Yet again an eventful day which resulted in an inappropriate ending. Three segments went down, an embargo supervising, a combat simulation with Oberleutnant Herr Von Speer and a massive battle with the Red Hessian Army.
Embargo supervision duties at Hamburg
The day began with getting my new bomber up and running. After a quick test flight, I headed off to Planet Hamburg to help Hauptgefreiter Weissman with embargo duties. The first contact we had was a Golem Class Mover, designation Lord Asgard, with a Bounty Hunter transmitter on board. When the peculiar ship carrying Luxury Food approached the blockade, Herr Weissman immediately ordered him to stop. The ship claimed to be unaware of the embargo between Rheinland and Liberty and turned around to get rid of its cargo when Herr Weissman ordered him to do so without resistence. Another wannabe runner was a Rhino class freighter, designated as Leiard. I caught the ship just as it was about to initiate trade lane sequence to Alster. I ordered him to turn around and take his material back to Liberty, but he attempted to get away once again. Since I stopped him, I didn't have to tell him again, he turned back to Liberty at once.
In the meantime, the Saale under the command of Oberleutnant Westerman joined us and took command of the embargo supervision duty. Since no freighters were travelling around and I had some Unioner pilots in my cargo hold, I asked permission from Herr Westerman to offload the prisoners at Westfalen. After being authorised to do so, I initiated the trade lane sequence and docked to the Westfalen. As I undocked and wanted to return, I spotted a Luxury Liner belonging to a Zoner, passing through the area, designated as ZAS~Spartacus. After scanning the ship, it turned out that the ship was carrying an incredible amount of slaves on board, so I powered my weapons up and ordered the Zoner to cut his engines. Surprisingly, the Zoner didn't try to run, but he said that the slaves they had on board were taken to be free men. I didn't understand at first, but the captain of the ship informed me that the Spartacus is a ship belonging to the faction called Zoners Abolishing Slavery. After a shorter negotiation, I wanted Herr Westerman to let the ship go, but instead, he ordered the captain to load his cargo off at the Westfalen. I didn't really know how the conversation followed, as my attention was diverted by something else.
A pirate transport, designated as Trader87 tried slipping past us, while we were busy. Luckily, I scanned his cargo and found 3397 units of Cardamine on board. Reserve pilot Kreuzchen also spotted the ship and we headed after it. I ordered the smuggler to stop and drop his cargo, but he didn't respond to my messages and tried to flee instead. Since after one, last warning and multiple released Cruise disruptors, he still didn't stop, I ordered Herr Kreuzchen to open fire at the smuggler. He attempted to enter multiple trade lane rings, but I got ahead him and disrupted the lane. As he saw his case was lost, he attempted to engage his cloaking device. A well placed SNAC of mine finished the smuggling attempt.
As we got back, Herr Westerman decided that the Zoner is free to go with our escort. He ordered me and Herr Kreuzchen to escort the ship out of Rheinland while they did a patrol around New Berlin. The Abolitionist ship left to the Sigmas without trouble. After a short patrol, I landed on Battleship Strausberg and went temporarily off-duty.
Combat simulation with Oberleutnant August von Speer
A few hours afterwards, I met Herr Von Speer in Braunschweig to simulate combat and train one on one fighter dogfight tactics and techniques. We altogether simulated combat three times, which took zirka two hours plus an hour long pause and an interruption by a Lane Hacker cruiser. The first simulation was the longest one. I concentrated on evasion without putting the proper emphasis on the usage of weaponry, so I could hardly cause proper damage to Herr Von Speer's ship. The simulation was interrupted the systemal entry of a Lane Hacker destroyer, designated as Jarek z.h.l.. I'm still wondering how the ship got the the classified Military Guard system, but along with the RNC Weisbaden, we made short work of it and continued the simulation with hardly any interruption. Herr Von Speer eventually exhausted me and took my ship down.
An hour later we continued, according to Herr Von Speer, my technique improved a lot, since I knew what to pay attention to. I managed to cause damage to his ship, but it still wasn't enough until the third attempt. During the last simulation with the combination of Cruise disruptors, mines and a better aim of energy weapons, I almost managed to take him out on multiple occasions. The test has been completed. I have to say, it was a real pleasure to train with Herr Von Speer, he is a really skilled pilot, especially expertising in the usage of flanking manouvers, weapons shifting, mine usage and razor usage. I'm honored to have learned from him.
