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.

53. Chapter 53 27 Dec 3049 Xi second mission

Chapter 53

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

27 Dec 3049 Xi second mission

Cate's Hold.

Colonel Mann and Captain Gaeta were mentally under heavy pressure. With the addition of a second "jumpship". The pressure had started building for everyone on this mission going all the way back to when they were loading the ships with passengers. Each of the dropships would only carry a skeleton crew per shift. All of the passengers, special skills teams, and other dropship's crew members were staying in the living areas on the two Colonial made ships. Captain Gaeta had to step in, when the XO of the Queen and a pair of civilians had almost come to blows caused by that building stress.

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Babs looked over the dining hall table at Jo as he played with his food with a dejected look on his face. She had an idea of why her friend and supervisor was not in a good mood. He had been this way ever since they had boarded their ride back to the same holes, which they had been working on earlier in the year. It was in a place called Jess's toy box, and it had good steaks. They still had a few days before they left New Circe, but it was already too late to un-volunteer for this mission.

Babs took a shot at getting her friend to talk, and to show how childish he was to the rest of the table. "Hey, I do not understand what your upset about. I have to share a room with a scientist that will not stop talking. You have your own room."

Jo slowly looked up from playing with his food, and he had a deep scowl on his face. "Yea, I have my own frakking room. It's a Cell… with Bars. Oh, and it is open on three frakking sides and one of those open sides is the crapper!"

Babs let a smile come to her face. "Well…..Then I would make sure that you do not have anyone over to your place, until you get back home."

Babs saw all the signs that said that she had pushed Jo just a little too far, and she made like she was looking over his shoulder. "Hey, is that the ship's XO? Maybe you can convince him to change your room assignment?" All Babs could do was smile and follow along in Jo's wake, as he turned to confront the ship's second highest ranked officer.

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Gaeta had to shake his head at the memory. It had not been all bad, and somethings had been learned from the first large mission to Jess's toy box. That first mission, they had thought that they had all of the bases covered. That is until they found what they were looking for, and they had to recover some of what they had found. At the same time, they had to recover a very long list of items without anyone on the planet knowing about it.

They were carrying more open drop collars, on this run with the two of the Colonial made jumpships. They still had the two Lions and their ability to carry mechs, tanks, and as well as some cargo. That was a combination that was just too important not to take on this run. They were not carrying tanks, there was not any reason for those types of combat units on this mission. They were carrying heavy transports to help recover any "items" found in the hidden SLDF base. They also were now better able to handle the "loose" found items, like they had recovered on the first run to this planet.

There was an Elephant class tug that was also coming along on this mission again. This time she was not just there for her ability to carry a nice sized mech force, and a decent amount of cargo space. Her heavy weapons were almost as important as her mechs and cargo bays. That had been for the first mission, now they knew better. On this mission? Her experienced weapons crews and that she was a tug were both equally important for her mission. At least now that they knew that they were working on uncovering a Naval support base or port castle. It was not widely known, but a tug class dropship could lift a good sized second dropship off a "normal" planet's surface. It was not something that they could stealthily do, but they could do the job. That was the only way to get some hulks off the active drop port and to the "long term storage areas".

To carry any found items this time around. It was not only one Cargo King being used to lift the cargo out of the gravity well, but two of this class of dropships that were coming along. There also was a military Cargo Masters for any heavy lifting needed to go off of the planet. Overhead was a "small" CAP that was coming off one of the "jumpships" at the pirate point. They were "only" third line fighter craft for the SLiE, but they were upgraded with weapons that few SLDF units would have mounted back in the day of the Star League. They also had one Mammoth class dropship, but it was not a fully operational vessel. It was more just a shell, with working life support and other supporting mission equipment under a thin metal skin. It was there in case they were as successful as what the SLIC and the SLDF were hoping they were. That was on top of all of the cargo the two colonial ships could normally carry. It also acted as some camouflage for the mission taking up a visible drop collar.

There also was a larger ground support crew needed for this latest mission. A larger percentage of them had been landing by landing boats from the two "jumpships" sitting at the L1 point over Cate's Hold. Having them this close to the planet was a risk, but they were close enough that the dropships on the ground could escape very quickly. All without the need to travel for almost a week to get to the normal jump point before exiting the star system.

