+++Incoming Transmission+++
+++Encryption: Medium+++
+++Comm ID: Warrant Officer Gareth Williams+++
+++Location: Escape Pod, in Orbit over Leeds+++
A tired, sweaty and bedraggled Gareth Williams stares back from the screen. The man salutes stiffly despite the cramped confines of the Pod and his constricting suit. As he speaks, even his voice sounds a little weary, but brisk and with a lot of miliatery bearing. He looked like a man who took his job seriously and barely smiled.
“Sirs, here is my report.” He pressed few buttons here and there is if he was bringing up some notes he had made. “I apologise that I am sending this as a video link, ordinary I would write it out in triplicate but my present situation precludes such a thing. I beg my superior's forgiveness.” There is a clear Bretonian accent to his voice.
“I received on emergency communication system a message from one of our ships that several Gallic ships bearing the tag RNS were present in the Leeds system.” It was amazing with how rigid he sat in his chair that he had not got back pain. He cleared his throat and continued.
“I immediately jumped into my Nyx, and headed towards the system. Through the comm chatter, I heard that several members of the BPA, BAF and even Junkers Congress were in attendance.” He frowned a little. “ Unfortunatly due to a navigational error with the ship's on board computer, it seems that the astro-navigation charts are out of date when I arrived the battle was in full swing.”
He pressed a few more controls, frowned for a moment and turned back to the screen. “I am adding on what few images could be retrieved from the databank of my Nyx. There seemed to be a handful of Gallic warships and snubcraft. I engaged, but fire from a Gallic ship, scored a direct hit on my life support system, and I was forced to eject in my escape pod. “ He seemed very annoyed at this.
“Despite this set back I am happy to report that the battle was won, and I am currently being towed back to conorado along with the Nyx I was flying.” He added as an after thought, “Which I believe is repairable.” He ran his fingers through his short hair and sighed.
“I shall await a request for debriefing. Warrant Officer Williams out.”
We spent the better part of the day looking for trouble, there was a total of three encouters worthy of note
The first storta cruiser we encountered named Achiles(sic), but I chose to avoid it upon noticing, that it outmatched the Magnesia in terms of both firepower and armor.
Second - a junker slavage frigate running cardamine. I was honestly surprised to meet one such ship in the age of cloaking and jumpdrives. The ship was unfortunately intercepted at a point too close to Cali to make a kill likely. Regardless, the ship cautiously docked not to be encountered again.
Third - another storta belonging to a previously unknown Outcast outfit called ASA. The trader Copernicus called the contact in and provided valuable information, determining, that the destroyer was underequipped to the point of negligence. And since its last reported location was relatively far from any Outcastsave haven, I made the decision to make best speed and seek an engagement. We arrived just in time, as the enemy ship just jumped to T23, it managed to go for another few K's towards Cali, but without armor, it was shortly defeated. The Magnesia suffered no damage.
I've been thinking of writing a status report of the tau detachment for a while now and finally I have enough data in hand to make it worth reading.
The 49th is a battlegroup in name only, composed mostly of post-invasion arrivals, but also a few G-day survivors, mainly former 44th deck aviation pilots who somehow managed to stay alive after their carriers were lost. There are also a number of warships - half a dozen corvettes and frigates, which are being maintained as well as conditions permit, some overdue for a shipyard maintenance cycle several times over. The Hades herself, having miraculously survived the G-day battles is close to becoming heavily-armed hulk not unlike IMG's own Hood. Engineering reports, that while reactors, weapons and shields are close to nominal - propulsion requires urgent repairs, possible only in drydock. For all intents and purposes - unless refueled, supplied with spare parts and towed back to Sabah, the Hades remains stranded you-know-where, doing sublight at best.
Politically, it is a challenge to keep the local miners out of harm's way. Java is garrisoned and Royal weapon emplacements have been deployed around it. while in combat, their value is minimal - we cannot use the base for anything more than cover fire against Outcast raids. The miners in general are sympathetic towards us. A rising issue is a junker detachment operating alongside Cali's Outcasts against (Among others) the IMG. As far as the miners themselves have been able to inquire, the said junker units appear to be a recently formed splinter of the overall Sirian junker population, aimed chiefly at cargo and monetary piracy. Since there are no standing orders on how to deal with them in particular, every 49th pilot approaches them on a situational basis. Since those junkers will engage any Royal or idependent miner just as readily - whenever they are after the former, our units tend to cooperate, while in the latter case, we logically side with the IMG.
