Neptune's Revenge: Sailing the Dark Sea

by cliff.west

INTRO: You need to read Neptune's Revenge before starting this book. The Colonials after joining forces with a group from Rifts Earth had thrown the Cylons off of New Caprica. Now they must repair, rebuild, recover, and then prepare for the future. The Cylons are gone, for now. The now mixed group must work together to find the planet that the Colonial are looking for along with th

48. Chapter 48 a little break in price 2

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 48: A Little Break in Price Part 2

Earth June 2021

While the container ship was being worked on above the waterline, the fuel stored on the island was opened up for use by everyone. Charles had not realized how much of the Earth based fuel was going off planet or being used by the people living on his islands. That was until he was told that the old emergency fuel tank was empty and as of that morning's briefing one of the larger airport tanks should be emptied by the end of the day. The twin diesel powered cranes, all of the effort to first move the huge ship, and then move and adjust the combined mass of the dock and its load was so massive that it had used a lot of fuel that had not been replaced.

Charles had not been worried about the fuel, and he had kept a poker face on while being briefed by his staff the following morning. Even though the Chinese cargo ship had been run at over 18 knots all the way back to Colonial controlled waters it still had over 9,000 tons of fuel in its many fuel tanks. She was a large ship after all, and she had been designed to cross the largest body of water on this planet at least twice before refueling. That meant she had been built with many huge fuel tanks within her hull.

What he and his staff had not counted on was how long it would take to get the massive ship completely out of the water. All so that the siphon lines could be hooked up to the fuel tanks of the huge cargo ship without causing a mess that was both unsightly and very toxic. In the end, he had okayed an emergency plan brought up by someone on his staff to have people work in the now little over knee-deep water. Knee-deep, provided the action of the waves were not added onto the measurements. Charles made sure to reinforce that anyone in the water for this work would be in at least full environmental body armor. The islands had their first shark attack two days ago and it had happened near the pier that the floating dock was tied to. That was a bit too close for comfort in Charles's book. Even with the approval to take the risk of working in the water, it still would take a few days to get the heavy pipelines hooked up to the ship's fuel tanks.

As it turned out, it was just in time and the Colonials had enough fuel with a little to spare before drastic measures might have been needed. That would not be the story if there was more than another day of delay, maybe two, to tap those tanks. If that had happened, they were going to have some issues filling up the roll around tanks that needed to be loaded on the converted space liners and shipped off planet. That is, until the fuel supply issue had been fixed and the other fuel tanks tapped. Now they were not going to need to worry about those issues. More than a few members of the staff were very happy to put those plans back into the filing cabinets.

Pulling the fuel out of those massive fuel tanks was not going to speed up the lifting of the cargo ship completely out of the water by that much. This type of fuel was less dense than sea water, so they would have to move a lot of it before it would help even an inch. The fuel tanks that still had fuel in them were at or just below the light load water line of the vessel. When those lines rose above the water, it would be counterproductive for that part of the mission. Still, every liter that was removed from the ship was a help.

It was the twin overhead cranes that would be the best way to get the desired effect the Colonials needed. Once the ship was empty of cargo, it still massed almost 94,000 tons or 22,000 tons over the 72,000 tons the dock was supposedly able to work with without being damaged. That was counting some things what were no longer on the ship. Things like fresh water, food, crew and others had already been ripped out of the ship by a team of a dozen people to be sent off planet or otherwise be used. It included things like the anchor, plaque, and chain used to add more distance to the Memorial slowly going around the island.

This cargo ship had over 200,000 gallons of fuel still in its tanks even after the high-speed run and the smallest backup generators were kept on. The generators had only been used to keep the refrigerator hook ups to the TEU's powered after it had dropped anchor in the Colonial lagoon. They were going to have to pull all the fuel from the aft most tanks first. Normally they would have done it from the bow first, but that was not going to work on this ship. The bow was the farthest point of the ship from the long pier.

Soon the thick fuel was being transferred off at the highest rate the Colonials could swing. That rate was still lower than normal. The fuel was filtered and shipped first to fill the nearby empty underground fuel tanks and trailers, then the smaller blivets on the island. It was only after they were looking to be fully filled that any more fuel was sent off planet for the rest of the Colonials to use. The slowdown was because the fuel also had to be pushed uphill. The container ship and its tanks were still below the pier's main level. The Colonials had never thought they might have to work this low in the water when they had decided to go with this plan of scrapping the ships. That slowed things down somewhat but enough was coming out on the first day that the hoses had been attached to meet the growing fuel needs of the Colonials.

