I'm writing this report to introduce the happenings that took place after the Ion storm we experienced earlier this day.
Training with Hauptfeldwebel August von Speer
As the effects of the heavy ion storm were starting to wear off, I took off from Planet Baden Baden, when we were forced to land. As I took off, Herr Hauptfeldwebel Speer offered me to introduce some combat tactics which are vital for survival on the battlefield. As soon as I offloaded three LWB pilots at Battleship Strausberg, whom I captured in an earlier firefight, I was instructed to fly to Braunscheweig, where the training took place. After a simple combat simulation, Herr Speer analized my tactics and movement and told me what improvements I have to achieve. I was honored to learn the tactics of weapon balance, engine killing and proper movement with engines cut. Unfortunately, the after-effects of the previous ion storm hit us, and I lost all communications, sensors and navigation systems.
A few minutes later, my systems were functional again, but the Hauptfeldwebel was nowhere to be found. I practiced "EK" in the Braunscheweig system and was planning to arm my ship with more Debiliators, when I suddenly picked up a long-range transmission, coming from New Berlin. It originated from a Bounty Hunter ship reporting that he found two Hessian ships and was requesting assistance. Since I got no restrictions that prevent me from assisting BHG members (especially if they're fighting Hessians in the middle of New Berlin), I took the liberty of engaging my cruise engines and get on the way to assist him.
As soon as I got there, I've engaged the Hessians, who were fighting the Bounty Hunter named Ed. L. Roe. The two Hessians were flying Thor class bombers (I cannot confirm they were specifically Thors, but they were bomber-class ships), who were obviously aiming to pirate traffic going through the Bonn-Dortmund trade lane. I took on the Hessian named "Gotha", whom the Bounty Hunter was also targeting, in hopes of taking the target faster down together. However, Gotha started evading and the other one, Karl Meyer took us on from behind. That event led me to switch targets, and take on Karl Meyer, while the Bounty Hunter was fighting Gotha. Herr Meyer was not a soft target. He used a mini-razor, a (S)NAC, CDs and EK to fight me, but after a 10-15 minute interval of fighting, I managed to make him run out of nanobots and shield batteries (while I still had 34 bots and 67 bats left) and also took his hull down to half. At that time, the Bounty Hunter's target, the Hessian ship named Gotha, fled the fight and the Hunter couldn't catch him. I told the Hunter that I have the situation under control, but since he needed the money, I've let him score the kill. The situation was under control, we got rid of the Red Hessian threat.
After the fight, I returned to Battleship Strausberg to rearm, repair and send the report. Note that the communication log is only partial and I took it after we took care of the Hessian threat.
Thanks to the professionalism of our training officers, no civilian lives were lost and the trash was taken out from New Berlin. I'll report back to duty as soon as possible.
Another eventful day this was, Rheinland has been saved from a great threat today.
I was in the Barracks when we were suddenly called to the briefing room. Reports have came in of Wilde ships being loose in the Stuttgard system and we would be scrambled to secure the system, protect the civilians and neutralise the threat. With the uthmost unfortune, I had to delay a few minutes from the launch because of a minor thruster malfunction in the hangar, but got to the meeting point at Planet Stuttgart in time. Herr Weissman, Herr Weddigen and a reserve pilot called Christian Stein were at the randezvous point already, we were waiting for the Admiral to issue orders. Nothing of particular interest happened besides an unidentified Wraith class showing up and heading into the nebula nearby.
As the Admiral arrived, we were ordered to form wings and patrol the system via the trade lanes, I was with Herr Weissman and Herr Weddigen under orders to take Baden Baden and the Border station. We spotted a trader ship called Poseidon, carrying Counterfeit software and was heading for the Omegas, most probably. Unfortunately, he engaged the trade lane sequence before we could halt him. We continued our patrol, but everything was clear until we started off on our way back to Baden Baden.