Surprisingly, getting the same land from the locals had not been a problem. The locals had been embarrassed by the attack on this group on the last mission Colonel Mann had landed here. They also really had liked working with Colonel Mann, and her people. Besides the last time, she had traded and helped the local militia with a lot of found weapons that they had needed very badly. There had been nothing left of the Awesome, but the Shadow Hawk and the Vindicator had been repairable. Colonel Mann and Captain Fallstaff had just left the hulks on the ground when they had burned for orbit, after making sure all of their tracks were covered. The locals had been surprised about finding them left behind after the stink that Colonel Mann had given over them, when she had been asked to turn them over as "evidence" of the attack.

The repair shops in the support department of the local militia had not repaired the Vindicator. It was a well-known fact that the cost of parts to be shipped out of the CC, even on the black market, was cost prohibitive. Instead, they had stripped the old carcass, like a host of ants on a dead elephant. That one hulk of the Vindicator had allowed the local defense force to return to service two mechs and a tank. All for the cost of a few hundred man hours of labor, on a planet that had too many hands without work to do. That one act alone would have made friends when Colonel Mann returned. When you added everything else that they had done while on this planet. They had a long list of friends, even before they listed themselves as newly being part of Copeland Supply Salvage and Resale.

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They had landed and hit the ground running as soon as the ground was close to being cool enough to walk on with very well insulated boots. That area had been very popular with the locals, and a few surprise off world visitors. Many of the stripped turrets were found and looked over with fine toothed combs. They had even found a few hatches, but they all had turned out to be just like the other decoy hatches that had been found before in this local area. After only a few months, the area was forgotten about by the people who were trying to find any lost Star League trinket. Not one new weapons turret was found, not one new tunnel was excavated, and a lot of people lost a lot of their money in the looking for things they thought might be there.

This time Colonel Mann and crew were not keeping the finding and stripping of any of the surface defensive turrets of weapons and armor that secret. Any of the high-tech weapons were loaded onto one of the cargo bays visible for anyone that was close enough to see what was going on, if they knew what to look for. After they were pulled off the turrets and looked at by SLiE personnel on the ground. Much to the surprise of the locals, a notice was placed at the space port about what was for sale and it was updated at least once a day.

By the end of the third day on the planet, the locals were buying up these weapons at almost bidding war prices after they left the selling truck. Something was in the air, and people were buying weapons, even if they could not really afford them. From the reports that were coming in to be played on the planet's entertainment net every few weeks. This type of buying was going on all around them in local interstellar space. People everywhere could smell that war was in the winds, and a lot of people were taking precautions. If you waited too long? You would be without weapons, and people without weapons are soon turned into slaves or fertilizer.

When Colonel Mann and her team had return to New Circe. All of the mapping done on the site of Jess's Toy box had been plugged into huge computers, that had the plans for all known types of Castle or other larger fortification the SLDF had been known to use over its long history. The data went all the way back to before the founding of the SLDF or the Terran Alliance. This had produced a lot of information, which might or might not be useful on a second run to Jess's Toy Box. But as luck would have it, the added mapping aids had been of some use for the second run. They were accurate about half the time in leading ground teams to a new tunnel, turret, hatch or room. It might not be the same room type listed on the computer-generated maps, but it was a room, hatch or turret they had not seen before. This had started a steam rolling effect of opening new rooms and new access points to the old Star League Port Castle buried under the ground the dropships had landed on. They were almost finding new stuff faster than they could get it loaded onto the cargo dropships, even with the stuff they were selling to the locals.

Within a few days of them being on the ground. The first truckloads of items were pulled out of the old base and moved into a cargo bay on one of the drop ships. The next day it saw more truckloads coming out of the newly dug out holes in lines of cargo loaders. Just like before, they were taking everything out of the base that they found. It did not matter if it was a computer, an armored hatch, a bunch of old parts, or a damaged battlemech. It was removed and loaded on to the dropships. By now, any food or natural items that had been left behind had rotted back into soil.

