Rubicon: Chapter II

[Omicron]

CO's quarters, Deck 2, WGS Ostara, somewhere in the Sigma Cluster
07/09/824 AS, 11:37 PM

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Wolf surprisingly found a lot of time to himself. Extend of his official duties were numerous adjustments to navigation he had to plot and confirm, issuing further instructions to the ‘new’ commanding officer who in turn made them a reality. Haupt fed and flourished on this type of power, he realized seeing as she continued to plot and issue what would go as far as the micromanagement of Ostara’s systems. She was becoming more and more dangerous in his eyes, the only difference being that her wroth was directed entirely on their enemies rather than them. He had no reason to complain.

It was ironic. Despite being officially an executive officer… the second in command of Ostara, he still occupied the captain’s quarters and Commanding Officer’s position on the bridge. Haupt preferred dark, deep reaches of the CIC, a place where she could plan demise of their enemies while giving Wolf free hand in doing what he loves the most: being at the helm of the warship, no matter its size.

Ostara’s moved on minimalistic momentum type of travel. They gained up speed by accelerating fully at the cruise engines and then put them on stand by mode. Most if not all warships preferred to cruise at nominal speed and fully powered across all waypoints: while less fuel efficient, ship’s commander had more tactical options related to movement: evading hostile warships and ambushes was as easy as simply pointing ship to another location without necessity of waiting for cruise drives coming back online. On other hand, they were also harder to detect with smaller energy signatures on long range scanners.

His attention turned to maintaining their fleet of starfighters. They took a beating from constant runtime and piling up maintenance they were not exactly capable of performing due to lifestyle of aggressive, opportunistic pirate. His Wraith could not be replaced so easily, same could be said about its equipment he bought from The Order at earlier date. The Order’s own neutron blasters were unlike typical armament seen on Rheinland battlefields and were surprisingly efficient to use.

Presence of Annika Haupt upon the bridge meant changes… big ones. Their new destination, Bautzen was recently liberated mining outpost from the hands of Kruger. People friendly to them took power in there, closer to Hessians than most Bundschuh operatives. It was a necessity to live at cordial bilateral relations with the moloch that Hessians represented. He heard that Anna Heinrich, their leader disappeared shortly after their meeting. He was lucky to sneak out of Army’s special operatives reach and avoid being framed for taking part of some anti-Heinrich plot. He escaped at earliest opportunity and flew straight to the last established rendezvous point to hide aboard Ostara again.

They were to re-enter Rheinland core colonies within hours.