Part of the cargo ship's hull eventually came level to the stone pier, but only after enough weight had been pulled off. At that point the pumps could get more out of the ship's fuel tanks with the same amount of effort. That happened when almost all of the TEU's had been pulled off the ship. The scrapping dock was almost to where it needed to be for the work to start but it still was a lot lower than it had been with the smaller ships they had cut up before. The crews were still stripping out what they could before the cutting started on what was going to be a very different experience than cutting up the warship or support ships had been.

The Colonials had been offered money, and not in small amounts, to just turn the empty container ships over to a few of the largest shipping companies on the planet. Charles Bellamy and Bill Adama agreed that they needed make a statement to this planet and scrapping the hulls fit with that statement.

That statement was, "If you frak with the Colonials, you will lose and it will be very public. And whatever you lose, it will not be around for you or anyone else to try to use against them again."

There was an entertainment show that had contacted the BBC about the ex-Chinese ship. They had paid to set up cameras on the dry dock to document the event of the ship being scrapped from a dozen different angles and with full color and sound. The BBC had backed out of the deal at the last minute due to some legal issues their HR pointed out. The show had instead flown a documentary crew on a private jet out to the island so they could set up their own stuff to do the job. They had not gotten there until the ship had been almost emptied of TEU's and the fuel had started being pumped out.

Charles was quite pleased with himself on how it had worked out. From the reports he was reading from his intelligence section on the world stage, his message was being heard and understood in vivid detail all over the planet. Mell had understood and agreed with the scrapping and having a small news crew document the event on slow news days.

Charles' comments during the broadcast reinforced his belief that he was doing the right thing but he had come up through the engineering branch in the Colonial Fleet. When he saw the massive engine that powered the largest ship other than a spaceship that he had ever seen in his life, he had been very impressed with what he saw. The engines were listed as some of the largest and most fuel-efficient engines of its type to date on this world. It hurt him in a special place to see such devices soon have a future only as scrap metal. Sent off planet never to be used as anything more than feed stock for something the Colonials needed. Those items that most likely were going to be a lot less grand than what they had started life as in a Chinese building slip.

He had given the order, and he had been there for the first two days of hull work. He had also been there when the huge mountains of metal called engines were cut up by the huge cutting lasers. He was on leave with Mell the very next day. This was good, because he had a few drinks to kill the pain his engineer's heart was feeling over the act of seeing something so well engineered be cut up to be melted down. He was not at work in the command center while on leave but if an emergency ever came up, he was close enough to still be an effective commander. That was what seconds in command were trained for. A commander needed to be not there, but still close enough to provide support if things went too far off the rails and the trainee needed to be backstopped. Charles was there for that, but he was going to enjoy some downtime.

It had taken four of the Hoplite Power Armors on the island to work on the D-shaped stern of the huge container carrier's green painted hull. They were so high above the propellers and the red bottom of the ship that they had to start cutting from the top down in smaller than normal increments. They could only go down about nine meters at a time until they reached the main hull. When that cut was finished, the mass of steel would fall to the still damp deck below the high point of the ship. After the slice of metal had hit the armored deck, the unarmored water deck crew would start cutting the newly fallen metal into manageable size for putting into the TEU with one of the two lifting cranes. The 4 lower cutters could not keep up with the Hoplite suits working high over their heads.

The salvage crews had started cutting on the top aft of the ship at just after 9 AM local. By dark and the ringing of the dinner bell, they were just to the line over the propellers and rudders of the container ship. It would take two days of just cutting chunks high off the ship and letting them fall into a small metal hill on the water deck. When they were at the point where they were cutting into the double bottom hull of the aft part of the massive ship, the four Hoplite suits didn't stop working. They spent the next two days helping the wet deck crew with the cutting, crushing, and packing of the metal for shipping off planet. Yet the next phase of the truly massive job was still ahead of them.

Charles had to shake his head to get the memories cast out. All of that was in the past, he had been gone for a week on vacation. He was now back looking down at the floor of the floating dock after spending a few days catching up on what had gone on without him. The once 330-plus meter long ship was now down to only about 180 meters long. It still barely fit with its massive width between the tall flat walls of the floating dock. The crew of the scrapping dock were slowly flooding the dock again but this time, it was only dropping the water deck to where it was only about a meter and a half under the water.