By the end of the second week, they had found the first access point to the "Port" part of the castle. They were "only" in the storage rooms' area, but the type of stores in those huge rooms was very telling about what this port had been supporting. A fire control computer repair kit for a dropship is just a wee bit bigger, than the same kind of kit used on even an Atlas II class battlemech. The heavy repair tools alone that were left behind were worth a billion credits, and the numbers were still climbing by the hour. Then they hit the Royal Division's main maintenance underground bay. It was a surprise when that first door was opened.

When word had reached Colonel Mann's staff about the new find and its scale. Pre-filled out orders were sent to the three main cargo ships. Within only two hours, two of the cargo dropships were on the way up and out of the gravity well. They would dock, one on each of the "Jumpships" at the planet's L1 point. They were to off load their cargo and open up more storage space within their hulls. This transfer was going to go a lot faster, than on the last run. In most part this was thanks to training and lessons learned on the last run to this part of the Inner Sphere.

Still even with that short cut due to cross loading cargo training and a lot shorter traveling distance, by the time that the two cargo ships had returned to the ground. Two thousand tons of war machines, hulks, tools, and even three full and mostly complete mobile HQ trucks had been loaded on the remaining cargo areas of the lone grounded dropship. Cooling trucks, maintenance trucks and MASH trucks were loaded protected by prefabricated metal sheets. Those sheets had been based off an idea by a Colonial pilot who had led an attack on a Cylon base. This little trick had hidden the identity of what was being loaded onto the dropships, even in the full sun in the noon sky.

The real surprise had been when a group working in the main repair area had found a massive tunnel. It had been hidden behind a pair of large Buffalo like hover trucks and heavy shadows. Behind those two trucks was a massive almost tank track train engine in a size never seen on New Circe. When it was moved deeper into the room, and the hatch opened. They had found the rest of the "train". They were still working on trying to repair it, if only to clear the huge tunnel.

It was the end of the tunnel that that had caused a half hour delay in reporting the events back to command in the prefab building. They had found the drop port. And it should go down in the history books as another one of the "Wow" projects, that the Corps had been able to build and keep hidden from the rest of the Inner Sphere. It was a huge artificial cave, or it might had started life as maybe an opened topped mountain. It was covered over by a thick and hard metal dome and who knows what was above the inside of the covering dome as viewed from inside. The area under the high covering metal underside of the dome held two dozen open pit type spheroid dropship landing bays. They were landing, loading, and repair facilities for any craft that used that design. Off to one side of the dome and opposite of the train tunnel was a perfectly flat landing area. It was for aerodyne craft, and it was large and wide enough to work with the largest of that style craft known to have been made. It was a huge spaceport hidden under a mountain top.

The huge hidden drop port was not empty of mobile structures, but it was not full of them either. After all, it took a lot of lift capacity to get a full SLDF Royal Division of modern combat units off a planet. That many dropships also meant that there were always some down for maintenance or other issues. It was only logical that some would not be ready to lift off of the planet, when it was time to add the Division's firepower to liberate planets from the Usurper closer to the cradle of humanity.

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Colonel Mann had taken a hover car to see for herself what had been found. They had made sure that the Command building was close to a known tunnel and hatch. It had taken less than a minute for her and the hover car to be hidden underground. She had to dodge over a dozen heavy movers coming out of the division support area to reach the newly found "train" tunnel. She almost slid her car sideways when the opening appeared before her. She looked over the lip of the turnaround on the high road right at the exit mouth of the tunnel. In the open area below her. She could see the nose of a Titan and the aft part of some other aerodyne, but that dropship was still mostly in shadow off to one side of the "runway".

Then her eyes went to the "pits". Off in the distance was a burned marked, but massive and imposing Dictator class of dropship. Three empty pits closer to her was a Lion that looked like it needed only to be washed of dirt, before lifting off again. Then her eyes looked down and over the lip of the road. Just below her, on the two closest "pits" were a pair of Small Confederate class lance carrying dropships. Colonel Mann was not surprised by seeing two of that class of mech carrying dropship out there.

