Valiant Task Group don’t use shuttles as combat vessels, something we’re pretty great at taking advantage of here in the UCN, even when it means running a skeleton crew on the main ship bridge”

“The Valiant Task Group will have 3 Sword Class Cruisers, and we will have none, but I have a plan for this too”

“Some of you might remember Drake Byte, hacker for the Greyhat pirates. He’s the one who hacked the presidential election, casting all our votes for himself and forcing a recount. Rumours have been flying that we’ve had him locked up in the Warspite basement for months since against his will. The truth is we got him to flip, he’s been working for the UCN”

“Byte put a backdoor program into all of the Valiant cruisers ahead of today. There’s a 4 digit code, and it’ll change regularly, but if we can hack it we can open a comms channel to hack and disable the cruisers. That should take them off of the board”

So, the plan overall…

Our victory condition – Capture Syn Castellum, capture 5 points on a Syndicate Trade Route, capture Syn Xanadu (the local gambling and party capital), then defeat the Valiant itself.

All within 1 hour.

Red Watch on the Takanami would head to Castellum, ready to capture it. It would be defended by the three cruisers, but once they were hacked we would be clear to destroy them and take the base. We would need to stall until we received the command codes, take the base, then head over to Xanadu to assist in its capture.

The Warspite itself, and Gold Watch, would be handling getting the hacking codes. Additionally, they would be tackling Xanadu and the Valiant itself.

The Warspite would be taking the Jump Drive. The drive is slow to recharge, so the plan was they would take it for a test jump, do the maths to work out how far you travel per unit of jump power engaged, map out the distance to Xanadu, then make the leap there.

Xanadu is surrounded for this exercise by a huge number of mines. The warpspite will use the jump drive to leap right past the mines, behind the Valiant, and start attacking it from the rear before they have any time to react.

Xanadu itself could fire upon the Warspite, and its shields will make it difficult to take control of. We thankfully have someone on the inside. Casiopia Garotte, who I got onto our side with some sweet talking diplomacy during a performance of Spamlet (Space Hamlet), will talk Xanadu into lowering its defences right before the Jump. As far as she’s concerned this is all part of that “interactive immersive theatre” trend that we turned the final act of Spamlet into.

Additionally, we were going to try and get into Randolph’s head, rattle him a little.

We got one of the Warspite staff to dress up as a fake Marine. The plan was she would board the Valiant and fake an arrest of Dr Brown for alleged medical malpractice, right before the Jump attack. The hope is that this will leave Randolph a little too scattered to recognise what has happened when we jump behind him, and further delay his tactical response.

Blue Watch would take the Havoc, and handle capturing the trade route bases, nice and simple.

I took on the role of Comms and Navigation officer, with Bell as our Flight Controller. 

As comms, I was responsible for communication with the Terra Novan and IMC vessels joining us for the assault on the Sword Class cruisers. I would message them periodically to relay orders from Captain Rhydding.

We sent a number of probes from a distance toward the cruisers, transmitting that data to the Warspite, enabling them to begin work on the hack.

Once they were successful and we had word the cruisers were down I commanded the fleet to move in, decimating the cruisers and taking control swiftly of Castellan base.

The warspite successfully jumped past the valiant, while the havoc was clearing up their final objective. Everything was going incredibly smoothly.

We headed onward at warp toward Xanadu to assist with its capture, but it proved unnecessary. We completed the final objective. 

Two objectives would have been enough to win in 3 hours. We did all four in under 45 minutes.

We all headed back to the Warspite’s mess bar, ready for a celebratory drink. We patted ourselves on the back for some outside of the box thinking while up against the odds, and apologised to Dr Brown for staging her arrest.

Judith, the ship’s computer, announced that a Teleporter was materialising visitors. This was probably going to be Randolph and the Vice Admiral coming here to chew us out. Taylor pre-emptively stated he would take any heat for the plan.

It went worse than I anticipated.

“WHAT ON EARTH HAVE YOU DONE?!?!!” Shouted the vice admiral.

“This was meant to make everyone back home on earth feel safe. It was meant to be a show of force for the Valiant, and you completely embarrassed us”.

