Benedict Arnaud

[tazuras]

Hugues Blanc walked quickly down the corridors of the Battleship Guillestre. The tapping of his highly polished boots on the corrugated floor echoed ahead of him, filling the empty space. It being the middle of the night the passageways were relatively empty. Ensign Blanc reached the lift and selected the hangar level.

Hughes had recently received a posting on the Guillestre after graduating from the Gallic Royal Navy Academy on New Paris with very high marks. He had hoped for a position on a battleship that was not assigned to permanent guard duty, as this would have allowed him to fight for his king against the council dogs who were trying to dethrone the king in their selfish vie for power, but instead this is where he ended up, as the chief of operations for the third rotation on a ship with a mission of boredom.

After spending only three weeks aboard the Guillestre, Hugues became painfully aware that this was not the Gallic Navy he had expected. Discipline was lax and the crew was lazy. If this was New Paris they would have all felt the touch of a pain baton, one of the instructors’ favorite disciplinary tools, more than once...

Guillaume Pelay was no exception to this. Guillaume was the dock master of the third rotation aboard the Guillestre. He was frequently known to have a bottle of wine with him inside the docking bay control cabin, which he consumed as the night passed by. Often this led to him losing consciousness before the end of his watch and failing to respond to Hugues requests for status reports. Five minutes ago Gillaume had failed to respond, once again, and this time Hugues decided go down to the docking bay personally and ‘remind him’ of his duties.

The door to the lift opened. Hugues stepped out into the docking bay, despite the fact that it was the third rotation there were still several maintenance crews bustling about, attending to the Guillestre’s compliment of fighters and bombers.

”Gillaume, what do you think you are doing!?” Hugues growled as he entered the control cabin. To his surprise Gillaume was not there.

Hugues stepped outside of the control cabin and called to the nearest deckhand, “Crewman, do you know where Ensign Pelay is?”

“Non Sire, I thought he was in the control cabin”

Hugues looked back into the control cabin and noticed the door to the supply compartment. Perhaps he decided to pass out someplace more private this time Hueghes thought to himself. He flung the door open, and there lying at his feet, unconscious, bound and gagged was Gillaume.

Hueghes rushed to the intercom, ”Crew chief, I want visual confirmation of every ship in this hangar, IMMDEDIATELY!”

As the crew began to shout off the name of the ship in every bay a pit began to form in Hueghe’s stomach. When the last three bays were called out as empty, his head dropped to his chest. Three heavy fighters, missing...



//The purpose of this thread is to provide context for the upcoming event, please only post here if invited.

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