The Confederate was a small lance carrier, but it had a very high almost bleeding edge high tech main engine design. It was well known by the SLDF, to have engines that seem to break if you looked at them even cross-eyed. It had taken the Clan a hundred years to work out all of the issues of that engine design, and even then, it was still a maintenance hog compared to other Clan ships. Still those work arounds had found their way to New Circe many decades ago. A loud noise drew her eyes to a group of people off to one side of the road. They were in the middle of some kind of celebration.

This and some free time had drawn Mann to the group of celebrators. She had to push her way to get a look into the massive cargo bay they were standing by. She now looked at row after row of capital grade weapons stacked up on both sides of the freshly open cargo bay. Weapons that could only fit on a true killer of the deep black. They were Warship weapons, and there seemed to be an endless supply of them in this one room alone.

These types of recoveries had been hoped for when the final plan had been drawn up. If they had found any dropships that could be repaired? Each of the two "jumpships" carried two Colonial heavy lifters hidden in their build in landing bays for just that reason. Between them and the specialized crew on the tug, they should be able to lift most dropships off the ground and back into space. Anything to heavy for them, would be handled by the "normal" tug.

That had been the plan when they had been getting ready to leave New Circe. That plan now had to undergo some modifications, now that the ground team had some real-world data on the hidden space port. Any major lifting would only be done at night, and only after the teams on the ground repaired the emergency dropship exit in the overhead dome. That last part had only taken a day of very hard work hanging a few hundred feet over the bottom of the spaceport. The next night, the first Confederate was lifted out of the fake topped mountain with the help of the tug and the Colonial made small ships.

Even before the first dropship was recovered, the first truckloads of massive anti warship weapons were pulled out of the newly found space port. It was only after the third updated report from the hidden space port had been filed with Colonel Mann, that she let her boss know about what had been found in Jess's Toy Box. For the first time a message of importance, besides test messages, was sent to another star system without using the HPG network. It would take less than a hand full of hours for the message to travel the 28ly between the two stars.

While they waited at Cate's Hold for a reply? Colonel Mann had kept pulling out everything they could from the old base. To provide a little cover to her operations. She decided that it was time to put up a few more items for sale/trade, and to buy a few more items from the locals. She was pretty sure the LRM 15 and four of the LRM 20's they had pulled from a "turret", that really had been in a spare parts storage area would sell very well. That would be a good payment for the "patrols" that the local defense force had been doing around the "rented" area she was using. The local government was doing everything that they could, so that there would not be a repeat of the attack on this group. They were protecting the goose that was laying golden eggs for the defenders.

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29 Jan 3050

Dunianshire

Mike entered the grounded dropship with a skip in his step. He had just overseen the first test firing of the unsupervised production run this morning, and then saw the first shipment of new Bear Slayers to go off planet this afternoon. They were now burning their way on board a modified Leopard class ship launched from MMM's private space port. The lance carrier was short two mech cubicles, and in their place were a pair of well protected small cargo bays. Each cargo bay had only six shipping crates. But around those six crates? There was ever manor of shock absorbing packing or restraining tack that anyone could think of. It was going to be a fast run to the jump point at a solid 2gs acceleration after the small dropship had left the lower orbit traffic lanes. That would draw some attention, but a press release provided a good cover story for the small dropship's speedy departure. It was being sold as a test run of a new engine design.

They were on the way to Canopus on a merchant class ship carrying a rare assault combat dropship as extra escort for the mission. He had been ordered to send copies of the new weapons, and no expense was to be spared nor was security to be lax. The Main office was straining at the bit and Mike was betting that it was taking every bit of space tape on the planet, to keep certain members of the main headquarters board from sending HPG messages every hour to his office.

When he entered the room that had been a casino, there was a large meal set out on the long briefing room table. Xi was sitting off to one side sipping slowly on a glass of what looked like white wine, or it could have been water for all Mike knew.

Mike McDonogh felt a true smile come to his face, as he closed the hatch behind him. "So, Margret. You are celebrating also?"

Margret smiled over her wine glass. "Yes, and no. Please have something to eat. Would you like to talk shop during or after you have a meal?"