Almost directly after the training, I returned to New Berlin to join my comerades on patrol. Red Hessian ships have been sighted in the system, the first one at Dortmund, designated simply as RHA. It was relatively quickly dispatched by the concentrated fire of Feldweber Voss, Hauptgefreiter Weissman and a few corporate pilots. As we congratulated Herr Voss, we recieved a transmission on system comms originating from a Hessian ship telling that Herr Voss made a mistake. We regrouped at Dortmund, split into two wings and began a system-wide patrol of New Berlin. Herr Voss and Herr Weissman led the two wings, Herr Weissman's group sighted the Hessians first. There were only two on the first sight (Deneth Aleski and Gunther Hoerst), but as we all got there, about three-four wings of them emerged from the nearby asteroid field. We quickly got rid of diplomacy as the Hessians opened fire with hardly a warning given.
The Military started with the upper hand. Our two wings with shifted targets took Deneth Aleski out in the first few minutes, but we soon had to pay triple the price for the Hessian pilot. Gefreiter Schultze, Flieger Kreuzchen and at the end, even Hauptgefreiter Weissman were taken out by the Hessians, while we didn't manage to neutralise one single Hessian. I know I'm not in position to do so, but I'd like to put the blame on the lack of organisation. As our first target was shot down, all the ships started randomly shooting at the Hessians, while they were split into groups of two-three and focused fire on our fighters. Admiral Malte ordered us to focus fire on Adolf Hessler, and no way I want to criticize the esdeemed Frau Admiral, but all our fighters shooting at one target didn't achieve too much either. I don't know if Hessler eventually survived the battle, since my ship was shot down at the end of the fight aswell, the Rotes Kreuz recovered my escape pod.
I know I'm not in a position to determine such things, but I strongly believe that our tactics need revision, I'm really not overjoyed by the fact that the Hessians and the Libertonians both beat the glorious Rheinwehr. I talked with Oberleutnant Von Speer and Goodmen about the issue, I think Herr Von Speer has the topic up to discussion in the neural net.
This report serves to introduce the happenings of smaller events that took place between the 21st and 22nd of September. Since I didn't have time to take a pause between these two days, I'll take the liberty of introducing them together.
Day #1, 21.09.817
I started my patrol of the New Berlin system somewhere in the late afternoon with my Snubnose bomber. I did a quick routine scan on my weapon and shield systems and since everything was in order, I took off. Just as I got into space and I was still undocking, I recieved a strange comm signal on the New Berlin system communication FTL. The message is as follows: "engaging RM", it only took a few seconds to figure out that I was the recipient of the message and the sender was a Red Hessian Sabre, later turned out to be designated simply as RHA. I was still undocking when the fighter sent me the message and initiated his combat protocols, but I succeeded in getting my weapons ready by the time he got close. The fight became relatively hard as we were hit by a heavy ion storm in the meantime. I have to admit, he managed to flank me for a few times, taking into account that I was flying a bomber, but thanks to his lacking mine evasion skills and a lucky SNAC shot, I managed to take him out. I wanted to go to Hamburg to supervise the embargo, but the heavy ion storms prevented me from doing so and I had to land on Essen until the storm was over.
About ten-twenty minutes later, the storm went away and I was able to patrol Rheinland's space safely again. I did a quick circle around the New Berlin lanes. Just as I was about to finish, I recieved a transmission from Flieger Wenzel Kreuzchen. He was requesting for backup to deal with a Hessian Sabre (designation Sabazius) and a Pirate transport (designated as Zeitgeist) it was escorting. The two Hessian ships were starting to attack Herr Kreuzchen just as I got there, I powered my weapons up and joined the fight. My priority target was the Zeitgeist , a transport that obviously had valuable material in its cargo hold as the Sabazius immediately opened fire at me when the fighter's pilot noticed I had his companion among my crosshairs. I managed to drive quite a few well-placed SNAC shots below the transport's shield and eventually took its hull down to 2,6%. For some reason, the Sabazius shifted targets and shot a few energy bursts at the Zeitgeist with full power given to the hull breakers. I have no idea why the Sabre did such a thing, but the pilot destroyed the very transport he was trying to protect, I guess it was in order to prevent some sort of intel, cargo or anything of that sort from getting into the Military's hands. Afterwards, I targetted the remaining fighter, which offered quite a challenge to my newly acquired Snubnose bomber. He managed to get below my shields and hit my power core with a mini-razor, which blew up leaving a large explosion with itself. My ship started to burn up and I lost navigation, communications, weapon systems, only a 21% life support and my hull remained intact. I was drifting in space for two-three hours while keeping my consciousness, I was eventually found by a Police patrol who took me into the infirmary on Planet Hamburg. Since I hardly suffered anything more than minor flesh wounds, I could continue my duties a day afterwards. I don't know how the battle ended, but Flieger Kreuzchen was still in combat when my ship got disabled.
