Long day this was, lots of issues to attend, from Hessians to Mandalorians, the glorious Rheinwehr stood ground.
I began my patrol with a brief run around New Berlin. Just as I arrived to Dortmund, I spotted two Hessian vessels, Olaf Handlampe and Herbert Taschenlampe moving around Dortmund. At first, I asked them to identify themselves, even though the Heimdall-class gunship was pretty obvious. They only replied with saying "we are hostile" and that I "don't need to identify them". I replied with the usual, attempting to place them under arrest, but they were't willing to be escorted to Vierlande.
Even though the Hessian gunboat wasn't armored, it still seemed to be a formidable opponent on the first look and even though later it didn't prove to be so, I called for reinforcements and opened fire on the targets. Herbert Taschenlampe, a Thor-class bomber was my priority target, while the Heimdall-class kept covering him with its solaris turrets. Despite that, the Thor was a rather easy target, the pilot wasn't paricularly skilled, despite his dangerous armament, I quickly dispatched his ship without them hardly even scratching my shield. Flieger Wilhelm Gerard also arrived to assist me against the gunboat, Olaf Handlampe was no more difficult target, we took the Heimdall out with using only two Wraiths.
Flieger Stephan Mueller and a reserve gunboat, the RNC Der Ritter arrived as soon as the area was clear. Flieger Gerard returned to hangar to conduct repairs, but I began a patrol with Flieger Mueller on my wing and the Ritter covering our flank. We flew around Frankfurt, by splitting to two at Holstein, the Ritter took the lane to the Sigma-13 gate and inspected incoming traders while I took Flieger Mueller to patrol Munich. Everything was clear until we got back to Frankfurt. We spotted numerous ships incoming and had to split our forces to three to deal with them. The Ritter was ordered to chase down an Ageira ship that was lurking around the Westerwald nebula minefield, Flieger Mueller inspected a Junker of some sort while I had to deal with a weird Republican agent and ships baring false registration codes. First of all, the Gozert, a GMG Kujira-class transport under a Republican IFF was my primary objective. The pilot was talking all kinds of weird and senseless things about him spending 20 years in Sigma-13 under the orders of our government to hijack a Kujira, which he did successfully and he was in Rheinland to give it in for inspection. I told the pilot that I didn't believe that nonsense and in light of the current GMG-Rheinland negotiations, ordered him to return the transport to the GMG and face their prosecution for thievery. He was willing to comply, he said he'd give himself up at the next GMG outpost he sees. Due to the lack of our Sigma access, I couldn't supervise if he indeed did so. Secondly, a Falcon claiming to be a belonging of a Freelancer was spotted flying around New Berlin with a Liberty Police IFF. We told the pilot that he was to fix his reg codes, then he started talking about being "new to this game". I told him that he shouldn't play games while piloting an armed ship in our capital's orbit, he didn't reply anything. However, we had more pressing matters to attend soon.
We caught a transmission on system comms that seemed to be a distress signal. The pilot was claiming to be under attack by Corsairs on the Bonn-Dortmund lane, I immediately took Flieger Mueller to investigate. The Flieger remarked that he had a bad feeling about this transmission, unfortunately he turned out to be right. As soon as we've cut the lane, a ship that confirmed itself as a Mandalorian Mercenary, namingly one called Cat Lover. I kept my finger on the trigger as the conversation lasted, even though this merc didn't seem to be the mindless butcher as the others were, I didn't let her fool me with her manners. Although most of her sentences didn't make the slightest sense, as she was talking about things like "Cat House" and "Cat President" while often making cat-like noises, she was talking a remarkable lot. Of course, I asked her to leave Rheinland immediately, the conversation quickly turned into her introducing a bounty claim with using her weird sentence structures to express it. Although the Mandalorian wasn't entirely sane, she was skilled. She quickly took the Flieger's vessel out and switched to me. I managed to tag her ship with a few nuclear mines, but neither was sufficient to bring her down. Eventually, another Mandalorian, Karl Mannheim and an MND Agent, Herr Christian Stein have arrived to the area, instead of assisting either me or my enemy, the reinforcements started shooting at each other.
The fight was a long-lasting one, the Cat Lover scored quite a few well-placed hits with her dreadful Buckshot cannons. However, I somehow managed to hit her to disable her flight navigation or something, because she ejected the ship before even being heavily damaged. Karl Mannheim, the other Mandalorian picked her escape pod up. Since her ship was still flown by the automatic navigation system, I had to destroy the slowly moving Sabre with the danger of leaving the armed chassis behind unguarded and only then I could go after the fleeing Mannheim. I was unfortunately too late. They ran off into an asteroid field that scrambled my sensors, I couldn't catch them.
I ordered the RNC Mahmaschine, a battleship present to commence a sensor sweep, but it could not locate the ships either. However, we suddenly had another important danger to deal with, a Hessian gunboat moving around the system. The Heimdall, designated as Furcht was located by the Ritter and opened fire on our gunboat. I switched to my bomber, but in the meantime, as soon as the Hessian spotted the Mahmaschine, it started to flee without sense, flying all around Berlin. I told the battleship to stay behind and worry about the sensors, while we started our sweep. We caught up with the Furcht near Planet New Berlin, the Heimdall threw itself into an asteroid field. Since the threat was imminent, we had to follow. Flieger Mueller also joined us, we managed to stop the fleeing Hessian a few clicks away from the lanes. I ordered the Heimdall to power down and surrender. The ship seemed to be doing so and I ordered the Ritter to board it with a squad marines in order to attempt to take the crew alive. However, as soon as our gunboat was preparing to lock in a docking pattern, the Furcht lit up, the Hessian captain told us on system comms that he would not surrender and opened fire on the unexpecting Flieger Mueller's ship, who was too late to save his ship from destruction. I hastily gave the order to destroy the Hessian gunboat, which again attempted to flee back torwards New Berlin. His vessel was ripped apart with ease, I managed to blow him open with numerous direct hit SNAC shots.
The area was secure, we couldn't salvage any survivors from the exploding gunboat. The Ritter managed to secure Flieger Mueller's escape pod and we returned to New Berlin. I went off duty to file the report and attend other issues.
Hauptfeldwebel V?lkel signing off.
Powering down transmitter...
Cutting comm link...
Closing visual data...
------------------End of Transmission-----------------
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