Background:
Born into a family of former executives and elites from Nuremberg to Heike and Markus Meisnerr. His grandfather, Heinrich Elias Meisnerr sat at the board of directors of Kruger Minerals during the Popular Revolution.
The subject has spent the first twenty years of his life on Nuremberg in the Munich system. After completing his education, he moved to the Dresden system to work on the Bautzen station as a Kruger operative. He has been listed as a special operative of Kruger for the next five years. Reported missing in action after an unsuccessful operation undertaken by Kruger security to capture a notorious Corsair bandit.
Confirmed by covert operative to be hospitalised on Freistadt and then promptly disappearing. Subject has been later detected engaging Kruger security in Omega-7. His ship was confirmed as destroyed in the resulting dogfight, and Kruger operatives had not found trace of his escape pod.
Subject has been sighted flying a Red Hessian tagged ship in January, 816. Field operatives delivered reports that the subject has joined the terrorist group and repeatedly engaged corporate and government personnel.
Subject classification: Class 1 terrorist. Advised course of action: Pursue with extreme caution, attempt to capture alive.
It might've seemed that the sluggish traffic was due to the fact that Christmas was up in five days. Even most of the pirates locked themselves in in whatever rocks they could find. Kruger security however had to be in tip-top shape all the time, as their bosses demanded.
A single Kruger fighter emerged from the trade lane in space around the station. Flying slowly towards it, it started it's hail of the station.
- "This is Kruger security four dash fifty two to Bautzen, requesting to dock."
A slightly garbled but distinguishable voice was heard. The pilot of the fighter heard it hundreds of times each day as convoys made it's way in and out of the station. The comm system they have been using was an aging piece of junk, but nobody in the higher ups cared as long as it worked well enough. Sometimes they would lose a pilot or two from the comms due to a jammed system, but mostly the pilots would turn up after a few hours. If they didn't, well.. there was a solid margin for "acceptable losses" in the company.
- "This is Bautzen docking control. Permission granted..." - said the voice. After a short pause it continued.
- "Hey Meisnerr, you better watch out in the hangar."
- "Yeah? Why is that?"
- "Bossman told me to tell him when you come back."
- "Oh..."
The fighter had now begun automated docking procedures. As it approached the bay, the inner doors were auto secured and the middle bay was depressurised. The fighter slowly approached the docking bay on correction engines. Slowly, but steadily it made it's way inside, and the outer doors closed after him. The bay was then pressurised again, and the inner clamps were released, allowing the inner bay doors to be opened. A magnetic docking crane would immediately fetch the fighter, before the artificial gravity of the station could bring the ship crashing down.
This is the part that the pilots docking inside of the station used to call "the gamble". Power outages were fairly frequent, and a lot of the capacitors were unusable. Thus the power from the docking bay equipment had to be automatically diverted to life support. It was deemed a lesser evil to be required to straighten out a few metal plates on an Eagle as an alternative to having the entire station spaced.
The magnetic clamp however managed to deliver the ship in one piece to it's landing area. As his ship gradually descended to it's designated spot, Meisnerr could see someone quickly walking towards it and a few other people running behind him as if trying to catch him. The ship reached the landing clamps, and the fighter cockpit was released. The first thing the pilot would see when coming down is the COO of security, Heinz Mueller. The first words he would say after docking would be..
- "Mueller, I can explain!"
- "Come here you little -"
The other people behind him grabbed him by his shoulders as if almost to keep him from running up and punching Meisnerr in the face. One of the men behind him went inbetween the two and started talking to the COO.
- "Captain, calm down!"
Mueller stopped fighting his colleagues grip for a second.
- "Ok, ok, I am calm..."
It took one more second of looking at Meisnerr's surprised face, almost as if he didn't know what was up, to start him again.
- "Let me at him!" - he pointed a finger at Meisnerr and started shouting - "It's gonna be my butt on the line, Meisnerr! Mine, not yours! The chief executive is going to call *me*!"
The man separating the two was slightly annoyed. He turned to Meisnerr and made a gesture towards a personnel hallway.
- "Join me in my office."
The man then grabbed him by his shoulder and almost dragged him half way through the hangar bay. The others had stopped restraining the security chief at that point, who walked off in the other direction, stomping his boots on the concrete floor.
