Tides of Change

[Rodent]

Blue. Beautiful Blue. Blue particles revolving around a blue core, flying through at an amazing speed, like a miniature comet, the force of the sky. It pulsated, swung...and impacted. A huge cloud of blue was created, but it was miniature compared to what followed.

There was a searing explosion, as the subsection of the Osiris ruptured, cracked, and started falling apart, tongues of flame were dancing from it, but it was still mostly operational. Just another day in Delta, and a massive pitched battle between the Guild Core and the Order. Order forces had struck first, and decisively, taking out a gunboat squadron in the Palau cloud.

The counter-attack came soon, and swiftly. The Core unleashed their big guns, the Makos, and Order bomber squadrons scrambled to assist. Soon, the Oathkeeper jumped into the fray. It was the Oathkeeper that was taking heavy damage.

The giants tussled with each other, and finally Titan threw down the Hydra, and the Makos exploded in a cataclysm of fiery torment. At great cost. At a greater cost.

It was a pyrrhic victory, The Order's entire strike group was severely compromised, but it was a victory, and something to smile about and drink to, this night. Today, Minor would not burn. Twenty-four hours of peace and quiet....a prized commodity.

[Rodent]

A cold wind was blowing across the launch pad, as always. It wasn't snowed under however, miraculously clear. Robert D'Souza stood nearby, looking at the sky. While other Admirals would prefer sitting behind the curtain, in a manner of speaking, D'Souza liked being close to the action.

They are over a day late... He worried. Nothing went according to plan these days. The escort pilot who had managed to break through the Naval forces Blockade of Hokkaido had reported that the Papyrus had went into hiding, and was looking for a good time to resurface. Three wings had launched three hours ago, looking to free the way for the shipment. The last report had reported the Papyrus as safe, over an hour ago, they would be returning to base provided nothing interfered.

At this opportune moment, the skies cleared, as the ugly shape of a pirate transport zoomed ever close. It circled around a few times, then began to descend.

Finally.

Soon, it was on the ground, and clamped in place. The cargo hatches opened, and the shipment began to come out. The first appearance was a middle-aged woman, with unkempt hair and a look of terror on her face. As she looked around wildly at the unfamiliar surroundings, D'Souza walked to her. Extending his hand, he gave as best a smile as he could...

You are safe, do not worry was all he managed to say.

The woman burst into tears, and leant on Robert's arm. It was a touching moment, and also a ray of success in the darkening clouds of failure. Three thousand refugees had been brought safely to Toledo, and their contributions towards the defense of Humanity would be invaluable....

[Tommeh]

Commodore was back on duty, onboard Khepri. One of the new osirises, serving on active duty only for a short period. Regular duties around Minor, working with Mission Control, Khepri was patroling far reaches of Minor, clearing out occasional Core and Navy wings who happened to find themselfes on wrong place in wrong time.

In one moment, all the Delta JH patrol wings went silent...Khepri's 1st Comm officers were keeping constant radio connections with those patrols, to monitor one of the Minor's entrances...

"All hands prepare for cruise speed, kick up those engines Demarco!" Aaron gave clear orders to proceed towards Delta jump hole. But on the way there...the worst scenario came true...Mission control reported unconfirmed Nomad battleship seeing.
Clear orders from Isis control were sent in wide system comms:

All ships, return to Toledo's higher orbit, secondary defenses were breached, we got an major problem here, over!
Officer's voice striked fear in pilots and Captains, everyone rushed to Toledo as soon as possible.
The sight was horrible...as Khepri was approaching Toledo, an massive purple ship was slowly uncovering.
And it already found his first victim. Osiris Dead Sea was struggling with the beast, newly commissioned, osiris was lacking proper armor upgrades and crew was lacking any experience in battle with larger Nomad units.

Khepri opened fire as soon it was possible, but it was to late for Dead Sea. bolts of energy ripped apart that osiris like a paper...Toledo defenses were bombarding that Nomad battleship, but ship was placed under certain angle where defenses could not deliver even half of full power. As the one osiris went down in flames, beast slowly turned towards Khepri and opened full barage. Second osiris started shaking like hell itself is coming upon it, shields failing in seconds, kinetical barriers barely blocking the fire from wiping out entire bridge.