Mike stopped mid step, and then looked closer at the tall woman. She was hiding something, he could tell. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up on end, like a lightning bolt was about to come very close to him. "I have not had a non-working lunch in a few decades. Why stop now?" He gave a slight shoulder shrug.

Margret nodded and rose from her chair and fixed a plate for herself from the far end of the table. She waited until Mike had fixed a plate and watched until he had worked about halfway through the carefully chosen food items. "On our first meeting. I told you that we needed to keep Captain Copeland and myself split from this side of our operations. I am afraid that little fiction has come to an end." She was watching Mike very closely as she spoke.

The President of MMM put his fork down on one side of the china plate. "I don't know if this change is a good thing, or not." The warning bells were going off like he had his head stuck in a church steeple of a medieval church.

Margret could not help but smile. "To tell you the truth. I do not know the answer to that one myself." The shifting of the two jumpships into listing them being owned by Robert's company had come from above her paygrade. It was not like Robert was paying taxes back home, or to any of these local powers. This dropship was not being added to that list of company assets.

Mike just did a lift of the wine glass in a silent toast. Margret waited for Mike to take another sip, and then to start to cut into a nice piece of fish. When he had seemed to be about to put the fish in his mouth? She struck.

"How is your dropship expansion construction coming along? We talked about it before, but have you had to make any major changes because of our new agreement?"

This got a set of raised eyebrows. "It's still moving along. I had to divert funds for any improvements in that area, to help pay for the New Bear Slayer PPC. Now why would you start with the bit about Captain Copeland, and then ask about my attempt to add a new type of dropship for my company's books?"

Margret let the smile fall from her face. She had been worried about that, and it was also why they had come up with Plan Z. She also was just a little surprise that Mike had been able to connect the two statements she had made. It might have only been the surprise that he had said something about it to her face, and not waited to try to use the information against her later. She reached down and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

When she was ready, she eye locked the man sitting across from her. "I was contacted by one of Robert Copeland's teams. They were on Cate's Hold tracking down some leads they had dug up when they were taking a break. They seemed to have found something, which might be useful to your company. It might be better as a spinoff company, but that is not my call to make. That would be your call, if you wanted to work with us on one more deal. I am just going to work as the middlemen for this one transaction. I do think it will work hand in hand nicely with what you have found in Athena Corporation's assets."

Mike put this fork down again and took the gold-colored sheet, it was just like the paper you got from ComStar. It had four small images and less than fifty lines of text on the whole document. That little bit of information was enough for him to start having a problem breathing, and he almost passes out from a lack of oxygen making it to his brain. Like everyone in this part of space or had to deal with lostech prospectors. They all understood the name of Cate's Hold, and why everyone knew the name of that planet.

Mike looked up again, and he was still having a hard time breathing. It was with very soft words that he spoke next. "They really found it, didn't they?" He quickly looked around the room. If even the slightest hint of this leaked out the wrong way? It would start a war, and not a small one. He was so stunned, that he had not even thought to ask how she might have gotten this information in the first place.

Margret didn't let her face move and inch in any direction. "It would seem so. They did not say much, and I think you would agree. That it was a good idea to get this information out as fast as they could. I had been planning on going that way after we completed some more shopping. I think you might want to join me, and we both can see what there is to see with our own eyes."

Mike was running the numbers in his head. They had just spent or have tied up almost a billion C-bills of capital this month. Granted they were accepting some limited prepaid orders and demanding almost a million c-bills per Bear Killer. It still was going to take a while to recoup those costs, and the market price for the Star League grade ER PPCs were dropping to what most people would call "more reasonable". Still they had turned one hell of a profit on the systems that they had bought, and they now could make new ones for a lot less than they were charging for them. To have to come up with the funds to build new repair/building dropship pits had been taxing on his part of the company's assets. This new issue could break his company. There was such a thing as expanding to fast.

Mike finally gave a shoulder shrug, but his stomach was around his ankles. "Well, it couldn't hurt to take a look. I do think that I will need to take my own craft. It might look bad, if word leaked out after making a deal with you of such a magnitude. What did you say the name was of your ride to Cate's Hold?"

