Gladiaxa
...after a few days of silence, it started to become apparent that, not everything went as planned, while the convoys towards Xanara had apparently been left alone for the time being the others have not been this lucky...
A few days after the first sightings one of the Mercenary groups sent out a distress signal, when a mid-sized ship started approaching them out of nowhere, when they hailed it didn´t answer and it´s weapons and shields were activated...
Before the mercenaries were in weapon range the ship already opened fire, while most of the missiles that were fired by the unknown ship were shot donw by the point defense systems of the mercenaries, those missiles which connected interfered with the ships systems by released a pulse of overcharged particles, when the ship reached mid-range it fired a high-powered beam-like weapon from it´s front, while the mercenaries opened fire...
The bullets of the mercenaries uselessly splattered against the ships shields, while it took them apart one by one the battle didn´t last long the last few pictures showed the assault on the last Poorstartia mercenary ship which escorted the civilian transporter, before another volley of emp rounds knocked out the ships systems for good...
...when the reinforcements arrived it was already too late, with all the rebellions and escorts that were to do reaction times of battlegroups were heavily affected, what they found when they investigated the remnants was likely even more unsettling than the attack itself, while the mercenary ships had been completely destroyed in the attack, the civilians ships seemed to be still intact apart of a few burned circuits, though...they were completely empty, the crew and the passangers were all gone...
Incidents like these happened several times in the last few days, while it helped very little with reducing the number of rebels due to the statistically low number od victims, it fueled the anger of the civilian populace on the gouvernment as they hadn´t been doing anything...
...in the meanwhile what looked to be some sort of civilian drones occasionally showed up near the convoys that were protected by the heavy Future Corporation drones, they always seemed to keep their distance and tag along the convoys until they disappeared in hyperspace again at some later point...