While we were travelling the Trade lanes, strange communication signals intefered the system-wide communication channels. I can't really compare it to anything I've ever seen before. At that moment, we knew the Wilde were indeed present. Admiral Malte ordered us to take up defensive perimeters around the planets and scan for contact. The scanners remained clear and we were about to start another patrol when a Border World Exports trader ship reported that the Wilde ships were near the New Berlin jump gate. We took up a reserve ship called Wisslor and headed to the mentioned location.
An Wilde gunboat, the Eselin and a Wrait, piloted by Wolfram Manfred were waiting for us. We quickly engaged the hostile contacts. Our priority was the Eselin. Despite the fact that no bombers were around at that moment, we took the ship down rather easily. Herr Chezberger and Herr von Speer also arrived during the fight. All of a sudden, two ships controlled by the rogue RBT units attacked us for a reason remaining unknown to me. As soon as the gunboat was down, Wolfram Manfred was our next target, who was a rather difficult one to take down while the AI ships were assiting him. They dispatched the Wisslor fairly quickly, I'm not aware of any survivors. Admiral Malte took on the Wilde fighter, while Herr von Speer and Herr Stein attacked the AI units. Noticing that he was flying a bomber, the RBTs started tracking Herr von Speer, who was bravely fighting them until near death and took one of them out with an incredibely well-placed shot. RBT-82 was crippled and the AI unit retreated.
All contacts were taken care of, we were ordered to return to Stuttgart and stand down. Another glorious victory by the Rheinland Military, no rogue combat machines or half-alien military members can stand against the might of the Rheinwehr.
Notes: These Wilde ships are nothing like I've ever seen. The gunboat looks alien, but it doesn't look like the "Nomad" ship designs I've seen in reports and documentaries. Quite a shame we weren't able to capture anything valuable, the gunboat got blown to bits and the Wilde fighter unit got away. How they were able to mount a nomad weapon on a Wraith class fighter is again a mistery to me. I hope the science teams can come up with something valuable regarding this topic.
Not a particularly eventful day of patrolling this was, although we spent a lot of time in space today.
Patrol Report Segment #1, 15:34-16:52
The patrol began with Hauptgefreiter Drum calling us in to help him with his duties of supervising the embargo and trade going on around planet Hamburg, since the traffic was too high for one ship to properly keep under control. I took off from Planet New Berlin and headed there at once.
The traffic was indeed rather large, although fortunately most of the ships passing through were freelancers and independent traders with no material under embargo on board. Hence, the first problem was a gunboat called Zorg The Bog, belonging to a the reserve wing of the Rheinwehr. He switched his IFF to the one belonging to the regular Military (which being us, of course) without having the proper autherisations to do so. Myself and Herr Drum patiently explained him how he is not allowed to do so, so he quickly switched back to the proper IFF coding. I'd take the liberty of recommending someone to tell the Federal Police to check out some of the traders at Altona station, since I'm quite confident he purchased the IFF from a black market agent.
Our next issue was a smaller independent Libertonian convoy, consistant of the ships Cyfer (Dromedary class), Sergeant (Rhino class) and Sandrosi (Rhino class). They were attempting to run the embargo by carrying High-temperature alloys to Liberty, Herr Drum, me and the gunboat Saale, which arrived in the meantime handled the case by ordering the traders to turn around and load their cargo off at a nearby station.
Our last encounter was with an independent Bretonian transport, designation Ramke, who was carrying Boron, claiming to have originated from LD-14. The main issue was his escort, a mercenary piloting a Pretorian class Corsair bomber, called Xcasei. Even though the captain of the Ramke was really trying to get his mercenary into Rheinland, a reserve pilot called Rudolf Macht escorted the bomber out of Rheinland. I presume we're better off that way.
As soon as things seemed to be under control, we begun a short patrol with Herr Drum. We went back to Berlin and we were lucky enough to encounter a Gull class transport, loaded with artefacts, designation Tafoka-Mu. Since he had a Researcher ID on board, we let him pass without asking any further questions, despite that, he took our routine inspection as some sort of insult.
