We stopped by Freeport 9 today to take on another two months worth of supplies. In addition, a small number of crew requested some additional items for increased comforts during our long away times. Although we don't exactly serve much for pleasure aboard the Hawk, I decided a few things would be acceptable to bring in addition to our normal pickup this time. A happier crew is essential to good productive behaviour, as long as focus is kept on our mission.
The astrogation team brought to my attention a number of outlying areas that we have not visited yet as well. The areas sent to me do not represent any place that significant alien incursions have been reported lately, but I suppose it is still prudent to make sure that no corner is left untouched. I will work with my Ops team and Helms-lady to coordinate a search pattern in the near future.
Our search for more traces of alien activity never stops, so to this end we decided to survey a area we have not been around yet, that being Baffin. The system is mainly under the jurisdiction of a larger Zoner group known as the TAZ or Temporary Autonomous Zoners.
We established some communications with the local group at one of their space station, but apart from some religious banter and a attempt to “help us please Eris” their goddess they worship, we did not find anything of interest. We scoured around the edge of the large asteroid belt that covers part of the system but only some microscopic organisms that they use for various farming and terraforming techniques were found.
Aug 9, 828 AS
I did not have much to report lately. I sent in another report to Kaplain today. I don't normally report this on my ship logs but it seems viable to do so as he has been working diligently over the past few months to dig up information that can be helpful to us. One such point of interest being possible Nomad contacts sighted in the Sigma Cluster. He is still requesting access to ship logs and questioning personnel willing to help us for further data before we can act. His efforts have been one of the cornerstones of our successes, he does not get enough praise for what he has done.
Aug 19, 828 AS
On this day we initially planned to explore the area of the edges near the north end of Omicron Delta. With the consistent Nomad activity, we made plans to comb through some lesser travelled area in a effort to find any sort of Nomad base. We suspect that something may exist in the system with how often raids occur. As it happens, we encountered a Freelance scientist who had more accurate information on a system that we were made aware of from a while back, but did not have a good chance to investigate it. Some from Freeport 11 had forwarded to us some information of initial scouting data of Lost.
A vessel under the designation of “DeepResearch” contacted us while we were holding near Freeport 11 and after relaying to him our ship's purpose, he offered to assist in guiding us to Lost, as he had apparently spent some time in there before. Seizing a opportunity, I elected to hire this Freelancer ship to assist us. In addition, a large heavy colony vessel called “ZV-Baruuk” had recently arrived and completed offloading personnel to the Freeport, and they also shared some interest in joining us. After negotiating some logistics, we took off with the research vessel and followed them to a jumphole near the north end of Delta, which led us to Lost.
Upon entry, we did not notice any hostile contacts, or any contacts whatsoever. DeepResearch stated that they could direct us toward a zone of possible Nomad activity. I would assume this would relate to his past experiences in here. I put our crew on the side of caution and readied our tactical systems just in case. After transitioning to another sector of the system, we arrived on a far out area. Shortly after, we were briskly engaged by several fighter wings of Nomads. The fought us very viciously, but fortunately with us being prepared for hostile action along with having assistance from other vessels, we managed to defeat at least four dozen fighter craft.
We spent a short amount of time engaged in combat, but the Nomads seemed to constantly be arriving with wave after wave of ships, so I was concerned that things could go downhill at some point soon. Before departing, we noted significant gravimetric distortions in the area, my science team thought it may be a jumphole nearby but was unable to pinpoint anything. With nothing else but constant waves of hostiles, I decided that it would be best to depart the area.
When we entered the system initially I noticed a decent sized planet nearby, and wanted to have a closer look at that. I directed the helm on a direct course to the planet with our friends right behind. The time spent travelling back to the planet was briefly going over what we may have found with the strange distortions located from the area we had departed from. Likely our science teams will have a lot of go over later with everything that was detected. When we arrived at the unknown planet, a large asteroid ring was discovered around it, and as we made scans, nothing important was found in the asteroids, and scans of the planet also were partially disrupted by the field, but what we did find seemed of little importance, no major structures or power signatures were found, its possible it may be a uninhabited planet.
After which we found some sort of cobbled together installation that was being patrolled by several wings of AI vessels. This is a curious discovery as we know that AI ships did frequently depart their suspected home planet of Gammu and left Kappa, but we had little intel on where they may have setup other bases, so it is good to know they are expanding beyond their original borders. As for the purpose of the base, we have no idea what it may be.
