Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale

by cliff.west

This is a spinoff story. It takes place after "But a somehow a most melancholy" and" Hunted Tribes". Please read those before this bit of work. I will not be recovering those stories, but re-reading them will help you fallow this story. This fiction also will be slow on the combat action.

45. Chapter 45 28 Mar 3049

Chapter 45

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

28 Mar 3049

Cate's Hold SAS tunnel.

Joachim Ronneberg was a third-generation hard rock miner. He had done a tour of duty, as required, in the SLDF army. But his one true love had been the tunnels, and he had hated having to spend weeks away from them to do his reserve duty. He had been underground for over a decade, after leaving the SLDF military. And that was why he currently was leading a team with people who had the same skills as the ones he had. Each of his teammates had been pulled off of other jobs back home just for this mission.

They were working on the clearing of the SAS support base tunnels. They had been taking it slowly, as they removed the blocking rockfalls, one rock at a time. They were putting up specially made temporary shoring timbers as they pulled out enough of the blocking rocks. He was in his modified lifting exoskeleton for this mission. It had been made for emergencies, after a major cave in back home in the late 2920s.

They had already cleared and then opened the "ground" bay in this tunnel. This had held a motor pool for the SAS to use while they were living in this section of the tunnel system. It had not been full of ground transports, but it also had not been empty. After they opened the exit door to that vehicle bay? They had been able to empty the bay, after night had fallen over the campsite. In that bay, they had found a matching pair of Nightshades and Rippers VTOLS. This was a nice fit to match a pair of each Beagle and Gabriel hover craft, that looked like they could just be driven out of the bay door after a light dusting off.

What had caused a lot of excitement, were a full lance of Vector VTOL's and a pair of larger Cobra class VTOLs sitting in the center of the bay. Joachim had known about the Cobra's. He had used them a few times in training, back in his army days. He also knew that the Exiles did not have enough of them compared to the need for those large craft. They were so much better than the dozens of Kornovs that had been brought back on the different supply runs.

You could tell were the eight Rotundas had been parked in the underground cavern. They were missing, along with what the logbooks had said were all of the cargo trucks. Getting the newest additions to the SLDF had not been a problem. The crew than had to be able to re-hide the exit blast door, and that had been a good bit harder. The crew also had to work getting them out of the bay, along with all of the on-hand tools and spare parts for who knew what other craft. It was a very large cavern after all. They also had to do the work in such a way, that no one on this planet would find out what this group had been up to. The cargo space on the Cargo King, and trucks in the Lions were now coming in handy.

Now they were making their way to what was called "The Main Bay". No one had any idea on what was in this "Main Bay", if anything. By now, and thanks to information found in the Vehicle Bay. This working team had been briefed. That this SAS unit, must have tried to Escape and Evade, to make it to a larger friendly unit. This had to be sometime after the 31st Royal Mechanized Infantry Division had left the planet. The one big question they hoped to find? It was why, they had not been used in the combat to Liberate Terra.

Joachim had been only keeping his mind half on the job, as his massive metal arms on his exoskeleton pulled another huge rock from near the ceiling of the tunnel. He did a half turn and put the half ton rock bolder on the floor, off to one side of where he was standing. A second person would hit the rock with a mechanical hammer or drill, to make the rock easier to be carried out of the still open smaller hatch. Right now, that second person was not there, and he would have to make the rock the right size to move down the corridor. You could get into the zone of moving and remove a lot of stone, as long as you kept your eyes on the rocks that surrounded you.

While Joachim was still working with that one bolder, one of the escorts went up the small rock wall like she was part mouse. She had noticed that rocks had not refilled the space, and it looked like they might have hit another void. The escort was there to handle any defenses, that the SLDF were known to have built into bases like this. When she couldn't see how deep the void might be? She hit her powerful hand-held flashlight.

When Joachim turned in his exoskeleton to line back up on the rubble wall. He saw the escort get bathed in a beam of bright white light. The escort was not dumb. She dropped out of the line of the opening, that maybe was only two heartbeats later. A blast of ruby light came out of the hole and impacted about twenty feet down the tunnel. No one moved for about half a minute, and after nothing else happened, like more weapons fire or another cave in. The rest of the work team started to react to the hostile weapons fire.

Joachim started to unlatch from his equipment when the escort gingerly made her way towards him. She kept throwing looks back to the open hole in the barrier. As Joachim reached for his side mounted Mauser, he felt that he needed to poke the bear a little. "Hey, Babs. You know that you are supposed to knock before you go into someone's home."

"Oh, Frak You Jo. That was a close one." As she came to the side of the lifting suit, she kept talking. "Looks like we found an active defensive point."

Joachim just smiled, and with a single arm wave two more people join them. The four of them were armed, and they walked up to the hole. They were keeping low or off to one side of the hole, to keep out of the line of sight of the opening. Besides knowing how to work in mines, they also were trained in how to fight within them.

While they were getting in position, a second group of armed personnel was alerted to the events unfolding deeper in the tunnel. They were rushing through the tunnel from the now converted SAS barracks room where they had been sleeping. They were the second work shift and they also were the back up in case of any emergency, like a cave in or finding an active defensive point. The contact team was not to just sit around and wait for back up. They were to find out as much information as they could, while the second team got ready to back them up.

Babs was the point man, and she would lead any recon. She shot Joachim a look, and with a returned nod. He reached into his pocket and activated an infrared glow stick. It was not visible to the naked eye and any sensors that were activated by visible light. Without waiting for any sign of hostile actions. Joachim leaned back and launched the IR strobe stick into and threw the hole, that he had exposed as hard as he could.

