I'm quite confident most of you have heard the news if not participated in it, but I was entrusted by Herr Weissman to write a report of the occasion. This night was nothing I've ever seen. I have fought against the Libertonians over numerous occasions, some of them even in Hamburg, but it is definitely not the same when they have a whole battlefleet on our doorsteps.
I was off duty when the situation erupted, walking down the streets of Hamburg to find an open pu... I mean a shop. The streets were dark, there were barely any people to be seen out in the cold evening. Good thing I had my temperature-contolled Military coat still on, so didn't freeze to death. All of a sudden, I heard something I never heard before. The Hamburg Planetary Alarm went off. The Rathaus started broadcasting on all loudspeakers ordering the civilians to get to their homes and the Military personell to get to their positions. I was lucky that an APC came by carrying a squad of Sturmtruppen to the Base and the Feldwebel in charge offered to take me along since "pilots were more important in defence" as he phrased it.
Fortunately, I got to the launch pad just in time, but I still had no idea what was going on. There were soldiers and technicans running all around shouting in the comms and at each other, I was trying to reach a CO, but noone responded until Oberfeldwebel Weissman caught me on the comm channel. He quickly told me that a Libertonian battlegroup was spotted on the edge of the system and we were to intercept. I immediately ordered a deck officer to prepare my Snubnose for launch and I got out to the planet's orbit in a minute.
I'm afraid that I have to say the whole situation was anarchic at the beginning. Fighters, cruisers, battleships and even civilian vessels were flying in random directions all around Hamburg, some of them almost even collide with each other. The Libertonians have jammed our communications, we couldn't reach any officers or commanders, so we were left in space with a huge reserve division to control for Oberfeldwebel Weissman, who was in charge.
However, the surprise didn't last long. The Oberfelwebel ordered all ships to proceed to Westfalen in order to be prepared to counter the enemy threat while he tried to negotiate with the Libertonians. He asked them to leave, but the enemy vessels didn't show the slightest intention to do so. They were claiming to retaliate their lost comrades in the raid we pulled off earlier, but they should have learned a lesson from their losses and stayed away.
The negotiations didn't go well, the Libertonians kept pulling in more vessels instead of leaving our Vaterland, so Herr Weissman ordered us to take the trade lane to the Hudson gate, since the enemy ships started gathering a few clicks away from that particular position. My worried and uncomfortable mood quickly switched to rage as I spotted the three Battlecruisers and two Siege cruisers infesting our Vaterland. The capital ships were escorted by one-two gunboats and a remarkably low fighter escort, which consisted merely of two ships (probably two defenders, but I couldn't analise them during the engagement). Some of the Libertonian ships started to flee as soon as they spotted our incoming defence fleet, a gunboat designated as LNS Orlando was the only one I could register.
I have to admit, we were all a bit trigger happy and it almost ended up bad. Most of our ships (mainly the reserve pilots) were looking to grind them up and I was to destroy them before they get more reinforcements aswell. The captain of the RNC Oderschvank kept shouting "Attack! Attack!" on the comms channel, which almost ended up with the loss of the ship. Herr Weissman gave us the go code, but everyone was making a slow approach while the Oderschvank charged onto the enemy with cruise engines. Herr Weissman ordered the captain of the cruiser to cut the cruise engines, but it was too late. The ship was immediately fired upon by the enemy capital ships and was very heavily damaged. Thanks to the skill of the other pilots, the bomber squad quickly caught up and unleashed the real firestorm at the enemy vessels. The reserve pilots were a bit hard to be ordered to focus, so they mainly served as diversion while our bomber squad consistant of Herr Weissman, me and Herr Hauptgefreiter Drum kept the enemy vessels under continued Antimatter bombardment. The RNC Nagold and the battleship RNC Stormholm also caused heavy damage to the enemy vessels with their mortar fire, aiding the bomber squad in their work. Fortunately enough, the enemy vessels didn't seem to focus fire at all, they were shooting randomly at our ships, therefore failing to cause any sufficient damage after our bombers hit them.