Overall, our survey of Lost yielded few results apart from the Nomad entanglement, chances are we may return later to take a more detailed look at them. The system, although seemingly with few items that interest us, may yield more on the scientific discovery side of things, I wonder how many others may have information on this place.
In the past few weeks we received unconfirmed reports from people at Freeport 9, as thanks to Mr. Kaplain, that transport ships passing through Sigma 17 had potentially spotted Nomad ships or similar sightings. After we got through analyzing what happened through our prior recent deployments, the Stormhawk moved into Sigma 17 for investigation.
The most notable area ships would likely hide in would be the Kunashir Nebula, so we centered most of our efforts around there, but also made runs around a asteroid field on the other side of the system.
Our scans unfortunately revealed very little, and we could not find any solid traces of Nomad activity, this was disappointing but not unexpected, due to their haphazard behavior lately.
Some of the original Zoner crew we took on also requested a stop over at the Freeport 7 site in the system which I decided to grant, with there being nothing else important on the agenda at that time. We proceeded over to the derelict station, which although much of has been salvaged, some of the main hulks still exist , caught in the stiff gravity of the system's suns and seem to have no significant deviation from their orbit.
We took a moment of silence for those that died on that day. I can hardly believe it has already been so long since that time when the Nomads first revealed themselves. It helped strengthen the crew's conviction to continue our goals of wiping out humanity's primary enemy.
It seems some of our exploits have gotten around between a number of other Zoner outposts and affiliated locations. Some requests were forwarded by Kaplain in regards to patrolling in certain areas and investigating potential Nomad incursions. Although I would like to help where we can, we are still only just one ship, and we cannot be in more than one place at a time. I will inform Hayes about this and also ask him to work with some other personnel onboard to try to coordinate what is best to explore.
We have already begun to make in-roads against the Nomads by moving to interdict their efforts and stopping any possible infected vessels, as far as we can detect. I am confident that even the small victories will amount to long reaching positive effects. We must all continue to remain vigilant.
Sept 17, 828 AS
Reviewing old reports that had limited success got me thinking. It may pay further to return to some places of interest in order to uncover more useful data for ourselves. One such place was Omicron Minor. As we had made in depth surveys of various parts of the system before, I am certain that more secrets continue to hide there.
Two days ago we made another move into Minor, specifically to see if we could get more intel on that destroyed Nomad gate that Captain Ward had shown us. Also, a number of Nomad light patrol ships were in the area though we managed to make quick work of them as they did seem prepared in any way for our arriving there.
It took some time to find it from the prior coordinates we used but we eventually managed to run into it. The first major item we noticed was a derelict platform beside it, that before seemed to be defunct but now apparently had suffered either some sort of damage or meltdown and it's power core we assumed, had breached open.
What was most interesting was the fact that we managed to collect some sort of gas that was being spewed from the core, we can only guess that this was its mean of power or something similar. The few canisters filled with them will remain in the Heavy lockdown unit and a small amount will be tested in our Lab onboard, before being offloaded to Corinth. My science teams are anxious to see how such gas can be used and if any relations exist between that and our Nomad Fuel-cell we have installed.
It was time again to make a stop at Livadia for some fuel and supplies. We encountered a suspicious ship on our route to Kappa, but after attempting to pursue it further, the fighter-class vessel escaped us, unfortunately we were not able to get a good fix on it's ID.
Upon our arrival at Livadia we spotted a unusually high amount of Whale transports loading cargo. We made a short wave hail to them, and their leader informed us that they were involved in some sort of re-construction effort over in Omega 48. At planet Gran Canaria, a Zoner colony planet over near Bretonia, they intend to rebuild a Docking Ring that was destroyed some time ago.
We are glad to see that the Zoners continue to assist each others even over such far distances. I am somewhat curious of their progress over there as we have not been in that area for a long time, and even then it was for a short duration.
It might be good to make more efforts to explore places that we don't normally get to.
September 24, 828 AS
I woke up today to find out that one Mr. Kaplain has been holding out on some information lately. Reports were received by our contact at Holman in Tau 31 that did suggest more suspicious activity within the West Independent Worlds. The reason for Kaplain holding back on it is due to several conflicting reports of what may have been actually going on, so he did not want to come forward with it until more was confirmed.
