Last week's if you didn't catch it: https://www.elevenwarriors.com/forum/ohio-state-football/2019/11/109000/...

Well well well, Buckeye nation. It looks like our favorite team is 11-0 and has already clinched the Big Ten East before even traveling up north. I'd give Ohio State a 35% chance of being ranked #1 on Tuesday--I think our resume is now comparable to LSU's and we've got better margins of victory, but I'm not sure the team did quite enough to unseat LSU for the top spot. No matter, take care of business next Saturday and we should be #1, as no one will have a better resume than us, including LSU. 

Anyway, here's the new entry, and it's got plenty of Chae Yong. 

Stardate 112319.6

Perhaps a string of easy victories made us a bit soft. Perhaps our opponent was more powerful than we gave them credit for. Or perhaps, quite simply, mistakes happen. 

To this point, Commodore Feeldz has been an exemplary officer, and I should say now that he is still an exemplary officer, and that his leadership and daring when it counted won us this great victory over the Nittanian Ascendancy. All that said, Feeldz committed a number of mistakes, and--it should be admitted--I did as well. These mistakes did not cost us the battle, nor did they preclude our plans for conquest, as the bulk of our forces remain intact. But they did cost lives, lives and a bit of pride, too. 

But whatever errors I or my subordinates committed, we were in the most critical moments saved by the decisive actions of that unstoppable force of nature, perhaps the greatest soldier in the storied history of the Imperial Space Marines--Chae Yong. 

Chae Yong has survived his first--and hopefully last--brush with the unctuous tentacles of the imperial bureaucracy and the machinations of the Council. His career and freedom have been guaranteed by the staunch defense of excellent advocates and the hard work of numerous staffers and adjutants in my command. With victory accomplished over the foes at home, Chae Yong could turn his attention to the enemies without--namely the fleet of the Ascendancy. 

The battle was a long time coming. The Ascendancy knew that we were gathering our forces, and that soon we'd be primed to go on an enormous offensive that might well catch the entire galaxy off-guard. Unwilling to wait for us to come to them, the Nittanites mustered all the forces they could--damaged from recent skirmishes with the Hoosa and the Gopha Collective, but still potent--and risk a preemptive assault on our prepared defenses. The Ascendancy's leader, Chancellor Frankeen, must have known his chances of success were slim, but still he had no choice but to try. 

Their fleet was comprised of a number of fast attack craft mixed with heavier capital ships, although they critically lacked sufficient numbers of starfighters and carriers to match our swarms. Additionally, the majority of their lighter ships couldn't even engage with our heavy orbital implacements due to the short range of their ion cannons and ship-to-ship missiles. All these disadvantages aside, it was the most powerful force I've yet had to face as Supreme Commander. 

The early goings seemed auspicious. As expected, we achieved rapid superiority in fighter-to-fighter skirmishes, and were thus able to establish screens and scouting pickets with impunity. Similarly, our battle stations hammered away at their fleet from a safe distance, shielded from counterattacking sorties by our outlying taskforces and the swarms of fighters. 

An early, easy victory seemed at hand. But then Commodore Feeldz pressed his advantage too far, and was caught with his capital ship alone, cut off from reinforcements. For a terrible moment, as I watched his ship cut to pieces by overlapping fire from a dozen Ascendancy cruisers, I feared we'd lost him. Luckily, he managed to escape on a pod, but in protecting this pod from the Ascendancy's fire we lost a half dozen cruisers. 

The tide of battle shifted, as our defenses were caught out of position and the Ascendancy roared back to seize the advantage. 

But then something miraculous happened. No, not miraculous, for miraculous implies not knowing the mechanism by which a triumph is achieved. I know exactly how the battle was won: Chae Yong. 

One by one the onrushing Ascendancy ships were simply deleted, ripped apart by internal detonations, their engines self-destructing, their ammo stores ignited. While the captains of the various ships had been engaged in ship-to-ship combat, they'd been inattentive to what was happening in their own holds. Leading a crack team of marines, Chae Yong took his needleship--perfect for quick, silent boarding operations--and one by one boarded enemy ships in rapid succession, slaughtering whoever was unlucky enough to stumble onto these operations, and then planted bombs in the holds. 

When the time came, Chae Yong detonated the payloads, erasing twenty Nittanite ships in a single blow. The Ascendancy no more attempted a forward assault, and from then onward the battle was entirely academic, simply a matter of isolating and neutralizing whatever Ascendancy ships couldn't make the jump through slipspace. 

The war is not over. The war is far from over. But a great victory has been won, and regardless of the outcome of our upcoming sortie into the Ann-Appa Nebula, I am confident we're soon to engage in a glorious wave of conquest the likes of which this galaxy has never seen. 

-Signing off for now, 

Admiral Dae Riyan, Supreme Commander of the Bukki Star Empire