After leaving the hospital on Hamburg and getting my new Snubnose in flight, I continued where I left off during the previous day, supervising the trade embargo, that is. My first contact was a seemingly independent convoy consistant of two large transports, designated as Neu Mann and Firraeveus Caron. As they reached the Planet, I requested them to shut their engines down and prepare to be scanned. Both ships had Gate and Trade lane parts on board, which are under embargo unless they are ferried by the Ageira Technologies corporation. I scanned for IDs at once. The vessel Firraeveus Caron was equipped with the proper ID and clearence to haul such parts, but Neu Mann didn't have an ID at all. I asked the captain of the Neu Mann why the ID was missing, he didn't respond for a short half minute. I asked him to reply and a few seconds later I asked him to reply again with telling him that irresponsive ships are taken as hostiles, but he immediately tried to engage a cloaking device, a device which I've been seeing more and more frequently every day. In the meantime, Herr Feldwebel Voss arrived aswell, and since we considered the cloaking device attempt as a method of fleeing, orders to open fire were given. We quickly took the trader's ship out and ordered the vessel Firraeveus Caron to leave the area.
A few minutes later a Bumblebee class transport arrived, designated as Supreme Intelligence. I ordered the ship to stop while I was scanning its cargo and it did. Since he had 1800 units of Neon on board, I asked where the shipment was from and he told me that it originated from Liberty. I asked him if he was aware of the trade embargo, but instead of replying, he quickly burst through with his thrusters and landed on Planet Hamburg. After landing, he told me that he's "only aware of liers". I informed him that he just got himself registered for the list of people owing 4 million tax to the Rheinland government.
After that particular event, I took a short pause. When I returned to duty, the new Embargo tax system was inacted. We were ordered to treat traders accordingly, but unfortunately, we met more difficult cases than a few transports passing by. A Colossus class megatrain designated as Askari tried passing through us. I ordered the captain to stop, and he pretended to do so, but he kept engaging his cruise engines and thrusting while killing his engines. He told us to follow him to an asteroid field where he said he would be willing to relase the cargo, but we didn't take the bait. We ordered him to stop continously, but since he only pretended to do so and kept saying "ok" "ok" "ok" "ok", I ordered Herr Kreuzchen to open fire. Before we took him down, he told us he'd surrender and dropped two slaves only, but kept drifting with EK into the asteroid field. I ordered Herr Kreuzchen to resume firing and we took him out of action. Luckily, most of the Slaves somehow survived in the parts of the destroyed cargo pods, so I called in the Rotes Kreuz at once to collect the poor souls before their life support ran out. Some Bundschuh recruit pilots tried sabotating our rescue attempt, but they had no chance to do so. The Rotes Kreuz collected the slaves and took them to Hamburg where the Government assumed control of the situation. We saved a lot of lives today.
Despite the fact that I was only in space for a few hours, me and my wing had to deal with a lot of problems suddenly falling upon Rheinland. Luckily, we managed to contain almost all the crisis situations that erupted in the Vaterland accordingly.
Arrestment procedure of Hessian terrorist Frank Reiner
My patrol began with Oberleutnant Von Speer and Hauptgefreiter Weissman. We made a few circles around New Berlin, both seperately and together. Our first contact was a Red Hessian ship, flown by the pilot Frank Reiner. He flashed up on my sensors while I was in a trade lane sequence between Dortmund and Bonn. I thought it was a malfunction at first, but I reported it to Herr Von Speer anyway, who ordered me to check the perimeter of the asteroid field. Since I found no trace of the contact that showed up earlier, I was ordered to go back to the surroundings of Bonn Station, where the rendezvous was held. A moment after our gathering was made, the contact flashed up on our sensors and the pilot even started to talk. It turned out that the Hessian met Herr Weissman earlier, but the terrorist managed to flee the Hauptgefreiter's wrath. As soon as he got out of range again, Herr von Speer ordered us the break formation and initiate a sweep pattern around the area to locate the ship, which later turned out to be an Odin class very heavy fighter. As soon as the ship was within range again, Oberleutnant Von Speer ordered Reiner, the Hessian pilot to cut his engines and perpare to be escorted to Vierlande. The terrorist didn't try to resist. I was ordered to take the lanes and stir civilian traffic away from the operation zone as Herr Von Speer and Herr Weissman escorted Reiner through to Vierlande. As soon as we got there, Vierlande's boarding team took the traitor into custody, he's probably going to spend the rest of his life without seeing the sun again. Before we finished our patrol, we met a Camara class freighter attempting to take H-Fuel to Liberty from Altona shipyard, designated as Barky. Herr Von Speer instructed the merchant ship to turn around and informed him about the embargo. The trader didn't resist and took the trade lane to New Berlin at once.
