Been a long time since I could report a flawless victory of the Rheinwehr and the complete and utter destruction of enemy forces, but today's happenings were bigger and more glorious than any smaller defeat we had to suffer in the short past.
Training with Leutnant Bjorn Chezberger
The day begun with a training. Herr Chezberger led it. First of all, we assembled to fix the transmitter of Flieger Axel Koch and after having it in place, we headed for Braunschweig to begin the training. The only smaller encounter we had were two corsair fighters, designated as Raptor[EVO.g2h] and Banshee_[Zork.g2h], Herr Chezberger finished them in under a minute, they stood no chance.
The training was supervised by Herr Westerman and Herr Major General Engels, Herr Westerman eventually had to leave due to some system malfunctions. Herr Chezberger, who was leading the training as I mentioned before, scattered Oxygen tanks around the area in hopes of inventing a new method of united target practice (without colliding into each other when pursuing a target), but it failed due to the lack of our understanding. We were eventually ordered to destroy the tanks and begin a standard combat simulation.
Two teams were set up during the practice and we were ordered to simulate a real life combat situation. My team was consistant of Major General Auztin Engels, Hauptgefreiter G?nter Weissman and myself. The opposing force was led by Herr Leutnant Bjorn Chezberger, with Feldwebel Maximillian Voss and Flieger Axel Koch as his wingmen. As the simulation began, we targetted Flieger Koch, as it was ordered by Herr Engels. We eventually took him out, I scored the killing few shots. Leutnant Chezberger was our next target, but since the Op4 was targetting Major General Engels since the start, he was lost before the Leutnant was disabled by a missile. As Herr Engels went down, the "enemy" tried to focus fire on me and I was almost killed when Herr Voss ran out of nanobots and he was killed by a wayward missile aswell. The simulation was very successful, I particularly enjoyed flying with pilots who had such an amazing level of skill and not to mention, we also got ourselves prepared for the next assignment. The assault and occupation of the Texas system from the hands of the Libertonians.
Rheinwehr victory in assault against the Texan Libertonians
As the training was over, Major General Engels ordered us to mobilize. We were planning to go against Texas. Of course, our morale immediately went up to the sky, everyone was eager to fight the Libertonian schweinen. I got back to the Strausberg to switch to hop into my bomber and went off to the meeting point at Hamburg. We quickly assembled the wings. Herr Engels led the operation, Herr Chezberger gave orders during the battles. Other pilots were Feldwebel Voss, Hauptgefreiter Drum and Flieger Koch flying Wraiths, I was the only one besides Herr Engels and Herr Chezberger who chose the bomber. A reserve gunboat, called the RNC Biber Blazer also escorted us to the assignment. The only remarkable encounter we had during the journey to Texas was a pirate train belonging to a Lane Hacker side-faction of some sort. It was designated as VR-VTS-Eclipse, and its cargo hold contained 4279 enslaved men and women. The Leutnant ordered the slaver to release his cargo and since he realised he was in no position to negotiate, he jettisoned his cargo hold into the space in a large capsule. The Rotes Kreuz eventually collected the poor souls and took them to Hamburg to begin a new life. We met the trader at Freeport 2, where he taunted us abusing the neutrality of the ceasefire zone, but he didn't cause any further problems.
No resistence awaited us when our way into Texas was made. The area was clear and we were free to proceed to Planet Houston with only the automated trade lanes shooting at us. About 10 clicks away from the planet, we met our first contact, a Guardian-class Very Heavy Fighter, designated as Cougar 1763, belonging to the 27F Squad, according to his affiliation. Either because he was only a recon ship or because he was scared to death, he retreated literally as soon as he saw us. We were not to pursue. We passed Houston without resistance and Herr Major General Engels ordered us to take positions near the Trade Lanes and await incoming targets. An LSF Agent, called Escrisma tried making way through our forward lines, but the ship turned back as soon as he realised the might we represented.