The last cuts into the hull had not been straight down the depth of the ship like they had been doing but had been specially marked out so that they would leave the next watertight compartments safe. Well, they wanted to make sure they were still watertight, and had done some extra welding to do so. With the water level set, the hull now was a lot shorter as well as a lot lighter in mass. The hull now displaced less of the water, and that made it easier to move the rest of the hull within the work area of the scrapping ship.

That movement was going to take four exoskeleton suits and all of the working bulldozers to do the job of moving the powerless hulk. It was loud, hard work as the four machines and bulldozers dragged metal mass against metal mass towards the pier. It was a carefully planned operation to bring the ninety or so meters of ship hanging off the end of the old floating dock to a more centered location on the dry dock.

The sound of metal scraping on metal was something else as it made its way through the almost neck deep water. The sound could be felt coming through the soles of people's boots even hundreds of meters away. It was impressively painful, and it all was caught on video. Soon what was left of the cargo ship was now all in the well deck of the floating dock. Water would be pumped out again and in a few hours, the well deck would be fully out of the water and only damp. Then the cutting lasers would come out again as soon as the officer in charge of the dry dock gave the order to start working once more.

On the airfield turned space port, the amount of cargo sitting around the area was huge. TEU's with big red X's on the ends were stacked two and three high waiting to be loaded onto the spaceships. There were a number of TEU's with cargo from the container ships, TEU's filled with parts of the ship's hull and TEU's filled with high value cargos brought into the pair of islands. These along with the fuel rollers took up a massive footprint. That was not counting the number of shipments coming in from normal Colonial orders placed to local vendors now that cargo ships were plying the local trade routes again. This much smaller converted airport was almost as busy as the main space port at Caprica had been before the Cylons returned.

To speed up the fuel roller refills needed off planet, they were now tapping the underground tanks near the tarmacked parking area. They did this instead of carrying the empty ones all the way over to the main pier, filling them there, and then returning them to the space port. The arriving larger spaceships would unload and be reloaded to the maximum the ships' masters would allow at breakneck speed. The maximum was not in weight, but in filled cargo space that the spaceships had available. The backlog of cargo loads had built up quickly as soon as the huge cargo ships had started being processed by the scrapping dock.

Charles's staff had to make sure that items like food and other priority orders were being put into the cargo spaceships first. The requested liquid fuel would then be loaded when the loadmasters wanted them. Last to go into the cargo bays would be the space fillers, various types of cargo filled TEU's. To give a good mix of items going out on the cargo space transports, the ground teams would mix up the TEU's going out while making sure each was clearly marked with the contents they carried. They were shooting for a 50/50 mix of seized cargo containers and scrap filled containers from the ships. The longest item to load time wise was still the returning groups of humans heading back to the other two planets.

There had been some talk from his staff about increasing the number of passenger only flights to the island from the other Colonial planets. Charles had vetoed that notion of them landing dedicated space liners. He preferred that they keep to the planned schedule so that they did not get into another bind when this windfall came to a sudden stop. After all, it was not like they were pulling stuff off of the container ship that would not rot while sitting waiting for a ride off planet. He did pass the idea on to the Admiral along with his suggestion that they wait before adding any more cargo ship landings to the Trading Post. He wanted a few larger ships, not a lot of smaller ones making many trips to this planet. It was not his call, he could only put forward a suggestion to the senior officers.

That line of thinking caused Charles to look down at the report sitting in his hands. This one was about what was going on in the other Colonial controlled areas. One item it had was that the fleet of ships that had been referred to as the Rag Tag Fleet for so many years was now much smaller. It had been reduced to only eighteen ships that were civilian operated before the coming of the Cylons. Adding the two 'real' Colonial warships, the total fleet the Colonials could call on now was listed at only 20 active interstellar capable ships.

Those were only the ships listed as being in active service. They had only had to hulk out half a dozen of the ships from the Rag Tag Fleet. Three made it to Tau Ceti. Another one of them was now the anti-air and missile defense center for the Colonials on this planet. Similar ships were emplaced on the other two planets to do that same job. Crews taken off of the retired ships were being added to the pool of skilled labor, even if they would have preferred to remain in space.