Babs pushed off the rocks with her knees and she pulled the weapon sights to her eye, all in one fluid motion of her arms. The flying stick would draw any motion detectors to the IR stick. The strobe was just set to the right frequency, so that her Mauser could "see" it. She only had a narrow field of view, but she could see "something" was moving in the bright IR strobe light. There were some objects that were casting odd shadows in the flashing beams of the stick sliding around. But she could tell that something was still moving around in there.

She dropped back down five seconds after she had risen, to look into the room from the hole. In a very low voice, she passed along what she had "seen". "Okay. It's a big fraking room, and I saw something moving around. I bet it is a Rat. If there is one Rat? "

She was joined in a course of "Then there are more Rats," coming from the other three mouths of this team.

The "Rat" was a 6ton Robot security hover craft, that was both fusion powered and mounted a pair of turret mounted small pulse lasers. This was not the first time one of these people had run across these machines. It was part of basic training and an annual training event for some SLDF units before the Colonials had found them.

Babs pulled out a metal and plastic ball. "Okay. I need everyone's Jonny."

A "Jonny" was a short ranged IFF device, that when activated, it told any SLDF system that they were authorized to be there. They worked, most of the time, but they were very short ranged. That was also why, any group that was exploring a newly found Star League base would wear body armor to go along with the Jonny.

Babs fell back on training, and when she reached back to launch her "Jonny" threw the hole. Three other arms were coming back in a very close mimic of her own actions. The four little balls went in one wave threw the air on different angles, to give the best possible coverage. Babs followed her ball through the hole, even before the other balls had stopped moving on the other side of the barrier. It was all about speed for the next few seconds.

Babs hit the ground hard and rolled behind something. She had no idea what it was, but it was metal, and it was thick. She started scanning the local area threw her scope. Part of her brain noticed that three other bodies had come through the opening in the rockfall. They were not as graceful as her entrance had been, but they had quickly found cover just like she had done. They were looking high and low around them, as they took up covered positions. If there were Rats active? Then there might be other active defenses in this area of the base.

6789708 was about as unhappy as a non-thinking robot could be. It had been activated three days ago, when one of its supporting systems had felt a slight trimmer threw the floor. It had no idea that it was someone clearing a collapsed tunnel. It only knew that it was wrong, and wrong meant that it now had a job to do. That was not what was causing the small hover craft "issues" to be unhappy about. The issues were that it had not been maintained or serviced in a very long time. The small drone knew that this was not the way it was supposed to happen.

It had been barely mobile when it had been activated. The readouts for its lifting fans, said that they were about to totally fail. That was bad, but it went downhill from there. The acoustic system picked up sounds coming from a wall that was not in its mapping program. It had sat there watching the "wall", for two days. That was when the other problems started. The fusion engine was not working at even five percent of its power rating by the second day.

Then when it was "allowed" to use its mounted weapons. One of the two weapons had not fired when activated. It "knew" that the safety interlocks had prevented the weapon from blowing up and taking out the craft with that failure. Still it didn't like, that only one of its weapons had fired. Now it was taking well over specs to recharge the one remaining energy weapon. Before it was fully recharged, one of its lifting fans was showing an overheated drive bearing.

While it had been working on rerouting power to the two primary systems. Four devices had entered into its detection range, and now it was more confused than it had been sense becoming active again. A long unused code was being picked up on the local radio waves. It was not the right code, but it also was not the "wrong" code either. If it had been working closer to being fully operational? It would have shut down and asked for a known friendly biologic to see what was going on. Now, it just wanted to fry whatever was near it, with its only remaining weapon. Now Its motion detector tracked something larger moving through the air. It was tracked, until the motions stopped behind a blocking object. At least this one was in its navigation files.

6789708 followed its programing, and it tried to get a line of sight for its weapons on the hidden trespasser. That was when the overheated bearing on one of its lifting fans came into play. As the Rat made a turn, and it lost lift on that one corner. The 6ton machine dropped that one corner on the hard floor as it was trying to move at 10kph. That was not a good thing, while it had been making a very sharp turn.

Babs heard the sound of metal scraping on the floor off to her left. She turned toward it with her weapon at the ready. Just as she was about to bolt to new cover, her weapon lined up out of instinct on the small hover tank. Without thinking, she pulled the trigger. She was lucky, that they had not been allowed to load explosive grenades into their weapons after they entered the tunnels. It was a well-known fact that grenades and confined spaces were not a fun combination, but that didn't mean that they were not used. It was just that under stress, sometimes you pulled the wrong trigger on your Mauser. This would not make your teammates very happy with the shooter of those little balls of explosive fun.

She hit her target with a full blast of pulse energy from her Mauser. She didn't see the other three sets of laser energy, that came from areas around the recently opened hole in the blocked tunnel. Those three blasts of light had hit on the same side of the tank that Babs had targeted. The RAT might mass 6 tons, but that did not leave a lot of extra mass for armor to cover the hull. The first three hits reduced the light armor shell on that side of the craft, and the fourth laser pulse had made it into the main hull of the little half floating tank. The damage was enough for the safety gear near the engine, to decide it was a good time to shut down.

Babs felt her heart rate start to slow down, as she realized what had happened. She had seen the smoke come out of a few vents, threw her scope. She also thought that she might have seen a few licks of flames somewhere inside that metal box. Seeing the flames in her scope made her realize something about her target. That there was a smell of burnt wires and other things, that were known to smell odd when they got too hot. Now that she was thinking about it with the light coming in threw the hole. It seemed like there was a thick layer of smoke near the floor of the room. It was a lot more, than should have come from just one RAT.

