YC109.12.17
Honoring the mutual defense pact between the State and the Empire, a Reserve task force under the leadership of senior Fleet Operations officers ADM Derrys Otireya and CDRE Ladel Teravada spent much of 16 December 109 in the Providence region bolstering the defense of the Curatores Veratatis Alliance against a strong push by the Triumvirate alliance to take control of the system's four moons and the inaugural CVA outpost, Inflatable House. Thanks to the efforts of the allied defense fleet, the Triumvirate assault was repelled and the CVA retained control of the system at the end of the day.
Preparation for the Reserve's part in the defensive action began on Friday morning, when CDRE Teravada relayed information about Triumvirate's initial push into the system which placed all four towers in reinforced mode. At that point, preparations began to move a a task force in place during the next 48 hours in order to assist with with CVA's defense of the system. During that time, battleships, interceptors, electronic warfare cruisers, and other combat ships were moved into position in the Empire near the border with the Providence region.
Actual combat operations began shortly after midnight on the morning of the 16th, with CDRE Teravada and CDR Ayari scoring their first kill against a Triumvirate Apocalypse-class battleship in their defense of a CVA space platform. Fighting for the next several hours was sporadic, as Triumvirate ships moved to close off the system and allied forces attempted to break through the enemy lines into X-3RNM to reinforce CVA positions.
Beginning around 0900, the pace of combat increased and Reserve forces participated in an action against sniper forces near the R3-K7K gate. In what was described by ADM Otireya as a pitched battle fraught with heavy electromagnetic interference from the numbers of ships involved, the admiral's Rokh and many other allied vessels were destroyed in what was a temporary Pyrrhic victory for the defending forces. These kinds of attacks and counterattacks continued throughout the next hour and a half.
At 1045, an allied force attacking an isolated Triumvirate battleship was ambushed by a Triumvirate counterattack, pinning them down for the arrival of Triumvirate's Avatar-class titan. CDRE Teravada became one of the first casualties of this fearsome weapon, his Armageddon-class battleship caught only a kilometer from the ship as its Judgement device was activated. The allied forces took significant but not crippling losses, and many pilots of Triumvirate were unable to withdraw in time and were caught in their own titan's doomsday weapon.
When the traffic control network was reactivated at 1200 after the daily maintenance period, Triumvirate and allied forces continued to skirmish for a number of hours as the CVA repaired its towers and disrupted enemy attempts to muster a significant capital fleet against the remaining vulnerable space platforms around the system's moons. During this phase, Reserve forces mostly served as adjuncts to the allied interceptor force, with one Reserve battleship destroyed en route to the X-3RNM system by a Triumvirate picket fleet.
By approximately 1600 hours, significant enemy presence had been reduced to isolated hit and run attacks, and the CVA fleet had managed to bring nearly all the platform shields back to full strength. With Amarr authorities firmly in control of the system again, at least for the moment, the Reserve task force was given a RTB order and withdrew from Providence.