The two men walked into an office area, down the hall and into a single door that had a sign on it. "Georg Paulsen, shipping director"
They walked in, and Paulsen immediately took his seat behind the desk while Meisnerr sat down on the chair opposite. He immediately loosened up and unbuttoned his pilot's jacket.
- "Thanks for this, Georg... You seen that look on his face? *That* was nasty."
Paulsen poured himself a glass of water.
- "I am almost inclined to do the same thing really. You should be glad I know how to restrain myself." - he said while drinking from the glass. Meisnerr tried to talk, but Paulsen lifted up his hand and gestured for him to stop.
- "Kaspar, this isn't Munich anymore and you know that. You might've been with us for the last five years, but don't think the company won't kick you out as soon as they find themselves losing profits because of you."
- "Yes Georg, I know that. It was a screw up and it won't happen again."
Paulsen's eyes widened.
- "You call that a screw up? You just vapourised two shipments worth of diamonds. It's far from a 'screw up' this time."
Meisnerr's facial expression changed to a display of almost mild amusement. As much as it was horrible, he almost found the situation to be comical in a strange sort of way. He then proceeded to explain the situation in a tone of voice so quick that it made it look like a comedy.
- "It's not my fault the damn bandits went and tracked my missile all the way to the train. Give me a break here, Georg! This could happen to anyone."
Paulsen sighed.
- "You're lucky that Mueller can't do anything about you, son." - he looked down on some random papers on his desk - "Pressure from high up still helping you it seems.."
- "Hey, don't look at me like that." - Meisnerr said while sitting up straight. - "You know my family doesn't have any influence here anymore. What can I do, these corporate penpushers simply deem me important for their errands."
Paulsen took a long gaze at him, took off his glasses and started cleaning them with a handkerchief.
- "That luck of yours is gonna run out one day, Meisnerr. I hope you realise that before it's too late."
Kaspar simply stood up and asked.
- "Is that all?"
- "Yes, that is all."
As Meisnerr turned to the door, Paulsen calmly said.
- "Oh and by the way, you're grounded for a week. It will be deduced from your paycheck."
Meisnerr simply walked out. He knew better than to argue. A week of his paycheck wouldn't be worth even a fraction of that shipment, and he would rather have that than have the company place the blame on him and punish him with another eternal debt. Knowing that what he basically has at the moment is an unpaid week of vacation, the next thing he knew he was off to the station bar to get a double shot of synth Jaegermeister.
Christmas time for everyone. Everything moves even slower than usual as most people in Rheinland are celebrating the old holiday. Amongst the whole wave of happiness, the kind that allows people to get away from the stresses of a poor quality of life and work, there are those that are relied on to keep the entire economy up and running during the worst three work days of the year. For the corporate CEOs anyways.
- "What do you mean you are cancelling my leave?"
The line to the office was long that day. Only fifty people of the total crew at Bautzen were allowed to go spend time with their families for the three days, most of them being directors and members of security. Most of the workers were overwhelmed with rage and decided to completely block the Human Resources Directors office. They quickly realised however that he too had embarked to spend a few days of Christmas away from the station, and thus the line ended up in front of the office of the Shipping Director.
- "Do you know what I had to do to get the money to celebrate a proper christmas this year? Well? Do you? My family is waiting for me in Berlin you old coffin dodger!"
Paulsen raised his eyebrow at this remark. He was trying to remember what exactly did he do to the company to deserve this, but could come up with nothing. Must've been bad luck on his part. Before the worker could continue, he interrupted him.
- "Careful there, son. There are at least twenty people applying for each single spot on this station every week. You can get your leave right now if you really want to, but don't expect to be allowed to come back."
Silence. The worker knew he had nothing to say to that. He turned around and walked out slamming the door behind him, but letting Paulsen catch a glimpse of the rest of the long line to the door. He sat back, relaxed for a moment and pushed a button on his intercomm after sighing loudly.
- "Miss Schultz? Please send the next one in.."
Meanwhile Kaspar has been spending his time at the bar. He knew there was no chance he was going to get a leave period. Even without him blowing up those ten tons of diamonds it was a bit iffy, but now? So he decided to drop the matter and just enjoy himself with a synth Jaegermeister and a few Bretonian whiskeys while engaging in all sorts of discussions with the bar staff. The bar was only moderately full and Kaspar had the barman's full attention.
- "No, if the flag of the Leeds Rockets was red, there would be no chance that match would've ever been played on Stuttgart. They would've been executed on the spot by the Rheinland Military, no questions asked!"