The strike craft's first target was the LNS Columbia. For some reason, the RNC Oderschvank started shooting at the Battlecruiser designated as SLICE. Despite that, we managed to cause heavy damage to the Columbia's hull while using the disarray and surprise we caused, the RNC Stormholm got close and finished the job with Mortar fire. The bomber squad was ordered afterwards to focus on the SLICE, while the capital ships split fire on the other enemy capitals. Two siege cruisers, the Paulsurfer and the LNS Denver were destroyed successfully before we finished the SLICE up. The Vallu, another siege cruiser and the Furious Absolution, a LABC were the last ones to be taken down before the Libertonians started to retreat. I told the men not to pursue them so that they can tell back at home how they failed at their task, but Herr Drum and some reserve pilots pursued the Piipu and destroyed it before it got out of the system. The other ship, the Konah was shot down by our ships aswell.
The whole battle lasted for no more than a few minutes. The Military was completely victorious against the invaders. The LNS Orlando, a gunboat was the only one to get away, but it stayed in the system to taunt us afterward. We were to ignore him and returned to our stations to go off duty. There was a smaller celebration following the event, we drank on Herr Weissman for being a successful leader and the rest for being wunderbar pilots. Special thanks goes to the members of the reserve fleet, it would have been harder without them.
Quote:Here's a complete list of participants in the action:
Today, we joined sides with the Bretonia Armed Forces to purge the Omega border systems of Corsair presence. The Omega Pirates Guild and their supporters have put a tough fight up, but we managed to hold our ground, while both inflicting and suffering large amounts of damage in the prolonged firefight. The reinforcements kept pushing in from both sides, so the fight never seemed to be even close to the end.
I started my patrol with taking off from Planet Hamburg. Admiral Engels called into the barracks that Corsair marauders were looting Republican ships in the Omega-7 system, so we were told to the intercept at once. Me and Gefreiter R?sdorf responded first, the meeting point was first placed to Bonn, but we were to reposition to Omega-7 before we could meet each other.
We were too late to catch the Corsair ships red handed. We searched throughout Omega-7, but all signs indicated that the pirate vessels have relocated to Omega-3, to Bretonian territory. Of course, we couldn't allow them to escape unpunished for the destruction of Rheinland property and the potential to do even further damage, so we contacted the Bretonian Armed Forces for permission to pursue the enemy ships. Lieutenant Commander McDonald responded us and gave permission to pursue the enemy forces into Bretonian space, so we immediately jumped to Omega-3 to prosecute the pirates.
The search didn't last long. As soon as we made our jump, we spotted two Titan-class vessels belonging to the Omega Pirates Guild waiting for a catch right near the gate. Scourge Grimly and Marauder CURIOS were surprised to see the Military pursuing them into Bretonia and they didn't seem to listen to us instructing them to return to wherever they belong or face the punishment. In fact, they started calling in backup, the system-wide communication channels indicated that well enough. The responding vessel's identification seemed to match that of Scourge Karolis, another OPG member, who as it later turned out, wasn't the only one in the area.
Admiral Engels ordered us to open fire before the Corsair reinforcements were to hit the area. My guns were already charged, we started to rain fire on the enemy targets. Unfortunately, we couldn't catch them before the first wave of enemy reinforcements, Karolis and Scourge Mate Krushak entered the area to assist the other two OPG pirates. We were first to target the pirates not yet warmed up, we started to get on Krushak's tail, but we didn't manage to cause any remarkable damage despite bringing his shields down a bit. The enemy, however opened fire on Gefreiter R?sdorf, who unfortunately couldn't evade the concentrated enemy fire and had to eject his ship before being destroyed.