He knew that plans were in the works for the Colonials to put a warship in each of the systems that the Colonials used. The two battlestars were to stay near New Kobol but soon they would be starting to work on getting a couple of lighter warships in operation for the Colonial Fleet. The last briefing he got was that they were going to look at building four such ships. They had kicked a few designs around in the Admiral's office, but in the end they had to go with the late First War Abbateggio-class. The Galactica had the full and very detailed deck plans for the craft, and she even had an interactive display from when she was going to be a museum. Surprisingly Captain William over on the Daggit Runner had more or less a complete set of blueprints in his private library for that class of combat vessel.

They were getting a lot of parts ready for the first ship and any long-term support they would need. It was not that hard to come up with the list of major end items a ship like that would need for construction. The twin engines were an exact copy of what the Galactica had four of, so they had a few spares sitting around in case of issues and knew how to make more. The smaller ships only had 16 heavy KEW's, and they were also copied from the Jupiter-class Battlestar. They would be mounted in twin turrets, just like what the old girl had been packing for her big teeth. The original design even had space for 180 light CWIS spread out on her hull.

The CWIS should have been the same light KEW's similar to what was found on the other Colonial ships. Those old style KEW's were going to be replaced with short ranged pulse lasers like the ones that had replaced the old style KEW's on the other warships. The report he had read today had the first of the ships to be named Delphi. Then they would have Diligence, Defender, and Devastator. That was how they were listed in the published defense budget. Anything after that was up in the air. Charles could see the hands of the Rifters in the names of those last 3 ships but he had to agree with them. Having the class with a common first letter made for ease of identification.

What was a surprise on the hard copy of the report, and he was still not sure what to feel about the diversion of resources, was that all of the best high end Rifter armor plate that could be made was going on to the Old Bucket. They were re-skinning the flagship a little bit at a time. They were starting at the very aft of the warship and working their way forward. They were lifting the hard-outer layer that was only about a few centimeters thick in some places and getting to the area underneath. They also were removing the old Rifter water-based ships from the side of the Colonial flagship. That area was going to be rebuilt but they were not going to try to remake an extendable landing pod such as what those Rifter ships had replaced. That was way above the skill sets of the repair yards the Colonials had been able to slap together.

Each battlestar had about a three meter thick armor layer or belt as an outer skin. The Galactica had most of her armor removed for any number of reasons before she was to start her new life as a museum piece. Now the three meter thick armor skin was being replaced with armor of the same thickness, but much better mega-damage resistance as they made their way up the battlestar's length. When they found the older style Colonial made armor or armor that was of a lower quality than what the Colonials could currently make, it was cut out and sent to a special armor factory set up planetside. They were not going to waste all of that armor plate.

The older armors were to be regraded and cut down into three millimeter thick plates. If it was the right grade it would be sent out to Charles to trade on this planet. He understood that they were keeping the re-cut plates in 4 foot by 4 foot sections. It was good that the new armor was still being made in those same dimensions, standardized all the way around. He knew that it would help with logistics in any of a number of different ways on the different planets.

What was not in the reports Charles had read was that they would not remove the armor in another section on the battlestar until the other area was re-plated with the new armor to the correct thickness. Still, it was going to limit the time the flagship could spend out of the new home star systems for the near future. Charles was also not sure that putting a new skin on the old girl was a good use of their limited amount of resources.

Then again, what if the Cylons did show back up? It would be very nice to have that kind of protection mounted on both of the humans' big warhorses. If the Cylons thought a battlestar was hard to kill before the Second Cylon War, they were going to be in for a huge surprise the next time they tried to remove a Colonial warship from space. That thought did bring an evil smile to Charles' face.

"Okay so maybe it is worth it to up armor the old girl," thought Charles.

It would also increase the amount of trade in the local area and Charles knew that they could sell those recovered armor plates. It was not like the old armor was little better than thick paper. Not against the new generation of weapons that the Admiral was working on putting into at least limited production on New Kobol. Those weapons were still nowhere near as powerful by weight as some of the weapons that had been available in the holds of the Lucky Find but they were another improvement over what the Colonials could have made before the Cylons launched their surprise attack.

Not all of the old armor would be sold off to the highest bidder. Some of the best or historically important parts would be marked as display samples, to be put in a museum for the future to remember. Charles agreed with the Old Man wholeheartedly on one key subject. They had to preserve as much as they could so that future generations would know their history. It was worth whatever the effort they put into it, so that the Colonials did not get absorbed into this larger group of humans. Or forget what had been done to them in the past.