He served Kaspar two more shots of whiskey. Kaspar grabbed one and downed it quickly, then responded.
- "How do you figure?"
The barman leaned over the table to him. Kaspar picked up the other shot glass.
- "The Kanzler hates the colour red. You seen what he did when there was that diplomatic meeting with a few Brets on Stuttgart and the air composition there made his personal silken flag of Rheinland turn reddish?"
- "Oh yeah, that HV transmission that got banned later on. Jesus christ, I thought he was going to pop a vein there."
- "Yeah, exactly!"
A loud beeping suddenly started, and Kaspar quickly realised it was him. He downed the last shot and stood up to remove his pager from his belt. The message was a bit weird considering he was grounded, but nonetheless he was to report to the flight deck immediately.
- "Catch you later, Franz. They need me in the hangar." - Kaspar said as he started walking away. The barman looked at him for a minute, leaning on his elbow.
- "Wait, weren't you grounded?"
- "That's what I thought too. I should be back in a few minutes though so save some drink for me."
The hangar was pretty quiet at this particular moment. Most of the time ships are getting loaded and unloaded almost constantly there, and the transport clamp makes enormous amounts of noise when moving ships to the airlock. This time around however there were simply sounds of a few engineers prepping a few Eagles for flight, and about ten people on the deck standing in a line.
- "Meisnerr! Get over here!"
Kaspar wandered up to the line somewhat slowly. He looked at the man in front of the line, and he looked back at him. It was Mueller, the chief of security. The difference between both of their gazes was that while Kaspar was looking at him with a bit of an anticipation, Mueller looked back with a sort of disgust. He then spouted.
- "Button up, this isn't an ice cream social."
Seeing no reaction from the pilot, he simply faced the others and started explaining why they were here.
- "Right, so I've just got word from the bigwigs that they want us in space immediately. There is a convoy coming in and we are to escort it. They didn't say much more than that but apparently they are short of pilots and we are the only station on their way that has a relatively competent security team on hand. So prepare yourselves. Any questions?"
- "Chief?" - Kaspar says while taking a step forward. - "You remember that I've been grounded by ol' Paulsen, right?"
Mueller, visibly annoyed looked back at him.
- "Meisnerr, you're ungrounded. Any other dumb questions?" - He paused for a second, then looked at the rest and spoke louder. - "Good! I want to see you all in space in twenty. My ship is ready to go so I will be leaving first. In the mean time get prepared. That convoy is going to be here soon and I want you fatheads to be ready to move out... Get to it!"
The pilots all dispersed to their ships quickly, Meisnerr along with them. He couldn't bear himself from thinking however.. why would the pencilpushers on New Berlin go out of their way to organise a single convoy like this on the night of Christmas? Certainly not for profit, it is doubtful there will even be anybody to recieve it at it's destination.
He decided to think about it in space. Escort duty was usually uneventful and boring as long as the convoy made it out of Dresden, so he would have plenty of time to figure it out.
Dresden, New Berlin, Stuttgart. The convoy made it through all of those without a single attack. It would appear that despite what the propaganda said, the so called "pirates of Rheinland" were human beings after all. Or at least they are treated like ones, "unlike Kruger employees" - Meisnerr thought. Wouldn't be the first time he would be sent on an errand like this. Deliver some cargo here, escort someone there; all at ridiculous times and dates and virtually unpaid. He was the resident "shifty" of Kruger, being the errand boy for the creepy deals. It used to bother him, but he couldn't even remember when it stopped.
- "All right. Prepare to make the jump."
The convoy had reached the Omega-7 gate. Mueller, being in a safe place away from the convoy, kept barking orders at the pilots by radio comms, trying to micromanage them as much as possible.
By itself this wasn't the usual shipment convoy. Meisnerr felt it in his gut. There was something bad about it, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was the amount of micromanagement they were recieving? Everyone seemed annoyed at it, so at least he wasn't the only one.
The convoy slowly moved towards the gate one by one. Meisnerr's ship on autopilot, he was one of the first people to go through the gate. Nothing out of the usual. In a few moments he was on the other side, accompanied by four other pilots who were busy chatting away to kill the time.
- "Why the hell do we have to fly this here convoy through this blasted system anyways? On christmas no less?"
- "Because the brass tells you to, knucklehead."
- "Hey, I want my paycheck badly, but I don't want it this bad."
- "Then quit the damn job!"