We recieved reports of SCRA vessels flying around the Omega-3 and Omega-7 systems, but fortunately, they didn't penetrate Rheinland space. We finished our patrol and I landed on Planet New Berlin to perform orbital patrol duties.
As soon as my orbital patrol duties were over, I took off and met Herr Hauptgefreiter Drum and Herr Gefreiter Schultze in space, near Bonn station. Herr Drum ordered us to perform a Rheinland-wide patrol duty, which resulted in the resortion to Stuttgart, Berlin and Omega-7 due to some stops we had to make in the meantime.
Stuttgart was all clear, we didn't have any signs of hostile activity besides a malfunctioning trade lane, I personally don't think it was sabotage, there was no trace of any ships around. Omega-7 was however, an entirely different issue. First of all, we headed to Hegoland station and we were lucky to find it in a fully operational state with no pirate activity around. Just as we were heading back to the trade lanes, Herr Drum picked up a ship on his sensors. We headed off to check it out at once, and we found the wreckage of an armored transport called Monschau in a gas pocket near the station. It was most probably a former Daumann or Kruger transport. No life signs were on board, the ship was even looted dry if equipment, as my scan ordered by Herr Drum indicated. The ship must have been drifting in the pocket for weeks or months. We continued to patrol Omega-7, eventually we got caught up in another constellation of explosive gas pockets, which damaged our ships' shields and hull. We were lucky to get out alive, unlike some corsair wrecks that were drifting all around us. As soon as we were near the jump gate leading back to Stuttgart, something... happened to my systems. It must have been an ion storm caused by the nebula. My communications, my navigation and my weapons were all shut down and I was drifting in the unknown with failing life support. Luckily, it quickly came back and I was able to re-join the patrol. I experienced the same in Stuttgart too, as we were heading back, along with Herr Schultze, but both of us could re-join the patrol quickly. I'd like to peronally remark that I *hate* doing patrols in Omega-7.
Near Planet Stuttgart, Herr Drum informed us that he recieved comm signals from sentries in Bering that Libertonian ships (possibly two gunboats and a fighter or bomber) was approaching torwards Hamburg. Eventually, Herr Feldweber Voss joined our patrol, while unfortunately Herr Drum had to experience the after-effects of the gas pockets we caught in Omega-7, but according to Herr Drum's orders, me and Herr Schultze went to Planet Hamburg, while we also filled Herr Voss in on the situation. For some strange reason, a whole battlefleet of reserve pilots were orbiting Planet Hamburg (The RNC Prometheus Battleship and the RNC Piri Reis Cruiser along with a Bounty Hunter Gunboat designated as Wolf). At that time, the Libertonians already turned around and left without violating our borders.
The only incident that happened at that time was that the BHG Wolf shot a few bursts at my direction, for some reason and when I told him to stop, he moved away a few meters and engaged his cloaking device. After recieving the permission to land, I landed on Planet Hamburg and finished the patrol for today.
What I'm about to write is highly confidental and is to be kept in secrecy unless the High Command says otherwise. We found some things during our patrol that could endanger the well-being of the entire Vaterland, if it's not in the process already.
My patrol began with the regular procedures, I took off and since no other Kriegsmarine were available, I decided to patrol New Berlin on my own. The only encounter I had was a Rogue Kingfisher-class ship, designation Neon Knight. He was carrying two IDs, which is illegal according to Rheinland laws. I instructed him to get rid of the one he deemed to be less fit, he eventually got rid of the Freelancer ID, so I had to escort him out of Rheinland. Fortunately, I didn't have to use force.