“YOU CHEATED!!! YOU BROKE ALL THE RULES, THAT WASN’T FAIR, YOU ONLY WON BY CHEATING!!!” screamed Randolph.

Randolph’s a sore loser, we didn’t break a single rule. We worked outside of the box, but didn’t actively break any rules.

“Randolph, you would know about cheating. You’re only in command because of who your parents are, you nepo baby” responded Taylor.

“SILENCE!” screamed the vice admiral. “I have decided that we will need to nullify the results of this wargame, and make plans for a retrial. This is not a victory for the Warspite. You will engage only in conventional tactics during the revised and official…”

Sirens began to blare out across the mess, and the lights in the room began to flash red.

“CODE OMEGA” shouted an officer. I knew from experience this meant a first contact scenario or associated threat was underway.

We ran over to the map, used previously to coordinate fleet troops during wargames, only to see countless UVPs registered on the map, moving out into neighbouring sectors.

Captain Athena Hamilton, a senior officer, had made contact from a patrol vessel. Potentially thousands of UVP vessels were spotted leaving The Barrens en masse, in numbers that absolutely dwarfed even the force we had encountered at Daedalus.

If I trusted anyone’s assessment of the scale of this threat, it was Hamilton, an officer I knew would not resort to hyperbole. They had been the first officer to personally encounter a rogue UVP the previous summer. It tore through the Falchion and its experienced crew like butter, leaving Hamilton shaken for some time.

If there’s any officer I respect, aspire to be like, and wish to be respected by in the UCN, it’s that stern but fair and supremely talented captain.

War was upon us. The time we had feared had arrived.

From our position near Xanadu it was going to take us more than 25 minutes at maximum warp to get to the frontline of the war, which was simply too long to wait. At that rate the UVPs would have time to spread incredibly fast and quickly conquer territory across the Adamas Belt. We were going to need the Vice Admiral’s permission to use the Jump Drive one more time to get the Warspite, plus docked Takanami and Havock, to the front lines ASAP. We would buy time while the rest of the fleet was mobilised and got into position.

Begrudgingly, the vice admiral gave us permission. She would need to use the teleporter to head back to earth and brief President Adebayo and Vice President Segretto, returning to us once earth’s politicians were up to speed on the developments.

Randolph slumped into a chair in the mess. He didn’t seem to know how to process what was happening. Perils of a leader without any actual combat out here experience I suppose.

Myself and the members of Red Watch were to stay here and strategise fleet movements, while Blue and Gold watches took out our two flagships to attempt to engage the enemy directly.

We were hurriedly given access to datapads with copies of the Adamas Battle Map, updates on live UVP and Fleet movements, and forms to request ship transfers between sectors. Most of the UCN fleet was still back at Xanadu, so we would need to get those ships moving as quickly as possible, as well as requesting operational control of vessels from our allied factions, to try and quickly establish a defensive perimeter to slow the spread of the alien threat.

A member of the IMC told us they refused to abandon any of their stations, they refused to be considered canon fodder in this defensive line formation.

I wracked my brain for a way to help, and decided to reach out to a couple of pirate factions I’d recently had decent diplomatic success with, Gobba’s Gang and the Darkstar pirates. In all honesty, these two factions were a big part of what motivated me to try and establish Letters of Marque for pirates in the first place.

Gobba’s Gang are easy to explain – They REALLY enjoy fighting, and blowing stuff up. If you tell them there’s a good fight, they’ll be there.

The Darkstars are a little more classified. What I can say is they are based in The Barrens themselves, and we were on decent terms with them.

I put in a request, and both factions jumped into the fray without so much as a moment’s hesitation. In this moment we were all united as humanity, there was no time to argue about alliances or quid pro quo arrangements.

As much of the general troop management was being effectively handled, I attempted to do what I do best, and look for opportunities to engage in diplomacy. 

I got a pretty good lead on that from Captain Taylor. 

Randolph was refusing to send any of the Valiant Task Group vessels into battle. If I could talk him into sending ships, we would have a far better chance of holding the line and stopping the UVP thread spreading too far out.

