I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 47: A Little Break In Price
Earth June 2021
Months after the submarine launched missile attack Charles was again on the high metal side wall of the floating dock and scrap yard. He was in a very good mood this time, with a smile on his face that almost reached his ears and a song in his heart. Now that China was out of the picture and they were only concerned with internal matters, things were moving along very nice and smooth. The number of cyber-attacks being launched against them was now down to only a few dozen a day. All of those were from known zombie machines.
They had to run only one more Raptor attack back into China after what had come to be called 'The Thirty Hour War'. It had only fired a few pairs of Colonial made missiles, this time with only standard explosive warheads. The Raptor had gone after the man-built islands that had been turned into centers of defense by the Chinese government. The personnel there had started locking onto overflying civilian airliners with the missile guidance radars on those islands. The people in charge of those islands had been demanding money or they would 'close the airways of China' to any 'imperialist' aircraft within range of their weapons. The Colonials had been asked by the UN to address this situation through private back channels. Charles had, with a few Colonial missile strikes. This looked to have fixed the problem of the weapons emplacements that were now only water-filled craters.
Things were settling down everywhere around the world save the areas around and in China. That was not really a concern for Charles or his people. They had started the war, so he had finished it for them. That was the end of the story. When Charles shared his instructions on the target list to the press, he had made it very clear that he only wanted them to take out key leadership and weaponry. The ones that had given the orders to attack, and any weapons that had the range to affect their people. Everything else was to be left alone for the locals to deal with. The Colonials had too few people and equipment to be this planet's full time police force.
They still were getting some threats from small or extreme religious groups around the planet. They were mainly headquartered out of South and East Asia, but they had proven that they had a long reach. Charles had a dedicated team keeping an eye on them. It seemed like they were going after everyone, so he would wait before he blasted them. That is, unless they attacked his people. Then all bets were off and he would send the Raptors over to visit with the biggest weapons they needed to make sure the job was done.
Trade was going great with the rest of the world, too. He just got back a few days earlier from his latest trip off the pair of islands. He felt that he had been spending almost all of his time traveling now. That was not true but it felt that way to him.
The Americans had had an election, and the woman who had been in charge of that large and strange country when he took over these islands ran for office. She had lost her bid for reelection as their leader badly. The newly elected party had been pushing for more trade with his people even before the election. And just as they had said during the campaign, they had been pulling out all of the stops to increase trade with the Colonials by the end of February.
He was not surprised to find that the person who ran against her was the ex-CINCPAC Admiral that she had let go. It had been due to his orders to report to and support the Australian admiral during the first attack on the Colonials. He had not been fired, but the emails Boxey had found definitely pointed to a 'your resignation has been accepted please submit it now' type of retirement. She did not like that the military had acted to protect a treaty member. The part that stood out was that she was mostly just mad that they had not even asked her first and treaties be damned.
He had won against the other candidate for the nomination with a landslide of voters in turnout numbers that had not been seen in decades. Alexander 'Will' Patch then proceeded to do the same in the general election. The 'release' of the internal emails bashing the military and even her own supporters had been the final nail in the incumbent's political coffin. Her patented reply to any question had been to deny, deny, and then pull out the sex card.
Charles had made sure to send messages of congratulations as well as a bottle of something nice that he knew the retired admiral would like to have in the privacy of his new home. He had to have it delivered to The White House, and Charles had found out that it had caused a few issues. The issues were more funny than anything bad. The last trip off the islands had Charles bringing the second bottle for them to share. The trip was to watch the Americans show off what they had been able to do with the items they had bought off the Colonials over the past two years of trading.
The demonstration Charles was invited to was held in a hot as Hades place call White Sands. It was in a desert area that would have been pretty, if it had not been so frakking hot. There had been a big lay out of combat equipment of all kinds for the demonstration. Charles was only one of a number of VIPs that would be viewing the events. But since he was there with the sitting President, he had a great seat and very special treatment.
The US military had wanted to get as much firepower as possible into the field with the least amount of money invested. They still had to spend a lot of money, and they had been able to come up with some out of the box ideas to get the latest technology into the field. The Americans had a lot to offer in trade, so they had been the largest buyer of items even before the official change of leadership. Afterwards the numbers had been a real landslide in their favor. The Outpost had been more than a little strained to keep up with the inflow of products. Charles and his staff had only thought they knew the industrial power that the US could generate if it wanted to.
The US Military already had over a dozen Special Forces units fully armed and now armored with Colonial level weapons technology. What was on display for the demonstration were not those teams but the bigger weapons of war. These were the heavy hitters of one of the largest ground forces on the planet. He was shown how they had up-armored their APC's and IFV's with a core layer of new armor plate supplied by Colonial machines. The armor was very hard to work with and only a very small handful of shops in the whole country could work with it. They were still getting the bugs worked out, but they were putting together refit kits that could be sent to depot maintenance shops to do the final fitting out to the combat vehicles.
The odd little light tank that they had referred to as a Bradley did not have any reduction in performance because the weight added was so small. Charles had been shown the new fifteen millimeter thick applique armor made of hard metal. It was a sandwich of two layers of the newest armor sheets coming out of this country's smelters surrounding a core of Colonial armor plate. It covered the turret, hull front, and the sides going right over the current hull. As long as it was a flat or flat-ish surface, they wanted to cover it in the new armored outer skin.
The weapons on the tracked vehicle had been upgraded also. The M3's twin missile launcher now fired a modified version of the missile that others of her class around the world still fired. It would be some time before all of the stored older weapons were used in training or against targets that were of an older generation. The new launchers were designed to take both weapons with ease. No one wanted to waste tens of millions of dollars worth of older missiles still sitting in the stockpiles.
This newer missile just had more range and could reach its maximum range faster than any other missile in its class so far. A new and more effective warhead was in development but from what Charles had been able to find out, it was not able to punch through the best and newest of the Earth made steel at combat tank thickness, much less the sheets of armor that the Colonials were selling on the market in growing numbers. Ten sheets of Colonial armor plate could still be traded for a whole small space ship load's worth of the best local steel.
The main cannon of the M2/M3 had been a 25 mm Bushmaster autocannon and it still looked that way from the outside. The barrel and targeting system on these 30 ton tanks were all the same across the whole fleet. The breach of the modified weapons, on the other hand, had been replaced with a fixed mounted Colonial assault rifle or light machine gun with a locally produced longer barrel fixed within the barrel of the 25 mm weapon. They would use the built-in system of the IFV to aim the rifle, then fire the thing with the projectile going down the longer 25 mm barrel after leaving the Colonial made barrel and its locally built four foot extension.
The only way to know that this was a more dangerous light tank was to investigate inside of the tank's turret. The briefing now listed this modified IFV as a tank destroyer or close assault support vehicle. Those were fitting names. A three round burst fitted with Colonial supplied ammunition would do all the jobs listed as the weapon's requirements. That is unless the other side also had some Colonial supplied technologies. There even was a display of the different types of rounds that the weapon could fire in combat. Only one of the displayed ten rounds were made by Colonials. The rest were all coming from the fertile brain power of the local arms industry. Charles had to smile. It was just more proof that Admiral Adama's plans were starting to bear fruit.
The other modified weapon system was an M1A3 heavy tank called an Abrams Main Battle Tank. Charles had never seen an armored beast that big and able to move at such speed before in his life. It was very impressive and the online videos had not done it any justice. He was very impressed when he was told about the capabilities of the basic design. It had been around and in production for thirty years and was likely to be around for another ten years before a replacement came off the production lines. It was a very impressive bit of engineering no matter how one looked at it.