Afterwards, I met Oberleutnant Von Speer, who instructed us to fulfill embargo supervision duties near Planet Hamburg, a reserve pilot called Wenzel Kreuzchen joined us. Herr Von Speer had a suspicion on two merchant ships who were potential embargo runners, so we flew to the Hudson jump gate to check them out. Just as we reached the gate, Herr Kreuzchen called for backup due to being under attack by a Libertonian Gunboat, called Dimitry2501. Herr von Speer and I quickly got to Altona station, where the fight was taking place and the Oberleutnant took the gunboat out with a well placed Antimatter cannon shot. As it was later found out, the ship was carrying a Mercenary ID and attacked Reserve Pilot Kreuzchen because he asked him to leave Rheinland with his warship.
Just as we were about to return to Hamburg, we recieved a signal from Hauptgefreiter Drum that he encountered an Order vessel in Stuttgart, fully armed with Nomad weaponry and he might have needed some backup to order him out. Fortunately, Herr Drum handled the case before Herr Von Speer and I got there without firing a single shot.
The tough part is about to follow. As Herr Von Speer left, Herr Drum instructed me to form a wing with him so we can check if the the Order fighter really left Rheinland and the surrounding Omegas. Our first stop was Omega-7, luckily the Order fighter was nowhere to be found and we managed to avoid the hazardous nebulas aswell. Our next stop was the Omega-11 system. It was clear aswell, but we had other things to encounter, most probably more dangerous than a single order fighter.
As we entered Omega-11, my sensors immediately picked up a massive projection of radiation, originating from the giant sun in the middle of the system. It was not fatal on the short term and thanks to Daumann's satellite path, we managed to avoid both the asteroid and radiation pockets. As we got to Solaris station (I have to confess, I was rather surprised that anybody lives in such a desolate and harsh sector, but fortunately Herr Drum was familiar with the region), we both docked and refuelled. Herr Drum finished a few minutes earlier, so he had time to go to the bar, where he met an old friend of him or something alike, I'm not really aware of the details. His friend informed him that an older colleague of him went missing some time ago and since it's priority for the Rheinwehr to protect the civilian populace, we immediately took off to find him, as I gathered, he was some sort of important Daumann employee anyway.
Since Herr Drum's contact provided the last known coordinates of the missing ship, we didn't have a hard time locating him, our only problem was the fact that he was in a flaming asteroid belt, located right near the main star, which was spreading its radiation all over the system, so its almost direct presence had five times the effect we experienced earlier. The ship was literally a melted wreck without any signs of life ever being in it. Still, we ran a quick scan, but it was only a bunch of iron and cables remaining. Herr Drum instructed us to go back before we were both turned into the Daumann ship's state.
During my stay near the sun, my left wing almost melted, my weapons systems went offline and I even almost lost my comm system before we got back to Solaris, luckily the locals were experienced in repairing that sort of damage, so we didn't have any problems with operating the fighter afterwards. I'll have myself checked with the medics as soon as the report is filed for radiation damage, although I'm confident that the shielding was strong enough.
After testing our systems, Herr Drum instructed us to depart the system. While we were flying, a quick contact flashed up on our scanners, a hostile ship, designation Durand Durand. Herr Drum ordered us to do a short sweep, but since we couldn't find it, we thought it was a simple emission from one of the many wrecks to be found in the system. We re-established contact later on, but he was unwilling to give a proper answer to our questions, so Herr Drum ordered me to ignore him.
The only thing we failed to detect was the fact that we didn't use the Daumann navigation bouys, so we had to return using the unexplored path. As we were flying, my sensors picked up an anomalous gravity well, a few clicks away from my fighter. Since there were a lot of anomalies in the system, we didn't bother checking it, but we somehow got closer to the source. We discovered it was a jump hole, I've only used such things twice during my time with the Rheinwehr. We ran a few basic scans on it, it was stable, relatively rapid, and it didn't seem to lead too far out from the Omega cluster. Herr Drum ordered me to watch out while he was testing the jumphole, he could only enter on the second try.
