Rogue Squadron

Alliance commanders on the Rim have a lot of autonomy. They need it. Even with Cortex relays and reasonably fast transports, commanders out our way are often operating on their own in sometimes volatile, usually unpredictable, circumstances. The isolation is why the Cruiser Captains and the Regiment Commanders for the units aboard can pretty much play it how they see fit out in the colonies.

There's a lot of variability in how they treat the civilians in their patrol regions. Most of them are pretty much ambivalent about it. Some of them are actually respectable folk and treat civilians, even Rimworlders, with a modicum of dignity. Command on the Sun Tzu's like that. But then there's the real qingwa cào de liúmáng commanders, like the sha gwa who authorized an attack on MacLaren's drift.

What the hell were they thinking?

All I could really do while I heard the comms traffic across both Civilian and Alliance channels was hope the folks on the ground were holding their own. Near as we could decipher was that some "Commander Peterson," from a Cruiser I hadn't yet identified, had dispatched a wing of attack boats to raise some hell on MacLaren's Drift.

Thing was, MacLaren's, like Hale's Moon, was in the Sun Tzu's patrol district. Whoever this Peterson was, he was out of his normal operations area.

It actually gave me a smile when I heard flight command on the Sun Tzu ordering one of their escorting frigates to break formation to go take charge of the situation. The IAV Marshal Iverson was similar to the IAV Abraham Sinkov that usually patrolled out near us, but was armed more as an Escort than a troop ship. Same hull. Different loadout.

Good boat to deal with a flight of rogue attack ships.

Without being there myself though, I only had the confused communications traffic and the reports from the folks involved. Most of the damage seemed to be superficial. Some fires. A few craters. Bunch of broken windows. Not a lot of casualties. The attackers seem to have broken off shortly before the Iverson got into position, which was probably a good thing.

For their part, the crew of the Iverson offered humanitarian relief, but the folks on the Drift are an independent minded lot. Doubt they took them up on it. By then though, I'd turned my attention to the Alliance Commander who'd gone and stuck his nose in where it wasn't welcome.

With my re-established deep access, getting details of this 'Commander Peterson' wouldn't be an issue.

At least not for us.