The old girl did not have that much armor left, but once the whole armor belt was replaced or updated, they would start on the Pegasus at some undisclosed date. She had more armor on her hull when the war started, so more of it would be put up for trade to the Earthers. Charles had no idea if they planned on saving any of the armor from the Pegasus for display but he doubts it. The Mercury class vessel just did not have the providence connected to her name that the flagship carried.

The industries on this planet were catching up in their production of good quality weapons and armor technologies. The last report Charles had read from the newly added Cylon datamining team on the islands said that it was still not that great. It looked like it would be between another five and ten years before they would be able to make the armor and materials equal to what was available to the Colonial military just before the First Cylon War. That would be for most of the world, not just one or two special outfits on the planet. Some groups on this planet were pushing ahead faster than the other countries in general, and they would reach that lofty goal sooner than others on this blue planet would be able to.

Some areas or countries would have better or higher levels of locally made technologies, but it was starting to spread out some for those few core areas at a growing rate. That was great news if the Cylons showed up again. Charles had been in the vocal group of military personnel who thought like the old Colonial government had. They had all thought that the Cylons were never coming back to Colonial controlled space. He had been wrong, and unlike ninety nine percent of the government, military, and civilians that had called the Colonies home, he had lived through the consequences of seeing his ideals proved wrong right before his eyes. He was not going to let that happen again if he could help it. Space was a dangerous place. So even if the Cylons did not show up around here, someone else just might.

Charles went back to thinking about his mission. The other part of the report was that they had started working on siting and building the next phase of planet-based major manufacturing facilities on New Kobol. There had been a lot of debate on what should be the output of the first wave of expansions. After a lot of debate, the decision was made at the highest levels of the military and government and it surprised a lot of people. Those buildings were not going to be directly related to making the fighting equipment that had been agreed upon months before. The leadership wanted those new production sites to have other uses. They now would still be used to support the fleet and other military requirements, just in a lot more roundabout way.

The first of the few expanding manufacturing sites were going to be focused on consumer goods. They had been able to duplicate the equipment in the electronics support ship Celestra, one of the few general manufacturing ships in the fleet. It was easier to make a building that could be expanded upon at will, compared to a ship's hull that had a fixed limit of internal volume. Charles knew that Bill Adama had long term plans to clone the Celestra and put her in Alpha Centauri. She would be both useful and could be a backup in case of an emergency there.

That command decision had led into another debate in certain circles. People asked who was going to not only control those new facilities but also get the profits that those businesses would generate over the coming years. That was expected to not be a small amount of funds. Somehow Laura and Bill had worked out something that the majority of people involved or who had asked about them had agreed with. Charles had no idea about any of the details of that official agreement. He was just glad that something had been done. Besides, it was not his problem to fix. He felt that he had enough problems on his plate to look after and fix as was needed.

He was also glad that they were to that point in the Admiral's plans. Having some new items for sale that were not of a military nature would help his bottom line at the Trading Post. At most, a country on this planet might have a couple of percentage points of its total population who could afford or were allowed to buy the military grade devices. That left literally a few billion costumers that the Colonials were not addressing on this planet. And now that the locals were driving hard to develop things like metallurgy and other physical sciences, adding civilian items also opened up a few more new pots of money for the locals to access to try to increase their technology base in. Those same pockets were also a lot deeper than the mostly fixed and published military budgets.

Those new manufacturing sites would as well be supplying the Colonial personnel living in the other areas that were under Colonial influence. They would also want the goods that they were used to having from faded memories of times before the Cylons came back. It would add to the quality of life for the rapidly growing Colonial population. It would also cut down on the amount of lower tech items being shipped out from Earth that they were just making do with.

Anything Colonial made coming off the Trading Post could have a huge markup added compared to the prices of products made on-planet. Charles had a slight smile on his face as he thought about being able to have a home like he had lost to the Cylon attack. "We just might make it in this part of the galaxy, but that is also going to cause more headaches for me."

He was still getting long lists of items that his people living off planet wanted, and it would be up to him to find, buy, and ship them off planet. Case in point, as he looked to the ship tied the to the long pier, he had been looking at starting on getting one of the Type 903 fleet replenishment ships, which had been among the newest acquisitions, cut up. He had thought that they might be better type-wise to start salvaging, with more usable items to send back off planet. He had even cut the orders to move one of them over to the long pier so they could start work on it. They still had all of those container ships to work on but they also took a lot more effort to get ready to work on than the shorter replenishment ships. At least all of the perishable items had now been taken off the other captured container vessels.