We didn't have to wait too long for a real battle, fortunately. The LNS Michigan, a Liberty Assault Carrier got caught up in our Trade Lane interruption sequence, he was obviously summoned by the Libertonian ships we scared off earlier. The united might fell upon the careless carrier as we were ordered to attack the ship. The monstrosity's defence systems collapsed like a card castle as we melted its hull with our Supernova antimatter cannons. The beast's life was only made a few minutes longer as a Mercenary Bottlenose-class gunboat designated as John.T, the recon fighter designated Cougar 1763, the LSF Agent, Escrisma and a Liberty Assault Battlecruiser, the LNS Enterprise arrived. The fighters were to focus on the recon-Guardian, which got rather quickly dispatched, while the bombers tried taking down John.T, which was evading relatively well. As soon as it was neutralized, the Enterprise was our next target. We almost took the LABC down, but since we, bombers, were ordered to focus our fire on a newly arriving gunboat, the Wolfsbane, the Battlecruiser Enterprise managed to slip out to Virginia. The captain of the Wolfsbane was obviously new to his duties, as his ship was quickly taken out. Afterwards, only the Michigan remained, I personally managed to shoot the final SNAC projectile into the Carrier's reactore core. That's how the first battle went, the only ship the Libertonians could take out discounted the RNC Biber Blazer was a bystanding fighter belonging to the Junker Congress, which was most probably accidentally shot down by the Michigan.
The next battle begun a minute later, with the arrival of an LSF agent, called Johny Leroy. He was alone and we were ordered to take him out. The ship managed to evade quite well and make his way through to Planet Texas without suffering too many major wounds. LSF Agent Blackcomb and the Liberty Navy fighter flown by Virgil Redline soon entered the combat zone to assist Leroy against our forces, a rather heavy and fast-paced battle followed, as Cpt. Rommel joined the fight on our side and Inspector Trace Whitney from the LPI, the Liberty Navy Fighter Shade Walker, Vigilante Jayce Silvers, a Navy reserve ship called Aerelm and DSC-Void joined the Libertonians. The first enemy down was Agent Blackcomb, shot by Leutnant Chezberger, in orbit around Planet Houston. The LSF pilot obviously survived, as he was messaging from an escape pod after his ship was taken down. Reserve pilot Captain Rommel was the following and our only casualty during the engagement. His ship was disabled and destroyed by LSF Agent Leroy with a well-placed missile shot. For Herr Rommel, the Libertonians had to pay multiple times the price. The battle slowly got drifted away from the planet, as Herr Major General Engels was being shot at by the Libertonians from the very beginning of the first battle and he ran out of nanobots, even though he managed to survive the whole battle without actually leaving it. At that point, Inspector Whitney was taken out by a well placed SNAC shot of Herr Chezberger and almost immediately afterwards, Vigilante Silvers was also taken out. He wasn't exactly a skilled warrior, I don't think he lasted more than a minute. Navy ship Aerelm, DSC-Void, a ship that literally lasted for ten seconds and the Shade Walker were the enemy's next casualties, Agent Leroy and Virgil Redline managed to escape to Virginia. They also tried calling in a LABC, designated as Rocky Yellowstone, but realising they had no chance, the captain ordered an immediate retreat to Virginia.
We managed to completely defeat the Liberty Navy defending Texas without loosing one simple Military member and inflicting massive losses to the enemy side. We regrouped quickly and went off to resupply at a Junker installation. Everyone who was spectating, Bounty Hunters, Zoners, Junkers, Mercenaries and Miners congratulated us, they were obviously glad that we helped them get rid of the opressive Libertonian authorities. Texas was freed and we returned to Rheinland. I docked to Westfalen to resupply, get some strudels, rest and write the report. Glorious day this was.
Quote:Here's a complete list of participants in the action:
This report was made to introduce you two quick and effective "Hit and Run" campaigns which we carried out today. The tactic is consistant of the rapid assembly of a small assault force and a strike on a key enemy target before reinforcements are in the battlefield.
Texas Strike #1
Our first mission was to take out two unknown-class Libertonian capital ships reported to be in orbit around Planet Houston. Since the MND Agents could hardly provide any more information regarding the two vessels, Herr Major General Auztin Engels decided to personally scout ahead in the dangerous gasps of Libertonian territory. Thanks to his bravery and cunning, we eventually found out that the two ships are in fact two Liberty Navy gunboats with minimal fighter escort. Vize Admiral August Von speer and myself took off from the Moselle immediately and set course for the Texas system.