Now that the main threat was over. Babs started to pan her weapon's built in light around the room. About all she could tell, was that it was a larger room, and there did not seem to be any more RATs moving around. She pulled the weapon off of her shoulder and flipped a switch to change from IR light to a more powerful white beam. She was just starting to play the broad white beam around the room. That was when other bright beams of light started to come out of the hole that she had jumped through, what seemed like hours ago. With more light now playing across the room from 8 different points. Her jaw hit the floor and her body almost joined her jaw on the fluid stained floor. She could not help but speak out loud. "Jess's toybox, indeed."

1 April 3049

Return to Cate's hold by Zephyr

The great jumpship popped back into space, very close to where she had been not too long ago. Felix walked around the command center of his ship. After making sure that everything was safe, and there were not any threats within ten thousand kilometers of his ship. He looked over to the communications station after checking all of the threat scopes one last time.

"Send a message to Colonel Mann and let her know we are back, and we are ready to receive any needed reports." Felix had to fight to keep his voice level, and to keep his internal issues with this mission from coloring his voice and actions. "Frak, this is a dull run."

They had to emergency leave this jump point over a week ago. It had been when their systems had detected that someone was coming to this jump point. They were just thankful that the Inner Sphere jump drives gave so much warning of a new arrival. They had been able to jump out into very deep space, and they had waited for the unknown jump ship to arrive. They had watched and waited for the 150,000-ton Invader class ship to recharge its drive and then leave. When the ship had left again, and it had not launched any of the three dropship she had been carrying? The Zephyr returned to this part of space and waited some more.

While the radio message was moving toward the planet at the speed of light. A meeting was being held at the ground camp. Colonel Mann looked around the meeting. Unlike the ships that were used by Copeland. Only the K-1 that Admiral Xi had taken with her had dedicated briefing rooms. This briefing room was a prefab building, which had been packed down just for the use as a briefing and management area for this ground mission. It was a nice, well lighted, comfortable, and it came with over 2,000 feet of office and living space.

Mann looked around the room. The first person she let her eyes stay on, was the commander of the SAS based operations. "Bob, you look tired. Was the lack of sleep worth it?"

Bob Rake gave a snort, that sounded tired even to his own ears. "You can say that. With the ground units recovered, along with the suits from the last visit. That alone would have been enough to keep the bean counters back home off our asses. Now that we found this Main Bay. Now, that is just cake with the coffee we had earlier."

Mann smiled and did a little wave with her hand to get more information. "Okay, give it to me. I do not like pulling teeth.

She had almost closed that statement with Query Affirmative, but she stopped herself at the last second. They might be in a SLiE base, but they still had to adhere to the set protocols for any mission to the Inner Sphere. She was thinking that the pain shooting threw her tongue should be enough of a reminder for the rest of this meeting.

Now Bob had a sad eyed look on his face. He had not realized that he was this tired, until he had heard his own voice. "Oh, sorry. We now know that this bay is the end of this base. We thought that there would be two to four more tunnels from this main bay, but they have not found any. We are still stripping out these last areas of anything useful. As far as we know, this last bay was the main firepower of the base. We do know that this base was one of the outside defensive weapons emplacements. Now that we know the layout of this part of the base. If anymore are out there, we will find them. Now besides the tanks and VTOLs you know about. The Main bay had four SPR-4F Specters and four EXT-4C Exterminators."

Bob had to stop talking, as the last mech name fell from his dry lips into the room full of open mouths. Everyone who had been chosen for this mission, knew what the most sought-after equipment would be for the SLiE. Finding two lances of the most advanced scout mechs ever made by the hand of man? Now that was at the top of the list of diamonds to be found, and they had come out of the mine that had given them Nighthawk suits already.

Bob now had a huge smile on his face, that he could not stop from forming. "Yes!" He did a fist pump into the air before he started talking again. "We also found some other machines, that the army would give their first born to have just one of."

The grin that Bob had on his face made it seem like he only had a chin, ears, and hair for a face. "We also found eight PHX-HK2 Phoenix Hawk LAMs and four STG-A5 Stinger LAMs. They were in the same bay as those other scout mechs. I know that this sounds like a lot of mechs, but just like in the tank bay we already emptied. This number is short from what the logbooks say. We think that it is short 8 mechs, at least according to the maintenance log PADDS. The bay held thirty mech storage, support, and repair cubicles that we are still pulling out. What I think is a major keystone, is that we found two Wayland Mobile Bases at the back of the Main bay. They were under some thick camouflage tarps, and we did not find them at first. I think that by sundown or midnight at the latest? We will have all of the spare parts and the Mech support cradles pulled out of the base. After that? We will need a few days to sanitize the area around this Mini-Castle Brian. Oh, and we have found the hulks for over a dozen RATs, but only the one you know about was operational."

Bob stopped talking and looked over to the leader of the second team. He had to play nice, because after this mini castle was sanitized. His team would be folded under her command. He might have five people working on scouting the area for any more surprises, but the rest of his team would fall under the other larger team as they worked in the larger tunnel.

Nat nodded, Bob and she had her own news to pass along. Now that Bob was done, she took over the meeting. "My team has been cleaning and clearing out the first and largest Tunnel of Jess's Toy Box. We have found and cleared over two dozen rooms, so far. We had a good idea of what unit was here, before we landed. But now we know that the last unit assigned to this Castle, was the 31st Royal Mechanized Infantry Division of the 7th SLDF Army. Now we know what they were assigned here to do, and maybe why the SAS unit was not used in the war. It also explains why this place is not laid out like a normal Castle Brian, like we have seen before on other planets. Near as we can tell, this layout is a modified Port Castle format. What we did not know about this planet, and why they were here for so long? It is that this used to be a major supply and repair depot for the Magistracy Navy, back before it fell under Star League control." That was it. The shot across the bow had been given, or the bomb had been dropped on the staff. It was now time to watch and see what the fireworks would bring to the people in this room.