That's it, fall back to Isis, all turrets open covering fire, Khepri turned backwards toward Nomad battleship, and started retreating while firing back. Combined fire from Khepri and Isis dealt serious damage to that monster...and he was slowly falling back, Khepri took heavy damage, they were to close when it got caught in fire line. Ship barely hold together, but gunners were still in full barage, still hurting that Nomad menace...
Eventually reinforcements arrived, clearing out any remaining Nomad snubcract, but that monster managed to run away heavly damaged, leaving purple trail in space...it was obvious that battleship took heavy hit, and won't come back so soon.
But Aaron was furious...we lost an bloody osiris infront of Toledo, how is that possible, he slams the walls in shuttle as he was leaving Khepri which was taken to Evora repair docks...damage was massive.
How did it got through, Taggart grabbed closest officer in shuttle and started waving around with him, tell me now god damn it. How did they knew that vulnerable spot in Toledo defenses...bah, you know nothing, Aaron let him go and went in back of shuttle to cool down.
Reports with causilties have started coming in...Dead Sea lost almost half of the crew, four patrols squadrons were taken down right at Delta jumphole, where their bodies were still floating in space.
Khepri lost 17 crew members aswell. 15 % of Toledo defenses were offline.
Order confronted yet another threat, and successfully turned it back to it's hole. But price was high...possibly to high.

---

[Rodent]

The alarms went off. Pilots suited up, got to their ships, launched. And they saw hell. A Core Armada had breached the defenses all the way to Toledo, and they were exacting vengeance with a flourish, destroying everything before it had a chance to respond. It was horrible. More horrible was that, at the other side, a nomad attack was in progress, nimble snubcraft whizzing around the dazed Order defense.

Klaxon after Klaxon went off, the wave of destruction spread, A geb carrier, caught in the line, splintered, cracked, and disintegrated. The Isis threw down covering fire, which was the only thing deterring the joint invasion force.

Reinforcements were called in from Omicron-100, the entire reserve fleet was mobilized. The attack was not big enough to overcome this blatant use of power, They retreated slowly, leaving only dust and burning pieces of ships behind.

The Core, and the Nomads, advancing on Minor, against their common Enemy. Fully Three Capital ships had been completely disintegrated, beyond repair, the death toll was in the thousands. How long would this last?

[Dashiell]

Captain Pike of the Hathor Finishing Touch was sitting in a corner of the battleship Isis. He was tired. Very tired of it all. Non stop attacks from all sides. Homocidal aliens on one end, crazed lunatics called the Core on the other. And more losses to Order forces everyday.

The Touch was being launched almost daily to try and repel attacks on Toledo. Well, repel is a big word. More like damage control. It was as if the nomads were just playing a game. Increasing the difficulty a little bit every attack. See when the humans would reach their breaking point. Pike knew, this point was awfully close for a -lot- of the Order agents. Including his own crew. Only his gunner, an over enthousiastic Libertonian was running around screaming 'lemme at `em! lemme at `em!'

How long has it been since the Order had a break? Well, Pike remembered one occasion. When some arrogant loon in a Mako was flying around Delta. He was screaming how awesome he was and that he could kill every ship he would encounter. Because Mart the gunner was so very eager to shoot stuff, Pike decided to see who it was, acting like a little kid with too much energy drink in his veins.

It was a Mako called 'Mimic'.

It had some Core ships around it, fighters mostly. The Mimic was blabbering incoherently, but the gist of it was that he would blow up the Touch without as much as breaking a sweat. The Core fighters which were around mumbled something about a bet and flew to a 3k distance, then held position.

Then the Mimic attacked. And missed. And missed. And missed some more. But then-!








It missed again.

Pike was getting bored and Mart was punching his console screaming 'engageglubbb!' (there was a mint stuck in his throat), obviously wanting to attack. So Pike humored his gunner and came around and attacked the Mako head on. The Mako was still missing every shot and then the Touch let rip with its pulses and razors. Soon the Mako's shield was gone. Then its hull started to take damage to the quad-razors the Touch kept spitting out.

Soon the Mimic hit the reverse and started screaming at the Core fighters to help him. They didn't. All Pike heard coming from them was laughter and some Core pilot, almost choking on his laughter, saying to one of his wingmen 'You owe me a 1000 credits, Malachite. I told ya that fool would lose to a gunboat'

Then more laughter was heard.

Meanwhile, Mart was jumping up and down behind his console, firing razor after razor barrage at the ill-dodging Mako.

'hahahha! Die! Take that! Want some more! LOOOOSSERR!'

Mart was drooling at this point.

Yes, Pike really admired the military-like dicipline of his gunner.
After the Mimic had take so much damage its captain decided to run like a little girl. The Touch fired a few cds, and disrupted its cruise engines. Then Pike waited for the Mako to try and cruise off again before firing another cd up its tail end. It was a sad sight, to see the battleship desperadly try to get to safety, with its captain screaming in rage at the Core fighters who just sat there, laughing their arses off.