A potentially dangerous trend however is developing among some of the more seasoned corvette and frigate crews - since contact with HQ back in Coronado is limited to reports like this one going one way and the extremely rare orders and rarer still supplies and reinforcements coming back, several captains have resorted to highly irregular, though not outright damnable practices for the sake of keeping their ships and crews well-maintained. The Hades herself can only keep strike craft in good order, but the few warships are essentially kept flying only as well as their crews can manage. Worn machinery is increasingly being replaced by what the IMG can safely provide as well as whatever a particular crew can salvage from wreckage or even buy from the local black market contacts. Any casualties are replaced internally as well, most commonly with highly competent, though not formally trained IMG fugitives and some mercenaries. All that is most worryingly of all - funded also internally. The most common practises are halting narcotics-carriers and "fining" them in accordance with outdated, pre-invasion regulations and letting the "culprit" continue should an arbitrary payment be made. The second most-common is considerably more sophisticated - a group of capitains and pilots amassed enough wealth to salvage a Fleet tender, lost on G-day and made it operational again. While this normally would be highly commendable, the salvaged ship (Currently named the Mauritius, an early Celestra) is being used by that said group not only to disrupt Royal mining operations and commerce, but more often than not - seizing the cargo and selling it at considerable profit, none of which reaches the treasury department.
While demonstrably creative and keeping the battlegroup in surprisingly good state of readiness and repair, as well as fulfilling its standing purpose, there is considerable risk of the independent commanders, possibly the entire battlegroup drifting far enough from the command chain to go rogue. A potential remedy would be a small, though visible increase in supply and replacements reaching the Hades, as well as giving the self-financing practices legal grounds or even rewarding them.
It would appear, that the Maltese continue their traditional practices when it comes to trade. At about three PM, we received a notice from the listening posts across the barrier approach, that something sizeable was moving all the way from Liberty and across Erisian space, towards the Taus. Since were already in the region, having annoyed the increasingly active royal miners some already - we assumed position at the hole from t29 and soon enough, the expected ship appeared. It turned out to be an Maltese-flagged freighter, full of live cargo. We stopped them, politely asked that they relinquished all the slaves, but after a few attempts at bribery, the enemy merchant just started running and barely made it to Cali, despite being under fire the whole way.
The next encounter proved far more rewarding in just about any imaginable aspect. About five hours after the previous encounter, the listening posts in the lower hemisphere of T-23 registered signals typical for a Royal mining ship. Knowing that even under the best of circumstances, a mining ship has excellent odds of simply lasting long enough to reach the captured BMM base's safety with a corvette in pursuit and under constant fire - I decided to wait at least for a minimum of back up, in this instance to be rendered by an imperial exile fighter and one of the newly-arrived Fleet pilots, Taiki. We typically approached from the base and surely enough, our query was obliviously chewing at the beryllium asteroids. We typically asked him to stop, his reaction was flight, our counter-reaction was fire. And for once it seemed to work - About three kilometers from the base, the miner finally stopped, seemingly to surrender, which we would have accepted, but instead, after a few seconds, it started fleeing again. It was too damaged to last another shot and all the ore he had on board spilled out. Lucklily the Copernicus was nearby, after a MOX delivery, so not a droplet of the captured ore was wasted. All sold in Liberty and the proceeds split three-ways between the action's participants.
After that, we went to rearm, but as Captain Skalski mentioned, shortly after the convoy left, the Royal garrison dispatched two planes in pursuit - a fighter and bomber. Courtesy of the captain himself and the Imperial exile mentioned earlie, the enemy pursuit was defeated - the fighter destroyed, the bomber chased to the Guillestre. Unfortunately, moments after the battle was won, Skalski's plane was hit by Guillestre's flak and needed to be towed. The captain was not injured. Other than that, no damage or casualties sustained.
Good news and bad news, as well as some drill theory today.
Good news is - a carrier we thought lost on G-day, the Valkyrie has reemerged and joined our merry band in the Taus. She's visibly scarred, but in a far better overall shape than the Hades. I have a theory about this all, that you probably you won't hear anyone admitting to. Val was always, I mean always a ship of nearly religious status among its crew by merit of its age. She's been in service from the very beginning and always crewed by select men - granted, many of the competent kind, but more still of the... eligible kind. On G-day, all carriers were lost one way or another - lost with all hands, abandoned and scuttled - the two exceptions were the Hades, that essentially played dead and then limped away. The Valkyrie was the only, repeat ONLY warship to be given an "unknown, presumed lost with all hands" status. Suspicious, huh? Now... I know the commanding officer of that warship sent some sort of communique, announcing their return and laying out the stellar success they had operating somewhere covertly. Ya right... I'm quite sure, that for the last year, the Hades has been the only Fleet carrier behind enemy lines. My theory is - on G-day, they simply broke ranks and fled, seeing, that the battle was becoming a suicidal rearguard action, rather than a fighting retreat. I figure they must have picked someplace to hide very well, as any bigger warship operating in the Taus would draw too much attention. I would have swung by Outcast space and emerged in Gallic space. In Council-controlled or at least contested systems, a ship of any size could hide out and maybe even do some some good. Or... just lay low. You won't see me throwing accusations around and I strongly advise, that no investigation is ever launched. Ever. A working, flying carrier, an iconic one at that - it's what this accursed war needs. Not judging people, who can be turned into hero role-models all the easier, since hardly anyone is left alive (like yours truly), who would remember and know better.