All of that changed when a message came in from the Old Man. It came in on the latest space liner/cargo ship to land at the spaceport, so it was not a priority message. The Admiral had suggested that the next ship should be the RO/RO or roll on/roll off ship. One that was supposed to be used to support the ground invasion of his command and had been turned over to the Colonials' control. It had been seized by the Australian Defense Force and it had been sitting in one of their harbors for some time now.

The Admiral's point was that now that the cities on New Kobol and Midian were built, and the population moved off the ships, they needed the ground transports in their hulls as much as they needed the steel or tools coming off the other ships. It was that, or the Colonials would have to start buying them off the open market to fill those growing and increasingly vocal needs for that type of small transportation. That was something Charles did not want to do yet. It had been a pain just dealing with the heavy equipment he had sent off planet. Next thing he knew people were complaining that the vehicles were the wrong type, size, or whatever was wrong with them when they arrived at the new homeworlds. Then they suggested what they thought he needed to do to fix the problem.

He did not want to do that all over again this time with cargo and passenger transports of tens of thousands of different makes and models. So, he changed the plans that his staff had spent all of that time working on. Now the ships farthest from the scrapping ship attached to the pier would be brought over. Some time before the Colonials came to this planet or had even known that this planet might be here, the Chinese government had mandated that certain types of ships, like the RO/RO's, would be built to be able to support a military invasion or other military uses. This was agreed to by the people buying and operating the vessels, or they would not be allowed to build or operate those types of vessels in Chinese waters.

Under the rules of war that where accepted by the major and not so major powers on this planet, they could be listed as combatants if used as such in time of war. In this case, they were loaded with the equipment the Chinese thought they might need in supplying the follow-on invasion forces sent to the two Colonial islands. Legally that meant those types of ship had become targets just like the rest of the Chinese fleet had been, and they had been taken just like any other ship involved with the People's Liberation Army/Navy.

The ships themselves were of a civilian design called a Cruiseferry. It could carry troops or people and their ground transportation all in one hull. Both ships were of the same class and had in fact been built only a year apart in the same shipyard. They were 75,000 ton ships and they could each carry over 4,700 tons of cargo on their decks as well as have 1000 cabins for paying passengers on long voyages. The seven hundred and thirty feet long ships needed at least seven meters of water just to keep them off the sea floor. It had taken some work but the first ship of this class had been moved to the very south part of the large ship pier. That end of the pier had a notch built into it to support ferry type ships before the Colonials had bought the place. It was not a good fit and if anyone had let a local ship's captain see it or an insurance company know what the Colonials were doing, they would have a heart attack right on the spot.

But the ship did fit well enough for what the Colonial needed to do to it and its cargo. With the now large number of people born on this planet working for the Colonials or already Colonials citizens, it did not come as that much of a surprise that a few of them were able to get the small bow loading door open and the short ramp extended to the pier. They only needed to use some power tools and a lot of elbow grease to get it to move. It was a lot better than using the high powered laser and cutting the doors off of the ship, then having to slap a temporary deck between ship and shore, just to get the prizes off the frakking thing.

Doing something like that had worked in the past. Until the waves in the lagoon were more than four or five feet high. Then the temporary bridge would be crushed between ship and pier or it would sink into the lagoon with very little warning. The bow door on this class of RO/RO was only one lane wide versus the aft doors, which were built to handle up to three lanes of traffic all at once. This should have slowed down the offloading of the ocean-going ferry, on top of the fact that the equipment had been sitting there for a long time, over a year now. All without anyone checking on them. Worse, they did not have that many people who knew how to operate the Chinese made mostly military based vehicles in the first place. All of this should have contributed to delays in offloading the vessel.

The Cruiseferry had been loaded up in its last port call in such a way that the ship could get unloaded quickly out the large aft door. That meant that to use the smaller bow doors, whatever was nearest to that door, like the first few transports, would have to be backed all of the way out of the ship. They would have to be driven that way all the way to the sunlight washed pier until the first few transports were pulled out of the area. The vessel had to be cleared of stuff first that might or might not be wheel based. A team was also set up so that they could check out each transport as they had time. The Colonial had done those kinds of things before. The way they had done it was just to lift the trucks somehow and carry them off the ships they were getting ready to cut up. Any work needed to get them fully functional would be done off planet. If they could not get it working, well, it was a short trip to the smelter.