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It took two days for Mike to get the right team together to leave to check out a new possible factory location. The true reason for the trip was only known to a few dozen people in all of MMM. But that just meant, that it would only take a few weeks for the news to spread like wildfire around two different planets. It would take a few months for these first vague hints to make it to the major players around the Inner Sphere. Mike had to risk a very deeply coded message to a friend on the board of directors on Canopus to let them know about this mission. They had already come up with a code name for Cate's Hold, what seemed like two hundred years ago. It was in case anyone found something major on that planet. With it being only 28ly away from one of the key MMM Facilities. It made sense that the Dunianshire office would be the first stop for someone wanting to sell their finds, and MMM had planned accordingly.

The ride out of this system was on an independent Merchant class jumpship. She was carrying an MMM Corporate VIP Buccaneer, and the Monarch that Xi was living in. It was a five day burn to make it to the commercial transport. By the time the two ships were attached to the 320m long ship, she was ready to leave this star system. Less than ten minutes after the two liners had attached to the ship. The M/V Green Trees was in a different star system.

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The two ships were on a 1.2g run to the planet of Cate's Hold. The White Skies could have done a lot better than that, thanks to her Colonial provided anti-gravity plates, and it would not have bothered her passengers and crew. But the other drop ship she was traveling with? She was just an updated passenger liner, just like all of the other Liners that plied the space lanes around the Inner Sphere. Thanks to the MMM's connections in this local area. The two dropships were green lighted to do a least time approach to the drop port.

There even was a hover limo waiting for Mike and Margret after the liners had cool down after landing. It was during the trip out to the dig site, which Xi brought up that they needed another person with an M in the name to make things look right. Mike took the hint and soon they had a mixed lance made of two Wasp mechs and two Pegasus hover tanks passing them. It was a very fast trip to the site, even after they had to cut cross country.

When the limo and lance reached the fence that marked off the land "rented" by Colonel Mann? They were joined by a pair of Black Knight class mechs. They stayed with the hover limo about halfway to the landed dropships. Then they were switched off for a pair of Crabs. Seeing two mechs that had been known to be mainly Star League machines might have surprised some, but not to Mike. Mike was just remembering about all of those H Class ER PPC's these people had sold his company these last few years.

Admiral Xi was quiet, as they closed in on the ring of landed dropships. She was hoping that her and Mann's acting skills were going to be up to the test they were about to be put under. The President of MMM was not going to fall for just the pretty face routine. They were going to have to be very careful about what they said, how they said it, and what they were not going to say.

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Colonel Mann was waiting outside of the Elephant class tug. She saw the limo and its escort as they cleared the far tree line. She had been warned about the local escorts, before they had left the main road going to this landing field. She also was hoping that her acting skills were going to be up to what was about to happen. When the limo came to a stop and dropped to the ground, she opened the nearest door. She had no idea if it was going to be her boss behind that door or the VIP, but she thought that it was the right thing to do.

Colonel Mann had a sly smile on her face and offered a hand to the woman sitting in the expensive looking seats. "Miss Xi. It is nice to see you again."

"That should cover any odd issues." Xi had her own smile on her face. "Mrs. Mann, nice to see you again. I have brought Mr. McDonogh out with me and he is the nearest senior officer in MMM. He would like to verify your find and see if MMM would like to make an offer on it."

Mann smiled and nodded to a man in a suit that looked to cost as much as a light mech. "I understand ma'am. I have a light transport set up for us, but I'm afraid your escort will have to stay here with the limo." The rich man nodded his head in understanding at what the military woman was saying.

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In the waiting for Xi and McDonogh to arrive. Newly promoted Major Fallstaff had found and opened a tunnel nearest to this dropship. It was only about a ten-minute walk to the small hatch hidden by a large flat rock. In that small tunnel was a small three wheeled electric car waiting to support the tour of the old underground Star League base. Mann wanted to do her best to keep the location of the Port as close hold as she could. MMM might not want to be the buyer for something like this. If they didn't want to be in the game for a large ticket item like this? Then she was going to have to go to someone in the FWL or someone high up in the MC. If that failed? The Hail Mary was going to be contacting the CC, and then just let the chips fall where they may. That last one was not liked by most of the people in Higher Command on New Circe, but it was a plan.