The outer hull of the tank had been fitted with two layers of Colonial armor over the top and sides, and it was the visible outer skin. It also was layered in such a way that a half inch layer of new style locally made armor was between each of the two sheets of Colonial made stuff. Even the bottom of the tank had this new armor layout, though absent the Colonial supplied armor. There was very little chance that a Colonial made or inspired weapon would be able to strike that location. The new three layers of local made armor should be able to handle any mines known to have been in production or on the drawing boards.
On top of the new armor on the outside of the tank, they had also added an active and passive defensive setup on the tank's turret. It was there to counter incoming missiles of both the older and newer generations. The very impressive fire control system was still the same as on the normal new production M1A3's. Except in place of the 120 mm smoothbore cannon was a Colonial made 30 mm KEW installed as its main weapon.
To keep from drawing more than its fair share of attention from enemy gunners, the heavy 120 mm cannon barrel had been replaced with a light weight tube complete with a fume extractor that was all fake. Even if someone were standing on top of the tank, he would not be able tell which one the non-modified tank was. Not even if it was sitting side by side with others. The new tank could hit harder and at a longer range than even her near sisters could achieve. It also could fire faster, with up to a three round burst, and it could carry more ammunition than the normal M1A3. This meant that she could stay on the battlefield longer and kill more enemy ground vehicles than any other tank in history. Charles made sure to pick up some of the briefing papers on this machine.
Charles could tell that there were many other dignitaries and military experts who were needing to keep a napkin handy as they watched the demonstration. Charles was betting that there were going to be orders placed even for a lot less capable American export version of these weapons at the end of the day. The upgraded armor packages alone would guarantee that. They would only have to find their own Colonial grade weapons to outfit them with.
The fire control systems that the Americans and a handful of others were currently fielding were amazing to Charles. He had never seen someone hit a target at almost six and a half kilometers outside of deep space. Much less do it half a dozen times without a single miss. It was an impressive display of the tank crew's marksmanship skills and the computer controls that went into the ground weapons. Any grounded Cylon craft up to a Heavy Raider were in danger from one of these beasts.
So far only about a hundred of the 30 mm Colonial made KEW's had been handed over to the Americans. Charles was doing the math in his head as he watched each of the new tanks being shown off to the crowd. Each Battlestar had between five and seven hundred of 30 mm KEW in twin mounted weapons. Then each MKII Viper had two like weapons and each MKVII Viper had three. Those were all of the old-style Colonial Fleet weapon. They had been replaced with either pulse lasers or a newer updated KEW close in weapon. That was a lot of available weapons in theory. Rumor had it that the Americans had built a thousand of the less high tech tanks already. In Charles' mind's eye he saw a line of these things charge down onto a Centurion line with guns blazing and metal parts flying through the air. He thought it was a beautiful image.
It was the day after the swearing in of the new President that a message was sent to Charles by name. Charles thought it was a thank you for the bottle that he had sent to the White House. That is, until Mell read to him the return address. This one did not come from the US Department of State in any shape or form. They had been having some internal problems even before the new President was sworn in. So it had come from the new head man himself in a very official capacity. The Oval Office letterhead was a dead giveaway of the power being put into the black ink.
The new President wanted to sign a long-term deal for the Colonials to supply six hundred of the 30 mm KEW's, two thousand assault rifles, and a matching number of light machine guns to his country. He was going to get a waiver to the laws that required all weapons and weapons systems to be made in the United States. The idea behind the law had been so that the US did not lose its sole source of a weapon if an embargo or some other issue happened. It would not have been the first time a waiver like this had been given for a short-term contact, though in the end the US Military would have to find someone to build a production facility to make those weapons on US soil.
Charles picked up another little bit of information not long after he had read the letter. It was something that had been dropped by one of the larger defense contractors. He had said that they were still in the building the machines to build the machines that will build the parts for a new generation of combat equipment phase. Charles also found out that all the modifications to these and follow on combat vehicles had been done in house at a handful of key US Army high level depot scale repair shops around the country instead of a defense company's production plant. That also impressed Charles and raised his opinion of President Patch. It was similar to what the Colonials had to do themselves while on the run from the Cylons. Just getting the weapons together and making sure they worked to kill the needed target. After that, then people can worry about making them pretty or other modifications.
This massive order for heavy weapons was over Charles' pay grade, so he kicked it up the political channels. He had no problems with numbers up to a dozen or so of any weapon type being sold to anyone on this planet at a time. This looked to him like pledging significant long-term support to a single planetary government. That was something that he was not sure was his place to do so. He thought that he might be overcompensating due to his friendship to the leader.
The Admiral and the President sent Saul Tigh to work on the fine details of the deal two days after Charles sent the notice off planet. Charles was happy to let him do all of the hard work and be the one on the blame line with their political leaders back on New Kobol. While Saul was there, he also brought Charles up to date on news that Lee Adama was leaving the service soon. One of the bits of stranger news was that Starbuck was moving from position of the CAG / XO of a battlestar to be the new commander of the Beast.
Laura was putting Lee on her staff to fill a key political position that she had been having to cover for a few years on her own. Money was now on that she was grooming him for her office when she finally decided that it was time for her to retire from public life.
The trade deal ended up being with the US Military or what they called the Department of Defense, and not the whole US government. This was to make sure that only the military would have the access to the weapons and not any other department in the overly massive American government.
The Colonials would provide one hundred modified KEW's, and ten fully operational twin mounts with weapons. Those were going along with the same number of battle rifles and light machine guns this year. Anything after that, they would have to be bought on the open market as they showed up for sale. The former XO did promise that the number of weapons coming onto the local market would increase by a significant amount in the future. Mostly to meet the needs of this new demand, but the Colonials were not going to publicize that fact.
Charles had no idea how much ammunition they were getting out of the deal but he knew that none of it was coming from the HE shells his people were hand making on the island. Selling those types of rounds was squarely under his hat for control. What the Colonials would get as payment for this massive load of firepower was a full one hundred and fifty bed level 1 trauma hospital in a box. They even had a Mobile Hospital Unit or MASH that would deploy off planet for six months to help set up, run, and train additional personnel to man it. The trainees would slowly take over the task until the whole hospital was supported by locals or Colonials. They were also going to help with the austere medical boxes that the Colonials already had. ThOSE only had a few dozen beds and they had already outgrown those two expensive contraptions.
This type of military hospital unit would be escorted by an infantry battalion combat team for the whole six months of their deployment off planet. This was just because the MASH unit would be out of contact with higher command minus good old-fashioned snail mail, and even that was going to be delivered by Colonial craft. The Colonials would supply the transport, as well as food and water for the length of the deployment for both units. It was a major sign of the level of trust that the new President had with the Colonials for this deal to go through. The idea did not have the full backing of the US Military, press, or some political leaders when this information was released to the public. Patch's reply had been that they were supplying medical aid to refugees and a security unit for that medical aid. What was the big deal? They had done this a hundred times over the last few decades. The only difference was that this need was off planet.
Thinking about that caused Charles's mind to jump topics. They had been flooded with requests for people who wanted to visit the Colonial worlds. They had a list of people who wanted to explore and, in some cases, even move to these areas. It was not just the two islands on this planet that was getting attention. In fact, most of the people wanted to move off planet if the Colonials would let them. They were coming from groups and individuals that wanted to see more open space and had the itch to see something new and make it their own.