Then Pike decided playtime was over. This was just too sad. Not wantng the Core fighters to eventually rescue the Mako, Pike ordered the Touch to rtb. Mart had had his fun, and the crew`s spirits had lifted. If all Core ships fought like that Mako, the Order still had a fighting chance.

That was a while back, however. Recently, competent Core agents attacked. And it was messy. Only the Isis had prevented an all out disaster. But how long would it take for even Isis to fail one day?

---

[majoj]

Commander Raoul Duke was lying in bed. His eyes were closed, but he was awake. The massive amount of painkillers kinda numbed the pain, but it was still there,
lingering, waiting for him to make a single wrong move to strike back with renewed vigor. Even the breathing was painful.

He slowly opened his eyes, one by one,
blinded at first by the glow of his ceiling lamp, then, he started moving his healthy arm behind his head, in search for something on his nightstand. Finally, his fingers
came upon a familiar shape. He grabbed the box, opened it with his fingers, and shook out a cigarette straight into his mouth. A flicker of fire, and suddenly, a thin
strip of smoke was ascending straight up, until caught by the torrents of air conditioning.

He took a big puff, blissfully inhaling the smoke, ignoring the sudden jolt
of pain from his broken ribs. Yesterday was a disaster. The Tranquility is in drydock, new armor upgrades ripped to pieces, cockpit missing... His crew members
severely wounded - or worse. The betrayal of Coalition has cost him his vessel, and almost his life as well. In these dark times, every help they could get was more
than appreciated, and a stab in the back like this lowered the morale of the entire Order, and with it, their chances of survival.

Duke turned his head around to see
the intercom panel built in the wall. Gripping the cigarette with his lips, he punched in his name and authentication, requested a call and waited for response.
After a short while, a lean, blonde woman in white uniform appeared on the screen. "How can I help you, commander?" "Jonathan Clay. Sergeant. What is his
condition?" "Let me see... Oh, I'm sorry, we did everything we could, but his wounds were too severe. " He closed his eyes momentarily in a gesture of utter dismay.
"Thank you, officer."

Raoul flicked the switch, and the screen went blank again. He resumed staring into the ceiling, puffing his cigarette. Is this the beginning of the
end? Are our days as protectors of humanity counted? Who will protect them when we're gone? Bleak thoughts swarmed his mind, ascending to ceiling, following the
trail of burned tobacco.

---

[Jeremy Hunter]

Axel stood to the side as technicians worked on a new Bastet. Wilde had been in Delta, Chris Leigh and his hairbrained schemes...

Axel left the hanger and went through the twisty cooridors and maze of closed of areas as he made his way to the bridge. There, he was going to thank Stone for pulling his arse out of the fire. Sighing as he manuvered around the subtley differemt interior, his comm beeped. Pulling it out, he looked at the screen. Seeing it was from Jeremy, Axel took it.

"Stone pulled me out. A new Bastet was delivered. Almost ready."
"Good. You're worrying Aqua."
Axel sighed. "There..."
"You wanna go over to Dirus and tell him..."
"right...what is really wrong"

Greeted with silence, Axel cursed.

"How bad?"
"Its the Corsairs all over again. Next time, avoid those with C-O at the beginning."
"Damn right."

Axel leapt into his fighter, left a note for Stone saying thanks, and roared away from the Horus. Aiming for 100, and Evora, Axel set the autopilot and grabbed some water.


Evora Shipyard:

The Oathkeeper sat at drydock as its ruptured subsection was repaired. The bottom of three hangers were breached, they lost half the motorpool, and around fifty died frim trying to secure vital data in Hanger Nine. Jeremy sat on the bridge as he waited fir Axel. Despite being Primary, Axel still perfered Weapons Officer, relaying orders to the gunnery crews.

Soon, the Bastet slid into Hanger Two.

Arriving at the bridge, Axel was met with tension.


"What!?"
Jeremy sigged. "We got backstabbed. Raoul's in the infirmary, we lost ships...this feel like the frakkin Alamo."
Jeremy pushed his water away. "Axel, you cant continue to keep your spot. The Oathkeeper is moving..."
jeremy sighed again. Axel nodded.
"Then good luck."
"In these times" I'll take uncertain luck."

Axel left for Toledo as the Oathkeeper, fresh from repairs, moved from drydock. Axel looked back once.

This was going to be the worst months ever.

---

May you ever walk in the Light, Shizune.

[Rodent]

The conference room on-board Lisbon station was dimly lit, just enough to be able to make out faces if one stood nearby. Here, in this quiet chamber, reminding one of a place where conspirators met in horribly cliche movies, a grave problem was being discussed. The room was protected against eavesdroppers, and the people talked softly.