Nat put down her noteputor. She had to wait for half a minute as everyone started talking at once. "What do we know, or maybe I should say. What do we think that we know? We know this Castle held two Mechanized Infantry Brigades and one Battlemech Brigade for decades. That is normal for a Castle, but this one has an odd layout. The closest design that we can find to fit the layout, is a Port Castle. We also know that there is a space depot out there somewhere. What kind of support depot were they protecting? I have no idea. It could be a dropship or maybe a warship support base. We are in the wrong place, if it was a jumpship support base. That would be on a moon, asteroid, or a larger space station closer to the jump points."

Nat "only" had to spend the next ten minutes explaining that this was a fact of life, and not her making it the Frak up for some off the wall reason. "Now if we can get back on track. We have been stripping all of the rooms, as they are declared safe. We think that when the 31st Division pulled out of the base. It was to support General Kerensky all the way to the Exodus from the Inner Sphere, but they never made it back here. My teams think that they must have been short lift capability. It might have been, that they were short dropships, or they might have been short interstellar ships, at this point we just do not know. Maybe when we get back, a records check can be made on a library core to see if there are any reports from this unit."

The whole room was now quiet, and she kept talking. "We have been finding a lot of left behind supplies and the odd combat vehicle in each of the lance and company areas of the Castle. The three battalion support areas, which we have found so far. All had items that you would expect to be left behind, if you were running tight on storage space or lift capacity. We have found old and now useless missiles and autocannon rounds for mechs and tanks all over the place. We have also found the equipment that looked to have been undergoing detailed maintenance when they started to be pulled out. That has been were we have found them and other bulk spare parts. That might have been why the SAS unit had been left behind, in the first place. They were guarding everything that was left behind by the larger unit, and that might mean a lot of items are still left to be fount."

Nat had to defend her statement until Colonel Mann stepped in and gets the meeting back on track. "I am just glad that we found that hidden Sally port near the Cargo King. That has made getting everything loaded a lot easier, than having to pull it down the smaller tunnels and then loading it into trucks out in the open. I think we should have brought another cargo ship." If it came down to it, they could launch a dropship to the Zephyr and use her cargo bays. That would cause a slight risk to the cover story of her just being a "normal" jumpship, but it was something that had been preapproved by higher command.

Colonel Mann had to smile at everything she was being told today. She knew that in one of the plans, they were going to bring both the found Cargo King and one of the Cargo Masters that the SLDF Navy had been able to build. The Cargo Master had been pulled at almost the last minute. Someone in higher command had thought that filling two good sized cargo ships and the Tug was being overly optimistic on the planner's part.

Mann looked over to the young Captain Fallstaff. He was responsible for the ground defense situation while she was on the ground. "Captain. How are our ground defenses looking? Are there any threats, close to us?"

The Captain almost looked bored. He had been hoping for more action when he had been ordered on this mission. So far, the only "good" thing had been to find out that the "New" light Colonel was not a micromanager. One part of his brain knew that the longer they stayed here, the more items that they could recover for his people to use. It also meant that his unit could eat as many steaks and ribs as they wanted, without breaking the trooper's bank. That didn't mean that he, and the others, were not going a little stir-crazy as they waited. He pulled out his own notes after being asked a pointed question by the mission commander.

"We are up to eighteen events, where we picked up someone or someone's trying to get a closer look at us. So far, they have left after we made contact with them. Most are handled by our infantry QRF, and they were daytime events. The ones at night have run away as soon as they picked up one of the on duty mechs running toward them. So far, we have not had to exchange weapons fire with anyone getting close to our camp. I think picking up over 60tons heading your way at high speed has them cowed. We were fined 250 C-Bills for not letting the local potentate know that we had a "mech practice range set up". Still we were not asked to pay for any repairs that might have needed to be done to that one Boomerang, that was using that big ridge line to sneak a peek."

Fallstaff was grinning like the Cheshire cat. He had been at the controls of the Wolverine IIC at the time of that event. The small 5ton spotter plane had only been "grazed" by his energy weapon. It had been set to "training mode", but it had enough energy to blister paint at the range he had used it. He could still hear the pilot squeaking and being very upset at whoever had just shot at her. He was betting that the pilot had to use a spatula to clean out her flight suit when she got back to a landing field.

Mann made a face. She could tell the Captain was bored, and she also knew that a bored mech commander could cause some issues. It was her job to try to make sure that something like that did not happen. "Keep it up. We will have the Zephyr back soon. Until then, we need to be able to bluff threw most threats. I do not know about any of you, but I do not want to have to live on a dropship while we wait for our ride home to stop by. All because we get attacked, and they get to close."

Lieutenant Colonel Mann was about to say more, when one of her staff members entered the briefing room. The current mission commander was quietly passed a note. She quickly reads it, and then made eye contact with the messenger. "Send all of the relevant and cleared data files on an encrypted channel." She turned and looked over to the captain of the Cargo King. "Is it worth taking a trip to the jump point, and offloading what we have pulled out so far?"

The Captain of that heavily armed cargo ship made a face. He didn't say anything as he did some math in his head. "I know that the Syssiphus is half full of recovered material. If we shift that over to my ship. That will give me two full cargo bays and a good start on a third one. I could see if we have any handy cargos on the other ships at the drop port or in the warehouses we can buy."