Everyone who requested an application to join the Colonials was sent one via email. They could also be sent a physical copy if that was what they wanted and were willing to wait. Only when it was returned did a background check get done by someone from Kathy's and Boxey's team, though they waited until something was in hand before starting this checking process. A lot of people talked a good game but until they took the time to fill out the paperwork and return it, the Colonials were not going to waste their limited manpower on them.
If the person had some of the skills that the Colonials needed and had passed the background checks, then a notice was sent back to them that they were welcome. They could only spend one year in Colonial controlled areas. After that they must take a solid four month break before returning off planet. What most of these people did not know was that the last part could be waived under certain circumstances.
One was that if someone in the Colonial government requested the paperwork for them to stay longer. If these new colonists decided to say... vote or do any job in the Colonial military, they would have to pass a government test and learn to speak the English/Caprican mixed language to a certain level or skill within a certain schedule. It took the average person only about a month of classes to pass the skills test. It was comparable to taking a first year foreign language in an average high school, albeit one that was also mixed in with a government class at the same level. It was a two birds, one stone kind of thing.
A year ago, fifty-six year old Richard White was going through the records for the previous year. Their contract was up in the Yukon gold fields, and it had not been renewed for the following year. He needed to find work for him and his family. They had finished pulling the last of their heavy vehicles back to their home base in Tacoma, Washington just the week before. His three sons and their friends had driven the last three of their heavy expanded mobility tactical trucks and Oshkosh M1070's back with the large supply container on it before the snow started falling and shutting down the Yukon.
With a sigh, he went back to work on trying to find work and after ninety minutes and twenty phone calls, he gave up in disgust. At least he now had a reason why his company was being blocked off from finding work. It seems someone wanted him out of business and to buy the company at the lowest rate possible. After another phone call he had one of his friends that was a P.I. check into it for him.
Three weeks later, the work still wasn't coming in. The only good thing was that the boys had helped their old man out by giving him most of the money they made working the gold fields as heavy equipment operators. With seven million in the bank the company was staying afloat. The good news was that all the vehicles and loans had been paid off the year before. His P.I. was still looking into who was preventing him from getting any major work. The only work his people were doing was preventive maintenance on the trucks and equipment and soon that would be finished.
Richard opened the mini-fridge, pulled out one of his last beers and sat at the desk in his office. He turned his computer on and started going through the lists of jobs in the state. He had won one bid from the forestry department. It was to cut a fire road up into the mountains the week before, but it was only a two week job and it would bring little into the coffers. He needed to find out who was sabotaging his business and find out before the next year. He sent off several résumés to companies across the US and Canada and hoped to get some more work for his ten employees. Sending the last email he looked up as the main door opened and in walked his friend Mathew Blackthorn.
"Mathew, good to see you. I hope you have news for me," Richard greeted his friend as the other man shut the door and came over to the desk.
"I do," Mathew replied as he sat down. "Hope you have one more of those?"
Richard went to the mini-fridge, pulled out another can of Olympia and handed it to his friend. "So who is it?"
Mathew popped the can of beer and took a quick drink before replying, "Shanghai Construction Corporation. They're the ones who have been buying up a lot of real estate and businesses in the US for the last ten years."
Richard dropped into his chair and cursed as he thought of that company. They had tried four years ago to buy the company and he had told them no. Now he knew why contracts were drying up and he had no idea what to do. Not with that bitch Clay in office and friendly with China and Russia. He did not think that she was going to win reelection but could he afford to wait her out? Opening the drawer on his desk, he reached in and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniels and two crystal tumblers he kept in there. Pouring some of the whiskey into the glasses, he handed one to Mathew and drained the other before adding more.
"Son of a bitch," Richard swore as he leaned back in his chair. "What the hell am I going to do?"
Taking a sip of his whiskey Mathew smiled as an idea came to him. "I have an idea, but it could cost you a bundle to get it set up."
"Anything. My people need work!" Richard replied as he looked at his friend.
"I didn't want to tell anyone, but Kathy and I are emigrating," Mathew said.
"Emigrating? Where? Why?" Richard asked.
"Why? Because we don't like the way the US is being friendly to certain hostile powers and Kathy is tired of having to dumb down her lesson plans for the kids. As to where, we applied to join the Colonies," Mathew said.
With a confused look Richard asked, "Colonies?" Then it hit him, "You mean the Colonies of Kobol?"
"Yes. I and Kathy flew out to Raiatea and had our interview. We plan on leaving in two months with the kids. While there we were shown the island and I noticed that they have problems keeping the construction machines going as they're not used to them. They have some guys but they are pretty green and overworked. I think you should apply for immigration and bring your company with you. Not sure how much it would cost to ship everything there, but it would be a pretty penny." Mathew said as he finished his beer.
"If we do decide to go, I'll figure it out but first I need to have a chat with my family and employees and see what they think," Richard said.
"Do so," Mathew said as he stood up and headed for the door.
Richard carried the folder he had put together into the living room of his house and looked first at his family and then at a few trusted friends that worked for the company. Mathew had done background checks on everyone that worked for him and they had all come back clean. Looking around the room he nodded to his three sons and his daughter before sitting down in his chair to face them.
"Thank you all for coming. Everyone have a drink?" Richard asked and they all replied they did.
"Dad, what's going on?" Jenny asked as she fed her three month old daughter. She could tell something had been eating at her old man.
Richard looked at his nineteen year old daughter and sighed, "I found out why we're not getting any jobs."
"Why, Dad?" Aaron asked as he sat next to his wife Jenny. Aaron was one of the mechanics who worked for him. He was also his main welder.
"Well Aaron it seems that Shanghai Construction Corporation didn't give up after I told them the company wasn't for sale. They have been greasing the wheels against us. Trying to drive us under."
"Son of a bitch!" Wyatt White snarled out.
Richard nodded at his twenty-seven year old son and said, "Said the same thing when I found out." Richard did a little toast in the air with his bottle.
"What can we do?" Robert, his second old son asked.
"As to work here in the states, nothing until Clay and her people are out of office and by then we'll be bankrupt and forced to sell," Richard replied.
"So what do we do?" Vincent asked.
The question he knew was coming, but still surprised him when it came from his twenty year old son instead of his oldest. "Well Vince, a family friend suggested something and I agreed to ask all of you. But all of you need to keep it quiet for now. Can you promise me that?"
The combined agreements came from all the adults in the room, so Richard continued after he took a sip of his beer. "I suggest we all emigrate."
"Emigrate where?" Sara, Wyatt's wife asked.
"If they will take us, I suggest to the Colonials," Richard said.
Those few words would set off a conversation that would take several hours to complete. By the end of the day and the barbeque he had planned, it was decided that Richard would fly to Raiatea and ask in person as they did not trust the computer system not to be hacked. Richard passed out the immigration forms he had copied from their website at the office, and they filled out everything on the pages. Later, with Mathew's help he made up a binder of all the information that the private investigator had gathered. Two days later, he was on a plane to Tahiti.
Colonel Charles Bellamy looked up at the knock on the door and then at the clock on the wall before shouting out, "Come in."
The door opened and Richard White stepped in. He was wearing his usual outfit of jeans, button down shirt and combat boots. In one hand was his ever present briefcase.