Two men, and a woman, were conversing. The Admirality of the Primary fleet was discussing matters, in a rather informal fashion. X was absent, of course. He was hardly ever around, his doings as shadowy as the man himself. Admiral Mirage was also absent. That left just the primary fleet admirals, to deal with the issue of the Coalition.

Osborne spoke first, as was his pergorative, being the holder of the rank of Fleet Admiral.

We know about the Coalition problem. What is your evaluation regarding them?

Both of them leaned forward, as to speak, but the woman, Julia Benford, Rear Admiral, spoke first, and Robert D'Souza leaned back.

[font=Agency FB]The threat posed by them cannot be underestimated. They were, and are a terrorist organization, their pilots are well trained, they are experts in guerilla warfare, and their ships are designed as such.

Their fighter corps have good experience in operations throughout Sirius, and they have flown with us, so they know our general tactics. They can be a large nuisance, and something we'll have to watch for. The perimeter will have to be strengthened against incursions by them, and we'll have to increase recon patrols in the omegas to hope to be able to locate their raiding squads and make arrangements.

Osborne nodded. It fit together logically.

Robert. What's your opinion, ehh?

Robert spoke, in usual Hispanic undertones.

[font=Agency FB]Julia's assessment seems good to me, but there are a couple more factors. Let's see what we know about them.

He pressed a few buttons, and an Osiris, with a couple of smaller shapes that could be identified as Typhoon destroyers, showed up.

[font=Agency FB]From what we know, they have two hard hitting Osiris class Battleships, The Havana and the Karl Marx. Both of which have undergone refits at Evora, and so we know that they are an older model of Osiris, although strong and durable because of some Coalition fitting.

They have a few Destroyers, of which The International, and The Lithuania are known. I do not put their destroyer strength at over twenty altogether. Storm gunboats, unknown amount. We know their construction though, because there is one in our fleet.

They depend on snubcraft mostly, and that's what we'll have to watch for. Their capital strength can hurt us if we are far from our bases, but in Omicron Minor with it's defenses, I doubt they can do much of a dent.

That fit together as well. Osborne gave a quick nod of assent, and now began to speak his mind.

[font=Agency FB]Let's have a look at the strategic overview then.

Pressing a few buttons, a 3-D view of the Sirius sector came up. With a few adjustments, he had a smooth map of the Omegas and the Omicrons, with lines from Omega-52 to Minor showing possible routes of attack.

[font=Agency FB]You see, the most direct route to us, and the most economical, is through Omicron Kappa. There are only two ways to Omicron Kappa, through Omicron Gamma, which we all know as Corsair territory, and Omicron-74, where the Omicroners reside.

The Coalition is at war with both the Corsairs and the Omicroners.

Julia interjected, with a trace of a smile.

[font=Agency FB]Obviously neither of them are going to allow the Coalition to move fleets through their systems.

Close, but not exactly. The Omicroners may yield to some pressure, but they are not going to allow fleets to move, under any circumstances. Which means we can rule out the big guns. That leaves the snubcraft. Obviously, any action in the Omegas will have to be guarded, because there they have free reign.

[font=Agency FB]Hmm. Their snubcraft are not to be underestimated. And they have assaulted Minor with the Guild Core, which shows a degree of cooperation. A combined assault would leave us short.


[font=Agency FB] They would have to sneak a wing to the Omicrons first. Unless I am much mistaken, and this break in the alliance was the doing of the Core, I doubt the Core is too trusting of the Coalition. And if we keep the recon nets strong, we would be able to see them coming.

Osborne sighed a little. They had a plan.

[font=Agency FB]So, strengthen our recon network in the Omegas and the Omicrons, send word to keep an eye out for Coalition movements, and plan our own movements outside the Omicrons accordingly. That should be sufficient.

Of course, I'll put the corps to overtime patrolling, just in case. We might have established the Coalition threat as a minor addition to the ones already, but we have to watch. As usual

The others merely nodded. They had consensus.

[Catbert]

The Order agents have been monitoring artifact smuggling activities for some time. And after months of tracking they finally found something interesting: a smuggler, who intended to move a load of some unusual alien artifacts. However, even now the luck was not on the Order's side - the LSF agents managed to intercept the smuggler and capture the cargo. Of course, such potenentially dangerous objects couldn't be left in the hands of governments, because they may be used in a wrong way. That's why the Order agents needed to intercept the LSF transport heading for Willard Research Station.

