Moving through the periphery of New London to keep an eye on the Gallic Death March, we've found something we didn't expect to find at all. From the very edge of the Devon Asteroid Field we stumbled across a lonely Gaian Claymore-Class Gunboat. It didn't respond to communications, didn't move and was just waiting for us to get claimed.
After deshielding and disarming the automatic defenses, we attached it to the rear hull and brought it out of the field. With the course set for the Sabah Shipyard in Coronado - since the Bretonians don't have any usable shipyards ready for us - we towed it from New London via Manchester to the Crayterians. Right now the ship is receiving basic chassis repairs. The systems are fried and the restoration will take a lot of time and effort. Captain Vertiga said he will most likely sell it to the Auxesians, since keeping it would just mean we would own an unlawful ship that needs to receive mainenance.
Nevertheless a nice found that might boost our finances a bit!
With heavy hearts we had to say goodbye to our good crew member Rebecca "Nancy" Edwards. Most of us knew her as her former self and learned not to judge people by their past. Many of us have given her a chance and became friends with her, not only one time. After our little goodbye party for her in the canteen, Captain Vertiga brought Rebecca to Planet Erie, where she will reside in a healthcare center run by a friend of Dr. Carr. Thus we know she will be in good hands!
And maybe, at some point, we will see her again on the Apahanta as a member of the crew once she is healthy again. Let's look forward to that day! Safe skies, Rebecca!
This is a summary of the event of the March 5th, 826. This quite irregular event has caused especially our newer crew members to ask questions. I will try my best to answer these questions with this debriefing.
Shortly after the return of Captain Vertiga from Erie, the Apahanta received a distress signal from the Omicron Minor system. This distress signal was specifically sent to the Apahanta via neural net. It was created by the CV-Titanic, which is known to some of us as the Bustard-class vessel we found abandoned in Omicron Chi in the late 824. After the reclaiming and restoration of the ship at Livadia, it was sold to Dr. Theresa Martinez, a famous scientist from Cambridge. Following the distress call, Captain Vertiga ordered the Apahanta to jump to Minor to launch a rescue operation. We found the Titanic, heavily damaged not too far away from the remains of Toledo. So far nobody else had found it in the graveyard, probably masked by the background interferences of the ruined planet and the plenty of wrecked vessels. The Apahanta stabilized the course of the drifting carrier and Captain Vertiga himself lead the rescue operation, boarding the carrier to save the few registered life signs the Apahanta marked.
To everyone's surprise, his girlfriend Maren von Westefeld was on this ship, together with her adopted daughter. Both of them as well as the third person they found, a nameless young woman, were in a bad shape, dehydrated and except for Miss von Westefeld's daughter, unconscious. The young girl guided the Captain via PDA, with the help of the Apahanta, to them and the Captain picked them up to bring them to the Rover in the hangar. Seconds before they reached the Rover, the ship initiated the jump drive, charging for a jump. Before we could react by launching the Handsome Rover to disrupt the jump drive with a disruptor, another ship appeared out of nowhere to stop the jump drive with a CD. The ship was a rheinlandian snub vessel of the outdated Valkyre-class. Shortly after that, the Apahanta picked up the signature of the capital vessel that had launched the fighter: The RNC Schiller.
Captain Vertiga and the survivors he found managed to escape in time and returned to the Apahanta before the Schiller arrived at the Titanic, and while we gained more and more distance and cloaked away, the Schiller moored with the Titanic.
The RNC Schiller is a historically known ship, supposed to have been destroyed during the Nomad War of 800. Our scans were proving what we already consider a rule of thumb when it comes to house vessels in the Omicrons: The ship was clearly using nomad technology, internal and external. The Schiller is, without a doubt, a ship under control of the Wild.
The Captain brought the survivors to the medical bay, where Dr. Carr took care of them. However, something that was essential for the survival of Miss von Westefeld was left onboard the Titanic. In order to save his girlfriend, the Captain contacted the RNC Schiller for negotiations. Short time later, they ordered us to follow them to a more distant location in the Omicron Minor nebula to moor with them. The Captain ordered everyone to vacate the area close to the airlocks without any additional information and then brought his girlfriend with a med-lev to the airlocks, to enter the Schiller. After that, we unmoored and cloaked away.
More than three hours later the Schiller contacted us, telling us to moor again to pick up Captain and von Westefeld. We did and nothing out of the ordinary happened. The Captain and Miss von Westefeld moved to the medical bay again, were forced to get full body scans, and whatever happened on the Schiller, it stablized Miss von Westefeld. Dr. Carr didn't find anything we need to be worried about.
Miss von Westefeld will require a few days to be on her feet again. For the time being, Captain Vertiga's family will remain on the Apahanta, including the cat Mittens and puppy Woofers.