"Colonel Bellamy?" Richard asked.
"Mister White, come in and have a seat," Charles said as he gestured to the chair in front of his desk.
While Richard closed the door and then walked over to the desk, Charles tried to get a read on the man. He still wasn't sure why this man was here. All he had was that the man owned and operated a heavy equipment maintenance company.
"Mister White, I really don't know why you're here. You didn't want to email the reason because you were afraid of your computers being compromised. Why don't you tell me what is going on," Charles said.
"Well the reason is my company is being attacked. Not computerized or physical. We're being shut out of all contracts by the Chinese." He opened his briefcase as he talked, pulled out a large binder and handed it over.
Charles took the binder and opened it. He started reading the information on what was happening to the man's company that he had built up over the last thirty years. As he read his eyebrows started going up and then he looked at Richard.
"You, your family and your employees want to immigrate?" Charles asked.
"Yes. I can offer you heavy maintenance workers, skilled heavy machine operators and a few other tech people that know how to work in the middle of nowhere. All we ask is a chance to join you and be able to do a job. My friend Mathew Blackthorn, his wife and grandkids joined you, and he suggested it. I have enough money to shift my company and employees here along with some specialty cargo we can get. The only thing we ask for is the chance to prove ourselves. The immigration forms are in the back of the binder. Each has another paper attached saying what they can offer you that wasn't asked in your questionnaire." Richard replied.
"I see," Charles said as he looked back at the binder and started thinking. Then he asked, "So you want to come to the island and work?"
"We can, but we would rather go to your planets and work there if that's possible," Richard said.
"Let me send a message to my bosses and ask. I don't think they will have a problem with it. Transporting your equipment will be no problem, just time consuming," Charles said, hiding a smile.
"That's all we ask. I'll even figure out some way to pay you with supplies if you want," Richard replied as he stood up.
Charles shook the man's hand and started formulating the request in his mind as he led the man to the door. He gave some instructions for the guard to see to Richard's needs in his native Caprican. Closing the door, he turned back to his desk. He quickly wrote everything up after scanning the binder's pages and encrypted it for the President's and Admiral's eyes only. He would be sending the file to the Chiron, which was sitting on the runway loading up her cargo bay with scrap metal from the dry dock. She was due to lift off in three hours for the flight back to the fleet. In the report he strongly suggested they take the offer.
Five days later he had his orders and he passed the information on to Richard who flew home the next day.
Harrison Zimmerman looked up as the door to his office opened, and a tall muscular man walked in carrying a briefcase. He was wearing what he would call work clothes, meaning blue jeans, a button down shirt and wearing what looked like combat boots on his feet. Standing up he asked, "Can I help you?"
"Are you Mister Zimmerman?" Richard asked as he shut the door.
"Yes I am," Harrison replied.
"Good. I called you several days ago. Name's Richard White," Richard said as he crossed the small room holding out his hand.
"Ahh, Mister White," Harrison replied as he shook the man's hand. "Please have a seat."
Sitting down, Harrison turned to his computer and brought up the man's requests, "I see you were looking for a ship to rent. I hope you don't mind but I did some checks on you. You're not a shipping company but rather a heavy construction/repair company."
"Yes, you are correct. I need a ship to move my company. We have been offered a lifetime contract and I won't say with whom at this time. Can you help?"
"Where are you moving to?" Harrison asked as he looked at the options on his screen.
"Tahiti," Richard replied.
"Hmmm, let me check," Harrison said as he started typing.
After a few minutes he frowned, "I can't help you on transport; the fees to ship would be astronomical. You would have to go to Hawaii first then transfer to one of the smaller ships heading to Tahiti."
"What about buying a ship? Do you have any that are for sale and could be quickly turned around for sailing?" Richard asked.
After typing some more into the computer he found one ship docked in San Diego. She was the Kapetan Christos, a thirty-seven hundred tonne Ro-Ro cargo ship. She just went up for sale at two million dollars.
"I have one. She is the Kapetan Christos, just docked at San Diego, and she just went up for sale. The asking price is two million. The ship was built back in the seventies and is almost fifty years old. Her gross tonnage is thirty-seven hundred tonnes, length overall is 96.8 meters, beam is 15.83 meters with a draught of 3.7 meters. Her container capacity is 60 TEU not including her vehicle well," Harrison said.
"Can you contact them? Tell them I am interested in buying her. Talk with the crew and see if they will stay on for one last trip after they bring her up here to Seattle. I will pay for the crew to fly home after we dock where we're going," Richard asked.
Harrison was not stupid and figured it had to do with the Colonials. With a nod, he sent off an email to the owners and asked. They went over the description of the ship and what info they could find, and he could tell the man was really interested when his phone rang and he picked it up. When he finished the conversation he had with the owners, he could see that Richard was very happy with the way it seemed to be working out.
With Harrison's help, Richard ordered some TEU's. They would be delivered to his yard where his people would pack everything in. A storage lot near the terminal where the ship would be docked was also reserved to store the vehicles that they would be taking with them. He had the exact dimensions of the vehicle well deck, and he knew it would be tight with the Oshkosh and her three lowboys that would carry the two dozers and excavator. The rest of the vehicles would be able to fit inside with no problem.
Thanking the man, he headed back to the compound where everyone was waiting. The next morning saw the delivery of the TEU's and they went to work loading them with everything from the smallest thing, to the spare attachments, to the equipment. Inside one was the canisters of gas for the welders, all in special wooden frames to prevent them from being banged around and to protect the heads from being damaged.
Several men were spotted outside the property, and Richard went out talk to them. They did not run off and said that they just wanted to see what was going on. Amazingly, later that day an inspector from the government came by to find out what was going on. All he was told was they were moving the company out of the state to find work. Where they were going wasn't mentioned, but hints to the south east were mentioned. Richard made a note to make sure some of the family hit the bars and pass out the same story.
Spare equipment parts were ordered along with tires, chains, and cables to fill the TEU's. Extra tools and tools they had wanted were ordered as well. By the end of the week, ten of the TEU's were packed full and taken to the docks where they were sealed up for loading onto the ship. Next items to be packed were most of their houses and other items they wanted to take with them. For housing, Richard ordered forty foot travel trailers from Keystone. Each could accommodate six inside and had several slide outs. The gas appliances had been removed and replaced with electric ones and the roofs covered with solar panels. Twenty were ordered and would be shipped directly to Seattle by rail. They would be loaded aboard ship and sent to Hawaii, then moved to the Colonial islands. Two extra family members of his employees were going with them. They were twin brothers of his employee Scotty Ruskin who specialized in engine repairs. They ran a well drilling company between the two of them and they would be bringing their whole rig with them.
After the last of the company was packed up, they went shopping at flea markets for items to take with them that might be useful. One place that they hit was the police compound where they bought out all the bikes that had been seized, found and repaired. Two thousand bikes from the impound lot were stored. When one of the ladies remembered from an interview about clothes being a necessary and hard to find item, they hit all the fabric stores and bought enough bolts of cloth to fill two TEU's along with accessories like sewing machines, needles, thread and miscellaneous things needed for sewing along with boxes of pattern books.
