$b CLCv $b Blindwind
$b En $b route $b to $b Herschel $b jump $b node


$b Nesbitt: Hello, commander. Did you sleep well?

$b Miles: Not well, to be honest, Commander Nesbitt. I haven't slept very well since the invasion began. It's difficult to have a good sleep when you know that every minute hundreds of people die and there's nothing I can do about it. 

$b Nesbitt: I understand how you feel, Miles, most of my comrades died in the last few weeks, they were cheated and manipulated by a madman who sent them into a senseless war. 

$b Miles: Senseless war? You mean the Cerberus rebellion? I didn't have a chance to hear about it from the other side's point of view. 

$b Nesbitt: Listen closely then, commander, you may not get another chance.

$b Miles: And you want to... just tell me everything? Well then... I'm listening.

$b Nesbitt: My squadron played an important role in the rebellion, we participated in dozens of Cerberus' black ops, retrieving Ancient artefacts, sabotaging Wolf's Fleet's infrastructure or eliminating important objectives with hit and run attacks. We didn't plan to take the Wolf's Group or even force a political shift, we couldn't. The rebels were being fooled from the very beginning, they had to destabilize the Wolf's Group and keep your fleet occupied while we plundered the artefacts, and they played their part perfectly. Although they didn't survive for as long as they should have due to incompetence, conflicts between their leaders, arrogance and ambitions.

$b Miles: But were you aware of Ovadiah's plan to bring the Nightmares to the Wolf's Group?

$b Nesbitt: No. Our aim was to uncover a secret Ancient weapon buried on one of Wolf's Group's worlds. Everything apart from tactical details and nearest future plans was top secret, even to Admiral d'Angouleme and all other senior officers. We were cheating the rebels, but we did not realise that Ovadiah was fooling us all. Our admiral, our officers, he played his own game.

$b Miles: So why did you obey him?

$b Nesbitt: Long we believed what he was doing was right. He was a head of Cerberus, one of three heads. And he was a true leader, with a vision of a brighter future. He often talked about our goal to discover a secret weapon to use against the Shivans. Now we know his ambitions and madness blinded him to that goal. He turned the Wolf's Group into a deadly trap, a trap only he and his ship were planned to escape, and so he did.

$b Miles: Ovadiah seems to have been an... authority to you. 

$b Nesbitt: He used to. A mysterious, charismatic leader with both vision and determination. He was the one who revived Cerberus, a weak and marginalized organization created many decades ago, and led it to power. Few of us who knew about the CLD Cerberus regarded it as the most precious resource of our organization.

$b Miles: Oh yes, Ovadiah's flagship. Since I saw them I've been curious how you captured Argus and Cerberus. A destroyer is not exactly something you can buy on the market.

$b Nesbitt: Argus was in hands of Cerberus when Ovadiah, Phantom and d'Angouleme revived it. An old GTA destroyer project designed at the end of Great War, and developed during the reconstruction era. It was called the Tereus at the time. Eventually it was replaced by the Hecate. Five Tereus destroyers in total were under construction, but none of them were finished by the Alliance. Cerberus used a corporation secretly under its control to purchase the incomplete vessel. The ship was then completed and heavily modified. Argus has been a mobile base of operations since then.

$b Miles: And the Cerberus?

$b Nesbitt: Similar story. I think Ovadiah simply needed his own command ship independent from the Argus, which was given to Admiral d'Angouleme. The GTD Icelus destroyer was an experimental upgrade of the Hecate, with greater firepower and improved beams placement. But the GTVA abandoned the idea and decided to create a completely new destroyer class based on an NTF project of the Preliator. Capturing the first and, as I know, only Icelus was the greatest achievement of Cerberus since Phantom, Ovadiah and d'Angouleme revived it. 

$b Miles: Two destroyers then. Are there any others?

$b Nesbitt: No. Or at least I don't know of any. Each Cerberus cell is autonomous. We know only what we have to know. Only a handful of the highest officers and scientists who coordinate our operations have knowledge of our total strength.

$b Nesbitt: After we lost in Delta Majoris and KY Cygni, many of us started to doubt Ovadiah's plan. When we regrouped in Spica, I assumed we would wait to rebuild our forces. But Ovadiah ordered the entire fleet to assault the Shivan Gate. It was then that Admiral d'Angouleme and many of her officers rebelled against our leader. She took the Argus and a few other warships and defected. The fleet you fought during the First Battle of the Shivan Gate was less than half of our forces in Spica, the rest followed the Argus.

$b Miles: And you stayed with Ovadiah. 

$b Nesbitt: And I stayed with Ovadiah, it was the biggest mistake I've ever made. I witnessed the destruction of the Meleager and your entire battlegroup, and I observed the first contact between Ovadiah and the Nightmares. It was then I realized he no longer needed us. He sent thousands of our people to their deaths only to weaken your forces and make sure the Shivan Gate could be opened, this way the Nightmare vanguard would easily establish a defense perimeter in Spica. And then he left us to die, trapped between the Wolf's Fleet and the Nightmare armada. Captain Austerlitz of the Blindwind tried to gather as much of the Cerberus remnants as he could, but the Argus and her battlegroup somehow disappeared without a trace. After a few days hiding in Spica a new hope appeared - Admiral Drayman's offer. And that's all, I think.

$b Miles: Thank you, Mairead. It's... interesting to look at the war from a different perspective. 

$b Nesbitt: We're in the same boat now, commander, and, all in all, we have much in common. We may have been on opposite sides of the line, but I must say you quite... impressed me, Miles. Your style of command... you rely on individual skills more than many other commanders. Your pilots fly surprisingly well despite the lack of discipline, I think you'd fit quite well into Cerberus.

$b Miles: Maybe you'd fit well in my squadron. Don't you want to stay in the Wolf's Fleet, fighting for your home and your people, not for visions and illusions of a madman?

$b Nesbitt: Perhaps... things could go that way... Cerberus allowed me to participate in something important. I felt responsible for entire Terran and Vasudan races. I felt like we were doing what the Alliance was not capable of.

$b Miles: I can understand that, but now we know that Ovadiah has sacrificed far too much, and all in the name of his own power. He's not a defender of humanity, he failed our race. 

$b Nesbitt: Yes... I know... Well... I should go.

$b Miles: You can stay if you want. We still have some time left... 

$b Nesbitt: No, Miles. Thank you. Captain Austerlitz is expecting us in the briefing room. We're about to reach the rally point. Perhaps we'll talk again, hopefully under much better circumstances...