From the personal journal of Bruce Wolf

I swear, the last few days it feels like me and everyone else have been given the bloody roundabout.

Not going to mince words here; the Royals were the biggest parts of stravag galahs I have ever met. I have met a lot of other mercenaries in my many jobs (Wolf, Bartender and everything else in between) and they were right dodgy even by normally right dodgy standards. I did not believe their story about a 'dropship malfunction' for one second. 'Dropship Malfunction' my arse! They were deliberately giving us the run-around so we would do all the hard work!

So when the bunch of bludgers took over our base, locking up our people and the Lyrans, I was not surprised. Such a dezgra action fits a bunch of bloody mongrels like them; I guess whatever the rebels offered them was worth more then their loyalty or any other cop like that. Of course, it also left us up a creek as we were cut off from our people, our ships and from our supplies, and with the rest of the rebels coming at us like a bunch of crazed numbats.

Fortunately, Irisz had a plan. She kept it on the quiet, which makes a lot of sense. We had been gipped once so far on this world, so not getting gipped again seemed like a good plan. But when our ship came back with our people, I could tell that the bloody Royals were going to get it.

And so comes the roundabout; we started this campaign with a drop on the spaceport, and what do you know, we did it again. We hit them like a bunch of drop-bears, getting the Royals unprepared while they were trying to fix themselves up from whatever Kardos and Doc Cartwright and the others did (going to admit, I probably do not want to know), hitting them hard and fast.

Peril Lance wound up tangling with some of their Vees, taking out a couple of Hovers as well as a Copper SecurityMech. We also got a bit of a run-around when they got the captured Carnivore Pixie and Night Stalker out and used them on us as well. The Stalker went down like a lightweight having his first real beer (I see it a lot) but the bloody Pixie got away.

The others did well too; Command Lance took out a bunch of tanks, including one of their high-ranking officers. Assault lance managed to cripple or destroy three of their 'Mechs, which was not too bloody bad either. Plus two of them are salvageable to boot, which means that we came out even on that front. On the upside, we managed to capture their two droppers. I think Dropship trading has become the gold standard for this campaign or something.

We still do not know where the rest of the bloody Royals got to. Most of them were off the base at the time, and seem to have gone to ground. What we do know is we bagged two of their top officers (both dead, unfortunately) and took their droppers and most of their supplies. So they copped it good and hard, leaving them how they left us. There's your turnabout for you!

So we have a drop port, our ships, captured ships and two 'Mechs we can put to use. We also have the Elises in command and rebels and Mercs lurking around us. In other words, right back where we bloody well started from.

But the worst of it? The bloody surats pillaged my bloody bar! It will take me forever to get it back in order, and there is no telling how much of it they just drank straight out!