The Colonel was thinking hard about her options. She could not draw on the funds that Copeland had set up, but that didn't mean that she didn't have access to some funds. "We have a budget but see what you can find. I will let Mr. Gaeta know. I want you off the ground in 24 hours or less. We will put everything we find in the Syssiphus or in the two Lions, until you get back."

She was hoping that this was going to be worth the risk. But orders were orders, and they had not had anyone stop by. That is besides the local inspector on the first day and the fresh food shipments to the camp. That fell under her orders, so that she could get some of the items off the ground if she felt it was worth clearing the cargo bays on the dropships. Right now, they had some very important items that the SLiE could use.

3 April 3049

New Circe.

Robert was worried. He had been "on leave" after returning from helping pull all of those people off Nike's World. He had been expecting to get the go ahead to start his next run well before now. He had heard, some well-placed rumors. That the next run had been approved of already by the power players of his people. He knew that his ship had come out of a detailed maintenance cycle weeks ago. She was sitting in an orbit near the Station, with only a caretaker crew on board her. He also knew that the dropships he had made runs with before, were also finished with their latest maintenance cycle and they were all sitting at the main space port. What he did not know, was why they were delaying his next run. Something was up, but he had no idea what it might be. Then he had received the message, that the head of the Navy wanted to see him out of the blue. He didn't know if he should be thankful or even more worried. He had settled on worried.

Admiral Whitfield was in the same office, that he had been in the last time Robert had stopped by to answer his official and written orders. The only difference was that this time the gatekeeper was different. The young lieutenant was a female this time, and she didn't seem to be as uptight as the last one had been. Maybe a note had been passed to warn this one about his arrival. Robert had been simply directed to a seat in his outer office, while she worked on something that only she could see. It was out of the blue, when she talked to him again.

"Commodore Copeland. The Admiral will see you now." The young officer didn't raise her voice and her tone was professional, if a little bored sounding.

Robert looked up from his new Colonial made electronic book reader. He had been on the same page for the last fifteen minutes. He just could not get his mind to focus on the news reports that he had been interested in, when he had pulled the reports from the global information network this morning. He had thought that maybe, one of them might give him hints on what might be about to affect him.

Robert gave the door a hard knock and then entered, after hearing a command come through the maybe wooden door. He took six steps into the room and then threw a parade ground quality salute to his friend. "Commodore Robert Copeland! Reporting as ordered!"

Admiral Whitfield smiled and then rose from his chair. He returned the salute and then he held out his hand to his long-time friend. Robert dropped his salute and reached for the offered hand and greeted his long-time friend in return. It had been some time since they had been able to "be friends" since he had been recalled back into service.

"Good to see you Robert. Just grab a seat." David had to smile at the way his friend was handling himself. It was almost like he was expecting to be taken to the Headman any second for some unknown crime.

Robert smiled and then took a seat, but he could feel an itch in the center of his shoulder blades. He watched as his friend went to pour a few drinks from a long shelf fixed to a wall. This time Robert was fully willing to have a drink. It was well past time for the noon day meal, and the sun had almost sat on the horizon visible out the windows.

"Maybe this is not going to be a bad meeting, after all," thought Robert as he took a sip of the amber drink.

Robert felt that it was time to find out why he had been called in to see the head of the Navy. After he had the first sip of his drink, and he could feel his nerves starting to settle. "So, David. Is this my last meal?" Robert had timed this comment, just as his friend seemed to almost be done taking a sip of his imported whiskey.

Admiral Whitfield did a snort, and some of the expensive liquor went up his nose. "Damn it, Robert! You made me waste it! You know how expensive this stuff is. Query Affirmative."

"Oh, quit squawking. Why did you want to see me? As far as I know? I am still on the beach. Query Affirmative." Robert was not going to give any hints, about what he had been up to while he had been on the beach. What he had been doing was not illegal, but it was not something that an active duty officer should be caught doing.

David took a second sip of the amber colored liquid, to buy some time for his nose to stop burning like it was full of flame jell. He was still not ready to drop the big bomb, yet. "Have you been taking drama lessens…. on your vacation? Query Affirmative."

Robert didn't say anything at what he knew was a delaying tactic. He just gave his boss a look and waited to find out why he was here and being given free drinks.

David gave up playing games with Robert. This was not his last meeting today, before he could go home to his wife and grandkids. "Robert, you are not going on another supply run just yet."

Robert hides a smile behind his glass for a few seconds, before dropping the glass again. "Does this have something to do with Xi's little vacation to a certain planet a long way from here?"

David felt his eyes get larger. It was not a secret that Rear Admiral Xi had taken a vacation. Then again, it was not public information when officers took scheduled time off. It also was classified what and were Xi had been. "I am not supposed to talk about this, but somehow I think you know what she has been doing. We are currently making a run to Cate's Hold. While they are there? Xi is using information that you provided, to talk with MMM. Higher Command and the Lord Protector want to see if we can work a little closer together with them. They are working on some ideas, that you put together on your last run. But that is not the main reason for your delay on making the next supply run to the Inner Sphere."

Robert put his drink down on a side table and looked at his navy's most senior officer. "Okay then, what is my mission. You would not have called me here, to tell me that I am still on the beach. Query Affirmative."

David let an evil grin come to his face, it was time to drop his bombshell. He just happened to know that this was information that Robert would not have access to. The final decision to use him had only been decided at a meeting late last night. "It is time for The Pilgrimage. It is going to be a smaller, but faster mission this time around. We were not planning on going, due to the war. The backup plan was to use one of the capital ships, if we needed to make the run or if we just needed to make contact with our "other friends". Your Styx has worked out so well on the other missions, that this plan has changed. You will be the mission commander for The Pilgrimage, and Jules will be the transport commander."