As the two ships were in his sight, the Major General attempted to lure them away from Planet Houston, so that our bombers could hit them in open space and the enemy orbital installments wouldn't give us trouble. He was successful in this task, although he had to take evasive action, since the gunboats, classified as LNS|Peacekeeper and LNS|-Ionious didn't forget to summon their fighter escorts to pursuit the sole bomber of Herr Engels. Needless to say, Herr Von Speer and myself were there double time. Since Herr Engels was under heavy fire, he ordered the Vize Admiral to assume control of the operation, who ordered me to release the antimatter containment cells and give full power to my Supernova cannon. I carried his order out and charged the infamous tool of destruction, it was ready to melt Libertonian scum in a matter of seconds.
The first target was the Peacekeeper. Even though it was damaged by the time I got to the battlefield, the nanobots placed in its engineering section quickly restored its hull integrity to maximum. Despite that, I wouldn't say the Gunboat lasted more than a minute against the might of three SNACs, the final blow was given by my cannon in particular. The Ionisus realised that it would soon share faith with the other gunboat, so it tried to concentrate on evasion rather than trying to cause damage to us, but it failed to escape, needless to say.
While we were fighting the gunboats, more and more Libertonian ships arrived, the escort crew of two quickly grew to five and then eight. We stood no chance against such a tough opposition, and Herr Engels was hit by a SNAC or a Mini Razor shortly after we took the second gunboat out. Even though reserve pilot Axel Ruhenz joined the battle, we stood no chance, Herr Von Speer ordered the withdrawal of our forces. We made our jump back to Bering, then back to our glorious Vaterland at once. The Mission was successful, the targets were neutralized. The loss of the Major General's ship was most unfortunate, but I'm confident that he will be able to fulfill his duties in a matter of days at most.
The first strike obviously had a major impact on the enemy defences and we managed to cause quite a shock to the Libertonian forces orbitting Planet Houston. Since we saw that our previous attack was successful, we waited for the majority of the enemy defence fleet to clear out and we assembled for another attack in a matter of hours. The strike fleet was led by Vize Admiral August Von Speer, Oberleutnant Ralf Hofman was the second in command. Oberfeldwebel Gunter Weissman and I were the wingmen. Our primary objective was the destruction of any bomber class ship we encounter, that's why the majority of the wing was consistant of Wraith class very heavy fighters. I was ordered to provide bomber support for a possible capital ship encounter, even though we didn't expect any due to the strike we carried out earlier.
As we got to Texas, we were ordered to fly a few clicks above the Jump Gate and move to Houston keeping the same distance. Of course, the Libertonian proximity sensors immediately spotted our presence and a furious word battle erupted on system comms. I personally noticed that the Libertonians didn't really have any support by the civilian population around, some civilian frequencies joining the channel indicated that well enough and wished good luck to the Rheinwehr forces, hoping that we'd get rid of their opressors.
Our attack wing was first spotted by a Navy fighter under the control of Andy Doggett. He would have been a quick target to take out, but something.... happened before we could engage him. A Hessian gunboat, designated as ave literally burst into the system, shouting illiterable words on the system comms and immediately attacked the Libertonians. The Vize Admiral ordered us not to interfere, but as soon as the gunship spotted us, he started opening fire at our attack wing aswell. We were ordered to return fire and concentrate our weapons at the Hessian gunboat. As we were about to finish the intruder, the Libertonian reinforcement wing arrived. Since they had about three times as many fighters and bombers as we did, we had no choice but to abort the mission and retreat. Herr Weissman managed to take a fighter down with a mine during the engagement though.