Two of us were left again, and the enemy vessels started to focus fire on me. I managed to evade until the reinforcements, reserve pilot Fridrich Heinz and the HMS Cornwall, an Armed Forces gunboat arrived to aid us. More reinforcements, Vize Admiral Chezberger and Vize Admiral Krupinski were on the way, but they arrived too late to save his Majesty's gunboat. Reserve pilot Heinz tractored the escape pods of the Bretonian crew, but I'm afraid some of them could have fallen victim to the explosion or tractored in by the Omega Pirates.
More reinforcements kept flowing in from both sides and the battle was getting really serious and large scale. Feldwebel Duncan Werden and a reserve pilot, Ritter Von Habsburg arrived with the RNC Stormholm, a reserve Battleship in their company after neutralizing a Hessian gunboat of some sort in Omega-7. At the same time, Marauder Vega and an independent Corsair gunboat, the Imperium arrived. The latter was quickly destroyed, as we already had a sufficient amount of bombers on the battlefield.
The third wave of Omega Pirate reinforcements was cut with the assistance of BAF forces, that arrived only so late, because they were occupied on the Leeds front by yet another Corsair assault crew. As it later turned out, our operation succeeded in disrupting a major attack planned against the House of Bretonia. The Sarissa, an OPG gunboat was relatively quickly brought down, Admiral Redmond from the BAF managed to score the final hits.
In the following few ten minutes, we lost Hans Kruger (a reserve gunboat with incredibely lacking combat skills and the total failure to follow orders) and reserve pilot Friedrich Heinz (we managed to acquire his escape pod) while heavily damaging CURIOS, one of the enemy titans, forcing him to retreat. We noticed that the enemy ships were concentrating fire on the RNC Stormholm, even though our Battleship didn't open fire because of the danger that he'd hit our Military pilots. A few minutes afterwards, we noticed why they were doing so. The enemy vessels were trying to cripple our battleship while their Legate, the Iron Maiden got into firing range. The Stormholm and the RM-BAF bomber squadron managed to bring the monstrosity down with relative ease, the Stormholm hardly even suffered damage, since the enemy Dred was targetting the bombers. Unfortunately, Feldwebel Werden was caught in the blast, but we managed to recover his escape pod.
Another enemy gunboat, an Imperator belonging to Rin Tosaka, an OPG Marauder arrived on the scene and was brought down just as quickly. I even managed to salvage about ten nanobots from the ship's wreckage, which didn't last long since another handful of enemy fighters got onto my tail again. The crippled OPG ships called in a repair ship, the Ivan into the field to resupply the pirates, it was some sort of upgraded one, as the ship's engines were too fast even to be caught by a fighter class vessel.
While our forces were attempting to take the Ivan out, I somehow got drifted away from the battle and found myself in a one-on-one dogfight with Marauder Diego del Torro. I believe I had the upper hand as I managed to bring the enemy vessel's shields down and damage his hull, which led him to give himself a shot of shield batteries to restore his defence mechanisms. Either because the ship noticed I outmached him or because he was called by his superiors, the Titan went back to the main battle with me on his tail.
The battle didn't last long afterwards. Vessels fled, disengaged or were malfunctioning, eventually no more than 5-6 ships were left on the battlefield, shooting at each other. Admiral Engels had a major engine malfunction, so he had to return to base while he could, so Vize Admiral Chezberger ordered us to pull out, since we managed to cause enough damage to the Omega Pirates as it is and one thing certain drove them out of Omega-3. The Bretonian authorities were thankful for our help and in turn. I flew back to Karlsruhe with Herr Chezberger and fell to a barracks room in my exhaustion. It was the 30th already when I arrived, it was a great battle indeed.
Quote:Here's a complete list of participants in the action:
The day's patrols began like any other, I took off from Planet Hamburg and since the trader traffic was remarkably low, I decided to patrol Rheinland space. I patrolled New Berlin, but didn't spot anything remarkable until I reached the Frankfurt gate with the intention to continue the patrol in Frankfurt.