Especially our more recent additions to the crew might not know it, but our stance towards the Nomads is a bit more complicated. Since the Apahanta left the control of the Core and turned independent under the command of Captain Vertiga, we have ceased our hostilities with the Nomads. For once it was a matter of resourcefulness. As we all had to learn over the course of the last three years, mankind is physically incapable of eliminating a Nomad by the definition of what a Nomad is: a non-corporeal entity with the capability of taking control of specifically grown vessels, so called warforms, which the normal man would see as the actual nomad. Weapons can destroy these warforms, but they, to the best of our knowledge, regrow fast. Faster than humans can regrow, and faster than human ships can be build.
The other factor is that Captain Vertiga researched Nomads over the last three years. The way they communicate, the way they behave and, of course, the way they can get beaten. The latter is sobering, as mankind does not have a weapon to eliminate the non-corporeal entity, meaning even if one destroys the nomad warform, it doesn't mean much as the warform will just reappear after having regrown. Fighting them would be pointless. Captain Vertiga's research, combined with the research of other groups like Auxesia, IRG, Core and other individuals, revealed that the Nomads are more than just a cartoon villain that wants to be evil.
827 years ago, there were only Nomads in Sirius. Then we mankind arrived. The Nomads were mostly sleeping, only few of them were active. Over the first centuries, Nomads were sighted over and over again but these sightings were either misinterpreted or caused people to create religious cults. On Malta, they were celebrated as Spirits. On Crete, Corsairs were sent to the Malvada Cloud to fight them as part of rituals and trials. The deeper mankind advanced into the Omicrons, the more active the Nomads became, eventually leading to the Nomad War of 800. According to Captain Vertiga and other researchers, the Nomads are fighting a war about their home turf. They are fighting so incredibly aggressively in the Omicrons because that is where their home is.
Communication with them prove that co-existence is possible. For us, this meant there was no need to fight them. We are not interested in their home turf. We are interested in survival, just like them. Because of this, Captain Vertiga managed to arrange a deal with the so-called K'Hara which could be called a NAP. This NAP protects the Apahanta and her crew from the K'Hara Nomads and their infected humans, the Wild. In return, the Apahanta and her crew do not interfere with any action the K'Hara undertake against mankind. This means also to not step in in case of a nomad incursion in house space, for example in New London or New York. Controversial, yes, but given the fact that we have no means to win a fight with the Nomads in the long run, as they can just regrow, while we have very limited resources, a good deal. From this point on the war between mankind and the Nomads was no longer our war. We became neutral observers and still are, without any intention to change it.
In July 825, things changed and things became more complicated. The Apahanta got infiltrated by a Nomad Incubus, a symbiont, or in this case, parasite that can take over a human body by wrapping itself around the peripheral nervous system. This is something happening entirely inside the body, not visible from outside. It requires depth scans of the most modern technologies to see through the trickery these psychic beings use to hide themselves from mankind. Even with our equipment from Dr. Thallia Thorn of the IRG and what we took with us from APM and Core, we didn't find the incubus back then, which allowed it to take control of our former crew member Lorena Hawkins, who then took the Apahanta hostage, forcing the Captain to cooperate.
This Nomad was not part of the K'Hara Mindshare, but of the Vagrant Mindshare, which is separate from the K'Hara. These so-called Vagrants are not bound to the NAP we have with the K'Hara and because of this, the Apahanta and her crew weren't protected at all by them. The Captain played along and fulfilled almost all demands of the infested Lorena Hawkins. The Captain had to kidnap the daughter of Forlorn Hope Leader Nick Stenn and use her as leverage to force Forlorn Hope to release a captured Vagrant Nomad. This exchange would happen in Sigma-13. Things went wrong, though, and Stenn killed the infested Lorena Hawkins during the exchange. And before she died, she killed Stenn's daughter with a psionic brain crush. As a result of the incubus' death, the Vagrant warform present to take care of the captured Vagrant enraged, opening fire at all present human ships. We returned the fire to keep the warform at bay while managing to cruise out and escape.
Vertiga tried to explain what happened to Stenn, but according to the Captain, Stenn seems to blame the Captain for the death of his daughter. Wishing to establish the same peace between Apahanta and Vagrants as we have it with the K'Hara, Vertiga and his girlfriend travelled to Omicron Lost, where it is said the Vagrants are the most active since they appeared in 823. According to the Captain, the negotiations failed and while the Vagrants allowed them to leave unharmed, the Vagrants gave no clear response whether the proposal was accepted or not. The Captain said he got the feeling the Vagrants were not interested in the Apahanta or her crew, and he expects them to ignore us as long as we don't stand in their way.
Standing orders are, because of this: Nomads are not to be engaged, no matter what. If we witness a battle between humans and nomads, we are to leave the area to avoid getting dragged into the fight. We can't pick a side. All crew members are to keep absolute silence about our NAP with the K'Hara. Any information related to the Nomads is considered Top Secret and may never leave this ship. If we leave them alone, they leave us alone. We have enough enemies already, namely the Order, the Corsairs and the Lane Hackers. It just happens so that these three are also fighting the Nomads, so it is in our interest to not interfere when they fight each other.