We weren't held up by the Libertonian forces on our way to Bering, but strange things happened afterwards. Our trade lane sequence between Freeport 2 and the Texas jumpgate was interrupted by two revolutionist ships, a Thor-class Hessian bomber piloted by Ariane von PrimaLuna and a Unioner Eagle designated as Ramke. Our wing turned around and we ordered them to disperse at once. As soon as the second warning was given, they engaged their cruise engines and left the area with making patronising remarks at us and the Rheinwehr. We were about to leave when all of a sudden, the Hessian gunboat ave appeared out of nowhere and fired all of its guns at my idle ship. My hull took major damage, one of my wingmen even remarked that he didn't understand how I survived the salvo, as the fight was over. Outraged, Herr Von Speer demanded us to serve him the head of whoever was in command of the ave, so we all opened fire at the annoying gunboat. In a matter of seconds, Ramke and Von Primaluna arrived and joined the fight aswell, assisting the Hessian gunboat. Our concentrated fire relatively quickly dispatched the Heimdall-class ship, avenging the failure of our previous operation. Ramke was our next target. The Unioner ship didn't stand a chance against us, as it joined the fight in an already damaged state. At the end, it tried to do a suicide collision with Herr Weissman, who still had his shields up, therefore the Eagle, which was literally falling apart at that point got cut up like a piece of butter by a sharp knife. The Kusarian tactic was unsuccessful. Only Ariane Von Primaluna was left. The bomber, which was shooting my ship all along (without causing any remarkable damage), quickly switched to evasive tactics as the whole Rheinwehr assault wing was after its butt. As the ship realised it had no chance to evade, it tried targetting my bomber again with shooting not only guns, but missiles and torpedos at my direction aswell. I, however, had a different tactic in my mind. Since I knew the Hessian was after me, I stopped my thruster with leaving only the base engine on, deliberately trying to give the illusion of the easy prey to the Thor bomber. As soon as it turned around and tried coming close, I've put full power to my thruster and shot an Antimatter projectile directly into the hull of the terrorist bomber, which had its shields down already, thanks to my comrades.
Even though the second raid was not as successful as the first one, we managed to inflict heavy losses to both the Libertonians and the Rheinlander traitors with loosing only one ship in whole. The Rheinwehr had a yet again perilous, but glorious day of serivce.
Another day at the office. Three smugglers and three terrorists down, no casualties. We also had an interesting training, but Herr Hofmann had that covered up well enough, so I'll concentrate on the happenings that took place afterwards.
A few hours after the training was over, I took off with my bomber from Braunschweig and began standard embargo supervision duties on my own. Hamburg was remarkably quiet, there was almost no traffic around to worry about besides a Junker ship passing through. As soon as it arrived, I ordered the Pirate Transport, piloted by Vivian del Los Santos to cut her engines for a cargo scan, which she failed to do so, leading me to disrupt the trade lane she attempted to take. The ship was loaded with Military vehicles, so I had to utilize more caution than with standard embargo runners. I ordered the ship to move forward to Bremen under my supervision. Captain del Los Santos took the lane, but as soon as we reached the Westfalen, she attempted to initiate a trade lane sequence to the Hudson jump gate. I disrupted the lane again with hopefully no permanent damage caused to it and informed the Junker transport that it was not the right way it was using. I had to wait for almost a minute when a response came, but then the ship engaged its cruise engines and went off to the Bremen Jump Hole without resistence.
Since no other traders entered the area for a while, I landed and took a fighter to continue the patrol. My first, and as it later turned out only, stop was the Frankfurt system. Just as I was heading back from the Sigma-13 Jump Gate, I spotted a Unioner fighter, designated as Union, standing by on the edge of the Westerwald nebula. He was having some sort of conversation with a Republican shipping agent, possibly aimed to pirate his ship, although I couldn't come up with evidence regarding that. Either way, I eventually approached the ship. As soon as I arrived, the factory worker asked me to join their pitiful revolution. I laughed into the comms and told the pilot to go back to Alster shipyard and continue his work on producing our warships instead of coming up with such a unique way to commit suicide. Then he called me a swine of the Kanzler, which led me to order him to power down his systems and prepare to be escorted to Vierlande for inprisonment. Since he wasn't willing to do so, I had to force him with opening fire on his vessel. The fight was rather perilous for both of us, but not particularly because the renegade dock worker was overly skilled at combat, more like because his ship was literally stuffed with explosives, such as Paralyzer, Cannonball, Sidewinder missiles, Nuclear mines and Sunslayer torperos. I have no idea where the labourer got all the explosives from, but it seemed he wasn't particularly paying attention to how hard it was for him to obtain the material, because he literally flooded the battlefield with mines, torpedos and missiles. I wouldn't lie if I'd say I hardly had to use anything more than my cruise disruptor to drown the worksman into his own loadout. His repetative usage of high explosives did damage to my ship, I have to admit, but he was the one who blew up. I landed on Holstein to commence repairs and was in space in a good ten minutes thanks to the workers that didn't choose to rebel.