I didn't enter the system, so I'll only report what Herr Drum said via the comms channel. Upon entering, he reported that the whole system was desolate and empty, only a large asteroid field was to be found, scans didn't indicate anything but a few uncharted planets. As he was heading back, he saw... Rheinwehr fighters approaching. I have to say, that message really reassured me, I thought at that moment that we found a jumphole leading to Dresden (hence the asteroid fiends), but then... I recieved a transmission from Herr Drum. It was rather simple, yet the most troublesome I've ever heard from a fellow comerade.
Strange weapon sounds and sheild impact sounds followed as the communication went down. I couldn't make contact with Herr Drum for half a minute, then he burst through the Jump Hole ordering me to leave the system immediately in a really troubling tone. I formed up and we left for Stuttgart. He told me that there was an extremely large Wilde that attacked him upon entry. We... might have found their base.
I have to admit, I thought Herr Drum was "infested" by the Wilde, but I honestly don't know how these creatures live, parasite, infest or multiply. Herr Drum's behaviour later reassured me that he was still in a perfect human state, I'd still like to have a medical checkup on both of us upon our return.
After a brief moment of pause at Stuttgart, I took off to help Herr Feldweber Voss to supervise the embargo at Hamburg, I think Herr Von Speer will be particularly interested in the events that took place, although I wouldn't exactly say we are sure that the things happened according to what how they seem to have happened. A Zoner ZBT, designation Phantom Shipping attended the blockade we had set up, our scans indicated that it was filled with Plutonium. After a bit of negotiation, Herr Voss told me to let him go, since the Zoner told us he is willing to submit his ship to the long-range tracking of Westfalen, but he didn't wait for us to give the go code. As the traffic seemed to be low afterwards and the reserve cruisers had the situation under control, I went off duty after recieving Herr Voss' permission to do so.
Please treat this report with the uthmost secrecy available. I'm afraid that whatever we discovered in the unknown system could be very dangerous, I trust the handling of the case to however the High Command deems neccesary, and I'm willing to stand in front of the firing squad if this gets into wrong hands.
Now, to something entirely unrelated. Forgive me for attaching this along with the above report, but I just finished writing the previous one when the following event occoured.
The RHA Assault of New Berlin
A rather shameful event that happened today, although I did my best, the event resulted in utter failure. I was in the barracks when we got a distress signal to take off and assist the Rheinwehr forces against a Red Hessian cruiser that showed up right near Planet New Berlin. Of course, such an event couldn't be ignored, so I slipped into my boots, put on my coat and ran to the hangar to take off.
As I took off, a reserve pilot called Wenzel Kreuzchen (who also participated in the operation mentioned before) joined me on our way to Planet New Berlin, to assist the RNC Saale. Unfortunately, we never made it to the planet.
The first contact we encountered was the RHA Messerschmidt, near Dortmund Station. Of course, the others soon followed, and I gave Kreuzchen the orders to engage before they completely surrounded us. RHA Maximilian Hess, Von Klaussen and the Stuka joined to back the Messerschmidt up, fierce combat followed.
The battle took 10-15 minutes and we almost managed to take Maximilian Hess down, who got resupplied by his comerades two times during the engagement. As the time passed, the RHC Von Rohe came to survey the fight and provide the terrorists with assistance if necessary, but it somehow didn't interfere with weapons. Reserve pilot Kreuzchen fought with uthmost bravery, but they hopelessly outnumbered us, though I'd hate to admit it, we never really had a chance. Herr Kreuzchen's ship got shot down, I don't know if he survived.
I tried to hold them off as long as possible in hopes of recieving aid, but I was disappointed to see the fact that only more Hessians came. RHA Otto von Barring and Gunther Hoerst entered the area a few minutes afterwards. For some reason, the one called Hoerst wanted to call his men off so he can take me on alone. Even though I only had a few bots and bats left, I was entirely out of ammo and my ship was crippled, fighting against one seemed to be a better idea than seven, so I agreed to join the strange tradition and go on the Hessian alone.