This ship had been sitting for over a year at anchor in the lagoon but it was sealed from the worst of the salt air and water. Still, stuff happened no matter what preparations had been made to protect the cargo. That did not mean that some of them would just start up and roll off the ship. Most would need some help to get them ready to safely move.

Soon the normal group of Colonial workers had started stripping the insides of the ship, including setting up the small pumps and fire hose lines the ship carried. They were there to start offloading the fuel still in the ship's large tanks. The old fuel would start to flow not long after the last of the fuel in the four bow mounted tanks of the container ship was empty of their contents. There was plenty of room in the underground storage tanks.

As a military officer, Charles had to not only know what was going on with the political aspects back home, he also had to plan and lay the ground work for any future operation his bosses might need. So, he had part of his staff looking around for the next items to support New Kobol. They still had 20 container ships, two fleet supply ships, and one more of the RO/RO type ships to work on in the lagoon. That was a lot of metal just sitting around but he knew that the need for metal in the Colonial areas was only going to grow, and it could grow fast.

They had two different space stations, a space repair dock to support the fleet, and maybe one day 4 more warships that will be needing all this material. All so that the Colonial fleet could be in more than two places at once. They had only three ships that could do anything like offensive warfare. This modest fleet was still made up of only the two battlestars and one light carrier. They needed more light carriers and other escort vessels if the Colonial Fleet wanted to grow into a real fleet again. Charles had to shake his head. It was a lot to get his head around.

To help with the future, his staff had been working with different groups around the planet to line up more ships to be cut up by his people. It was a shock, but now it seemed like Green Peace and like groups had been on the rebound with the Colonial's arrival. It had not been without a few missteps, but they knew how to raise money and get the press to support them no matter what they said. They had jumped on the bandwagon to support the Colonials' new idea, after an interview had made the basic idea known. Those large environmental focused groups had some questions about the Colonials' plans, but they were not showstoppers.

One of the issues they had was that they wanted to know how the Colonials would protect their workers from the toxic substances most older ships were known to have been made and operated with. They also wanted to know how the Colonials were going to protect the local environment from those same toxic substances leaking into the lagoon or soil of the island. They also were worried about those same toxic substances contaminating other planets. That last issue had been a late addition to their list of published issues.

Charles' staff let him know about the contact, and Charles had okayed them sending some data and videos to those interested groups. The videos were of how the Hoplite suits protected the operators from any gases they might have to deal with. They also paid some of Ruth's staff to shoot some images on their off time for some public relations releases. These were of how the 'industrial' lasers cleanly cut and melted anything in its path. All without anything leaking or floating away to have to be picked up later. By now those suits were known the worldwide, but the Colonials were still careful not to let anyone see inside of one.

They could have just used stock images of the stomp and load method for those reports. Instead the Colonial staff took the time to show the before and after images of the work being done so that it was clear that nothing was being left behind in scrapping the captured ships. They even got images of the little dams on both ends of the floating dock that they had added while they had been working on the first ship. This way nothing coming off the ships would end up in the lagoon from the fuel tanks or any other leaks that might happen while the vessel was being 'packaged'. Next, they sent a few images of the mining and manufactory ships. They added a simple statement that any salvage that was recovered from those Earth ships would be first put into a blast furnace and melted down by those spaceships. It had worked better than Charles or his staff could have hoped. Both the dams and the data sent to those odd groups were met with worldwide support.

Green Peace and other environmental groups were spending boatloads of their own money to support an issue that the Colonials were trying to accomplish. They were touting how the Colonials were the poster children for removing all of those nasty and smelly old ships that were dumping so much toxic substances into the water and greenhouse gasses into the air. This had caused more than a few outright laughs to come from the slowly growing command staff on the Colonial islands.

His staff had been receiving dozens of emails for the last week or so wanting to know if the Colonials would work with other ship scrappers from around the world. So far, his staff had said they were not ready to take that step just yet. They were interested in the idea that they were talking about. What the other companies did not know, was that there were no plans to work with them in the future. The Colonials were going to be directly competing against them for the more select scrapping targets the world over.

