The Tide of Debris (20-June-2008)

This day proved to be a long and interesting day in the war against SYM for B57. As the day began, they still had a large number of ships with free-reign over much of our territory, but by the end of the day they were gone, with naught but echoes to tell their passing... echoes, and debris.

The war came to my research base Šåηå₫гîå at just 23 minutes after midnight on the beginning of the 20th. Grogmir landed 264 heavy cruisers on my small garrison and overwhelmed the base in one move. But that was only the beginning of the fighting there. For the next 9 hours we played a deadly game of cat & mouse with their fleets in the Šåηå₫гîåη system, and with each engagement the debris field grew even larger. After the initial battle, Grogmir brought in 1726 recyclers to clean the debris in one tick and move out. But before he could get any, aledujke swept in with a corvette fleet and blew away nearly 1300 of his recyclers, as well as other ships there. Grogmir retalliated by bringing in more ships, and he and aledujke fought round and round across all the planets and moons of the system, spreading debris in their wake as they went. He finally caught aledujke's corvettes at 12:32am and destroyed them. The next few hours were a sort of standoff, with neither side being able to approach the massive debris pile without the other side showing up in large numbers. By 9:30 that morning, YukiKashimaru had arrived with a dreadnaught, 2000 corvettes, and many recyclers. He managed to get over 20k credits of the debris, before Grogmir hit him. They fought back and forth over the pile for a short time, then YukiKashimaru swiped the last of it up and scooted out before more SYM fleets could arrive to knock him off. Finally both sides pulled out, leaving me to clean up Šåηå₫гîå and rebuild...

Sparse skirmishes took place during the rest of the day, but nothing major until evening. It was then that the tide of the war turned significantly in our favor. Up til that point SYM had been on the offensive, inefficient, but on the offensive nonetheless. After 9pm (server time) their ability to launch significant offensive strikes in B57 was pretty much null. It began around 6:30pm, when we began putting a plan together to strike their LZ at Rickenbacker. I sent in some corvettes ahead of the group to take out a fleet of Wröng's scouts. Incapable of sending sufficient fleet to assist in the main battle, I pulled out after that.

At a few minutes after 9pm (server time), aledujke landed a huge fleet at Rickenbacker and proceeded to take out the last SYM fleet of significance still there: the 1mil+ fleet belonging to oj. In a series of fighter and heavy bomber drops, he took out most of the support ships and then finished off the Titans with a cruiser/heavy cruiser force. When the dust settled, there was over 1.2mil credits in debris at Rickenbacker, making the pile at Šåηå₫гîå pale in comparison. Finally it was over. The invasion had been repelled, and the invaders had retreated among heavy losses. MI5 had weathered the storm... so far.

What will be in the days to come? Unknown. While SYM is home licking their wounds, it falls to us to decide on our next move. Will we make peace? Will we strike back while they're weak? Or will we wait? Only time will tell, and tell it will. For this is a game of warfare, and only the strong will survive. MI5 has passed its first test, a test of unity and determination. I can only guess as to what future tests may hold, but one thing is certain: If we stand together, we can weather any storm. Long live the Commonwealth! Long live Spooks!