This ends the debriefing. I hope all questions are answered.
After Bretonia successfully taking over Gran Canaria in Omega-49, they sent an ultimatum to the IMG, demanding their shipyard in Omega-3 to turn the tables against Gallia. IMG refused and both groups went to war with each other. As a consequence of that, Bretonia lost even more sympathy and support all over Sirius than it already did by moving a battlegroup away from the New London siege to claim Omega-49. Determined to take Aland Shipyard from the IMG in order to repair and rebuild their fleets while Gallia is already attacking New London with six confirmed battlegroups, the house is staging attacks against Aland's powerful defense perimeter.
However, the IMG has rallied allies to defend the both Falster and Aland, and today we witnessed IMG and the Red Alliance of the Coalition, Red Hessians, Mollys and Order defending against the combined battlegroups of Bretonia and the Core, which sent the Perditrix and the Skadi into battle. It was an incredible light show, but in the end, the defense perimeter of Falster held and Bretonia was forced to retreat for a while. Captain Vertiga authorized me to share the sensor recordings for the internal news.
Captain Vertiga clarified that we are not picking a side in this conflict. We are allied with Bretonia, but we are not hostile to the IMG or the Red Alliance, except for the Order. They however are not in Omega-3 to hunt us. We will continue to observe the situation. Hopefully this conflict ends soon, in a diplomatical way. Similar to the Apahanta, the Aland Shipyard might not allow a hostile take-over and rather blow itself up in a blaze of glory the moment the Bretonians enter the station...
In the past few days, we've monitored the battles in the Cortez system, both with our Rovers and with the Apahanta itself. The Captain took a special interest in the fleet movements there after Sombra told us that Battlegroup Harlow of Bretonia had moved into Cortez.
Matter of factly, the Gallic Battlegroup Betheny was forced to deal with the combined firepower of three battlegroups and crayterian support crafts. Even with the assistance of the Corsairs, the Betheny stood no chance. Today, the Colony News Service published an article that summed up what our Rovers recorded: The Betheny is destroyed! The surviving gallic assets have retreated and Harlow and Alma are now receiving repairs before continuing the battle somewhere else.
It shouldn't surprise anyone here that the great news have euphorised our curacaoan Captain, as Orbital Spa & Cruise will very likely reopen Curacao, after all the damage on the surface has been taken care of. First pictures from the surface however show that the shield domes were holding and most infrastructure and buildings are fine. The docking ring and the mooring fixture however will require some maintenance.
To celebrate these news, the Captain announced a party in the canteen tomorrow in the evening, 20.00 internal standard time. Suit and dress up, style and make-up!
We've received two updates on Bretonia within the last 24 hours, and I believe I shouldn't keep this away from you. First of all, this. We've witnessed the scenery around New London multiple times and kept an eye on it with the Seductive Rover. Last weekend, Gallia's sieging fleet around New London went in for the final push. We don't have any footage on what happened, yet, but from what we can gather it appears that Bretonia and her allies managed to repell the Gallic Death March, however not without heavy losses, and not without a orbital bombardement. The casualties are high, and I'm sure they didn't just target military targets. You can read the CNS report yourself, I've added it to the database.
If that wasn't horrible enough already, we've just received this transmission on all open channels. It was also added to the database, including the added guncam picture. The Gallic Death March has launched a full scale bombardement on Leeds as well, and with the heavy losses of Liberty and Bretonia at the capital, it seems that... well.
It is possible that Leeds will get destroyed entirely.
We have no means to change anything. We can't fight the fleet they deployed. We can't sneak into Leeds and save people down there. It is too dangerous. As much as I would like to help, we can't.
Should there be any questions, or if anyone wishes to talk about the situation, I'll stay in the canteen after dinner.
Once again our Rovers successfully found something potentially useful for us. In the depths of the debris fields of New York, we stumbled over an abandoned depot, probably previously maintained by the Liberty Rogues. The area was abandoned long ago and we didn't find any activity of the Navy or the Rogues or anyone else in this area.
The Captain lead the Away Team to take a look at the inside. As expected, whoever ran this place in the past, took everything of value and left. No crews, not much of value, but still an unregistered station husk in the heart of Liberty. Miss Hookier was then tasked to visit the depot with her Whale, and KSRs have begun dismantling parts of the station that contain, to us, valuable metals, electronics and maybe a few data cores. Captain Vertiga ordered a few crew members to go over everything, as chances are we might find hints to other abandoned hideouts.
The few materials we received will help maintain the ship, though, without the Captain having to pay for processed materials from Livadia, Sabah or the shipyard in Puerto Rico.
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