Robert was in shock. He felt that someone had both hit him in the head and in the genitals, at the same time…. Hard. The Pilgrimage was a major event for the whole star system. It was almost a religious event for Clan Wolverine. The Pilgrimage was a 3-part mission. One was to pay respects to the members of Clan Wolverine who had died, and not just the ones that had died in the Gamma 1551 AW system. It was something that was done to reinforce that the Wolverines were not dead, and that they did not forget what had happened to them in the past. It was also to show that they had not forgotten about the betrayal they had been subject to. Every other Pilgrimage had brought between a few thousand and ten thousand members of the SLiE out to that location, so far from home and so much closer to clan space.

It was also to meet with any of the Dark Caste that might be in the area and were friendly to the reflagged SLiE. The bandits didn't know who they were meeting with, only that at certain times. A group would show up in this area of space, that were not gunning for them like the rest of the clans were known to do. The Wolverines would trade Inner Sphere tech and some other items, that they had figured out the other groups wanted. Most of the time it was a list of things that had been worked out after trial and error over a hundred years.

Some of the groups of the Dark Caste would trade information about what was going on with the rest of the clans, and they would also trade plans for newer weapons systems. They also knew that the location was purged from all Clan navigational databases. That was how the SLiE got the Avar and plans to make other combat units that the Clan had been making. The payment for the plans to make the Avars and 2 examples had been steep. It had been ten fighters that were a mix of Ahab and Hammerhead airframes, ten clan weapons technology upgraded Golden age Mechs, and two hundred tons of spare parts for other heavy weapons. It had been hoped and it had been hinted on the last mission.

That on this trip, they were going to have two different classes of Omni fighters and a new dropship design that their most steady contact wanted to trade to them. With this war raging and the information that was brought by the Coast Guard ship lost in time. It was decided that this mission must be launched. It was only a question of who would go, and how many ships would be undertaking this mission.

The last part of the mission was to recover some of the debris left over from that war. When the forces, led by IlKhan Nicholas Kerensky, had left the system? After they had defeated the Wolverine forces that had been caught there. The other clans had left very quickly, and they had not even bothered to clean up the many different battlefields. If a warship or transport could not jump out of this system? It was left behind to be forgotten about. After the "war" damaged and wrecked dropships, fighters, and mechs were spread out from both jump points going all the way to the planet surface. Most of the leftovers, but not all, of what had been left behind had been Wolverine crewed and controlled equipment.

According to later information, that the SLiE had been able to trade for to the Bandit Caste. Anything that was connected to them, was considered tainted and it had no place being used by the rest of the clans. Any mech, tank, fighter, dropship or warship that had fallen to Clan Wolverine fire also had the same taint. That had been okay for the returning Wolverines. They had cleaned the battlefield on repeated visits to this star system. It had been a major source of supplies for both the SLiE military and its government. They had started on the planet's surface and it had been used for trading to both the Bandit Caste and the Inner Sphere on supply runs. Most of the time a recovered unit would serve the SLiE and then be used in a supply run later.

They also had been working on trying to repair the old Widowmaker warship Egg Sac, and the other warships left in this system. It was not in their original mission orders to recover it on this run. It was estimated that it was going to take many more visits, before it was ready to leave under its own power. By now all of the planet's surface had been "cleaned" except for some key places. Everything else above the planet had been hidden from any bandit or clan visitor that might stop by.

By now the system was visited by many smaller groups, to remember the people who had stood up to the whole clan for what was right. The area around the last stand had been turned into a sort of shrine, one that saw a Pilgrimage from many other splinter groups from the Clans. Clan Wolverine was only the largest and most well-organized of those groups.

Robert came back to the real world, and he was still having a hard time breathing. He reached over and finished off his drink in one long pull. The now emptied glass missed the table and fell to the floor with a clatter, but it didn't break. He could see his friend watching him very closely. Robert knew that he had fallen into a well laid ambush, and he did not feel bad about it. To be picked to be in a leadership position on a Pilgrimage, was a high honor. To be picked as a commander of any ship on the Pilgrimage was a sign of great trust. To be The Pilgrimage mission commander was the highlight of a person's career. It was normally only given to someone who had earned a line in the Remembrance or was expected to have a line added before they died.

"David, that is not a nice joke to play on someone my age." Robert was only kind of hoping that this was a joke of some kind. Then again, part of his brain was telling him that this was the God's own truth. But if it was the truth? There would be a price to pay, and it could cost him what he loved the most. Was this going to be worth something like that?

The Admiral leaned forward and locked eyes with Robert. All signs of friendship evaporated like a snowball under a blowtorch. "This is not a joke. We have learned a lot about mixing Colonial and our jump drives over the last few years. The Styx had her old jump drive completely removed, and it is being ground up to be recast. She still has her Colonial made one, that I know you have come to love so much. We know that you can mix a Star League age HPG pulse, to mask the colonial drive jump signature. With the old core gone, it will give you back most of your internal cargo space. You will have an escort of a Titan and an Olympus class vessel. The Styx will be their mothership, but they will have their own jump drives. The Styx will carry one tug, and two modified Princess class liners. All of the ships have been upgraded with Colonial made artificial gravity plating."

Robert felt punch drunk at all of the information being given to him all at once. "Okay, I can see that those liners are larger than the other liner I have worked with before. And a lot of the extra crap has been removed already, so they pack about 600 or 650 people in each of them. Query Affirmative. That is still going to make it a small pilgrimage. Still, there are dozens of senior officers that could lead this one. Even, if it is so much smaller than in the past Pilgrimages."