As soon as I reached the gate, my sensors detected a smaller energy anomaly from within the system, although the signal was faint, I was quite sure it was indicating a ship blowing up. A few seconds afterwards, another followed, so I decided to check it out. I turned around to patrol the system again with all jump gates included, a reserve pilot, Fridrich Heinz joined me on my route.
Our target, a Hessian bomber piloted by Frank Mueller was spotted near the Dresden gate. Debris were drifting around the area, my quick scans indicated that at least one of the vessels destroyed was a Rheinwehr Wraith class. The pilot admitted destroying a Military ship and he was intending to do the same to me, with weapons powered up, he started shooting at me, while reserve pilot Heinz continued his patrol to Dresden.
The Hessian was obviously some kind of officer or ace. He was already damaged by the ships he destroyed earlier and I quickly drained his remaining nanobots and shield batteries, but then the situation was getting dire. He managed to both shoot and evade well, his combat performence was remarkable. Fortunately enough, none of his SNAC projectiles hit me, that was because of my evasion skills rather than his disablity to aim.
The fight lasted for about 30-40 minutes and we both grew tired, not to mention a slight ion storm that erupted in the meantime. I managed to burn his ship up, while he shot one of my Hornvipers off, making him even a tougher one to damage. Right before my final shot, the terrorist rammed the RNC Leverkusen, a reserve gunboat standing idly to watch the fight and the Thor was perished in the crash. In the meantime, reserve pilot Heinz destroyed some Outcast, I didn't pay attention to the details.
Unfortunately enough, I couldn't return to the barracks to have some rest. Just as I landed, Heinz called me again informing me that he spotted seven rebel ships at the Bonn-Stuttgart trade lane. They were probably trying to avenge their lost ace. I took my bomber, in hopes of catching some bigger-class Hessian ships, but the contrary was in effect when we got there. Hessian and Unioner bombers and fighters were pirating the lane traffic, they were negotiating with some mercenaries just as I got there. Reserve Pilot Fridrich Heinz and the RNC Leverkusen could summon a Bounty Hunter gunboat, the Luis von Graal to our aid, but we were still outnumbered by the hostiles.
The traitors blew the mercenaries apart and came into range as soon as that. I attempted to commence negotiations with them, but the Luis von Graal opened fire at the hostiles without my autherisations. I was forced to order everyone else to open fire too to save the heavy support. Against five bombers in the enemy ranks, I was sure to see the gunboats go down first, but after loosing the RNC Leverkusen, we stood our ground. The two enemy fighters, an Arbeiter and an Odin caught my tail, they hardened my ability to aim properly.
The first enemy to go down was Abweichung, a Thor-class bomber that was hit by the Hunter gunboat. Quickly enough, Vladimir Lenin followed, since his shields were down, I used the occasion to introduce him the taste of a good old Braunschweig-style SNAC. I ordered the men to concentrate their fire on Jahr Gulden, he was quickly crippled and as he realised that, he attempted to flee by jettisoning mines to evade pursuit, I launched a cruise disruptor to make him regret his decision, so his ship was blown to pieced by his own mine. The next target I issued was Markus Vogel, we managed to heavily damage him, but the fighters that were on me switched targets to reserve pilot Heinz and since I was trying to SNAC Hoenir, Vogel used the opportunity to escape. Only one bomber and two fighters were left, I ordered to focus on Hoenir, the last Thor, one which was heavily damaged and destroyed by me and the Hunter gunboat. In the meantime, the two fighters took reserve pilot Heinz down (although one of them fled in the meantime), so only Leo Troczky was left. The miner quickly realised that he couldn't anymore count on his comrades and after a few shots fired, he decided to retreat into the asteroid field, so he did with success.
The Rheinwehr was yet again utterly victorious against superior numbers with minimal losses. After the assignment, I returned to Strausberg to repair the minimal damage I took and file this report. My bomber should be ready for service already.
Quote:Here's a complete list of participants in the action:
I have to admit, I was starting to get worried if I was ever going to see space again, but the massive ion storm suddenly passed away. It was astonishing to see the Rheinland traffic and trade being re-established so quickly, although that brought the smugglers and embargo runners along aswell.