I didn’t take detailed notes during my diplomatic exchange with Randolph, but I can summarise the basics.

Randolph didn’t believe the scale of threat we were going to face was real. He assumed we were being hyperbolic.

Even if the threat was real, he refused to help after Taylor “embarrassed him” by beating him in wargames. Randolph is a deeply petty man.

Even if that were not the case, he argued that the people of the Adamas Belt are strangers. Why should he risk the lives of people he knows for strangers and civilians out here in space.

Without his signature, none of his ships were going to move.

In terms of making the threat seem real, I opened by explaining that the tactics we’d used in wargames were based on UVP tactics. As unfair as they had felt, the war ahead was going to feel equally unfair.

I then took the patch off my arm, the memorial patch for Zyzyx Furlong, and explained my experience during Daedalus. I told him about my first hand experience fighting this threat, and what it was like desperately trying to save the life of an officer I deeply admired while facing a threat there was no hope of us defeating.

Zyzyx wore our campaign crew’s patch on his uniform until the day he died.

I asked Randolph “Do I look like I am lying, or mistaken, about the scale of this threat?”

“No. I do believe you saw what you are describing”

Something here shifted in him, just a little.

“Lt Cmdr, how do I send my men to face a threat that will slaughter them? You faced them and lost lives, how do you live with yourself not being able to keep them safe?”

“You make the tactical decision that will save the most lives in the moment, mourn losses, then push to minimise the losses we face tomorrow”

After a pause, Randolph approved four ships from his fleet to join the fight. It was far from his full batch of 10, but it was a start.

As the battle progressed I returned to him, taking a different tactic. I tried playing into his superiority complex.

“Randolph, I don’t know if you heard, but both Gobba’s Gang and The Darkstars committed their entire fleets to the war effort, without even a second thought. Imagine that, pirates fully committing to the war”.

“Remind me Randolph, how many of your ships have so far deployed to the frontline?”

The sheer number of expressions that passed over Randolph’s face in a few short seconds was a sight to behold.

“Fine, have the rest of the Valiant fleet, but the Valiant itself stays safe back at Xanadu, it’s my pride and joy, I will not lose it”

Getting most of the fleet was a decent accomplishment. It wasn’t enough though. The Valiant is one of the two most powerful UCN ships available, a sword class ship comparable to the Warspite. We needed it to join the fight.

Around this time a shout rang out across the Warspite, as the two roaming crews arrived back to resupply.

“We’ve just received word that Hamilton has been Kidnapped from the Falchion by UVPs. The Falchion itself is destroyed, and we don’t yet have casualty numbers, we are waiting and hoping for shuttles to have escaped”

The whole Warspite fell into silence.

“The creatures boarded the Falchion and spoke. For the first time they spoke. They demanded we hand over Oz Wilcox. Hamilton stepped forward as captain, pretending to be Oz, and was led away”.

Well, this does confirm these aliens understand and can speak human language. I guess that’s good, diplomacy is technically possible with them. It does however confirm they have been actively ignoring our attempts at Diplomacy for multiple months, and that they have been collecting information on our crews. This is an issue, it shows that have zero interest presently in a peaceful solution, and have been better than us at information gathering pre conflict.

They seem to know more about us than we do about them.

I briefly wondered why they had wanted to take Oz, but was quickly rushed back to war room diplomacy. I’ll explain who Oz is and why they might be important a little later in this mission log.

We had the ship’s IFF signature, AIXAIY_^JAX. If we saw it, we would need to jump into pursuit.

Around this time I was pulled aside by the Vice Admiral, who had just returned, and Captain Taylor. Taylor had a proposal for the Vice Admiral.

“Come to the war table, and publicly demand to know why the Valiant isn’t yet part of the fight. Randolph won’t be able to resist pretending I’m at fault. Act like you believe him. Take away my command, and put the entire fleet under his control”

“What, why?”

“Randolph will never let me issue orders to the Valiant. If he’s in charge of the fleet, and can dispatch the Valiant to make me look bad, he’ll do it”

After some pushback, the vice admiral agreed.

