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:
![[Image: RM-Avatar.png]](http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm144/zombie2279/RM-Avatar.png){kind=avatar}