The Unioners - Message Dump and Mission Reports.

[Arno Schultzky]

Incoming Transmission

To: Union oberkommando.
From: Gunda Riehl.
Subject: I need a bier.

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Mission report on the recovery of the RNC Prinz Eugen.

We did it. Against adverse odds and superior numbers, the battlecruiser has been returned to Pacifica. Every sub-optimal scenario occurred, yet we still retrieved the ship.


Losses number nearly a hundred crew amongst the Eugen due to a magazine fire set off by rogue munitions during the insurrection, loyalists and Imperials alike. Union losses include an escort cruiser to sustained fire from the RNC Tegethoff and her escort wings and most of the original escort detachment assigned to the Eugen’s recovery. Loss ratios are roughly five to one against our favour. A great many patriots died out there in the Munich Frankfurt connection.

The mission was compromised almost from its initiation. We had barely located the Eugen before we were jumped upon by a succession of wraiths - all attempts to silence the sentries just coaxed more of them. They were onto us before the bodies had finished falling within the Eugen’s halls.

The response time of the RNC Tegethoff was the biggest SigInt slip I’ve ever had the fortune to survive. A battleship came out of the rocks at Munich with orders to terminate the Tegethoff before we could intercept her - it took the last of our cruise disruptors to slow her down sufficiently for the Eugen to clear gun range - not soon enough. One of the Eugen’s primary turrets had been blown off her hull, whilst her secondaries were fried. The Tegethoff mauled most of the Eugen’s power grid, and if the defectors hadn’t started their burn when they did, the Eugen would have been so much scrap metal drifting around the binary stars.


Our original trajectory was impossible. As soon as we brought the Eugen out of the combat radius and resupplied the few escorts we had left, the military started locking the jump connections. We had to take an unscheduled leap into Sigma Fifteen, then back into the Tanusfeld, running through open space to the Walker Nebula to make the Eugen’s transponder update. Turns out somebody at Heisenberg must have tipped off the Military - the Tegethoff’s crack nav crew made it to the Dresden hole faster than our escorts in the interim hours. Deciding that if you’re going to run a blockade you might as well take the suicide route, we RVed in Bremen with all our remaining forces from Frankfurt and Hamburg before screaming up to Bering without opposition.

A few hundred lives died today for a hundred thousand tonnes of metal. Lives are replaceable. Hardware isn’t. We are not going to be able to reconstruct the Tegethoff’s weapons grid overnight, but we do not need to. Time limits were never at play.

There’s a memorial service for non-flight crews over the lives lost on the Hel Cruiser. No pods were ejected. All those still on service duty are to continue as they were.

I need a drink. We all need a drink.

Transmission Ended

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