Just as we got back from a exciting interview about Helium mining in Pennsylvania we spotted first a couple then three ships on short range scanner. We weren't able to make out the ships details at the 7k distance and decided to get closer revealing three outcast ships. Shortly after they were joined by a Rogue bomber. The bomber captain decided to get very very close to our ship causing my assistant to faint. I was able to wave at him.
The Law had a couple of ships at Manhattan, addionally to the presence of Bounty Hunters. While their strength increased a Red Hessian Cruiser joined the side of the Unlawfuls.
Just as I took a picture the ships began to head out to engage the Liberty and Bounty Hunter forces. It didn't take long and the Bounty Hunter anti fighter gunship had taken out the first Unlawful.
The Liberty capital ship LNS-Harmony had decreased the distance to around 2k but not engaged into battle.
If anyone would have had to bet, it would have been in favor of the lawful forces. My assistant screamed as Outcast battleship materialized just a moment later. It drove off the lawfuls and began firing at the Liberty cap-ship. The odds had changed.
But not for long, more Liberty cap-ships arrived on the scene. The LSF Grand Forks had opened fire from a distance. The Navy applied intriguing tactics moving in and out from the battle to recharge shields and weapons while other ships drew the fire. A second Outcast battleship jumped onto the battlefield changing the odds in favor of the Unlawfuls.
But only temporarily. The Outcast battleship MNS Mr. Monty was taken out and the odds changed once again but this time for good.
Liberty cap-ships kept pouring onto the battlefield and shortly after the second Outcast battleship Mr. Killer was forcefully removed from Manhattan's skies. Bounty Hunters and Liberty Forces cleaned up and suddenly the scene was very calm. Just ships heading towards Manhattan. No extensive comm chatter, nothing. I almost seemed like a routine.
Another victory for the Liberty Navy and other security forces.
We were monitoring the long range sensors and discovered a accumulation of ships in several systems. Everything was pointing that a possible contact point would be the Magellan system. My assistant laid in the course with a pale face. I don't know why she worked me knowing that I am going after indicators like this one.
We arrived in the Magellan system. Two Bounty Hunter ships headed away from the California jump gate. The general direction was the Kansas jump hole. We set the course and the cruise engines engaged. We entered the jump hole moments later to emerge almost in the middle of the battle.
First order of business, put some distance between us and the shooting.
A closer look at the scene revealed different factions. Outcasts, Core, Legion, Bounty Hunters and Order, even freelancers were involved. A strange scene dozens of ships firing at each other. Sad but true, it was more colorful than the New Years fireworks on Manhattan .
It took a while to figure out who was shooting at whom and at times it seemed that the Bounty Hunters were shooting at everybody. It was a nerve wreaking battle and in the beginning the outcome was hard to calculate.
It reached it's peak and the Outcasts prevailed over the factions. They began to dominate the battle field and became to be the hunters, hunting the remaining ships of the other factions. As stated earlier, it is still unclear to us on which side the Bounty Hunters fought.
It all ended after a long time with a few Outcasts still fighting with stranglers.
It seems that all factions have too many enemies to fight. It might be a good idea to think about lasting alliances.
On our way to the Omicrons (background in later issue) we stumbled across a transport the Republican HoloSan under Captain Blake in the Hamburg system. He asked us if we were interested in news. Of course we were, what a question. That's like asking a Junkie if he's interested in Cardamine.
We followed him to the Stuttgart system where the base is located above planet Aalen.
We weren't able to confirm who's base it was, but we saw him and an ALG vessel transporting base supplies to it.
Suddenly Kruger ships appeared as well as Rheinland Military (RM) Kruger claimed that the base belonged to Hessians camouflaged as a house base as well as the supplying transports ships.
Captain Blake stated that the base was officially registered with the Rheinland Federal Police (RFP), which the Kruger representatives obviously didn't believe and more Kruger ships were brought to the locations.
We were a little surprised that Kruger was using Bounty Hunter gunships and bombers. It didn't look that the Kruger ships were there to talk it looked like they were there to fight.
After the discussion about the base was settled and Kruger was asked to file an official dispute with the RFP, they claimed that the RM had attacked one of their ships in the Omegas.
As an impartial observer, it looked like the Kruger folks were fishing for a reason to open fire. The Kruger gunboat even stated that they have their weapons charged and ready. A RM cruiser appeared and after a few arguments back and forth the Kruger fleet left the area abruptly.
It's good to see that not every dispute has to end with weapons fire.
My assistant and I were sitting in our Manhattan office. Breakfast was waiting for us on the ground floor once we were done with planning our reporting schedule for the day. My assistant took notes. We still had to finish a report about a battle between several groups in the Kansas system yesterday. The period behind our last journal entry concluded our morning meeting. I got up, turned around, and surprise almost bumped into the boss.
