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’ll start this mission log by discussing the events that took place in the 24 hours immediately following Corrupted Hamilton’s declaration of war against humanity.

The vice admiral went to earth and briefed President Adebayo and Vice President Segretto on the events that followed Wargames – The kickoff of war, the kidnapping of a UCN officer, and the attempt to create a defensive perimeter to prevent the spread of the alien threat.

As the 24 hour countdown came to an end Adebayo issued a video statement globally, to both the UCN and the civilian population back on Earth.

Put simply, the official answer was that we were not surrendering. We were obviously open to peace, but if forced we would engage in war.

This also served as, outside of the UCN and Adamas Belt factions, the moment the rest of humanity learned of the existence of non-human lifeforms.

I tried to keep my head down and focus on work. I didn’t pay any attention to social media or the news, I honestly wasn’t ready to think about how everyone back home was handling the revelation that our official first contact came alongside the news of intergalactic warfare. It felt like that would be a distraction from the task at hand.

The response by the UVP fleet was swift. Once our response was issued, the UVP fleet which had thus far felt fairly well contained, began to push at its borders, testing the strength of our defensive line. Areas we thought were well defended became contested territory, and many of the first battles that took place along the border territories were won by the alien aggressors.

One of the few early wins for humanity was a battle won by Gobba’s Gang. Again, pirates securing one of our first victories in this war would hopefully strengthen my argument to the admiralty that we should be introducing Letters of Marque to formalise some alliances with pirate factions during the upcoming war effort.

For a day or so the frontline was held by fulltime UCN crews. The first day visiting crew members were able to sign up to help on the frontline I made sure I was there. I wanted to understand what kind of threat we were up against, and hopefully settle some of my nerves about how bad things were around the centre of the belt.

In the Warspite mess I spotted Oz Wilcox, who had definitely undergone a change of aesthetic since the events that transpired a few days prior. Now she wore a long leather trenchcoat over her official uniform, definitely not a sign she was dealing with some angsty emotions. It really did read from the outside like she maybe felt guilty Hamilton was kidnapped in her place, and she’s not necessarily ready to deal with those feelings in any way but fashion statements.

I attempted to pry into what was up, but struggled to get a solid answer.

Our crew for this mission, setting out on the Havock around 7pm, consisted of 3 senior officers and 4 ensigns, 3 of whom had never served with the UCN before today. Presumably inspired to enlist to help with the war effort, I did my best to get them up to speed on the nature of the war, ahead of being sent to the briefing room.

The crew sent in before us, earlier in the day, had been tasked with attempting to carve a path through UVP controlled space, from the west of the map to the east, along the lower edge of the UVP control line. Most of our troops were locked on the West, with facilities on the east basically completely unprotected.

The crew were seemingly successful in retaking the final sector of the path, leaving us free to focus on other strategic control points for our deployment.

While usually our mission briefings as part of the UCN begin with a message from President Adebayo about the optimistic hopeful nature of space exploration for the benefit of fuel collection, today’s Frontline mission began instead with a video introduction from Vice President Segretto. This makes sense, his primary role in the combined government is military strategy or something of that nature.

He said something like “I thank you all for being willing to serve. We need an array of people and cultures working together now as allies. Humanity as a whole faces this threat, and must stand together on the frontline of this war”.

It was a bit predictable and generic, but it’s the least annoyed I’ve ever been listening to the man speak. I suppose giving him a script does wonders for keeping him from putting his foot in his mouth.

Jumping to the mission briefing itself, we would be heading to sector 08-04 on the galactic map, Horizon.

Horizon is an IMC mining facility, mining and refining Gravium used as fuel across the entire Adamas belt. It’s one of our primary producers and collectors of the substance, and the theoretical start of a supply line. It’s also incredibly close to the current edge of UVP controlled space, and was under attack presently.

We would be joined by a vessel named the Katana from the Valiant Task Group, and tasked with defending both the Horizon mining and refinery stations. If we could not succeed in those aims, our backup goal was to at minimum allow a final shipment of refined gravium to safely escape Horizon, to buy the fleet time to recover the base.

In a perfect world, we would bring Horizon from contested status back into allied control

Expect strong UVP resistance.

I took on the role of missile officer, alongside a first time recruit on our beam weapons desk. 

If you know anything about me and my service record with the UCN, you’ll know I don’t typically serve in weapons desk positions – I served on weapons once early in my career to earn my Generalist commendation, but typically prefer other positions on the bridge when given my choice of roles. I enjoy positions on the ship that allow me opportunities to speak to others, at my heart I’m a diplomat through and through. I love serving as Captain or XO on missions, with Comms Officer as a second choice role. Failing that, I sometimes volunteer to handle Navigation simply because it’s a role with plenty of downtime, allowing for opportunities to leave my desk and talk to visitors aboard the ship. If I take on a combat role it’s usually Dock and Drone, as I enjoy having a fleet of smaller ships at my disposal, and being able to help out engineering in a pinch by depowering one of my drones to keep the main ship up and running.