Almost as soon as I was in space, Gefreiter Wenzl Kreuzchen came on duty. He informed me on the comms channel that the smuggler he met a day ago, a transport designated as [Legends]_von_Claussen was reported to be operating around Frankfurt. The transport was caught smuggling and since he refused to co-operate and opened fire, he was to be dealt with. Since his location was unknown, I ordered Herr Kreuzchen to proceed to Frankfurt and block the Berlin-side jump gate, while I tried to hold the Sigma-13 gate. Eventually, we met Kapit?n Friedrich Lang, who assumed command of the operation after I briefly filled him in on the situation. He took up Herr Kreuzchen and headed to the Hamburg-Frankfurt jumphole, where they eventually spotted the wanted trader. I was there ASAP aswell. The trader had a Kusarian ship of some sort, since he was using a Gull yesterday, he was obviously paid good money for his committed crimes. As Herr Lang ordered me to take control of dealing with the trader, I attempted to put him under arrest after explaining what his was charged with and demanded him to pay the 8 Million Sirius Credits fine for firing upon Herr Kreuzchen earlier. He simply said "lol" (a phrase I oftenly hear being used and never understand, must be some Libertonian slang) and engaged his cruise engines. I ordered him to stop, but since he was using his trusters even after we disrupted him, I authorised the Kriegsmarinen to open fire. He was very quickly dispatched and he obviously learnt a permanent lesson.
Afterwards, sightings came in on two additional Unioner ships around Hamburg. I had to land on Planet Hamburg to refuel and rearm, so the fight between our men and the Unioners was already going on when I launched to space. Dieter Lutz and another ship designated as Union (seems these dock workers are not too creative at naming ships) were fighting Obergefreiter Otto Weddigen, Oberfeldwebel Maximilian Voss and VizeAdmiral Walter Krupinski, who assmued control in Herr Lang's absence. I was told not to interfere, as it would have been an unnecessary waste of manpower and material, so I surveyed the fight. The Union was the first to go down, interestingly enough, this ship blew itself up aswell. The second seemed to be more difficult to take down, but Herr Voss scored the final shot, blowing the angry worker's cockpit, ejecting the poor soul into space without an escape pod. Well, I told them I'd have been happy with assembling turrets on Alster in their place.
When the labourers were taken out, Herr Krupinski organised us into wings and we did a patrol around the Vaterland. I was in a wing with Oberfeldwebel Voss and we were assigned to patrol Hamburg. We managed to encounter a smuggler right on our first waypoint, on the way to the Bering jumpgate. A Firefly transport, designated as Vicius attempted to smuggle cardamine through the Vaterland, and the hidden caches in the transport's hold didn't succeed in covering the 3488 units of poison he had on board. Herr Voss ordered him to stop, but he didn't. Surprisingly enough, the ship approached the Jump Gate, but didn't engage the jump, it went right through it without turning the necessary sequence on and kept drifting around the gate afterwards. Since he didn't respond, Herr Voss fired a warning shot. Then, the trader asked how much we want, we told him that he was to drop everything from his cargobay. His response was a quick engine thrust to the gate and he engaged his jump drive. Of course, we pursued him to Bering, where he couldn't escape. I disrupted his cruise engine after he took a wrong turn and we managed to close up six clicks with Herr Voss and destroyed the vessel.
We resumed the patrol of the Hamburg system, we checked the Hudson gate, the Westfalen, Vierlande, Alster and the Berlin gate. Everything was clear discounted for a trader ship, designated as Karak, which ran through the embargo with a whole cargo hold of Luxury food. In the meantime, Herr Kreuzchen and Herr Krupinski managed to disable or destroy some kind of smuggler carrying counterfeit software, either way, the cargo was destroyed certainly.
As soon as we were back to Planet Hamburg with Herr Voss, the Vize Admiral instructed us to go to Hudson and scout around for possible Libertonian intruders. We didn't find any, but we actually did find a jumphole, connecting Hudson with Bering. "Could be useful", as Herr Voss said.
Eventually, both Herr Krupinski and Herr Voss went off duty, I took command of Herr Weddigen, Herr Drum and Herr Kreuzchen until Oberleutnant Ralf Hofmann arrived. We reported him what happened during the patrols then we went off duty aswell.