Now, the bad news. As I keep saying ad nauseam, the Taus are frustratingly understaffed and the hardly any of newly-arrived strike craft pilots ever received flight deck training. The only people, who performed squadron-sized combat launch and recovery are the G-day survivors. With the Valkyrie at least nominally back, there's potential for making good and devastating use of what USED TO BE the the most-used trick in the book! It will take weeks, if not months for people to start getting it right again - both the flying personnel as well as crews.
lastly, for the time being, I'm getting the pilots used to what I'd like to think is the best they can do in terms of carrier operation procedure. Until I'm sent updated handbooks (Actually, forget the books, send me some zoggen spare parts instead!) or come up with something better - They're what we'll be doing.
The idea is to get the planes and pilots back onboard. Yesterday. No matter how badly banged up by the enemy or the landing itself. Assuming any random engagement starts going south - the operation's commanding officer makes a decision, that it is time to LEG IT GOOD AND PROPER, the order is issued and immediately, things happen among the planes and onboard the carrier. The fromer one's commander decides on a recovery queue, prioritizing at their discretion. As per the aforementioned queue order, pilots each at a time signaling the carrier and waiting for the carrier to signal readiness. The latter on the other hand - drops everything (figuratively speaking) and prepares to receive a plane, signalling the approaching plane when ready using... just about anything as long as it's bright, flashy and easy to notice and distinguish from the inevitable snafu all around.
Captain Michael Owens.
Ship: Armed transport class Celestra "Merodeador"
Greetings, I'm glad to report that we have complete seventeen investigation of the Mad King's army suply lines along southern Taus and Leeds, by the best method known by man kind: Shooting people.
Despite this almost three weeks of constant fighting and traveling our old boy Merodeador is in good condition and ready for more. Here is our results:
Tau 29:
Almost a waste of time. We spend litle time near the gate to Tau 31 but the only we font is many angry Gauls and Outcats. Unless the intelicence's guys say otherwise there is little reason to make raids there. Not with the rest of our results as reference.
As for the Gauls concern there is little to see here. Alot of empty transports and a small suply depot near the Indochine Outpost, wich of course we take a sample.
Our favorite drug dealers on the other are a different story. Insted of the traditional cardamine shipments we found and intersting offer of comodites like Pharmaceuticals, Mox and the Galic crap version of Alcohol known as "Wine". I guest the role of Cali these days is more of an outpost for raid operations than drug smugling. A pity they only use small freighters.
Other coments:Seriously, if someone tell me that they are invading Sirius to get access to decent drinks I would believe it. This "colored water" have no impact.
There is something of value... I guest. We only found transports carrying food wich our friends in Roussillon desperately need. Maybe desperately enough to make a few deliveries from time to time.
Now we are talking about. We identified two iportants suply routes with diferent sets of commodities of high value, both with planet Leeds as destination. Some of them we only knew of them after this. I guest that normal materials is not rifinied enough to make Galic fantasy stuff like their Lynx.
1) Endimburg jump gate->Planet Leeds
This trade lane have a hole in the West Leeds Smog Cloud, with is great. However there are fewer valuable shippments troght this route. But we found a huge delivery of Protomere and something identified by my creew member private Dominique Wells, ex IMG, as Molybedenum. A raw Material used to manufacture metal alloys, here are the some potential selling points. Some people in freeport 4 buy this stuff at 3288 credits the unit.
I imagine that the GRN has managed to capture some industrial complex on Leeds capable capable of producing this and they are they are producing locally Metal Alloys instead of give us the chance to steal it in space. Looks that we won't be able to get basic alloys to our little project from them after all.
2) Tau 31 jump gate->Stokes Mining station->Planet Leeds
In terms of loot per time unit this is the trade route. Have less patrols than the Endimburg jumpgate-> Planet Leeds route, this one doesnt have a hole in a smog cloud, and have more frecuent transports of all sizes with Ship hull panels and some kind of special alloy for special stuff. After not few inquiries we found that is called Shape-Memory Alloy, here is the list with some of the most lucrative selling points. The people of Freeport 4 buy this at 3.015 credits the unit.
