Asteroid Blues - Departure

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Admiral JCJ [REDACTED] – Flag Aboard POS Phoenix – OIC PanOceanian Fleet Detachment “Taniwha”

Support operations for Boomerang Corps, and Long Range Operation Group deployment, complete.

Frigate POS Monash sweep of the Helicon Belt and Trojans successful, one pirate vessel engaged and destroyed.
Frigate POS Chaytor sweep of the Orthys Belt and orbital facilities successful, Shasvastii infiltrators and Combined Army engineering team uncovered on the Jˇıng Qì facility and eliminated by boarding teams.
Cruiser POS Melbourne, Frigate POS Nasution and Transport POS Riker holding station by Abyss Gate.
Battleship POS Phoenix, Frigate POS Bonifacio and Transport POS Reynolds returning to the Abyss Gate from Novyy Bangkok in the Homeric Belt.

Light casualties to Long Range Operations Group assault teams due to operations against Combined Army and other actors on Novyy Bangkok. Requests for resurrection attached: {attachment HIGH PRIORITY}

Operations at Liberty Cargo deemed successful, despite late Haqq intervention. Operations on The Strip cancelled. Operations in The Gorge and Gallery Maze ineffective, cancelled on request of ALEPH.

Detailed report follows.

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As the POS Phonenix and her support ships manoeuvred away from Novyy Bangkok, the Admiral could not help but smile. To be fair any operation which required only the deployment of Spec Ops teams and no ship-to-ship combat usually did.

Although the difficulties of deploying teams quietly in such a remote location had stymied their offensive efforts, and even made supporting ALEPH more challenging than expected, the Status Quo had largely been maintained. As always, that meant another win for PanOceania.

Boomerang Corps had proved to be an effective tool for the Inner Hexahedron, and the Long Range Operations Group a suitable personal proxy. Proving that had been worth the cost of involvement in these “Asteroid Blues” as Maya had dubbed the crisis.

His Geist was streaming the maya feeds from the analysts, pouring over what had been found regarding the Shasvastii infiltration, and the expected purpose of the Combined Army engineering teams. He offered up a quick prayer that they were wrong. If the Evolved Intelligence really was building a gate, for another wormhole into their space, and bypassed the Archeron Blockade (with all the attendant losses that the passage and blockade extracted) as well as the bottleneck of Paradiso entirely…

He shuddered, the smile swept clear from his features.

The hell of the breakthrough which had led to the Third Offensive on Paradiso danced through his memory. Just one EI gunboat had smashed aside the pride of the Human Sphere, O-12, PanOceanian and Yu Jing alike. The idea of a whole fleet making it through without disruption was a true horror.

Glancing across the bridge, his eye landed on the Pnoenix’s pilot, the Omn Starfish Lassit, and Fleet Sensor Officer Warwick. He tried not to imagine them floating, bodies ruined by the void. But even in this effort, he failed. Knowing the power of those Combined Army ships made it all too easy to imagine even the tough old Phoenix broken open by that furious plasma fire.

Hopefully someone had a plan.

But it was hard to imagine how any plan would be more than a suicide mission…