The entire operation didn't work as planned. First of all, commander Maersk's ship turned out to be malfunctioning. So, commodore Taggart had to take the lead. With colonel Gunson and two ensigns they proceeded to the ambush point in Tahoe Ice Cloud. Things went well so far, but then the worst part began. The Order operatives successfully disrupted the transport. Its escorts consisted of two LSF vessels, but the reinforcements from San Diego showed up shortly. Lucky for the Order agents, LNS-Assault-1 couldn't use the weapons without the risk of friendly fire. The fight was long and tense, but the LSF pilots managed to get the upper hand. Eventually, commodore and colonel were the only ones who made it back home in their ships, the ensigns had to travel in the escape pods in the cargo hold. But from the intercepted transmissions they found out that the LSF have also lost something valuable...

Planet Toledo, Cape Hope, briefing room.
Lieutenant Scott learned that the strike team hadn't managed to take down that LSF transport. He was still sitting in the briefing room, when he suddenly got contacted.
- Lieutenant, check the message on the channel 62-5.
- That's... surprising news. So, have our researchers said anything about it already?
- I'm afraid there's not much they can do. The power cell was damaged severely, it just was shattered. They said that they -could- make some use of it, but nothing really significant.
- Right, we'll talk about that later. I'll compile the reports of the commodore, the colonel and the ensigns, as the Admiralty requested. I have received the data already. Brian Scott out.

At that moment lieutenant Frederick entered the briefing room.
- I assume the operation went well, Brian? I've heard the news that we got one of the artifacts we had been after.
- Well, the success was partial, Henry. The transport reached Willard and delivered most of the cargo. The artifact we got is almost useless now, it's broken. And the remaining artifacts are at Willard... For now.
- For now?
- Yeah, I think they will try to move them to more secure location. And "for now" applies even if they decide to keep the artifacts on Willard.
- Wait, are you up to something? I saw the mission reports. If the LSF protect their convoys that good, Willard will be a space fortress. No way the Order can breach its security by open attack.
- And I didn't say a word about the Order, Henry. However, I might develop a new plan. I was thinking of a force that -could- assault Willard openly. One of them has just come to my mind. Tell me, do you know much about Rheinland Military Intelligence?..

---

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[Tommeh]

Exordium : [color=#C0C0C0]Fleet Admiral's disappearance....
<div align="right]

It was suppose to be just another day on Toledo;
Morning shifts rushing to the landing pads, fighters getting clearances for take of...
New rookies being late on their working spots, briefing papers already waiting on 1st officer's tables.
There was no time to waste, transitions between shifts were inconspicuous, Order discipline at it's best.

Jack was walking down the corridors, constantly getting saluted by lower ranks, it was their duty and honor to salute Fleet Admiral...

Osborne was exactly like one of them in younger days. Eager to show off infront of higher ranks, if nothing else, then just saluting move pulled swiftly and accurately.

Jack's thoughts were somewhere else, something felt wrong that morning, he felt insecured more and more as he was getting closer to his office, almost afraid of entering it.
He finally reached it, looked around a bit and steped in, everything was same as before, like there wasn't even reason why it wouldn't be...

Screen on his desk flashed.



Jack sat in his leather chair, and slowly opened message, at first screen was covered with interferences, nothing meaningful or readable, and then slowly it became crystal clear.

Old debts from past waited to long to be charged.

Transmission contained simple message:

<span style="font-size:18pt;line-height:100%]It's time, leave now.

Source was impossible to trace, transmission origin unknown.
Jack immediately started sorting out neccessary paperwork for his departure.
He could have used his influence as Fleet Admiral, to solve this..."debt" but conscience wouldn't allow him,
he was man of the his word, and always did everything to keep up with his motto.
Firstly he transfered all Command and Planetary defense grid Codes to Vice Admiral D'Souza.
Secondly command over Kheops was moved Commodore Aaron Taggart,
and finally, short private note to his 2iC Robert D'Souza.

[color=#FFFFFF]Time has come my friend, this seat is yours now, take good care of it, and good luck.




Jack left his Admiral uniform, grabed his old coat, and left his office and higher ranks deck on Toledo, where he swiftly walked down the corridors for landing pads.
There was one hangar bay that was never opened since the day Osborne became Fleet Admiral,
he made sure to have a way out of here in case of emergency, like this one.
And there it was; Eagle with all the Order latest upgrades and technology installed.
All hidden under simple civilian type of hull. No one else knew about it except Fleet Admiral itself.
Ship was in perfect shape, jack hoped in and quickly left the landing pads not turning around.



Era of one Fleet Admiral has came to an end. Jack did his duty towards Order, his burden was transfered to someone else, now was time to deal with his past. Eagle flew away in Alaska direction, with final goal reaching Liberty....

---