David still had a smile on his face. "Yes, there are. Then again, we have a war going on. Some of the others will be on this trip, but they are passengers on what will most likely be their last chance to take The Pilgrimage. They understand that they are "off duty" until you get them back home. I have a full briefing packet for you."

The Admiral passes over a noteputor to Robert. It was not a very detailed brief, and it only took Robert a few minutes to look over the whole briefing on the digital device. When he was done, he looked over to the Admiral. "Okay, so why the song and dance? Query Affirmative."

Now David looked a little uncomfortable. "I cannot order you to take this mission, Robert. I was pointedly told this by my boss last night. She said, that if you did not want this mission you could back out. She wants you to volunteer for this. Chiefly that is because of all the brass, that you will have to deal with on a very long mission. Not to mention that you will not have the firepower, that we normally send this close to our connection to Clan Space."

Robert had a small smile on his face. He was a military man, and in the deepest part of his mind. He had just been given an order. "When do I leave? Query Affirmative."

Admiral Whitfield gave a huge smile. He didn't say anything for a little while. He used that time to refill both drink glasses. They would spend the next hour working on that refill and talking about the mission and requirements. By the time the meeting was over. The PADD had doubled the amount of information about this mission.

1 May 3049

New Circe high orbit.

On the first of May, the small fleet left New Circe on the long run to the other side of human known space. They were starting The Pilgrimage to an uninhabited almost unnamed world only 25 normal jumps core ward from clan claimed space. The passengers on these ships were a mix of the very old, young, and the ones who had seen the elephant a few to many times.

Each of the three objects were traveling together, at least at the start of the mission they were on. They would stay close together for the first few days of long jumps that the mission required. They were jumping 30 light years every four hours. They were traveling faster and further than any Colonial ship had done before the Cylon war. The base course that they were to take was planned out way above Commodore Copeland's paygrade. The three independent interstellar capable ships would stay close for the first four days or until the Mission Commander changed those orders.

On the start of the fourth day of traveling, the pattern was changed. This was when Commodore Copeland would get his first little bit of freedom. This was the first day that the ships under his command would be traveling in "new space". This was the area of space that had only been scouted maybe once in the last few decades. Most likely the last time that they had been scouted was on the last Pilgrimage. This still was not safe space for anyone to be traveling in, and the convoy's alert fighters were ready, and weapons turrets manned.

Now each jump would put the Styx and one escort carrier in the same star system on the set route. The second carrier would be in a different system scouting the local area. Command was not wanting to waste the effort and opportunity to do some scouting along this long-ranged mission. And on Robert's orders three other systems would have a pair of jump fighters appear in them, along a detailed pre-planned route. They were mounting the best scouting systems that the SLiE could make. Each route had been given to him as a possible route, for the mission to take if they ran into any issues. He did make sure that this idea was approved by Admiral Franks, but it was very close hold. After all it was going to have an impact on the amount of fuel that was going to be needed. It also was going to put a lot more strain on other key parts of the ships on this mission.

These were scouting missions, and no one would know that those ships were spying on them. All entry points were not to be in the normal jump points of those systems. They were close, but they were far enough away that they should go unnoticed. Each of the systems would have these visitors for only four to six hours. When those four to six hours were over? The SLiE units would go into a new system where they would start to scout that system. There also was a rotational mission, that the two carriers would trade off after each day to keep the Styx covered.

This was going to use a lot of the Colonials supplied fuel, but with the old-style jump core being removed from the old Tramp Class ship. She had room. The Styx had been able to have a massive temporary fuel tank installed in that opened area. She would be the tanker for all of the vessels on this mission. She was carrying more fuel than what Colonial One was rated to carry when she left Caprica before the Cylon surprise attack.

If they needed to? The plan was to cut back on those scouting missions, when that fuel supply dropped to 60 percent. This was a lesson that had been learned by Copeland's missions and some of the long-ranged raids that the SLiE had run against the Cylons. If this number was reached while on the return leg? Then Commodore Copeland could use his own discretion, on how long to run those extra scouting missions. They always could strap one of the carriers to the hull of the ship, like they had done with one of the older style of jumpships to save fuel for the overall mission.

Ragnar

In the dark of deep space, a burst of energy and a blur of movement were all that announced that two ships had arrived into this local area. The pair of ships had been here before. One a lot sooner than the second. That second ship was aesthetically not pleasing to the eye, and it didn't matter if they were human or Cylon eyes. The second ship was just plain ugly. It was designed for one job and it did that one job very well, and her looks were not in that job description. The other ship was made of clean lines, and it looked sexy to the human eye.

Captain Phipps looked over to a side screen, and he could not help but frown at what he saw. The Colonial Mover was there, but it was such an ugly ship. He knew under some of those covering shipping containers, were filled with some surprises. Not only was that ship carrying cargo, she was the escort for his pretty lady. The Colonial Navy was limited in what it could do to make real warships. On this mission, they had taken a page out of both Starbucks book and the Star League Navy idea of a Q ship. And they had come up with this idea.

Phipps was brought back to his job when a powerful lightning bolt flashed on the planet below them out of the corner of his eye. "Contact the Mover and have her stick close to us, but not to close. If they scratch my paint, I will have their Fraking ass. Nav, plot a course to the Tunnel."