Only half an hour passed until I was called on assignment again. We recieved reports of a Hessian gunboat terrorising the civilians in Rheinland, of course I slipped into my bomber at once and tried to track the ship down. When I got there, Frau Admiral Malte and Herr Hauptgefreiter Drum were already fighting the Heimdall class gunboat, designated as Ave with success. I was told not to interfere, as the ship was already crippled by my superiors, but the Hessian broke from attack and shot at me without a warning. Of course I had to defend myself, the damaged gunboat was destroyed by two-three well placed Supernova Antimatter shots.
A patrol around New Berlin, Frankfurt, then New Berlin again followed. We didn't encounter anything particularly interesting besides an increasingly heavy level of trader traffic and a strange communication signal on the New Berlin system FTL, but we had a good conversation in the meantime, at the very least. We got seperated at Bonn Station, Frau Malte had some important matters to discuss with a Bounty Hunter associate of hers and Herr Drum took charge of the patrol to Stuttgart and Omega-11. Everything was perfectly clear, the only interesting thing we met was a jumphole leading to Dresden from Omega-11. Herr Drum seemed to be aware of its existence and judging by all the anomalies in the mentioned system, I wasn't too surprised either. I was just hoping that we wouldn't end up in an unknown system, like we did last time. Also, a backdoor to Dresden calls for awareness. Omega-11 seems like a system that can potentially serve as cover for a lot of threathening activities. As we were going back to New Berlin, Herr Drum experienced some sort of malfunction regarding his mine dispenser, he lost a few activated and fully charged mines during our patrol, one of them even managed to hit me. Herr Drum landed on a Kruger base to repair his weapon systems afterwards.
Just as I got back to New Berlin to join the esdeemed Frau Admiral, my way got blocked by a Unioner Arbeiter class vessel, piloted by Volkmar Henckl. He attacked me as soon as I ordered him to power down his systems. I gained the upper hand at first and caused serious damage to the fighter's hull, but he somehow managed to get his flying skills up to a level that provided quite a match for me. We kept shooting at each other for a rather large amount of time, about 20-30 minutes, I would say. The fighter eventually retreated with 25 nanobots and 3 shield batteries left, while I still had 40 nanobots and full batteries remaining. Frau Admiral Malte took out some sort of gunboat in the meantime with a Police Officer, I'm not aware of the details. My radio transmitter and some other systems took damage during the fight, so I had to land on Battleship Strausberg to have the necessary repairs made.
I was in the cantine when I recieved the next distress signal. It was Herr Hauptgefreiter Drum requesting backup to deal with an appropriate number of Hessians in the Hamburg system. Herr Ralf Hofmann and myself responded, although when I go to the scene of the battle, Herr Weissman, Herr Drum and Herr Kreuzchen were already in a fierce battle with members of the Red Hessian Army. I was immediately told to join the battle, with putting Liona Jones into my crosshairs. Just as she was about to go down, her comerades started resupplying the pilot with nanobots to repair the damage caused to her hull. We lost Flieger Kreuzchen in a matter of minutes and the managed to heavily damage and eventually take down Herr Weissman, who survived with a burning ship for a remarkably long time. It turned out that the supplier of the bots was a Hessian terrorist called Eric Heimdall. The pilot managed to get rid of all of his nanobots and therefore, we shifted targets to him. Herr Drum managed to score the final shots, penetrating Heimdall's hull and reactor core, which managed to blow the Sabre class fighter to pieces. Unfortunately, Herr Drum was heavily damaged and he had to vacate the area, so I was the only one left against two Hessians. Admiral Malte, who was supervising the fight ordered me to retreat, since a lot of lives were lost today. The Hessians returned to their base to resupply and repair afterwards, so did I. My landing was made at Battleship Strausberg, I've been there ever since.
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