To: Harold Kane, Natio Octavarium | From: Hunter Wolff, Alster Union

[Kazinsal]

[ Incoming Transmission ]

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Identification: Harold Kane
Affiliation: Ministry of Relations, Natio Octavarium

To: Gefreiter Wolff, Alster Union

Subject: RE: Assistance
Encryption: Good lord, yes
Location: Canberra Star City, Tau-44

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Gefreiter Wolff,

I feel like we need to break this one down a little bit, so let's backtrack to the beginning of this branch of the mess that's going on in the Bering system.

The Unioners were constructing, on contract, a Hel-class cruiser for the Harmony fleet, using materials and funding from Harmony to ensure speedy resourcing and implementation. The construction of this vessel came to completion, yet owing to a verbal disagreement of some sort, the ship was not released. I don't know the details. All I know is there was an argument of some kind and Harmony decided to take the ship by force. Failing that, a thermonuclear strike was authorized by Harmony against Pacifica Base in the Bering system several weeks ago. The strike caused apparently severe damage to Pacifica and in its wake, Harmony began to enforce a blockade.

Now, at this time, we began to get involved, primarily out of concern for the people affected by the blockade and the NEMP attack. The Lane Hackers made an effort to assist in this, and were willing to broker a peace agreement. We personally sent out a logistics vessel, escorted by the Lane Hackers, to make an incredibly obvious run through a blockade hinging on our own luck and reputation and with complete disregard for the political fallout in the southern and eastern Independent worlds that it may bring unto us. We did this out of humanitarian concerns.

Fast forward a few days and your high command is making things in the peace process difficult. A few more days, talks are breaking down. A few more, one of the parties is accused of collaboration with the BDM and pulls out of the talks. Total war is inevitable and has to an extent already begun, so your high command then decides that the best course of action would be to authorize your very own thermonuclear strike against Marshall Station with the intent of causing equal or greater amounts of harm back at them and quite frankly, Gefreiter Wolff, I have to ask, DO YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF DECORUM AT ALL?

Ahem.

One: Your organization's willingness to play "shot for shot" with thermonuclear weapons is quite clearly among one of the most concerning things I've seen in the past six months, and that includes seeing a dreadnought firing flak cannons at a suspected smuggler from my bedroom window. I had hoped that the unification of the Alster Union and the Landwirtrechtbewegung would have tempered the situation but it appears that once one has used weapons of mass destruction against a station, one cannot help but continue to use weapons of mass destruction against other stations.

Two: We are better able to provide logistical support and aid in Rheinland proper. We tend to have logistics transports scheduled for the next few months to be operating in the area for unrelated reasons, so additional stops would be easy to add to the agenda. We are much more capable of removing civilians from an active warzone than we are moving goods into said warzone.

Three: The Fourth Octavarium Fleet does not have the capacity to base military vessels further east than the Cortez-Magellan corridor at this time. This is not an ideological blocker, but merely a logistical one.

In short: Yes, maybe, and no.

Regards,
Minister Harold Kane
Ministry of Relations, Natio Octavarium

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