The fight lasted for around ten minutes, the results are obvious. I passed out as my reactor core blew my ship up, I don't know how I got into the central Berliner hospital.
I'm sending this file to report the happenings that took place yesterday, unfortunately I wasn't able to send the file until I was done with the necessary preparations to get my fighter up and running.
Just as I took off from Planet Hamburg, I spotted a trader surrounded by a wing of reserve pilots who were shouting with each other on the local communication channel. I asked what was going on at once, and one of the reserve pilots briefly explained me that the trader, designation Dro was carrying Artifacts and was refusing to drop them. Reserve pilot Carl Hofmann gave the trader ten seconds to drop the cargo, but as the countdown expired, the cheeky trader attempted to fool us by dropping only two pieces. Which, of course made us loose all our good will. I warned the trader for one, last time, but since he didn't react for another 15 seconds, I instructed the pilots to open fire. The transport ship began to run for it, but the Bumblebee's thin plating quickly succumbed to the concentraded fire of the patrol group.
The next encounter we had was a slaver ship, designated as LostProphet. It appeared half a minute after the artifact smuggler was taken out, unfortunately the patrol group wasn't in one piece yet. The smuggler broke the trade lane and attempted to go to the far side of Planet Hamburg, but he turned around halfway there. Since I ordered him to cut his engines and as he ran, we shot multiple cruise disruptors at him and still he kept running, I authorised the reserve pilots to fire at will. Unfortunately, the Hamburg mooring point was not informed of the running smuggler and he could dock before we took his hull down. We almost had him, nevertheless.
Since no further trader ships came for a while, I instructed the reserve pilots to take care of the embargo and begun a patrol of the Vaterland. I went through Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. Everything was as clear as it should be, so I initiated a docking pattern with Battleship Regensburg to refuel and rearm. Just as the last liters of H-Fuel were loaded up, I recieved a transmission from a civilian fighter that he spotted a Red Hessian cruiser as he was passing through the Hamburg system. I called for backup on the Military Secure Channel, Admiral Malte and Feldwebel Voss immediately responded and took off to space to track down and destroy the Hessian Cruiser. Admiral Malte instructed Herr Voss to search for the ship, which wasn't found until I got to Planet Hamburg.
I met Frau Malte commanding the Schwanstein and Herr Voss at the previously mentioned location and begun the search together. Herr Voss established contact with the Hessian cruiser first while he was located on the far side of Planet Hamburg. It turned out that the RHC Bayern is the mentioned ship, a Vidar class cruiser commandeered by a captain under the influence of alcohol, which eventually costed the lives of him and his whole crew. Frau Admiral Malte ordered the Bayern to shut down its systems and prepare to be boarded, but the captain of the ship instructed his men to fight and threathened them to be shot if they don't follow orders. We had to open fire. Even though the Bayern's firepower was superior to the Schwanstein's, its armor plating was weaker, weak enough to be neutralised by our concentrated fire in a matter of minutes. I'm not aware of any survivors.
Since the Schwanstein was damaged and one of its decks was burning even after the fight, Frau Malte ordered us to return to Planet Hamburg, where she docked the Altona Station to commence repairs. Herr Voss was assigned to lead a patrol wing around Rheinland, but we didn't get too far as we spotted enemy ships right near Alster shipyard. Herr Voss and I commenced pursuit into the asteroid field, as they didn't respond after Herr Voss' hails. As we got closer, we identified a Hessian fighter of unknown class, designated as Sabazius, which seemed to be escorting the Zeitgeist, a highly possible pirate transport of unknown origin. Herr Voss cut his engines and didn't continue the pursuit, since as it later turned out, we were walking into an ambush.
As we were leaving the field, I started experiencing a sudden loss of energy from my engines, I immediately had to return to Alster to identify and repair the problem, which took all the time until today morning. The engineers didn't inform me on any details of the power loss, but they managed to repair my ship and get it working once again.
![[Image: drum.jpg]](http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm144/zombie2279/drum.jpg)