He was a very unhappy person most of the time. His grim face stared at me questioning were we were going. I looked at him gesturing shuffling something in my mouth. He pulled his eye brows down and told us to call the id he had sent to my comm device asap his body language indicating that our breakfast could wait.
I put my ear wig in, selected the id and issued the connect command. The connection was established. A deep smoke voice answered and asked if we were in a private setting so we could speak openly. There was really no private setting anywhere so the answer was no, but we could have found us an area to initiate holographic imaging. Our contact terminated the connection asking us to call him back once we can talk in private.
We rushed down to the ground floor got our breakfast to go and headed to the landing pad. Our ship functioned as the requested private place to continue the conversation.
The hologram of the contact came alive in the back of our ship. The hood of the man was pulled into his face. Only the outline of his face was visible. My assistant initiated the recording.
Transcript:
::Sirius News:: What kind of information do you offer?
::Informant:: It seems that the AI code was corrupted.
::Sirius News:: How so?
::Informant:: Per my information the AI's are pieceful and only attack in self defense.
::Sirius News:: This is our understanding as well.
::Informant:: Well, I ran into the Captain of a Zoner Gunboat claiming that he got gunned down by an AI cruiser and an AI drone yesterday. The AI cruiser initiated what he called a harvesting process after they had pursued him on his way from Freeport 9 to Freeport 11. According to him there was no reason given by the AI other than that he had entered hostile territory.
::Sirius News:: Now that's interesting. Do you know where we could find this gunboat captain?
::Informant:: No I don't I saw him last on Freeport 9 and he was heading to Corfu to take command of a new vessel. I'm sure you find him somewhere in the Border Worlds.
::Sirius News:: Looks like we're going to the Omicrons.
::Informant:: I agree somebody needs to find out what's happening out there. Who knows when this will swap over into house space.
The connection was abruptly terminated. White noise was visible on the screen where the Sirius Neural Net logo was supposed to be. Very strange. I looked at my assistant. Her reaction as almost funny.
With a shivering voice she said, “Yeah, yeah, I know plot a course to the Omicrons!”
A scary thought: AI vessels in house space wreaking havoc.
Suddenly the void in about 7k distance of planet New London's docking rings darkened. A super structure not a lot smaller than planet New London itself slowly materialized. Witnesses described the event it as intimidating, fear injecting. Some are still shivering when talking about it. The landing pads are busy, freighters and transports are leaving. The emphasis lays on leaving. Individuals and families with their essentials are boarding and are gone within the hour. The scenery feels like chaos is creeping out from every corner in New London, taking possession of the citizens.
In a 5k distance it still covers a large part of planet New London's face.
A power source that gigantic, what could it possible be used for. Some elaborate on the latest Nomad and Wild encounters and speculations draw the picture of a Nomad invasion force, which would shake the Bretonian government in its core.
A lot of citizens have left New London already seeking refuge in the neighbouring systems going as far as Rheinland or Kusari. This throws up a new questions, how long would millions of refugees be welcome in the neighbouring houses. Lets face it, a large amount of refugees could very well impact the economy of those houses or even destroy it. Looking at Rheinland's economy, which is not the strongest right now.
A large pile of questions forms under the given circumstances.
Is it possible that a Nomad occupation force could throw out Gallic forces for good. What would be the trade off if it happens.
Would the Nomads enslave the citizens of Bretonia, specifically the citizens of the New London system?
Will they occupy only New London or will they start expanding their zone of influence?
Will the war weakened Liberty Forces aid Bretonia? How will it impact Liberty?
Another angle to explore is the trust, thinking back to what happened in Rheinland.
Who can be trusted once a Nomad invasion force establishes a foothold. Will the government be taken over.
We will try to get a statement from the Bretonian Military over the next few days.
The citizens we interviewed had all the same opinion in what to do next:
The allied forces had survived the first wave. Nomad battleships, cruisers and gunboats had exploded illuminating the skies of New London. Military and citizens were running and stumbling over each other, manning fighters, battleships, basically any ship which could carry weapons. I dragged my assistant into our shuttle and prepared for departure.
It was astonishing that the Bretonian Military hadn't prepared their ships.
The first wave of Nomad ships had spawned right next to the Power Source as we cleared the docking ring. Their overwhelming hammered the few definding ships. Nevertheless they stood their ground as more and more human ships joined the battle. One squid after the other was taken out by the allied forces. Forces comprised out of Bretonian and Liberty Military, Freelancers, Bowex, Cryer, Mollies, Bounty Hunters, Junkers, Outcasts, Corsairs, the list goes on.
