The Torment

[Torment]

INS-Torment

CAPTAINS LOG - Entry #7: Commandeering
Date: July 16th, 827 A.S.

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It has been roughly a month since my last entry, when the Torment was deployed to the Magellan system. As ordered, we have been hitting the supply lines coming through the system, seizing what military hardware and supplies we can. I must confess I was surprised by how smoothly it went at first, I guess Liberty was more caught off guard by the assault on Willard than I originally expected. The convoys we ran in at first had some minimal protection; enough for fighting off potential pirates easily enough, but not a planned military strike.

The Insurgency sends the occasional freighters to come collect what we've gathered and take it back to be redistributed in Vespucci, a good chunk of the fleet was damaged during the Bering assault and following events, so the supplies help speed up the repairs nicely. After the first two weeks however things started to heat up; they started using heavier assets as escorts for the convoys and soon our fighter wings were facing gunboats instead of lighter fight craft. We lost Ramirez that day. This turn of events put me in a difficult position; do I engage with the Torment and take out the gunboats, but reveal such a heavy asset was in the system, or do I trust that the fighters will manage to break off and get back safely?

In the end the mission was what mattered most, we needed supplies and if Liberty found out they were dealing with the Torment rather than an organized group of fighter pilots, we could be sure that the next convoy would have even deadlier escorts, or worse, they might send out part of their fleet to take us down. As such I had little choice but to monitor the comms and instruct the pilots to come back under the cover of the Wendell Ice Field.

Having experienced the bitter taste of our first defeat, I called a meeting with my senior staff to discuss our options going forward. It was clear a new strategy would be needed.
Utilizing The Barrier wasn't much of an option unfortunately; the field has a decent Lane Hacker presence and while they generally left us alone we didn't particularly feel interested in dividing the spoils for their potential assistance. In the end we decided to go with a more...creative approach. The Magellan system is littered with wrecks from the Gallic war, abandoned and gathering space dust. Our fighters towed one near the lanes and lined it up with explosives before causing a brief disruption in the lane.

It wasn't a pretty sight, and it was far from what I would call a heroic engagement. We waited for escorts to clear the wreckage so they could continue on with the trade lane and once they got close enough, we triggered the explosions. It wasn't enough to clear them out, but it definitely softened them up enough so the fighter wings that had been hiding could swoop in and finish the job.

It seems we sometimes have to do things we're not proud of in order to serve the greater good.

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