There has been a number of sightings of would may have been Alien or various unidentifiable ships noted specifically in the Coronado system and likely its neighboring areas. This does bring back a prior survey we made into Coronado and Inverness earlier this year. We were not able to investigate very much in there due to security restrictions and the fact we took on some damage from a assault in Inverness. Although I don't have much information about Inverness, Coronado I know is controlled by Crayter and they seem to be friendly to a number of Houses, hopefully they could be friendly with us and allow us more unrestricted access to make a more accurate inspection of the area.
On another note, Kaplain intends to create another section of Delta 4 dedicated to procuring data in areas that we do not normally get to, that being the House areas and some of their surrounding territory. It is his belief that since there does not appear to be much outright Nomad activity lately, it could suggest that the Nomads may be up to some other covert plans that they want to take action on. Kaplain has spent the last 2 months using his contacts including primarily the one at Holman to access the black market and acquire some various technology that normal channels, those among the our team would not have easy access to, likely some House space included. Apparently he intends to outfit a small ship of some sort that will act as a recon ship into areas that we could not normally get into. It is through this that he hopes to find evidence of Nomad infections or activity of any kind. I am a bit skeptical of this whole idea to be honest, as we from the very start stipulated that we would not run operations in there with the exception of extreme circumstances, but I suppose it will be worth checking in on their progress some time later. I mentioned to him that the Stormhawk and remainder of Delta 4 would be staying in the outer territories mainly.
I suppose we need to stay vigilant to cover any area that the Nomad and their lackeys may be hiding, so he will have my support on this for the time being.
October 2, 828 AS
The Phoenix array ran into some sort of major problem today and had to be taken offline, Waxford and his team are having a look at it now, but for safety reasons I will not take the ship into potentially hostile areas until it is repaired again. This is the first time the array had to be taken offline since it's full activation with the help of BMF.
Waxford tells me it should only be down for a day or two until it is repaired. Although I don't want to rush him, the shorter the better.
While passing through Zeta on a patrol we encountered a civilian transport ship that seemed to have originated from the inner systems. They stated that the were on a delivery assignment for the Phoenix to one of their main bases of Kadesh. It is good to see that the Phoenix are still conducting business and improving their stance with others, even getting the attention of corporations farther from the Edge worlds.
The captain of the transport, one Bill Wagner, offered us a invitation over to his main base of operations over in Magellan. Wagner made statements approving of our main mission and did also offer to provide us with potential assistance if it was feasible for them to do so. Although I don't fancy going there that often, with our plans of making a point of some R&R time at Curacao, I imagine we could make a brief stopover there to see what they have to offer. Getting more allies is important to what we need to accomplish.
October 11, 828 AS
After some consultation with our tactical staff, I elected to make a broad range survey to have the Stormhawk move through Omicron Mu. Since we were granted security access rights to the majority of their space there, it may be a good idea to have a better feel of their home space, for future references.
The Order does maintain a strong defensive patrol throughout, but regardless, with the constant Nomad patrols flying and assaulting ships in Mu, there may be more there than originally assumed and from what we received from the Order, so we began our movement through Mu today.
After passing by Taba base, we moved on to what is known as the Wall of Seth, a large outcropping of Edge nebula on the west side of the system, we spent many hours combing through, but did not locate anything of significance, apart from the planet Nile. A few nomad patrol ships were engaged and destroyed is all we have to report from in there.
Next we moved over to a large asteroid field on the opposite side of the system, where we spent nearly half a day inspecting for anything suspicious, but again nothing was found.
After which we made our way over towards the north end of the system, and decided to have a look around the planet Nebet and it's outer gravity well, as it does have several moons of note, including Akabat itself.
It was quite a sight seeing this gas giant up close, and also including some curious gravity signatures nearby which we will investigate soon, but with the system seemingly very well kept and secure, I don't imagine we will find anything else. I bet Liberty could learn a thing or two about system security, my time in the Navy showed me countless holes they constantly leave open, and the Order has barely a quarter of the might of the Navy as far as I know.
October 13, 828 AS
Our time in Mu overall was not fruitful, but not far from Nebet we actually located a un-registered Jump hole that was not in our database. After a careful scan of it and the fact no other ships were near it, we determined it was safe to jump through, so we proceeded.
What we found on the other side was quite amazing, it seemed there is a whole other system that none of us had ever seen before. Unfortunately, our time there was quite limited, as a small Order fleet was blockading the jump hole and after a very short conversation, demanded that we leave the area at once. We could not get any specific info of why the Order were there, but it appears that it may be some sort of high security zone they have designated for themselves.
