I was called to duty following several sightings of two Lane Hacker ships in New Berlin, a reserve pilot called Charcoal was already addressing the issue. Since we failed to locate any of them, I switched priority to securing the civilian traffic in-system. A Junker Salvage Frigate, the Silver Shovel requested an escort to Bering, so I left my reserve pilot behind in order to track the Hackers down, while I escorted the slightly armed Junker vessel to Liberty territory (with an empty cargo bay of course). The captain of the Salvager was a rather cheeky one, good thing Bering wasn't far away, his anarchist nonsense was getting hard to tolerate.
In the meantime, the Hackers were confirmed to have relocated to Hamburg. I ordered Charcoal to relocate and begin a sweep for them, while I told all ships in the system to proceed to the Hamburg checkpoint for inspection. The two Lane Hackers have showed up for a brief moment, I identified the ships as Destroyer and Firewall, two Broadsword-class bombers and ordered them to cut their engines and prepare to be thrown out of Rheinland. They refused to obey and went out of range quickly. Following that, I informed them that they would be treated as hostiles if they fail to cooperate, but they openly refused to comply. The reserve pilot went after them, but couldn't locate either. A few minutes later, they announced that they were leaving Rheinland, the scanners of the Westfalen confirmed their departure. Hopefully, they weren't gathering information of some sort and the situation was resolved with their departure.
A few minutes following that, we spotted a Freelancer armored transport moving torwards the Westfalen, with a full hold of Vacationers. The ship was designated as BumBleBee. I asked him where he was going, he told me that he was taking the people to Pennsylvania. I was about to ask some further questions, when the transport suddenly started moving. I fired a disruptor at it, but for some reason he retaliated with shooting live firearms at me. After giving straight orders to cease fire, my only chance was to retaliate with trying to disarm the ship. I was quite successful at evading the pulse turrets while keeping the ship under fire at the same time, crippling the transport to a major level. I again ordered the captain to power down and surrender, the damaged ship chose to obey. I read him his rights and the charges that he had to face, that being avoiding inspection, resisting arrest, firing at a Military vessel and putting hundreds of civilian lives into jeopardy. The captain decided to comply with my orders, but he claimed that he didn't have 8 million credits to pay the fine for firing at a Military ship. I told him that on that account, he was to be arrested and taken to Vierlande. He disarmed his guns and followed me while I took him to the prison. The arrest was successful, I took him to Vierlande where marine crews Messer einz and Messer zwei took charge of the ship upon docking. I also managed to secure the civilians he had on board, he released the 400 former vacationers in an escape pod, tractored into a docking bay of Vierlande too. The captain of the BumBleBee was arrested along with the navigation and weapons crew, Admiral Malte told me that the civilians he had on board had their wounds treated, were inspected and taken to Planet Hamburg and that the crew of the armored transport were now facing trial.
Following a few hours of pause, mainly due to the paperwork that followed the event, I started my duties again, beginning a patrol of New Berlin. It was quickly interrupted by a Volksfront member, Daniel Boehmer. I have been encountering this man a lot, we have also lost numerous Police officers to this terrorist, I knew that he was a formidable threat to deal with. This day was no different. Just as I got to Planet New Berlin, I spotted the Volksfront pilot fighting Gefreiter Karl Schulz. The Gefreiter was taking a heavy beating from the terrorist, I was preparing to interfere. Major Gunter Rall also arrived to survey the situation and ordered me to drop into the fight, while covering the escape of the Gefreiter from the vile revolutionary. I was successful at first, the Gefreiter could escape while I took his place. The Bundschuh was indeed a tough target, he managed to score quite a few well-placed hits and missiles, damaging my ship slowly. I'd even say we were of somewhat equal fighting skills, but there was a Military training on my side to consider. Using that advantage, I was successful at making him run into a pair of nuclear mines and ripping his ship into radioactive pieces, unfortunately he ejected fast enough to escape. The pod quickly wanished from our eyes though, I'm sure this man will return.
His reinfocements were not far away. Two Red Hessian Army ships, piloted by Adolph Hessler and Ferdinand Gryneus arrived too late to save their "comrade". Gefreiter Schulz was ordered to take Hessler out at first, but more enemies kept pushing in, a Falcata-class bomber, piloted by Anton Tassilo came in and also an RFP Mjolnir, the Volkswagen. Soon, open fighting broke out. Major Rall ordered me to engage the enemy targets aswell, while he himself opened fire too. We were to take down the Falcata, while the Hessians made the Volkswagen enjoy priority, which was our first loss in that engagement (despite the fact that he was not ordered to engage). Tassilo was also given heavy damage, which led the lunatic pilot to attempt landing New Berlin without using the docking ring. Needless to say, he was ripped to pieces in the athmosphere, I doubt he could launch an escape pod. Some backup arrived on both sides, Feldwebel Wenzel Kreuzchen from the Rheinwehr and Hans Botzler from the RHA, Koroglu, a Unioner and a heavily armored Heimdall, the Hans Van Rot arrived to engage. We quickly found outself outnumbered, but that didn't seem to matter. Even though we lost Feldwebel Kreuzchen and Gefreiter Schulz had to withdraw, we forced Adolph Hessler into retreat. Our second wave of backup totally turned the tide, Hauptfeldwebel Gunter Weissman and Gefreiter Sven Wolf arrived to deal with the gunboat in bombers, while Vizeadmiral Walter Krupinski and Obergefreiter Otto Weddigen came to clear the rest of the enemies up. Hans Botzler and Ferdinand Gryneus both bit the Vizeadmiral's perfectly placed razor shots, while Koroglu, who committed the mistake of attacking our bystanding bomber wing and Otto Weddigen, forced the so far idle ships into engagement. Even though Koroglu was still suffering the after-effects of an ion storm of some sort, he was shot down by a SNAC projectile launched by Hauptgefreiter Weissman's bomber.
Little time went past, I left off to conduct repairs, while Krupinski, Flieger Hans Putzkammer and Major Rall dealt successfully with another enemy assault wing consisting of several Unioner ships. While they were doing so, me and Hauptfeldwebel Lenora Schneider were called to respond to the presence of several other Hessian ships, flying under the flag of some smaller attack wing, the Red Barons. At first, we only met their leader, introducing himself as Gottfried Halse. However, quickly three more of them arrived, as well as a Red Hessian Army member, Gunther Hoerst. Fortunately, Vizeadmiral Krupinski, Major Rall, Flieger Putzkammer and Feldwebel Kreuzchen were quick enough to respond, the odds were even again. I didn't pay attention to what made the fight break out, but I soon found myself shooting at the enemy ships again, in my already exhausted state. Halse's men were tough people, I'll give them that. They brought down Feldwebel Kreuzchen and Hauptfeldwebel Schneider in about 30-45 minutes of fierce combat. As far as I know, Schneider was a victim of her own ship systems, as they were suddenly rendered unoperative by a cataclysm of unknown sort. We also destroyed the ship of Benjamin Roeming before we lost anyone. Most unfortunately, I too started experiencing sensor and weapon malfunctions, even though my ship was unharmed after a good 1,5 hours of combat. I had to disengage and leave for repairs on board the Strausberg. I don't know how the fight ended, but I strongly assume that since we had the upper hand all along, the opposing force didn't manage to alter that fact.
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