Their filler conversation was interrupted as Mueller's familiar voice punched itself through the speakers on each ship.
- "God dammit you all, shut your traps. It's starting."
It took a short second for this to register with the escort ships.
- "Wait, what's starting - " - Meisnerr asked before being interrupted
- "Maintain radio silence and dock with the trade lane."
All ships in formation, the convoy had initiated the lane and the ships were accelerated to light speed in the magnetic well the machines produced, all in the direction of the massive gas cloud. One that blocked all sensors.
The sequence was soon complete and the convoy had returned to impulse speed. As the pilots regained awareness of the area, they all began to realise just what has happened. There was no station in the vicinity, instead about 20 unidentified craft were flashing on short range sensors. The moment of silence the pilots enjoyed seemed like it lasted for hours, as they tried to register what exactly just happened.
- "Wait a second.. this isn't Freistadt!"
- "Hola amigos, look at what we have here? A Christmas present!"
Time slowly turned from a halt to a heartbeat for the pilots as more transmissions from the unidentified craft began echoing across the comms of the convoy. The only thing the convoy escorts heard amidst all the interference were frantic reports shouted through the comms by their fellow pilots.
- "The trade lane was disrupted! All units, arm yourselves!"
- "Corsairs surrounding us!"
As the escorts tried to regain composure and muster some sort of desperate defence against the vastly larger pirate force, the three ships right in front of the convoy engaged their engines and flied closer to the transports. No shots were fired yet, but it looked like there would be soon.
- "I paid a lot to get to these diamonds, compadre. Hand it over now."
With even more blips showing up on scanners, the convoy was all but ready to surrender.
- "We have more contacts inbound. We can't win this!"
Meisnerr however kept careful attention to the scanner. As the blips entered IFF recognition range, he immediately shouted into secure comms.
- "It's friendlies! Repeat, friendly units on intercept vector!"
- "Friendlies?"
The mere scanner blips were now visible as they entered sight range. The incoming force was no less than eleven Rheinland Banshee fighters and a gunboat. Right then a distorted voice came through on system wide comms.
- "This is Kapitan Brueker of the Rheinland Military to all attackers in the vicinity. You will surrender immediately. Comply now or be eliminated."
This provoked a second long silence again, until all the pirate vessels in the area engaged their engines towards the military ships, and a short but meaningful sentence was heard across system comms.
- "Bite me, fritz!"
- "Colonel! There are too many of them -"
The transmission was cut short as it's sources Wrath suffered a direct hit to the engine and spun out of control straight into an asteroid. The Corsairs were slowly overpowering the military backup, and six out of the ten Kruger escorts were already destroyed. The military gunboat was circling around the fight, hopelessly trying to target any of the pirates with it's guns.
- "I'm hit! This is hopeless, we have to pull out, Colonel!"
Brueker continued to blast a Corsair Titan with no response. After a few seconds of silence, and another Wrath hit by a pirate missile, consuming one of the Kruger security fighters in the blast, he finally gave the order.
- "This is Brueker to all units: engage protocol C!"
Radio silence maintained from the other pilots, they silently began to pull out one by one, but not before leaving a trail of mines. None of the Corsairs bothered about following, they were too busy with the trains. It wasn't too hard to notice for Meisnerr, he easily noticed he was more and more outnumbered by each passing second.
- "What the hell? I thought you were sent here to help us!" - His voice sounded in all the Rheinland Military pilots' headsets. Each of them continued to silently follow orders.
- "Answer me, dammit!"
It occured to Meisnerr what was happening, when he noticed a Corsair Titan in front of him suddenly lighting up in a ball of fire before exploding.
- "Jesus christ... they are going to blow us all to hell.. Pull back, transports! I repeat, all transports pull back!"
The military ships, now a good 3k away from the battle and formed up in a nice line. Brueker at the head of them, he gave the final order.
- "Begin first pass."
The Rheinland ships engaged their thrusters, and began closing in formation with the battle once again. At this point Meisnerr knew something was wrong. The Corsair' transmissions were frantic, at moments hysteric even. They seemed no longer concerned with blowing up his ship, but more about engaging their cruise engines and retreating. He shouted into the comms at the top of his lungs:
- "I said PULL BACK!"
The sound of several torpedo and missile launches echoed across the particles of the nebula. It almost seemed like everything went quiet for the second it took for the torpedoes to reach the furball with the transports at it's centre. And then... there was only heat.