I began my duties with embargo supervision, Feldwebel Kreuzchen soon joined me near Planet Hamburg. The first issue to deal with was a Freelancer merchant, a Percheron class transport designated as Dagon.Transport. He hailed us on system comms as he entered Hamburg, so we coordinated him to Planet Hamburg for a routine inspection. The ship complied and I ordered Herr Kreuzchen to run a scan on the Transport's hold. Luckily enough, I ran a routine scan on the ship aswell, since Herr Kreuzchen failed to notice the hundreds of Gaian livestock species stuffed into the Percheron's hold. I informed the ship's captain regardling the Kanzler's laws, and made him relinquish the content of his cargo bay for confiscation. He followed my orders without trouble and due to the lack of any specialists to be found on spot, we had to destroy the Gaian species which the Dagon formerly had in its hold. It turned out that the merchant was contracted by a Cambridge researcher, but since he failed to equip the transport with the proper researcher license, he was not authorised to carry his hold into Rheinland.
<*Error*: Guncam shots not found.>
Shortly afterwads, we picked up a Freelancer fighter on our sensors, one that seemed to have been assembled purely out of scrap. The pilot, David Saferight, stopped as soon as we ordered him to do so, although he seemed to be in a hurry. During the scan of his cargo hold, me and Kreuzchen discovered three pieces of unknown organic things, most probably still alive in the pilot's cargo hold. I am more than certain they were nomads or something related. We had to act quick and since no MND agents were available, we ordered the Freelancer to jettison the alien things into space. Luckily, the things were secured in some pod, so they didn't attack us. I ordered Kreuzchen to eliminate the strange things with a salvo of Tachyon. During the trial on the spot, we determined that the Freelancer didn't know what the things he had on board were and what dangers they posed, but we didn't fill him in on our anticipations, mostly because we were yet unaware of what those things exactly were. We authorised him to leave Rheinland and told him to watch out for what he tractors in while flying in unmapped space. After that incident, Feldwebel Kreuzchen left, and Fridrich Heinz, a reserve pilot came to replace him.
Our next client was not so co-operative. An IMG Atlas class transport under a Freelancer registration code showed up at Hamburg, designated as beasboy.GL. The ship's captain didn't stop for inspection as ordered, we caught him just a moment before him taking the lane to Westfalen. I ran a scan on his cargo hold, which indicated him being in possession of a full hold of Plutonium. I asked the captain where the shipment was going, he admitted that he was shipping to Pennsylvania, that being Liberty territory. I informed him on our hostile status with the House, but he initiated the trade lane sequence to Westfalen just as I was accessing the comms. Luckily enough, I ordered Herr Heinz to move a lane further before that happened, so the reserve pilot was quick enough to prevent the embargo runner from escaping. The beasboy.GL further attempted to elude us by engaging its cruise engines and firing countermeasures as a response to our disruptors, but didn't manage to escape. Eventually, the captain of the transport stopped trying to evade us and started saying something like "read the rules" and we "dont have the rite", however we didn't succeed in figuring out what he wanted to achieve with these senseless statements. We gave him several warning to drop his cargo, then I ordered Herr Heinz to fire a warning salvo at the ship's shields. The beasboy.GL responded with trying to engage some cloaking device, which is something we couldn't allow to happen. We started firing at the ship with all guns, ripping the transport's hull apart. I tried to contact the ALG Waste Disposal to bring the radioactive material back to Dortmund, but failing to do so, we blew the shipment of Plutonium up with a mine after evaquating the area.
Nothing worthy of being detailed happened afterwards besides a smaller encounter with a Freelance miner and a remarkably weird Junker vessel. We did a smaller patrol around Berlin and Dresden with Herr Heinz and I landed on the Strausberg afterwards.
Hauptfeldwebel V?lkel signing off.
Powering down transmitter...
Cutting comm link...
Closing visual data...
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