The fights were heroic. Individuals went beyond their usual abilities and everyone fought to the death if necessary. Escape pods were picked up by transports and rushed to New London for the pilots commandeer another ship and enter the fight again.
If the event wouldn't have been so devastating I would have called the Nomad invasion a positive influence seeing all of humanity united putting their disputes aside and defending our freedom.
The first wave was defeated, but oh my god a second even fiercer wave emerged. More Nomad cap-ships and fighters manifested themselves around the power source. But they all faced the same faith, destruction, as the Bretonia battleships entered the scene.
At last cruisers of the Council joined the forces.
Observations and scans began and suddenly the Bretonian Military became very protective of the rock in front of the home.
A Zoner Cap-ship appears and begins to scan the power source and is threatened to leave the area, very suspicious. The fact that the Bretonians don't want to share any information begs the question if they are already infected or just want to harness the knowledge all for themselves.
It is astonishing how fast the table turns once a threat has been eliminated. It seems that we're back to everyone for themselves.
A Gallic Royal Navy [GRN] ship appeared and was attacked and destroyed. We looked through the transcripts but couldn't find any communication about the reason the GRN Valor was there.
The destruction amongst humans continues.
One could almost wish for more Nomad invasions in order to get the Humans of Sirius united.
The fear in my assistants eyes increased as we closed in on the location where the Cayman jumphole was supposed to be. It appeared on our radar shortly after.
The Cayman system, why do you want to go there you may ask. There are only ghosts in this system. The Reapers disappeared decades ago. Nobody really knows what happened to them. Rumors have it that they went back to Omircron Alpha, others speculate that they had been assimilated by the Nomads. We found articles declaring that they were in an unstable mental state, which drove them to a mass suicide. But nothing concrete.
All this speculations became obsolete when our long distance scanners picked up ships with Reaper call signs in Omega 49. A Junker reported that he had contact with three ships claiming to be Reapers with a Freelancer IFF in the same system. He claimed that they had questioned him in regards to his cloaking device and what he's using it for, what kind of weapons he would be transporting to the Omegas and Omicrons and more. All this sounded just like their credo: to stabilize the skewed and hostile state of the Omicron and Omega sectors.
We entered the jumphole. A shiver ran through my body once we had materialized on the other side. A orange gloom filled the cockpit. It felt as we had entered a new universe. Everything seemed to have changed. My assistant pulled up the coordinates we had found in the archives on screen and punched in the numbers.
The force of the engaging cruise engines pulled us back into our seats. I was surprised that we made it this far in our Civilian Shuttle.
[Note to myself, ask for a better ship!]
The orange colors cascaded across the main cockpit windows. The knot in my assistant's throat had loosened as she announced that it would take us a while to reach the destination and that she would get us something to drink.
We didn't talk much and began to relax. I was about to close my eyes as the blury outline of a huge installation manifested itself in front of us. My assistant switched to the 'Solars' display, which identified it as 'Manatum Repair Station'.
The touch of my finger and the station was selected. Another touch and the auto-dock sequence was initiated. A robotic voice confirmed the docking request. We looked at each other, realizing that we were both surprised.
The hangar doors closed and a green light indicated that we were cleared to disembark. The whole hangar was empty there was no movement but the readings showed active life support levels above what's needed for humans.
I nodded and my assistant hesitated for a second but then opened the ships hatch. We put on the head sets, which had a little screen attached to them displaying materials and distances of objects in sight.
We followed a corridor leading away from the hangar. There were no people, nothing moved, everything seemed to be dead. The thing we noticed though was that it was clean, as if someone had recently polished everything. There was little rust visible on the metal plates along the corridor and no dirt or even dust on the floor panels. The dim sometimes flickering lights contributed to he ghastly feeling creeping up inside me. We reached a T like intersection and as we stepped into it my assistant screamed pointing to her right. I saw a shadow disappearing in the distance.
My assistant became ecstatic. The echo of her second scream subsided after she had turned around. Then she ran. I didn't know that she could be that fast and had a hard time catching up with her. We entered the ship, her hand slammed on the emergency close button and the next thing I knew was her sitting in the pilots seat and the ship undocking from the station.
She made it clear that we would be leaving this system in a breathless voice. I lost my balance as the cruise engines came online and the ship pulled away from under me slamming me into the back wall and finally landing on my butt.
I began yelling at her, but she totally ignored me until we had put a significant distance between us and the station.
There is somebody on that station and given the reports we received it seems to be that the Reapers are back. But I'd like to have prove before we acknowledge their existence.
You all have a great day. PH signing off from Gran Canaria.
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