Richard ordered canned and bulk food that they liked. Two TEU's were loaded down with canned and boxed food for the Colonials. He made sure they were the big number ten cans for emergency foods ordered from the emergency canned food manufacturers like Mountain House, Valley food storage, Augason Farms, Essentials, Saratoga Farms, Ready Harvest, and Harvest Farms. Once the two TEUs were full, he decided to order more and filled up eight more for the Colonials. One thing that Jenny suggested was to get some Harvest Right freeze dryers and after studying the information on them he ordered six of the largest along with several deep freezers. Two large sheds were ordered as well. He would recommend to the Colonials to buy some as well to make their own dehydrated food for long term storage. He ordered enough empty #10 cans and several small can sealer machines to go with them to fill another TEU. With his contacts and friends across the nation, he bought enough beef, pork, cheese, chocolate and poultry to fill ten refrigeration TEU's. He planned on selling most of it to the Colonies and kept just one for himself.
James, his youngest and adopted son who had turned eighteen wanted to open his own business and Richard promised to help him. Three more TEU's were filled with booze and another pair with fishing and hunting supplies. The last two TEU's he had he filled with deep sea fishing gear. After talking with Charles on the phone, he then talked with the captain of the ship and made his last order from his old office. Twenty Skeeter Bass boats and twenty 25 foot long bay boats with parts were ordered from dealers in Seattle and Tacoma. The boats would be carried on the top deck with the forty TEU's they had already filled. In all, they spent almost five million dollars on shipping, the homes, and everything else. They put up their houses and the land the company and its buildings sat on for sale. When the sales were completed, they made back almost two million. They could have held out for more, but they were getting a little antsy to be on their way.
After a month and half of packing, buying and loading, the Kapetan Christos set sail from Seattle heading for the trading post. Aboard the ship, Richard, his family and the employees of the company along with a few extras used the cabins on the ships to settle in for the long trip. It was a forty-four hundred mile trip, and it would take fifteen days to get there. The new housing trailers would have been delivered to Hawaii the morning they left Seattle on the Ro-Ro.
Fifteen days later, they came ashore on Raiatea where they were greeted by no less than Charles Bellamy, William Adama and Laura Roslin. The family members were all shocked that the two leaders were there to welcome them, not realizing that with all the supplies they brought their arrival would be deemed to be that important. Richard was not too sure he wanted to be interviewed by the Colonial press when they landed. The final paperwork was done to sell the haggard cargo ship Kapetan Christos to the Colonials. It was sold at a little better than scrap price, but that still amounted to a nice nest egg for the Whites. She was towed to rest beside the next ship about to go under the Hoplites' energy knives.
It was two months later in January that the last of the items were lifted off Earth and taken to their new home in another star system. The Colonials had to use four liners making several trips each week to lift off everything. The food, clothing and supplies they brought made a world of difference to the survivors.
Back in China, the owner of the Shanghai Construction Corporation was throwing a hissy fit at not being able to get White's heavy maintenance company or its multiple assets without spending a fortune buying new equipment. Even used equipment like that were expensive. He had to report to his bosses in the Chinese government that he had failed. His boss had been planning on this company to supply hard currency that was needed to maintain and possibly expand the territory their warlord controlled. Now, they were going to have to find something else.
From his perch on the high metal wall of the floating dock Charles watched a small group moving below him. The group was composed of Hardball, her new husband Paul, and their newborn baby boy. They were walking around the huge working pier like a young couple walking in a park. It was not as congested as the older and smaller pier on the other side of the island. That was the one that the West Pac and her sisters still used most of the time. This one did have a lot more of the heavy machinery moving around it than the smaller pier did. Paul and a group of military people from all over this blue world were currently part of a composite unit sent to defend the islands. It was hoped that this would help in fostering the spirit of working together and living on this island with the other Colonials.
It was looking more and more like he would be leaving his country of birth's military to join up with Diana. The Quorum had just passed a law that limited the number of new citizens to no more than 0.5 percent of the current population per year. Laura had wanted it up to one percent until someone had shown her the numbers that had been run with both of those percentages. They showed that native born Colonials and Rifters would be bumped to a minority population in less than sixty years if they went with her number.
She signed the law the Quorum put before her, but she had made sure of a few things first. One was that there were no limits to the number of contractors that could be hired and working for them under certain conditions. Hiring contractors from Earth pulled a lot of trained personnel into skill areas that the Colonials were short on. Those included medical personnel, basic school instructors, heavy equipment operations, and those maintaining those same heavy machinery. The list was almost two pages long and it seemed to be growing every day.
The list of needed experience in those key jobs even if Earth was about 20 to 30 years behind Colonial tech was massive. It would help the Colonials get back to building a lot faster than the now almost 75,000 population would have been able to do on their own. After all, there were only four people that had the know-how to put waste water plumbing into a house. And none knew how to do it in a large building besides a spaceship. Even Laura knew that was not the most efficient way to do that kind of work.
Charles was thinking back to some of those contractors that had taken jobs for the Colonials and smiled. The one he was thinking of right now had been a real island local who had some skills in running heavy equipment in a jungle setting. He had wanted to see what had been going on in his old home after selling his land to the strangers. So, he had taken a job that would let him come back to his place of birth, using his skill at driving rock trucks and heavy excavators to pay the bills.
He had overheard over dinner one evening about the problems in finding a place to offload the extra fuel that was coming off the large captured ships. This issue was causing a lot of backlog in cutting up the ships that had been captured. It had happened not soon after they had to jump the frigates up the line and it had not gotten any better afterwards. He had an idea of what might work to fix this nagging issue that came to a head few months later. It would have to wait a few weeks to bring the idea forward to anyone with rank that might be helpful though.
That was because the next day was the big party, and the day after that, someone wanted to throw a few nuclear weapons at them. When things did calm down again, Henri Salaun used Charles's open-door policy to pitch his idea. The open-door thing was something that he had been told about by one of the Rifts Earth people. It worked amazingly well with handling a wide range of problems before they blew up all over a lot of people.
After introducing himself and taking a seat in the second floor office, he told Charles about his life being born and raised on the island. Then he talked about hearing about the Colonials' worries on how to store the fuel oil all over the place in what he called penny packets. Even the amount of fuel going off planet was not that much compared to that they had access to right now. He wanted to know why they were not using the underground emergency fuel tanks near the typhoon emergency electrical generator. He was on a roll and went on to ask about the massive fuel tanks under the airfield. He had quickly gone from acting on island time to a ferret on a caffeine rush.
It was not long into this story before he stopped talking in English and went into full French. That was when Charles had to hold up his hand to stop the rattling.
Charles looked him dead in the eyes asked, "What fuel tanks?"
That started him up all over again about his early life on the island and how they had lost power a few times due to storms. After the second run through of the story, Charles stopped the middle-aged man again. Now Charles called in the legal firm's representative who now lived on the island. While Charles and his new friend were waiting, he contacted the on-call computer expert into his office. He also cancelled his next few appointments scheduled for that day. They could wait, this could not. The four of them went through the inventory list made back when the Colonials took over the islands, line by line. They could not find any reference to what the 'new' local was talking about. There was not even a vague reference to anything that he had spoken of.
With Charles's office being so close to what was referred to as the jet fuel tanks, the four of them decided to just go out to the area where the local kind of remembered they might be. They walked around on foot and used their eyes to scan the local area. After they were looking for about fifteen minutes on the heat reflecting landing field, Charles decide that it was worth the time and effort to get more assets involved in looking for the old fuel tanks. He had the alert Raptor crew fire up its DRADIS and scanned the area in question from a low hover. It took them all of two minutes to find the tanks and the pipes leading to the surface. As it turned out, it was not far from the main airport building. That was where the problems started.
