Crayter Military Reporting Facility

[Panzer]

At 22:03GMT, Listening posts in T-23 detected a possible royal contatc estimated by virtue of its characteristics as a Royal mining vessel. The Raphia immediately deployed to investigate, with a bomber piloted by WO Smilovich supporting. We moved first towards Indochine, after which, we made a turn towards the berylium field, hoping to find a mining ship far from safe harbor. We encountered the enemy mining ship in the nick of time, as it was making best speed for Indochine, full of recently-mined ore. We intercepted and stopped it about halfway to its destination, which was fortunately far enough to make his survival unlikely. A standard demand has been transmitted, the enemy crew complied and upon relinquishing its haul, moved away without incident. Taking a minor risk, since retaliation from T23's garrison is awlays to be expected - the local utility ship flotilla dispathed one celestra to seize and liquify the captured cargo, unfortunately it only had the capacity to pick up little over half of it, the remainder had to be destroyed to prevent recapture. As per Smilovich's satement and that of the merchant captain, the ore ended up delivered to planet Pittsburgh and sold after an uneventful journey.

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