UEG freighter Turmfalke

The UEG freighter Turmfalke (German: Kestrel) was a Delta-class interstellar bulk freighter constructed by Harland and Wolff above Barrow in 2479. Originally named Sauniere, the vessel passed through several hands throughout its life before being destroyed at the Battle of Petrovina in 2542. Turmfalke was, like all vessels of the Delta-class, designed to carry large quantities of raw materials between colony worlds, being loaded and unloaded while in orbit by smaller craft capable of atmospheric flight.
==History==
Sauniere, as she was known for the first thirty four years of her existence, was purchased by Adrastos Freight Limited, a company specialising in transporting raw materials to Adrastos' many manufacturing companies, and shipping their manufactured goods to the inner colonies. Sauniere's first skipper was Oleg Lombardi, an experienced Adrastonian freighter captain. The vessel served in the Adrastos Freight livery until 2513, when she was sold to Diamond Logistics, a company contracted by the to provide logistical support to remote installations. Sauniere spent the next eleven years mostly hauling bulk ice to installations incapable of sourcing their own water supplies, as well as also moving food, fuel, ammunition and spare parts.
In the 2520s, the CMA inherited 79 Gideon-class freighters no longer required by the UNSC Navy. The CMA therefore retired many of its own freighters and sought to end its contracts with external logistics providers. Having lost the bulk hauling contract that made Sauniere profitable, Diamond Logistics put the vessel up for sale. In 2524, she was purchased and renamed Turmfalke by Daniel Schaefer, a civilian with his own small freight company, including six other vessels. This was based on the inner colony of Nabaros, located 37 light years from , where he lived with his wife and four children. Schaefer kept the company going mainly by taking short-term, irregular jobs with smaller manufacturers moving freight in and out of the commercial hub of Miridem.
===Fall of Nabaros and Battle of Petrovina===
In June 2540, the colony of Nabaros was attacked and destroyed by the , whose scouting force had happened upon the planet by chance and was able to swiftly destroy the token UNSC force stationed there. Close to 400,000 civilians perished. Three of Schaefer's freighters had been in-system at the time, all of which fell under emergency military control once the evacuation began, but all which were destroyed with all aboard. The dead included Schaefer's wife, four children and most of their extended family. Daniel Schaefer himself had accompanied Turmfalke on a transit to Miridem in order to meet with a customer, and so had avoided the destruction of his homeworld by chance. Although he subsequently relocated the business to Petrovina and continued with Turmfalke and three remaining other ships, he had been profoundly affected psychologically by the loss of most of the people he had known including his entire family.
On the second anniversary of Nabaros' destruction, in June 2542, and driven half-mad with sorrow, Schaefer took Turmfalke out of port on a flight path not logged with the Petrovina port authority's AI. Alone onboard the freighter, he did this with the intention of returning to Nabaros and seeing the burnt-out world for himself. Turmfalke's navigational computer would not let Nabaros' coordinates be entered into the destination, in accordance with the , but Schaefer, an experienced skipper, knew how to override this without triggering the automatic lockout.This was an anti-tamper system mandatory on all UEG vessels that, if triggered, would auto-navigate the ship to the nearest port, and report the owner to the authorities for attempted treason. The system formed part of the series of security measures popularly known as the Cole Protocol. He arrived in orbit of Nabaros in the early hours of June 21, 2542, and observed the now-dark world for several hours.
By sheer misfortune, a Covenant scout ship was also in the system at the time, as part of a tactic known to the United Nations Space Command of observing destroyed Human worlds for activity. The Covenant ship detected Turmfalke at a range of three hundred million kilometres, far beyond the range of the freighter's basic navigational instruments. When Turmfalke finally slipped away, Schaefer, presumably unintentionally, failed to make a series of indirect jumps in accordance with the Cole Protocol, having earlier disabled the system that would force him to do so. The Covenant vessel detected Turmfalke's bearing, and on later examination the UEG system of 51 Spectris was the only practical destination along that bearing.
On 19 July 2542, a Covenant force totalling twenty five vessels jumped into the system, and located and engaged the Human presence on the second planet of Petrovina. In a swift action lasting no longer than 36 hours, the colony was destroyed and almost two hundred thousand of the planet's population were killed. Turmfalke was destroyed by a direct plasma torpedo hit in the first salvo, with Schaefer at the helm. The part Turmfalke played in the destruction of Petrovina was only revealed in 2584 after the Covenant Remnant opened its archives to Human researchers.
==Notes==
Category:Freighters