Battle of Sagittarius
A notorious incident where the Musican Fleet, sailing westwards to Talenore, encountered a SATCo convoy at rest in the roadstead offshore from MoMA Station Sagittarius and inexplicably misidentified the sonar and radar contacts as belonging to the Jingdaoese Xi Group. The Musicans attacked and scattered the convoy, disregarding signal flares, tactical recognition signs and repeated broadcasts of a ceasefire order from the nearby MoMA Station. Fighting became generalised during the night and continued even when the error became impossible to ignore in the morning light of the rising of Atos. Musican marines conducted a number of ship to ship boarding actions, commandeering six merchant vessels which were then impressed into service with the Musican Fleet. The Fleet, which relied upon feudal levies for its crews, then suffered a catastrophic breakdown in discipline, with sailors getting drunk, deserting their posts, and going ashore to plunder settlements on the island of Sagittarius - an action which brought the incredulous Imperial garrison into the fighting.
Weeks would pass before the last of the Musican mariners were rounded up, divested of their loot, and cudgelled down into the holds of the ageing warships that crowded the roadstead. The Musicans could not however be prevailed upon to relinquish the stolen merchant vessels, and the Imperial Navy was reluctantly compelled to compensate SATCo for the losses incurred in the attack launched on its convoy by friendly forces.
In spite of being an infamous debacle, the "Battle of Sagittarius" proved to be a useful taste of combat conditions for the hitherto inexperienced Musican crews, which served them in good stead during the Bombardment of Blore Heath, and at the Battle of Kares Island. Nonetheless, the Musican propensity to devote more time to the pursuit of prizes and to pillaging than on accomplishing their mission objectives proved to be an incorrigible failing that would dog the fleet for the entirety of its journey to Talenore, adding weeks if not months to the journey time.