I guest someone smarter than me can theorize what the Gauls are doing with this. Because they are moving a lot of this high tech crap.
It might be of interest to you, dearest HQ, that the IMG are showing some curious initiative for a change. Me and one of the navy intel men participated in a convoy escort job. Paid well, looked like the miners could use the help too, didn't neglect any usual duties. Like there are any to begin with...
On the 22nd of june, at 1900hours standard, me and officer codename Sempiternal dearted from T23, our convoy princials were a pair of pelicans carrying... well... Nomad stuff.
Oh not that I don't trust the miners, it would just be stupid not to actually take a peek. The stuff was consistent with liquid cardamine. See, the fun part is that the stuff is RIDICULOUSLY rare. I've seen it only carried by either Maltese nobility - the religious and landed business owner kind, not the ones with fancy paint jobs.
Or... Aliens. Now... Don't get me wrong, I myself liberated some of that stuff from the squids and pawned it away at some point or another, but the amount the minershad either took years to accumulate or your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway, as soon as the whole escort job started, we seemed to have a very generous amount of support from everyone's favorite bunch of enigmatic techno-mongers - The Order. Seemed like they were the cargo's recepients to begin with... Some mercenaries too. We moved out aaaaand big surprise - a Maltese noble with about a dozen junkers jumped us as we entered Kyushu. Well, more like tried to. They were prepared to go after the transports - I eyeballed no less than a pair of warans, a roc, one funny roadkill-frog-like fighter, a gunboat and call it half a dozen various fighters. Well, in any normal cicumstances they'd wreck the principals easily, but us all friendlies combined outnumbered the attackers by a fair margin. The fight lasted fairly long, as the enemy would try (with no small success) disperse our units between t23 and K. After a couple minutes though, the path was cleared and the transports moved on. It was a long and annoying journey through Kusari and the sigmas. The second big fight happened as the convoy was pretty close to its destination, in zonerland o74. This time, we were jumped by aliens and mutants. Harder fight, sure, but again - too many of us and too few of them. I definitely saw an alien cruiser, alien gunboat and one mutant gunboat. On top of that no less than three alien bombers, two light fighters and no less than three Federal-build mutant fighters. I couldn't make an accurate count - here's why:
COMMS DISCIPLINE SUUUUUCKED
I had an unreasonable amount of trouble mentally filtering out all the verbal chaff that resulted from about a dozen and a half men chattering, butting into each others' sentences and generally having NOTHING constructive or relevant to the job at hand to contribute. Understandable during the lax-time, but not when the action starts. Only two of us were present and we just picked logical target, mostly ignoring what was said out loud. Text wasn't much more useful. Ok, granted, we aren't working in too large groups, but on the off chance, that we become like... a giant war machine (again) - I'd veeeery much like that a vox-discipline manual be written. Just so vox was actually helpful in mass combat.
At any rate, during the second fight, the intel officer got three kills, I got two. Which including the brawl in Kyushu comes down to six kills Fleet-exclusive. The IMG convoy lost their decoy pelican. Overall, it worked because the IMG kept moving at sensible times and the mob of fighters on our side outnumbered the opposition every time. Don't know or care what happened to the cargo later, I'd guess the Order received it.
Things get a bit weird in Coronado. I mean, thanks to Barrier's gate we deal with things that the other squadrons don't. I don't mean pirates and smuglers, I mean crazy people. Like freelancer trying to find a way to bring peace to all man kind. Or a supposed agent of the BIS searching for a weakness in the Gauls suply lines in Barrier's Gate. But yesterday things reach another level: The SCRA destroyers International and Crescent and the LSF battlecruiser Kunsan end together on the upper orbit of Pecos, when Major Lloyd Flint in the Eros "Anchises" reach the place they have recently agree a cease fire and were negotiating. The SCRA made an incursion on Liberty and the LSF cut their retreat and was trying to rescue some prisioners. I didn't see it but I think that the Kunsan gave them a beating.
We are not train for situations like this, we shoot pirates, search for contraband and show the undesirable freelancers the exit from coronado. But be a mediator between two foregin armies? I am not ready for this and I don't think that many in the 15th know what to do. We are colonials, not an exotic version of the Libertonian TV show Guardians of the Galaxy, we do not solve others trouble.