When they reinforced the plane and car parking areas of the old airport with high damage resistant concrete, they had inadvertently covered the access pipes to the airport's fuel tanks with a four inch covering of the amazing material that had been laid down. That was not going to be a quick task to cut through to access the fuel tank cover without damaging the items they were looking for underneath. Charles was about to thank the man when one of his staff came running out of the building converted to a command and administrative center.
He came running across the concrete waving a computer tablet in the air like a crazy person. The computer team had found the information Charles had been looking for, and it was big. It turned out that the airport charter required the field to have one full reload of fuel to fill a large wide-bodied jet. It was supposed to be only used in case of a list of emergencies about a mile long. The notes said that the island was supposed to have a doubled up 34,000 gallon storage capacity in the underground tanks at the airfield.
The leaders on the island had decided to approve the project, and it had been paid for with a grant from the UN. At that point, some UN agency had decided that the island needed to keep on hand enough fuel to fill two Boeing 777 passenger liners from empty instead of the one listed in the regulations. Charles had the area marked and had some of his staff get a detailed fix on where DRADIS said the tanks and pipes where. Then he gave them the task of accessing the pipes without damaging them or the fuel tanks they led to.
Charles looked around and smiled at the local. Then he had the local join him on the short ride over to where these 'Emergency Generators' were supposed to be located at. He had already proven useful. It still took them some time to find what the small team was looking for. They were not in the area described in the paperwork, but it in the back of the Commune d'Uturoa main building. That was where they had found an empty room with a sign half hanging off of the door. It did not take much to confirm that this was the place in question, but the generators were long gone. Most likely someone had taken them off the island during the land buying and no one had noticed. After all, the Colonials had told the previous inhabitants to take whatever they wanted. They did find the feed pipes to the now missing large electrical generators and backtracked them to the refill location outside of the now repurposed building.
Charles put Henri Salaun in charge of the project to get the lines and tanks found, evaluated and fixed if need be for fuel storage again. With that done, Charles went back to his office. He made sure that everyone knew this was very important and that they were to prioritize anything that those two teams needed. Most understood but a few did not. While Charles was in his office, he finally authorized anyone that lived on the island to freely draw from the salvaged fuel to run generators or personnel transport. This was listed as only a temporary benefit and no one was to get used to the handouts without having to pay for it.
It had taken the two teams about two days to get both areas checked out and it was just as dirty, hot, and smelly a job as one would think such a job might be under the tropical heat. The fuel tank closest to the pier had been the supply for the emergency generator and it was bone dry. Amazingly, it looked to have never been filled with any type of fuel in the first place. They put a little robot in the access point to check out the tank. It looked okay, but they pumped in fresh but not drinkable water to the very top of the tank as a test.
They let it sit for a full day filled with water, then had a very detailed DRADIS scan run over the area around the tank. When they did not need to add any water and the scan did not detect any ground that was wetter than normal, the fuel tank was declared good to go and the water pumped back out. It was amazing how fast 20,000 gallons of water could be pumped out of the ground with the right equipment. What Charles was not happy about was that they had used fresh water for the test. Granted it had been mountain water but still it was fresh water. He was not told until after the fact how they intended to do the testing. His first warning had been when he saw kids playing in the water running down the street and into the lagoon in a not so small stream of blue gold. He changed his tune when he was told what even a little salt would do to the insides of the heavy equipment's engines.
As soon as the tank that by now was near the community center was empty of water and mostly dry the team got to work. Henri had used the time that the tank was being tested wisely, planning out how to best use both semi fuel trailers on the island. The one from the larger ship pier worksite went to the underground site first. It was simply because they did not have to move any pipes. That first tanker trailer had only been three quarters full but it did put a dent in the underground tank when the fuel was transferred. The emptied trailer tank passed the second tanker on its way to the floating dry dock and the warship it was holding to refill from the hulks' tanks.
They siphoned fuel out through pipes connected to the side of the warship but no one had warned the crews about the sudden demand the newly operational underground tanks might cause. They were very surprised after filling the first tanker when the second tanker trailer came in looking for more fuel. This completely drained the Number 4 tank on the warship before the second tanker trailer was filled. They were still hooking up to the Number 5 fuel tank when the empty tanker normally parked on the pier came back again to take another drink from the warship. It was empty as it had been when they started refilling it today.
The worksite tanker topped off the newly found fuel bunker an hour after getting the new fuel tank accessed. It did not completely drain the tanker trailer the second time, but it did but a big dent in it before it returned again to its spot near the larger ship pier. The salvage crew had to fill it up again before its return trip to the working area on the other side of the island. In a single afternoon, they had finished the warship's Number 4 and Number 5 tanks, and even the Number 6 tank had been tapped by the time the sun went down for the small fuel team.
It was a very impressive day for that small team. They had not moved that much fuel in one afternoon, ever. The faster they could get the fuel tanks emptied on the warship, the faster they could start cutting it and the other ships still anchored in the lagoon up. Parts were ordered to emplace two gas station fuel pumps which would be put in so that the underground tank could be used by anyone that very night. Those parts would take a few weeks to make the journey to the island after the online order. It would take longer to get the low flow pumps emplaced, but all the ground work was done for the addition to the island's infrastructure. Very quickly a slapped together system was put together until a safer and more permanent solution could be put into place. When word that the new gas station was about to open was released, a half dozen diesel powered motorcycles were ordered by different people around the island.
While one group was pumping the test water out of the one tank by the empty generator pads, another set of crews was checking out the tanks under the tarmac near the main command center of the island. They had to put some firepower into cutting through the four inches of Rifts Earth concrete to get to them, but they were able to get the stuff off in the end. Then they had to get it cleared away from the main access point to the two tanks. They were lucky, because these access points were not in the area of the tarmac that saw heavy use. They were off to the edge and close to the road, so it could have been harder. Otherwise their actions would have affected the operation of the whole spaceport.
The first tank was not empty, but it also was not fully filled with fuel. They found that the tank had eight inches of water in the bottom of the fiberglass tank in all of its smelly glory. A portable Colonial scanner showed that the tank was sound. The second old aircraft fuel tank also was wet, but this wet was a bit more flammable than had been expected, especially compared to what was in the first tank.
They had about 8,000 gallons of Jet A class fuel mixed with air in the tank just sitting waiting for a match or flame to be introduced to it. They had no idea what to do with this 'jet fuel' until someone found that the Jet A would be great to add to the Bunker C they were pulling off some of the ships' fuel tanks. It they mixed about one gallon of Jet A per 100 gallons of the Bunker C, it would actually make the diesel engines work better when they burned the salvaged fuel by itself. All they would need to do is mix it into the tanker trailers each day from a 500 gallon roller blivet. It would take some time but in less than two weeks, they would have the second tank empty and ready for refilling with the fuel offloaded from the slowly rusting ex-Chinese navy ships.
It was good timing to find a place to store the overflow of fuel. At that time there were exactly two companies that would ship cargo into this area of French Polynesia. Those were the only ones still operating with the world powers throwing nuclear weapons around the local area. There was not a single insurance company in the world that would cover or honor a claim made in an area like that. So, most cargo companies were taking some downtime while things settled out and the radiation levels dropped.