The old Rising Star class liner led the way to and threw the "Tunnel" that led threw the upper reaches of the gas giant. The old Colonial Mover's last navigator had not kept the old navigation data from its last visit here. As soon as The Boreas entered the tunnel. She sent a transmission down the tunnel, to the hidden Raptor. The trip down the tunnel and docking with the hidden station and anchorage went without issue.

Charles Bellamy was both happy and sad to see his boss and the cargo ships as they approached the Anchorage. That there were two ships was a surprise, but he could see why, and he was grateful to see it. He found out that he had liked having an independent command. As soon as the modified star liner had entered the pocket that held the station. He had sent a copy of all of his mission reports to the mission flagship. He had only received a message saying that the reports were received, and then the hard work had begone.

Out from under two of the containers on the Colonial Mover came a squadron of Vipers and Visigoths. They came flying out of the old ship to take up patrolling routes. The old space liner attached itself to the North Pole, and a flood of people and supplies started to come over to the station. It would take two days before everything calmed down enough, so that the two officers could have a face to face meeting. That meeting would be held on the old star liner. It just had a lot better facilities for something like this. Ragnar anchorage was still very much on the spartan side.

Peter looked up as Charles was first announced by a crewmember, and then the other officer walked into his office. "First off. Charles you have done a Fraking good job. The Vipers and other craft will be using the launch and servicing bay you have finished. I can tell you the pilots of those craft will thank you every day they have to go out on patrol. The small airlock that was cut into the Mover was not fun for them to have to use. I'm also surprised about this warship, that is still around fighting Cylons. You did very well in getting them on board to support our mission. That last data dump is going to have the Admiral fraking foaming at the mouth."

Peter could see that Charles was not going to interrupt his commander. "We had to change the plans after what happened at Troy. I will be staying hear with the Boreas acting as a housing unit. The Colonial mover will be making runs between here and New Circe. They will be taking back anyone that wants to leave, bring in supplies, and take back any information we can find to keep the Admiral and the President in the loop about what is happening out here. I will have to leave periodically, so you will be in command of Ragnar Station. I still will be in overall command of the mission."

Charles didn't know it, but he sat straighter in the chair to sit a little taller with his back ramrod straight. The mission commander saw the move and he kept on talking, like he didn't notice anything. "One of the missions, that I will be leaving on is dropping off a scout team on Canceron. That unit commander has been going over every word about that planet that you have been able to get. I would have liked to wait for this Captain Hewitt to show back up, but that option was not in the original plan. The Mover will act as my escort when I drop off the recon team. After my return from that mission? My ship will be attached to the docking port that is being modified near the new engineering command center. Your office, as the Station Commander, will be were ever you feel fits best for you and your mission."

Peter let a full smile come to his face. "Now that all of the official stuff is done. How are things going?

Helios Delta

Canceron

High above the planet that was once known as the largest democracy in the Colonies. Peter "Moa" Phipps could feel the sweat running down his spine in cold rivers. They had needed 10 days to get ready for this mission. Most of that time had been used for the more refined planning of this part of the operation. Then they had waited two more days as two Raptors made a closer scouting mission of the targeted planet. They only had one area to look at on the whole planet, but it was an important part for the start of this extended mission. As soon as they had completed their report, the mission had been launched.

Peter looked around his bridge one more time. "Okay, launch the cargo shuttle and her escorts. When they clear the bays. Let's drop down and be careful. We don't want to frak this up, or the Old Man will have our Fraking hides mounted on his office door.

On the outside of the fat arrow shaped hull, two Raptors and a medium cargo shuttle left the two vent like small craft bays on the top of the ship. Almost the second those three small craft had cleared the nose of the converted star liner. She started to drop closer to the mostly water covered planet below them. Above the liner an ugly ship vented two full squadrons of fighters into the space around the two Colonial crewed vessels. They were not there to pick a fight with the Cylons, and it was hoped that they would not be needed. The crews of both ships really wanted to leave this planet without the Cylons knowing that they had even been there.

The Boreas lowered herself on artificial gravity, so that her hull would not heat up. That would have been bad for the cargo strapped to her underside. She didn't have a cargo door big enough for what she was carrying. So, it had been "Attached" and sealed in a space safe cargo container normally used by the Colonial Movers. When the ship's hull was only a few meters above the water, and the cargo container was mostly in the water. It split open and a submarine "fell" until it was riding high in the water. As soon as the old Neptune was released, the passenger liner shot back up into space. The two spaceships only stuck around long enough, to make sure the submarine was still functional after it had hit the water. Peter was happy that all was reported as well, and they were ready to start the scouting and support mission on this planet.

Notes:

RAT. I found them in a battletech book when I first wrote this a few years ago. They are a 6ton almost AI hover craft with twin small pulse lasers.

Old jumpdrives. The SLiE would not waste the hard to find materials in an old jump drive. Besides, they would need them to make or test the next generation of jump drives. The old adage of waste not want not.

Canceron. Capital City Hades, other large city Prommos and Mangala. Main attractions are Rudy Range and Kor Yaz Glacier. It took at least 3 large Nuclear warheads in the Cylons surprise attack. It had a huge population and a lot of poor.

HH's mission orders. 1) Protect his ship. 2) Protect the Ragnar Anchorage from being found out. 3) Scout all remaining human groups and collect any information they might have. 4) Evaluate the viability of any human group, and let any survivors know about human form Cylons. 5) Do what can be done to improve those human's situation, but not violate 1 and 2. 6) Scout for any Cylon activity. 7) Kill any Cylon but do not violate 1, 2, and 5.

The Story. When I started writing this, I only wanted to cover Robert and his actions in the IS to support his people. After working with Hotpoint and reading a lot of comments, it has grown from its original path. I hope you all like the additions.