"How about fierce barricade!?", said zontic king.
"hmm"
"well?"
"what else do you have?", bean said.
"well, uhh, how about tempest barricade, or blazing barricade!" he suggested.
"i think ill stick with fierce zontic"
"ok" he said "be sure to give me the credit for the name"
"i assure you i will"

Bean flicked the switch on his comm to the off position and finished his paperwork.
"who knew it would be so hard to find a name that was fairly decent!" bean complained. he needed a break from the mind numbing work that seemed to eat his brain from the inside out. Bean got up and walked to the overstuffed synthetic leather easy chair and looked out at the asteroid field in the distance. he watched as an atlas with a peculiar paint job slowly drifted towards the docking bays. because of the coming campaign, the itani senate had omega send one of his councilors to ukari to poke around and scope out the situation before he comitted resources and personel to the undertaking.
"why did I have to keep worming out of doing any work" bean complained "this is much more boring than overseeing the recruitment of prospective members"

Bean couldve written the notice in just a quarter of an hour, easy, but he had to go and sit in his ship for hours on end watching everything and doing nothing. granted, it had its interesting moment but those were few and far between. the only thing that kept him sane was the thought that he would be first to actually do stuff. the success of the deneb campaign was encouraging to the higher ups and they asked us to further our operations. After a while we decided to do something a bit more agressive.

the thought of a blockade excited bean, He had done it before and had lots of fun, but never like this. this was big. this one was supported by the senate. there was little chance of failure.

"BEAN! BEAN!! Beeeeeeaan!!!!!"
someone was trying to contact him. he rushed to his comm unit and hit the switch with his palm.
"what!" yelled bean loudly.
"the fight force is here!" said spidey.
"hmm? and who might this fight force include?" bean asked.
"well mostly just the usual dudes, omega, iry, zontic, and me"
"anyone else coming?"
"we passed a bunch of the others on the way who said they were coming as soon as they finished their work for the day"
"cool, how long till everyones ready?"
"the minute you get that notice up"
"ok, im just finishing it now, just got a name for it too"
"cool" spidey said, "when are you sending it out?"
"tomorrow, im too exhausted to work any more"
"ok, we are ready at any time of the day"

bean lazily hit the switch once again to off and drank a can of xithrilite he found in the back of the refridgerator. he walked over to the chair by the window and collapsed onto the squishy chair without bothering to turn off the comm or the lights and fell into a deep sleep.

ATTN: ALL
FROM: Itan council

After the brilliant success of the defense of deneb last week, we have decided to further our operations against the serco. The Itan council has decided to blockade the Ukari wormholes to prevent serco traders from taking weapons in or out of their own nation. All traders going to and from serco space will be stopped and their cargo searched. If you are not serco, but you are trading with the serco you will be stopped at the wormhole and you will be ordered to empty your cargo for inspection, if you are carrying nothing dangerous, you will be let through. However, if you do not give up your cargo for inspection, your ship will be destroyed and the wreckage will be searched. If it turns out that you had no weapons or items used in the construction of weapons, such as textiles or food, you will be allowed to come back and redeem your lost cargo, however, all serco ships will be destroyed on sight and you will not be allowed to redeem your cargo. all pirates will be shot and killed immediately. In light of the recent pirate attacks on itani space, there will be frequent sweeps of grey space in order to maintain fairly safe conditions for traders.
Now you are warned, do not try to get through the blockade, we will not hesitate to ruthlessly hunt you down and kill you.

ITAN councilor mr bean
Coalition Of Itan.

i misread the title as "Operation fierce barnacle" at first, my face hurts from laughing

Feeling fierce eh Bean?

my only wonder is why [ITAN] is in ukari L-14 in such numbers who will they barricade?? is it some front to keep sercos in red space, or is it a means to strangle trade, or perhaps its a way to make further incursions into serco homelands where the Itani purists have wrought so much destruction before.. alas we'll never know the truth just what is reported and that is a shame. hire an unbiased reporter clone the fingernail and get some actual news out of it........

Code names should be more confusing to the enemy.

