Shakedown
A new captain. A first command. A vessel that refuses every protocol.
Marcus Cole is field-promoted to captain when Commander Elara Vasquez's diagnosis forces her retirement on Day 19 of ISV Resolute's first deployment. The mission: survey Junction 44-K, a geometrically anomalous sub-junction flagged by ISCA Temporal Intelligence. What the crew finds: two Splinter vessels stationed at the junction. Protective protocol. First engagement.
Ensign Aditya Khatri is killed in the climax engagement on Day 116. Marcus violates protocol to save the crew. Geneva reprimands him. The crew trusts him.
Era
2192 – 2193
Series
Book One of The Long Watch
Price
Kindle Unlimited
Who you’ll meet
Artefacts from this book
The archive →In-universe records, blueprints, and documents drawn from Shakedown — the institutional paper trail behind the story.
Directorate Order 2192/07-G-441 — The Rank of Captain
M. Cole
The Geneva order that created the grade of Captain — effective at one man's signature, on Day 19 of the Resolute's first deployment. Before it, the chair held a Commander.
ISV Resolute — Blueprint
Exploration-class vessel. First of class. Houston Interstellar Yards. A 312-metre needle built around a forward 84-metre harmonic array, four secondary arrays at the quarter-points.
ISV Resolute — Engagement Report: Junction 44-K
H. Whitfield
The first engagement. A new captain breaks protocol to save his crew, and an ensign chooses to die so the ship lives. The board reprimands him. The crew never forgets.
ISV Resolute — Transfer of Command
E. Vasquez
"The Resolute is yours. Walk her slowly." The handover that retired a Commander and made the first Captain.
Unidentified Combatant — Sensor Reconstruction
ISCA-TI Sensor Section
The first sustained sensor return on the hostile at Junction 44-K — six seconds of usable data, and a reconstruction that is mostly the shape of what the instruments could not resolve. Filed because protocol requires a file, not because the file answers anything.