They deemed the area classified and we were commanded to not to attempt to return again. I was not about to challenge the Order in a area they cleared had controlled, so we promptly turned around and departed. I will reach out to the Order again and see if i can find out where we exactly walked in to, since our mission is to explore as many Edge worlds where we suspect the Nomads to operate, I want to see if they may divest any further information, if possible....that is unless they clearly want to keep it a secret.
As we were making a run past Cairo, a battle group of Nomads moved in for a assault on nearby ships and the base itself. Fortunately a Fleet of Order vessels sped to assist along with a number of Corsairs ships that were also in the area. Almost all the Nomads were obliterated, very nice to see. We took several direct hits and sustained some hull damage, but nothing terribly serious. We have moored up at Cairo and it will likely take a few days to repair.
October 18, 828 AS
Repairs were completed yesterday and we have proceeded to head out towards Cortez for some well earned time off at Curacao. We spent some time there earlier this year and it was well received by my crew.
I also received a response by the Crayter government that they have accepted our proposal to make a in-depth survey of Coronado for any possible Nomad activity. This will work well in line with our plans here, as I was hoping to proceed there after we had some time spent on Curacao. Once we receive final confirmation that we are cleared to enter, we will pack up and head out immediately. I really hope we find some results.
I think being amazed is a understatement on what we got to see here.
Thanks to Crayter's generosity, Delta 4 could finally get a close look into Coronado and the suspected Nomad actions happening there. It was a literal treasure trove of data for us, much of which we had not seen such similarities before.
We started entering the system by way of Cortez, having just finished some shore leave there. We were greeted by some military escorts that we had requested to meet us. They confirmed our mission into Coronado and we moved out.
First stop was near the Inverness jump hole and after arriving, we conducted in-depth scans of the area. Although we couldn't find any direction contact of Alien activity, we did find some traces of what could have been possible engine signatures of such ships, since we do have several records of what to look for. Other signatures were found near it, with the Crayter escorts proceeding to talk about Auxo and that being their main area of operations. This also included claims of them having dealings with Nomads, which is quite intriguing considering the Order made similar claims.
After this, we crossed over the central part of the system, moving towards the Barrier Rim asteroid field and had a look there. It seemed like a pretty generic field, we could not see anything worthwhile in the area, so our escorts suggested another location of interest.
After some time, we arrived at a planet they call Jericho, a moon of a large gas giant near the southern side of the system. It was here we found our first major point of intelligence and science.
The planet is under a strict quarantine and Crayter maintains a security patrol around it all times, mainly due to intense radiation coming from the planet. We ran into a security issue with another patrolling ship that did not know why we were there, I suppose some of their fleet were not aware of us being in there. Once we sorted that out with the help of our escorts, we were able to take detailed scans of the planet, and did find traces of unknown materials on the surface, as well as known Alien traces of hardware. They Crayter assume it does have something to do with potential Nomad activity and therefore have locked it down. We were not allowed to spend a long time making scans and so a ranking officer on-site approved us to explore another area that we would have interest in.
This is where things really came together.
We were led to another area of the Barrier Rim to a location that had been the site of a major battle. This area apparently housed a Nomad Jump gate. The Crayterians went on about how it connected to a system called Drake, which they assaulted with a major force.
This was a incredible find for us, as we only have ever found one other known Nomad gate, that being in Minor. They kindly asked us to fly slow as to respect the battle that went on here as regards for their comrades that fought hard against the Nomads. This gate led to a system that the Nomads had control over, and were likely going to become a major threat to their system, as far as they told us.
We made detailed scans of as much as we could in there, from the topography and composition of the alien materials to the strange radiation coming from them as well. A lot of preliminary scans seemed to match what we know so far, but more work will be needed. We know that some Nomad technology does have certain types of radiation and other signatures that help to identify it, so the data collected from this will go a very long way in our continuing fight.
After all of this, we were asked to report to their home planet of Yuma. A intelligence agent requested to board our ship to take delivery of the data we collected right there. They seemed to be in quite a rush, not exactly sure why. Regardless, we promised to share the data, so after collecting it for transport, we allowed them to dock to receive it.
All in all, finding that Nomad gate, along with other suspicious items in Coronado leads us to believe the Nomads have a strange interest in the area or someplace nearby, this will warrant further investigation by Delta 4. I also intend to find out more information about this Drake system, if its possible. This information will be forwarded to Kaplain for deep storage and also to our people at Corinth. We have extended our vast gratitude to Crayterian government for them allow us such exclusive access to their system, I am sure we will find ways to cooperate further in the future.