Beattie's masters could not even publicly send their ships into that kind of warzone. Not without drawing a lot of unwanted attention from people they wanted to avoid being seen by. Those remaining two companies were charging four times the rates to deliver cargo compared to before the last Chinese attack. These two companies also were a bit on the shady side. They were known for occasionally not delivering the goods that they were paid to, and then having some of that cargo show up on the black market somewhere else at a very steep markup.
The Colonials had no choice but with their payment on delivery history they had less issues with missing cargo than most of the rest of the local islands. Most of the people the Colonials were working with would not use those two shipping companies. A few of them were holding onto their items until other shipping arrangements could be found. Like when the West Pac and her sisters started their supply runs again. It would hopefully be another month or three after the nuclear weapons stopped falling that they would make a daylight run to the Colonial islands. If people did not see the run, then it did not happen. That was a very common attitude among ships around the world.
Charles and the Colonials did still have three space ships landing per week that need to be filled with something. The cargos they should be filled with were currently sitting in dozens of ports across the South Pacific. With only one tank of fuel left in the 120 meter long and 4,000 ton ship that they started cutting up into smaller bits that first night, it did not take them long to get almost 2000 tons of metal cut up and boxed for shipping. It was helpful to the Colonials now that every form of steel was so expensive. These captured ships were a major break in price to acquire. Charles also started shifting important cargos using Colonial cargo shuttles that were both augmented and escorted by Raptors from some of the spread out collection points around this part of the world.
The cutting crews were able to finish cutting up the warship in two days. It was an impressive job, and they did not use that much overtime to do it. They were able to get the second Type 075 40,000 ton amphibious transport dock back into the floating dock for scrapping. Charles had been very happy that they were looking at getting back on schedule. His staff, under his orders, had the third and last of the small carriers brought over to the large ship pier. She had been captured by a neutral party after the nuclear attack. This would make it easier for them to start the stripping of that ship. It had worked out that they could do that job faster with the larger ship pier than in the floating dock. As long as it went smoothly, he did not care how it got done.
He was surprised to be contacted by the UN rep in Hawaii four weeks after the aborted Chinese nuclear attack on his command. The shooting had stopped for a few days in China, and the UN had rolled that information out with a great deal of fanfare at first. It had lost steam very quickly as fewer and fewer of their normal supporters fell away to the sidelines. Then, the shooting in China restarted at a major increase in rate and caliber. The UN needed a real win for the local media to push, and they thought that the Colonials were the perfect people to help them.
According to the UN rep that flew in to meet with Charles, a lot of the local islands needed emergency resupply. With no one knowing how many Chinese attack submarines might still be in the area, no one wanted to risk their cargo ships at anchor while they unloaded the needed supplies in this part of the world. The UN wanted the Colonials to use their Raptors to make high speed runs to the different islands with emergency supplies.
Charles had no issues with making the emergency supply runs in the local area. He now had six Raptors on the islands that did not have working jump drives. Having them and their crews get some flight time was not going to be a risk as long as they did not have to jump anywhere. It would show that unlike the other combatant, the Colonials were trying to help those caught in the middle of a conflict. It would use a lot of imported from out of this star system fuel, but it would look good in the news to see Colonial war craft helping out in the local area. He worked with Ruth and Mell to have a correspondent embedded on all of the flights that they could cover. It also was a good way for the plight of these islands to make worldwide news.
It was during the supply and support runs that the last of the captured Chinese ships made it into the lagoon and dropped anchor in the protected waters. The huge cargo ships made the lagoon seem so small from the air. Charles had the law firm file the papers to take over ownership of all the cargo on the civilian ship. That had not gone over well with the other owners of those cargos. In the end, the Colonials were allowed to take the cargo if the original owner was a Chinese linked company. It still was a whole lot of sea/land vans that Charles had now become the owner of. After inspection, they were sent off planet for the rest of the Colonials to use.
The other ships that now were in the harbor were more valuable to the Colonials than any small warship. The weapons offloaded from the frigates and other warships were boxed up and stored until they could be shipped the 170 miles to Tahiti. After the warships were cut up, they started working on the third and last of the landing ship dock. It had just been waiting on free space in the floating dock. Admiral Adama was very happy to get another two large cargo hovercrafts sent to him off planet. The downside was that now he had six of the fuel hungry beasts to feed. They were not short on fuel, but it was something else that had to be closely managed and it took up cargo space on those interstellar ships.
Charles liked that he now had six of the flat bottomed landing craft to help move items between the two islands with ease. It was also on this last ship that they found out what had happened to the Chinese built helicopters. They found out that anyone above a given party rank or with military secrets had used the pair on each ship to escape by flying low over the water. The data found on the little laptop showed the Colonials that the radar coverage around this area, even with Colonial systems, was too thin to catch what happened to those choppers. With this hole shown to them, they were taking steps to fix it. It was only going to take time and training to have that gap plugged.
When the world and maritime courts agreed that the Colonials owned the ships and cargo, that caused another issue that would need to be worked on. That one was just a matter of throwing enough people at it, though. Oh, it would take time. And it would take some tools that if they did not have on those two islands, they would have to improvise to get the job done in the end. It was just not going to be as efficient as having the right tools for the job.
The Globe-class container ship had 19,100 TEU's stacked a dozen deep in and above her hull. That was like having almost 20,000 semi-tractor trailers to sort through with only a mile or two of road network to work through the problem with. The Colonials currently had twenty vessels that size or larger riding at anchor in the lagoon. They had the list of TEU's that need to be offloaded and made ready to transship to Tahiti. From Tahiti, it would go to the people or companies that were not connected to the Chinese. The others would just have to be dealt with by the new owners.
The Colonials didn't have an AT-AT like what could be found in a major port, or any of the other tools that would have been used to offload a ship like this. This meant that the Colonials and other locals had to rig something else up on their own to do the same job. The stacks were nine TEU's tall or taller on most of the ships in the lagoon, but a Raptor could and did lift off six at a time, in a two by three box after only a few minutes of work. They would fly the TEUs to land on the large ship pier about a kilometer and a half from the anchored ships.
If any of the offloaded containers were on the approved list to be returned to their owners on Earth, they would be moved to one side of the pier for transshipping. If they were on the red list, they would be sent to the airfield to be loaded on the next ship going off planet. It did not matter what was in the TEU's, they could be used on the Colonial controlled planets. If they could be used soon, they were unloaded and the empty TEU's sent back to the Trading Post on Earth. It was noted that next time something like this happened, any recovered TEU that was going off planet would be emptied and fully inspected before moving off world. As it turned out, the posted manifests were not always correct.
It would be some time before the shipping situation could settle out in the local area, so some of the TEU's would be loaded on the now overused twin hulled Spearhead class ships that Captain Beattie was running. It was a great relief when the Feedermax ship made a port call at the Colonial island and took 2,000 TEU's off the pier with its two built in cranes. Charles' budget was not going to like it, since the Colonials had to pay to get the cargo to a free port. All so that they could continue on their journey to their lawful owners. It was a lot of work but it would turn out to benefit the Colonials in a lot of different ways in the long run. Even if it had caused some sleepless nights, grey hair, and some power drinking before it paid off.
Charles was thinking about how to move the massive cargo ships a lot. As soon as they had known that the legal problems were under control, he had ordered his staff to roll with his backup plan and they had gone into full speed to get it rolling along. Now the partially emptied cargo container ship was huge, to put one word to it. How do you move a large ship that masses about 100,000 tons from anchor to docking point on a pier? Now add in how you are going to do it when you don't have the crew or anyone knowledgeable on how to run the engine?