How about
"Operation Taco Bell Run"

awww, taco bell run! why didnt i think of that! oh well ill stick with fierce barricade.
well, its wednsday night and im still too tired to write the thingy, ill do it tomorrow morning if i have time, if not ill do it tomorrow night.

heh I still like fierce barnacles.

I can think of better names than that! Try Pavise Wall, Splintered Aegis, Phalanx Charge, etc. No need to mince words when creating a code-name, just make it obscure and memorable (remember Operation Toasted Marshmellow, eh?).

Anyway, the bit was funny, but you need to work on your structuring and flow a bit; it was something of an eye-sore to read at first, and it took me a few tried to figure out what was going on.

hey, dont blame me, blame zontic king, he even asked me to give him the credit for the name.

and well it was written while i was half conscious.

Hmm.. so if I were still in ITAN as a trader, would I have been shot dead / searched?

So much for free trade... so much for life... (single tear falls)

-Lambin

if you were in itan why would you join a guild thats mainly a military guild and trade with the enemy?

I was told by many when I left that its much more than a military group and that it supports free trade throughout the universe.. not limited to Blue and yellow territory..

So in the end what I am getting at is this: You are willing to murder trusted, honorable traders...

I'd like to pull up a clip from your formal statement regarding the so called "Fierce Barricade."

"In light of the recent pirate attacks on itani space, there will be frequent sweeps of grey space in order to maintain fairly safe conditions for traders."

Now for the next clip...

"Now you are warned, do not try to get through the blockade, we will not hesitate to ruthlessly hunt you down and kill you."

These two statements strike me as funny and ironic.. You plan on hunting down pirates in Grey space... Then seemingly pirate the traders which you were protecting..

You were right when you asked "What's the point of diplomacy in this game?"...

-Lambin [TGFT}

How about you go barricade some useless place in Itani space. Attacking people in gray isn't protecting free trade. Protecting free trade is defending traders of any nation from attack. You singling out UIT and Itani for protection while destroying any peaceful serco traders is NOT defending free trade; it's nationalism.

-Miex

[ITAN] has my full endorsement. By Akan, they should have stepped up to the plate years ago and done something about the serco menace.

Miex we are still at war. Its never going to stop. And as far as i'm concerned there are no "Peaceful Serco" vermin.

Again GO get them ITAN.

Bless Akan and bless you ITAN!!!

lambin, the second quote is aimed at the serco. the objective of the operation is to stop the ferrying of weapons in or out of the serco dominion. we are authorized to kill serco and pirates on sight. we have and always will support free trade. serco are our enemy and we cant help it if the serco we kill just happen to be trading. and what do you expect us to do miex, would you rather us just kill every trader going through on sight? this isnt only traders though either, all serco die, all pirates die, its the same as its always been, we are just taking the fight to the sercos rather than wait for them to come to us.

Pirates are attracted to [Itan]. I suppose it's our awesome [Itan] brand deodorant, but whenever we defend / protect something(s), such as the Deneb border or Ukari, they come in droves.

Seeing as that is happening, I'd like to give a big cheer for all the CLM and SYN out there for forsaking their cause and attacking us [Itan], instead of killing traders. I'm sure many pilots who enjoyed the free trade in greyspace agree with me when I say: Thank You!

hmmmm first this line:

we are only authorized to kill serco on sight

notice the part "we are only authorized to kill?" then it says serco

then we have this next part:

pirates will be killed on sight as well.

So your only authorized to kill serco but you will kill pirates just cause?

And CLM and Syn, among others, are coming after you for very blatantly coming into grey...to fight the serco. Battle them all you want in Deneb, but you come to our yard of course we are going to shoot at you.

As for you protecting free trade, if you are shooting all serco, trader or not, then ummm guess what? Thats what we do and you call us pirates and outlaws, cept we dont discriminate and only pick on certain ones. :)

He....I knew that little job I did along with tumble for the serco at deneb would have some repercussions...
*yawn...No biggie

sorry about the mistake, ill fix it. as for comparing us to pirates, we are killing for very different reasons than you do.