My assignment on missiles this mission was in part practical, allowing our new recruits first pick of positions. In part it allowed me to support our new beam officer. In part I knew I’d get the best sense of the combat threat posed by the newly emboldened UVPs from a direct combat position on crew.

I’ve been deployed on military missions in the past, and sometimes they have involved fighting UVPs. Usually not from moment one, generally we’re off fighting pirates first and UVPs come in to attack when we’re weak from handling other hostiles. This frontline mission was different, the UVP threat was instantly present and threatening from moment one.

We arrived at Horizon to find it already under fire, with multiple UVP swarms attacking multiple targets. We contacted the IMC flight controller at the base and asked where they wanted us most – They asked us to focus on protecting one refinery to the south, at no point leaving it undefended unless directly requested to lend assistance.

As wave after wave of UVPs approached our defensive target, we noticed them not only swarming in larger numbers than we were used to, but additionally engaging new tactics. Some UVPs were racing right past the Havoc for example, attempting to lodge their ships directly into the base’s shielding. I cannot be certain how they managed it, but they were able to get a couple of their ships so deep past the IMC shield that they were able to fire on the base essentially unharmed.

We had to take a risk to take them down, which in this case involved dropping mines that were strong enough to take out the embedded ships, but also severely damaged the base’s shields at the same time. This was not a safe plan to repeat, so we would need to focus on shooting these ships down before they could embed themselves past the protective barrier again.

In moments of rare downtime we attempted to explore, venturing out following signals picked up by radar. We were able to find a number of UVP beacons and destroy them, hopefully weakening the UVP’s ability to pop back up in the same sector soon.

We also attempted to lend assistance at the main Gravium Mine, but any time we attempted to give the fleet our support more UVPs would swarm the refinery, quickly demanding our attention.

I’ve experienced combat heavy deployments before, but I think this is the most UVPs I’ve seen in a single deployment since Daedalus. The numbers were staggering.

If this war becomes a war of attrition, I don’t know if we can win. The issue isn’t going to be tomorrow, this week, or even this month, but a year or more from now I fear we will have run out of usable ships, while the UVPs continue to replace any ship we destroy as though it is nothing.

We are going to, at some point, need a better plan than this.

During the battle I continued to support our new Beam officer with education, both in ways they could use their console (targeting specific subsystems etc), and the history that led to the fight we were being wrapped into.

At one point we took a break from protecting the refinery to protect a slow moving gravium transport ship, to ensure at least one more shipment made it out of the sector. We were successful, but did have to go and rescue a member of the IMC who had been left behind by his crew rather than being allowed to escape on one of the evacuation ships. It’s unclear why he was left behind, but we rescued him regardless.

He was a huge help in assisting our navigation officer ensign, and in keeping an experienced eye on which targets in the area most urgently needed defending.

At one point in the battle we ran entirely out of power, briefly becoming sitting ducks in the face of a huge UVP battleship. They had no shields and around 2% hull remaining, with their maneuvering disabled. They could not turn, and we could not fire our weapons. We were entirely out of missiles, and didn’t have access to the shuttle to cannibalise for spare power. 

It was a tense moment that likely didn’t last more than 30 seconds or so, but in the moment it felt like several minutes passed in full darkness before we recovered enough energy to fire off the final couple of shots and take the final UVP down.

By the time we eventually pushed back the UVP threat, everyone on the crew was exhausted, from Ensign to Lt Cmdr. It had been non stop from start to finish, with the risk of losing access to Gravium mining and production a genuine threat. The tension was ever present, but we kept every possible piece of infrastructure protected from the onslaught.

We went back to the Warspite for a debrief, where we got confirmation that we’d successfully managed to turn Horizon from a contested region of space to one fully IMC controlled. This would, for the time being, allow enough Gravium mining and refining to keep the battle fleet well supplied for the foreseeable future.

We were also asked to speculate on the tactics used by UVPs during the battle. I hadn’t really stopped to consider it in the moment, but thinking for a moment it became obvious that UVP vessels during this assault had frequently flown close enough to get into view on our sensors, then waited a while at that distance before approaching to attack us. This is uncommon behaviour, and felt notable. Our best guess is that they were taking a moment to assess our capabilities and test our tactics or behaviour before each assault.

The fact they felt relaxed enough to do tactical assessment before each push against us suggests a degree of forward planning for the big picture of the war, one that I don’t think the UCN is broadly engaging in response yet.

Beyond that, why Horizon as a target? The obvious answer would be because they know that Gravium is important to us and our side of the war effort. They might have been trying to stop us producing it to slow us down, or taking over production to benefit themselves in some manner.

There’s also the possibility they have a reason to desire Gravium, or the location of Horizon, that we’re not yet considering.

Regardless, we noted our speculation and took a short break in the mess. We were about to head out on the day’s second deployment, and it was noted that a little rest and recovery before redeployment was advisable.