Now that they were basically cleared to start scrapping ships of all kinds, Charles had ordered a second 368 meter floating dry dock to be built in South Korea. It had been on sale for a cost of a little over thirty million US dollars not counting delivery. It was going to be basically a near sister of the floating dock that they had now and knew the ins and outs of how to get what they needed from. It would take a few months more to be built and about that long to get it all the way out to the Colonial Trading Outpost. Once it got there, they would be able to work on three different ships at once. One being unloaded of the cargos or other high value items within the hull, and two being cut up and packed down by his people.

His staff could have picked one of the floating docks on the open used market. When his staff did some number crunching however, it worked out to be cheaper to just get a new one and wait for it to be built and towed out to this part of the Pacific. Now the floating dock would be built to the standards that the Colonials wanted. It still would need some modification to do what the Colonials needed it to do. Just little things, like four cranes in place of the normal two her class normally was built with. Those were also of a heavier duty design, at 60 tons lifting capacity for each crane. The Colonials did not need that much lift right now but the four heavy cranes were already built, so they were available now without the wait that the smaller ones would entail. Those four cranes also came with an attachment that would let them lift many TEU's at a time. Those attachments would be coming to the islands in a few weeks. They were supposed to be a universal design but Charles was not buying that until he saw them working on one of the cargo ships.

Once the new scrapping ship had been built and towed to his command, they would be ready to start scrapping two ships at a time. That is, after the Colonials had added an armored layer onto the ship, just like they had the first ship of that type they had. The shipbuilders had offered to do this job for the Colonials themselves for a cost before the tugs arrived. That is, if the Colonials would supply the armor plates, and a few extra for the builders to see and use on other projects.

That part of Charles' plan was vetoed by the higher ups at least for now. His staffed passed along that maybe later something like that would be okay for the Colonials to support. The armor that Charles had going onto the floating dock was going to be better than what was being sold on the open market, and thicker also. These were some of the things that the Colonials didn't want the rest of the world to know about yet.

Soon, old ships would no longer need to be taken to the back end of nowhere where they would just be charged up a conveniently sloping beach and driven high up on the beach as they could at high tide. Crews would no longer just shut the engines down after the metal ship had stopped moving up the sand beach. No longer would the ships be attacked by groups of barely trained people that had been standing on that same beach, armed with minimal tools, most just with cutting torches and bolt cutters to start the work of scrapping a once proud ship. It was a dangerous, dirty work, and messy in more than a dozen ways on top of that.

The old ships were free or cost just a few hundred dollars to buy at any major port around the world. A three hundred meter long American aircraft carrier massing about 80,000 tons was a prime example. She had been bought for only a single penny only a year before the Colonials had arrived. That was the way the scrapping companies made money, by selling the recovered metals on the open market. This covered the labor and the cost of taking care of the waste issues of scrapping.

Soon all they would need to do was contact the Colonials, and after making sure the ship was of sound hull and not leaking anything, those ships would come to his location where they could drop anchor in the lagoon. The Colonials would fly the ships' skeleton crews back to their home of record. Charles and his staff hoped that soon, they would become the first people contacted when the largest ships came to the end of their usefulness, or when they cost too much to keep working for whatever reason. They already had proven that they could cut up one of the top fifty largest ships on the planet. This last ship would prove that they could handle any job as long as they had room for the soon to be arriving hulk in the weather protected lagoon.

One thing Charles had put his foot down with his staff was that there would be no more than four empty ships at anchor waiting at any one time for a spot on the pier. The only way around that was if he signed off on it on a case by case basis. The area was too pretty to waste with eyesores of old rusty hulks sitting in and filling the lagoon's waters with rust flakes. The hulls would be easier and faster to cut up than the captured ships full of cargo and fuel and they were going to be working both types of ships at the same time. Charles was hoping that by the time the stock of captured ships was done being cut up, they had worked out any or at least most of the issues or surprises. Then maybe he would relax his rules on the number of waiting civilian ships to be serviced by his salvage team. It was just that right now they had too many ships waiting for attention from the cutting lasers.

Charles was thinking that with all of the Chinese shipping lines now out of business and having done so in such a short amount of time, it was going to take a while for things to settle down and the local shipping companies to relook at their internal shipping capabilities. On top of that, China was no longer dumping tankers and cargo ships on the market to drive out any future competition. It was going to be some time before things settled down on that front about building new ships. Especially with all of those one time Chinese owned ships sitting on the secondhand market. The water transport lines on this planet were in major turmoil. That was fine with him, because it would give them time prepare if there was another wave of surprises.