The book said just to use a few tug boats to do the job. The Colonials did not have tug boats, and they did not want to wait to get any to come all of the way out here to them to do the needed work. What the Colonials did have were a dozen giant manned robots and some heavy equipment that could help out with the task. The few Colonial crewed submarines were on duty protecting the island from any future attack and could not be used to help out with this work. They had to snap kick the next phase, so that they would not be seen by many of the other intelligence agencies that were now calling the island home.
The huge ship needed over forty-five feet of water to float when it was fully loaded. They had already pulled over 5,000 TEUs off the ship just by using the Raptors. These had mainly been from the front of the very long ship. This was so that the bow would need less water than the aft end to keep it off the bottom of the lagoon. Charles's staff had collected every bit of Colonial made cable on the pair of islands and tied it to the side of the huge ship while it sat at anchor.
Under the water, five combat robots were on each side of the long ship. As the cables were attached to tow points on the ship's top, they were thrown over the side. Those cables were picked up by these hidden combat robots. When all ten lines were in the water, the ten machines started walking across the lagoon floor with the lines firmly in their hands. The hardest part was having to be careful to keep a steady, even pace and maintain the right distance apart in the clear water. They could not move fast, but once they got the ship moving some, they had no problem moving it to the dredged channel that led to the large ship pier. It was a roundabout way to connect the two locations but it was the only way to move the ship from the anchorage to the large ship pier that looked like it would work. The last thing the locals wanted do was to get the ship stuck on a sandbar.
When they were lined up to the pier, not the floating dock, but the long concrete covered pier, a line was attached to the prop on the aft part of the cargo ship. This new line ran back between the floating dock's two walls and onto the pier. It went some distance further down the pier to a set of heavy equipment waiting to tow. The underwater machines then cleared the area now that their job was more or less done.
The new group of towing equipment had to move the over 1,000 foot long ship through and past the scrapping dock. They had to work very closely with a team on the top of the now flooded working dock for safety. It was a complicated dance to move the ship and get it lined up as the math said it should be. This could only be done with every bit of heavy equipment on the islands to pull the container ship aft first into the now flooded floating dock tied to the pier. It was happening even slower than first planned, because something that size would not stop on a dime no matter how much improvised equipment was thrown at it.
The job was done though it took a little longer than planned. Okay, it had taken a lot longer than had been planned for. When the cargo ship was not moving and floated over the top of the flooded deck, it cleared the flooded well deck with barely 24 centimeters of space between the two massive metal objects. The ten main lines were pulled out of the water and were used to attach the container ship to the underwater dock.
Even before the Globe-class container ship had been secured, the two modified 40 ton lift limited cargo cranes on the high walls of the dry dock were in motion. They each picked up the TEU's from the back of the ship and shifted them to the pier that would soon be perpendicular with the ship. The operators were the two best crane operations on the island and they quickly proved their skills by working so closely together. They worked for hours without hitting each other's machines once. Sometimes there was an electric semi to take loads coming off the cranes. And sometimes the TEU was just put on the ground to be moved again later. The crane crews were on a very strict timeline and they had already started later than planned for.
The well-used floating dry dock the Colonials had could only lift 72,000 tons or less out of the water and that was what she had been doing for some time now. The container ship they were working with today came in at just over 184,000 tons with a full load. They had already moved over five thousand TEU's, each weighing between fifteen and twenty-six tons each. Even then, this smallest of the captured container ships was still both too long and too heavy for the dry dock to work as it had been designed ten years ago to do.
The Colonials only had four hours to remove as much weight off the back of the container ship as they could before the ocean high tide started to roll back out of the lagoon. While the cranes were moving the TEU's as fast as they could, the crew of the flooded dock was pumping air into the bottom hull of the dock that was sitting on the bottom of the lagoon.
The mixed Colonial and local contract crews had to get the bottom of the scrapping dock off the lagoon floor before the tide went back out and the local sea level dropped again. If the heavy ship was allowed to pin the dock between it and the lagoon floor, the small floating dock would be crushed by the wave action of the larger ship on the smaller dry dock. It was hoped that adding 70,000 tons of upthrust would keep the dock and the load between her high walls off the muddy bottom of the lagoon. It took the dock almost an hour from when the aft part of the cargo ship crossed over its top to when it contacted the bottom of the ex-Chinese cargo ship's red painted hull.
The twin cranes could move a TEU every six minutes per crane. As they moved deeper down the stacks of TEU's on the very aft part of the ship, the weight of them grew and the effect on the ship's displacement also grew. The deeper into the ship they went the more of an effect lifting out the TEU's would have on the whole operations. You did not want the heaviest load far away from the water line in any kind of wind or wave action. That was how ships sunk even today. They would be too top-heavy for any sudden change in the weather. The two cranes were still each able to cut about two hundred tons of weight off the ship every hour. That did not count the twelve shots of steel anchor chains and the two twenty-ton anchors that was pulled off by the land based heavy equipment. That much weight being removed had a positive effect on the mission.
When the tide went all the way out again, the bottom of the floating dock and her current cargo did not touch the mud. Unless they had a major storm to cause some major waves to make it through to this part of the lagoon, the floating dock seemed to be safe from being battered against the sea floor for now. The top deck of the floating dock also did not clear the wave tops of the smooth-ish water in the lagoon. The working deck of the dock or well deck was about three feet below the surface of the waters. That did not count the waves' troughs as they rolled across the area every minute of the day and night. They were on a knife edge for the next few days.
Two Hoplite suits had been underwater to watch what was going on the entire time. They were to report in all movements of the dock as the tide went out. It was both boring and dangerous work watching a few hundreds of thousands of tons of metal moving only a few meters away. All of that movement was due to the air and wave action over their heads. With the floating dock now out of the mud, they were able to shift the dock back into its normal operating orientation very quickly. Even while it moved, the offloading did not stop. It slowed down, but not that much. The offloading cranes just could not afford to slow down.
Almost three hundred feet of the cargo ship's hull was sticking out from one end of the dry-dock and it was overhanging an area that had never been dredged. As seen from above, the cargo ship looked like an arrow had been stuck backwards into the long island pier. So, when the water went out of the lagoon at low tide again, the bow of the ship got lower and lower to the hump in the lagoon's sand and mud bottom. At the lowest level of the tide, the metal nose of the ship with its long bulbous nose came to rest in the soft mud. It was only lightly touching the mud. So lightly that it barely compressed the mud and sand under the hull.
If the ship had been longer, just a little longer, this might have been a problem. The wave action would have bounced that end of the hull up and down and the lagoon bottom was less forgiving than the thin double hull of the cargo ship. The hull bottom only put a dent two or three inches deep into the mud before the tide was recorded to have reached the lowest that it would be for the next 48 hours. It was a close thing, but the plan had worked. So far, at least. And this was only day one and part of day two of the operation. Thankfully, the weather had been very nice and uneventful.
The offloading slowed as night came on, and it was clear that the scrapping dock was safe from bottoming out and the damage that would have caused. The offloading lost some of its frantic pace, and it went down to a safer level of operations. This gave time for the ground crews to catch up on moving all of the grounded TEUs to where they needed to go to clear the pier. With the floating dock's tanks blown dry and as the load was lightened throughout the night, the ship and dry dock would slowly come more and more out of the water a bare millimeter at a time. Way too slow for the human eye to notice but the change would be there none the less.