I tryed to do my best in avoiding a bigger incident. I mean, an LSF crusier in Coronado is bad but I can't blame them. If the GRN take more than twenty of our people into Kusary space we aslo would follow them without any diplomatic request, right? Besides why the SCRA retreated here? They espected that we invite a drink to the LSF while they scape? The guys of the 52nd have to work with this *****. We couldn't shoot them, the same for the SCRA, we have enought enemies to add another. And on the top of the list of trouble: We didn't had the weapons to do any of this things. They should go to Vespucci, where the Legion surely he had been excited of add the Kunsan to their colection (or at least parts of the Kunsan). Or maybe continue to Baffin, or try luck in drake. Anywhere that doesn't here on my watch!!
In the end the problem was solved by itself. The SCRA surrender the prisioners and everyone leave Coronado alive. The only problem would be mine if the crew of the International com back for a drink that I offered. I didn't realize at the time that this destroyers have a crew around a hundred.
End of report
This user talks little to none english. If you find something wrong tell him.
A two-stage engagement against the Royalgarrison. Not my preferred kind, as I normally prefer raiding things that don't shoot back and drop spare parts, valuables and such...
Traffic in t23 was normal and included some Kusari folk, a Chrys and an Imperial both surprisingly peaceful and chatting. SUDDENLY! (dramatic, wasn't it?) a wild Royal appeared and following an exemplary display of laziness-induced eloquence, proceeded to engage the three of us. Not personally, no, he found himself a recruit to try out. He... wasn't as challenging as he was tedious to deal with. Gaston his last name or something along the lines, equipped as a short-range shotgunner, but otherwise quite inaccurate, using only guns. Uncannily evasive in terms of guided weaponry, maybe two missiles hit out of 25 and not a single, rotten mine. Most likely because the Maltese drones out of Cali make for excellent chaff, but just maybe the Royals have some new jamming gizmo (Ye, Tried to recover it. Nothing left but charred plastic) - after a while Cloud and Matthews joined me and engaged the other Royals. Overall, Cloud's plane got blown up by the same cluster of mines that took out his opponent while Matthews unsurprisingly died after inflicting a surprisingly good amount of damage. The Kusari finished his opponent off, while it took me... call it half an hour to finish that recruit. Overall we lost two planes while the Royals lost three.
I dragged my lightly damaged plane back to Hades, but on the way spotted another Royal, this time a robotic cruiser under GMS flag. Paid a Chrysie from before to keep it busy chatting and staying out while Carmine's heavies had time to engage and blow it out of the stars. After that Carmine only mentioned the IMG having a skirmish against a few maltese just off Cali with a Trident and some planes involved, Guildsmen did fine, chasing the Maltese party back to the station's safety.
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>>:Incoming Transmission >>: Comm ID: Warrant Officer David Matthews >>: Destination: Colonial Military Reporting Facility >>: Encryption: HIGH
Greetings, officers of the Colonial Military.
I am forwarding my latest actions out in the field via a patrol report.
7/21, 821 A.S. - With the ink on my enlistment papers still fresh, I headed out in a recently outfitted Nyx-class fighter to the Tau-23 system, where officers "Pericles" and "Panzer", along with the support cruiser 'Hellas', were busy fighting a Gallic fighter. However, the situation became worse when a second and third Gallic fighter joined in along with a Corse Asco, for some reason assisting the Gallics rather than the Republic. The support carrier 'Hellas' was quickly destroyed, and while myself and Panzer attempted to fight off the fighters, Panzer was quickly destroyed, and I followed soon after.
7/23, 821 A.S. - With a new Nyx under my command, I moved from Coronado to Leeds as a GRN assault was underway. I assisted BPA, BAF, and CR| forces in defending against the large Gallic force, but we were ultimately unsuccessful and experienced a total defeat and loss of all forces.
7/24, 821 A.S. - With another new Nyx fresh off Sabah, I moved to assist officer 'Panzer' against two GRN in Tau-23. While Panzer was busy fighting the Gaul 'Sebastion Gaston', I went up against 'Albert Charles'. While we fought for a long time, I was narrowly defeated in combat against the Gaul.
7/27, 821 A.S. - With the fourth Nyx this week alone, I flew to Leeds and began to engage a Gaul cadet. We fought for a long time and I was narrowly bested by the missile-packing Lynx.
7/28, 821 A.S. - With the FIFTH Nyx now in my possession (I feel like I'm about to be court martialed), I flew to assist a TAZ vessel under attack by Gallics in Dublin. Unfortunately, I was unable to assist the zoner vessel against the pirating Gauls and thus the zoner vessel was destroyed - and then I was annihilated afterward in mere seconds. However, I was awarded the Medal for Fastest Deaths, ironically the fastest a colonial pilot has ever received a medal from the admiralty. I look forward to continuing my service record of getting shot down valiantly.
For those we left behind. Warrant Officer Matthews, out.
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