The plan went off exactly as expected. Randolph took the bait, and was given charge of the fleet.

Taylor was allowed to remain ship level captain. He was selected to helm the Havoc in pursuit of Hamilton’s kidnappers.

Taylor looked at me, and asked if I would be his XO, second in command, on this rescue mission. I said yes in a heartbeat. 

Taylor is an absolutely legendary figure within the UCN. He’s survived wars, tried his hand at basically every discipline out there, and remains pleasant and caring through it all. He was the one to push for my promotion to Lt Cmdr, and the one to talk me through the loss of Zyzyx at Daedalus. I’d never had a chance to serve under his direct command before, much less as his XO, so I leapt at the opportunity.

Taylor tasked me with documenting the rescue attempt, and attempting to theorise what I could about our current situation.

Notable observations – Many UVP vessels had been choosing to ignore engaging with us on recent deployments, suggesting there was a targeted decision to wait for this one overwhelming assault.

There are transmitters all around the newly UVP controlled areas that look like metal exoskeletons of dead space squids. They seem to act as beacons, perhaps enabling the opening of wormholes for UVPs to traverse through. Destroying them seems advisable.

If they’ve kidnapped one officer, there’s no reason to believe they’ll stop there. We’re going to need to consider this a tactic of concern in the war ahead.

Why did they want Oz? Well, it might be because she has experience as a stellar cartographer. Earth is 22 light years away from the Adamas Belt, if their goal in all this involves earth, an officer who knows how to plot a course to earth would be a valuable target.

They have enough intel on us to know Oz is a stellar cartographer, but not enough to know Hamilton isn’t Oz. Did they lack access to images? Do we all look alike to this species?

What will they do if and when they realise Hamilton isn’t Oz?

As I was taking these notes, our Radar officer finally noticed a UVP with a human lifesign aboard. Presumably this was Hamilton. We pursued at warp, doing everything we could not to lose sight of it.

Unfortunately, we were too late. It passed through a wormhole, along with countless other UVP vessels.

From all accounts, our ships will get torn to shreds by conditions on the other side of the wormhole. We could not continue our pursuit.

Upon returning to the Warspite, we were told to return to the war table. We had received a video message from a UVP vessel.

What we saw next was worse than anyone could have predicted.

Hamilton, their face altered with technological components, staring glassy eyed at the camera.

“I am the herald of the end of your civilization. You will surrender, or your species will be annihilated”

“You have one rotation of your home planet to decide. Your warlord must be the one to choose”

That was it. Message received. True first contact, their first communication effort with us, and it was to declare that war was a mere 24 hours away, if President Adebayo refused to surrender.

The Vice Admiral stated she would pass this message on to the President. She expected he would refuse to surrender.

“Taylor, your methods may be unorthodox, but right now that’s what we need. I am temporarily promoting you to the position of Commodore, as part of the war effort to come”

She then leaned in and whispered “I can make you a commodore, but not everyone will want to let you keep the position”.

I briefly caught the Vice Admiral before she left, and made my plea for the introduction of Letters of Marque. I pointed out the great help the pirates had been, and that they’d leapt to our defense faster than Randalph.

She told me to formally submit the proposal, but that she would give it proper consideration given the circumstances.

(Of note, in the week that followed, I got word that the admiralty had held a meeting about the proposal, as well as asking for detailed information on various pirate factions, as well as information on myself and my fellow co-signatory on the proposal).

With war likely less than 24 hours away I tried to think about new diplomatic approaches that might be open to us with the UVPs.

We know they want Oz / a route to earth – Could we promise that, not intending to deliver, to get them to a negotiating table in the hopes they let something slip? Probably not, but maybe. 

I stopped trying to think like a diplomat. The Odin and the Falchion were both destroyed, we’d lost high numbers of crew already, and this upcoming 24 hours was likely going to be the last bit of quiet UCN officers would experience for the immediate future.

I had a stiff drink, went home, and got some sleep. It was the last uninterrupted night’s sleep I would have for the foreseeable future.