To: Rheinland Military High Command From: Agent Ansgar Freyberg, Marinenachrichtendienst Subject: Operation Eis Scherbe successful
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Kommandant,
This is Agent Freyberg. We carried scout mission #269-D (aka. Operation Eis Scherbe) out with success. The required intel is secure and is being examined on Schatten. The files were taken there under my personal surveillance safely.
The mission was led by Agent Christian Stein, as you requested. We met up at Battleship Westfalen, in the Hamburg system. While Herr Stein was acquiring the 'Mimic' stealth signal system, I met in space with a Military Hauptgefreiter, called Heinrik Drum. I don't know if the soldat was an undercover MND member, but Herr Stein told him to join the operation, which he did willingly. We didn't waste time, as soon as Stein arrived, I entered formation and we headed off to Libertonian territory.
Our way was made through to Texas via the Hudson system. Even though we used the Trade lanes at first, the Cold Bay terraforming deport didn't detect us due to the icy emissions of Planet Atka directly above it. We managed to slip through to the Texas jump hole, located a few clicks away from the gate, in an asteroid field. While we were heading through, Herr Stein briefed us in space. Our objectives were to gather intel from the Willard research station, a hidden Libertonian base in a Californian nebula.
We quickly made our way through Texas. The immense amount of scrap littered around the system gave us an outstanding cover from the Battleship Mississippi's sensor sweeps and we were not detected by the Libertonian patrols. Even though some of the wreckages produced variative levels of radiation, we rather used the radioactive interference to our advantage, precisely to further cover our advance while hardly suffering any damage thanks to our shielding, seeing that most pirates and junkers avoid these areas due to the hazard they pose. We eventually used a Jump Hole, located in one of the floating debris fields to make our way into the California system.
The jump led us to right in the middle of a dense asteroid field, which also housed a Liberty Rogue base within. Fortunately enough, most pirates were out on raids rather than patrolling their 'turf', so we managed to avoid whatever little level of security they had. Herr Drum and I followed Stein through the field, then through the far side of Planet California Minor, managing to avoid both the Navy and Planetform corporate sensors at the same time. We successfully made our way to Willard research station, without encountering any of the Navy Patrols that were supposed to be in the area. The station's gunners however, did spot us as we got close. Herr Drum diverted the attention of the turrets while Herr Stein and I made our scans on the station. As soon as we were ready, we assembled formation again and headed back to the Jump Hole.
The station, of course alerted all the Libertonian authorities that were available. Police ships were scrambled from San Diego and Navy ships took off from Battleship Yukon. Just as we got to the edge of the asteroid field which covered us before going through California Minor, we spotted four hostile contacts on our scanners, waiting for us at the Texas jump hole. We immediately flew out of range, the Libertonians didn't manage to catch our direct position, but they have made short-range scanner contact. Fighting them was not an option, at least one Liberty Assault Battlecruiser was with them. We had to choose an alternate way out. Herr Stein wanted to take the jump gate to New York and use the badlands as cover to get to the Texas jump hole, but I recommended him not to use this route, since it would be equal to suicide. I saw that taking the jump hole to Pennsylvania and from there to Texas would be our best option to survive, and since we hardly had time to think of any others, Herr Stein ordered us to target the anomaly. We managed to avoid the scanners of the Libertonian ships sweeping the asteroid field and made our jump out to Pennsylvania.
Even though that system is heavily populated and patrols are always common, we managed to avoid any contact with the Libertonian authorities, since we used the cover of the asteroid fields and the shading of the gas giants to manouver safely and quietly. Only a Junker base caught sight of us, but they didn't summon either the pirates or the authorities around, they even seemed to deliberately ignore our patrol going through the system.
We managed to take the jump hole to Texas, but ended up in a Dark matter field, most probably another one produced by the heaps of scrap (or maybe the heap of scrap was produced by the cloud?). Either way, my geiger counter was off the scale and my ship suffered 16% radiation damage to its hull while manouvering through the field, but we managed to survive. We used the same method to cover our retreat as the method we used to enter into Liberty (covering ourselves in scrap, that is) and we managed to flee successfully with all the recovered data. The Libertonian authorities' main units were still in California, searching for our wing at that time.
As always, the Vaterland was an astonishing relief to see again. I made my way to Schatten with the gathered intelligence. About 20 scientists and analizing personell are currently working on decrypting the data we gathered. I'm confident that the information we gathered will be well of our advantage. Operation Eis Scherbe was a complete success.