October 26, 828 AS
Seems Kaplain needed our help with a delicate mission for the Order. Given our history with them so far, we were happy to assist them further.
The mission was to pickup some capital weaponry appropriated by the Order in Sigma 59. Upon our arrival, a Order ship made brief contact with us and assisted with transferring the weapons onboard. Although we do not have a lot of spare storage space, we managed to have just enough to load what was needed. It seems given their situation with moving such high importance cargo, using a heavily armed vessel was the best choice for them.
After our loading was complete, we were asked to head for Akabat. We travelled several hours out of Sigma and then arrived over at Mu, where we were escorted by a Order ship, one CV-Kerimov, to Akabat to take delivery of the weapons. After confirming we were not followed by any others, the transfer was completed without incident.
Although I don't exactly want the Stormhawk to be used as a transport, we must continue to support what allies we have, when appropriate. I only wish we could have more of such allies, perhaps we will need to continue looking.
Some of this was pushed back due to priority of other items, but now we are getting the completed report of what we found a while back in Minor.
The unknown gas we discovered does not exactly seem to be unknown, but rather is known as Azurite. It was discovered not long ago and has various properties involving the adaption of hybrid alien tech. The people out at Corinth don't get to see it often, so our capture of it was very helpful. Both the Order and Core know of it's existence but have done little to publicize it, probably because it's full extent is not yet know. I am going to make inquiries as to whether it may be possible to make use of it with any of our technology currently on-board, including a still-active Nomad Powercell that we have not made good use of yet.
Kaplain made his own requests on Azurite, and he was not able to uncover much, leading us to believe that few know about it yet, or are otherwise unwilling to divulge further info. We may try to harvest more of this, if possible and see what can be done then. For now, we are going to obtain a small amount from Corinth and use it on tests during our excursions.
Next onto our continuing expanding knowledge of Nomad technology. The data we procured from Coronado cross referenced from Minor points to several components that our research team believes are key to various Nomad tech. At least three unknown substances were found from our scans, one of them having known distinct Nomad signatures. The other two we have no distinct records of, but since the data was passed on to Corinth where facilities are larger, at least one piece of feedback was sent so far, with one of the components showing similar properties of that of known Dom'Kavash ruins. This is very intriguing, since we know the Dom'Kavash did control the galaxy or at this part of it at some time in the past, it is logical to assume they may have had a direct part in the construction of much of the known Alien tech.
All of this combined information will assist us farther in our continuing mission to both understand and obliterate our enemy. Very soon, I intend to schedule a meeting with our science teams both on the Stormhawk and at Corinth so that we may discuss further the potential adaption of Alien technology.
November 6, 828 AS
The lead of team Falchion brought to my attention that based on security concerns noted by other orgnizations operating in the Edge worlds, specifically near Nomad-infected system has recommended to me that we have a regiment of medical and mental health checkups on a regular basis. We do have occasional checks on the crew mainly when they have disembarked from the ship but as of next month I will work with my command team to put forward a plan to have constant checks on the crew, primarily to inspect for possible infection of Nomad symbiotes. This along with increased security measures for the crew will keep everyone safe and ensure that such threats to the ship and Unit will not happen.
Waxford has informed me several times lately that our Phoenix array has been running into more problems. It appears that he and his team are unable to always keep it online. This is very concerning since I thought we had this sorted previously. I will make plans to contact the Phoenix as soon as possible to see if they can help to diagnose the situation with us. Additional maintenance may be needed so this could be a good time to turn in to a well equipped shipyard after such a long time.
Our engineering team has tried several times to find the solution here but I am wanting a second opinion. I still trust our team here but since this is a critical point of our operations, it must be rectified ASAP. It is still workable but it cannot be allowed to stop functioning when we need it most. I hope we can get this resolved soon.
November 17, 828 AS
During a patrol in Delta we ran into a Artificial Intelligence ship. We have not had many chances to experience them so it was a interesting chat we had with it.
The ship had a curiously high interest in Nomads and their activities. They cited that they want to understand them more and noted that a possible....Zoner group? also had interest in them. Unfortunately we were unable to find more information on them, as such a discovery could could show evidence of other humans attempting to collaborate with Nomads. As of yet we have no solid information on AI ships assisting Nomads or Wild in any way, but it could be possible.
We likely will seek out more encounters with this ship and other similar ones in the future.