They took the long way to the hidden space port, taking as many side turns in the underground base as they could to confuse any of Mike's internal navigation skills. It also helped to work as a sales pitch to show the potential buyer how big of a facility they were looking at, besides the cherry on top of what they had talked about so far. It was very effective at what they were intending, but it also had a few unintentional consequences.

Mike had been through this type of Rodeo before. Still he was quickly impressed by the sheer size of the place he was being shown. He had been in one castle brian before, and it didn't seem this large as more and more tunnels went passed his eyes. He also noticed that the place was stripped clean of anything that might be of value to MMM. As one part of his mind noted this? The other part was coming up with an idea of what it would cost to get this place back into operation. He already knew that number was going to be in a word…. HUGE.

He was looking every way that he could, so hard, that he was feeling the starting effects of whip lash. And it still was a surprise when the car came to a stop. At first all Mike could see was one wall that had odd cut marks running from left to right. Then he turned and looked out into an open expanse of half-lighted space on the other side of the transport. There seemed to be thin spots in the dome cover high over his head as he looked up, up and up. They might have been damaged, or they might have been designed that way, so that light could leak threw them to cut down on power requirements. It was not bright, but there was enough light for someone to see what was below where the three wheeled cart was currently parked.

Mike didn't remember getting out of the little wheeled transport. Colonel Mann had to grab his arm to prevent him from taking a long walk off a short pier to a very hard landing. The few images had not done the cavern any justice. Mike first looked down, then side to side and then up again. Massive was about all he could get his head around.

Xi walked up to the other side of the MMM representative with a sly smile on her face. She handed over a set of digital field glasses, so that he could see better some of the objects in the distance and in the low light. Without really looking at them, he took the device and started to do a detail scan around the area. He could see the open pits stretching out below him. And after working on improving the dropship site he managed? He knows what he was looking at, and what to look for as problem areas. He first ran his eyes down the length of the covered runway. Then he started looking at each of the pits more closely. He started at the farthest one from his location, and he was planning on working his way back towards him. Ah, the plans of mice and men.

Mike let a little air out of his lungs to help steady his hands. He started working from the lip of the support pit to the top of the egg-shaped ship. It gave him an idea of the size, and it was a little over 9,000 tons of combat spaceship. Mann shot a look over to her Admiral and with a nod from her. She pitched her voice and pointed over the road edge.

"There is one dropship, it is not an Overlord. I think they call it a Dictator, but most of my people didn't have a clue. The briefing one of my people gave me, said that it was a command variation of some kind. I understand that one in ten were of that configuration back in the Star League military. It has some damage that might be repaired. Also, the other 23 pits seemed to be intact, for doing even major depot level repair work." He didn't need to say out loud that if it could do that level of work, then it could also build new dropships.

Mike pulled the field glasses down, but he didn't take his eyes off the landing field. "I want to get closer." He had spoken in almost a whisper. All he could hear was the blood pounding in his own ears. So far, those pits had not looked stripped from where he was standing. He needed to know for sure. If they were stripped bad enough? It could be a deal breaker.

For the next two hours Mike walked and or drove around the deep and tall cavern that was an old space port. Mike would stop and check a few things out on the nearest area to him. He noticed that all of the storage rooms were emptied. Some of those cargo bays had clearly been cut open, and he was betting that it was very recently accessed. He was not surprised that they were stripping the base, but he had only seen maybe twenty people in the entire time that he had been underground getting his little tour. That told him that they were almost done with what they had planned with the easily moveable parts of this base. It also could mean that they were getting ready to leave. That also means that Mike was also on a short timeline.

"Mrs. Mann. It would seem, that your notice was as advertised. And I should not have been surprised. It was what I have come to expect from Captain Copeland and his people. Now let's get about seeing about taking this off your hands." Mike was now in full salesman mode of a CEO of a major weapons production company.

Admiral Xi steps forward and this pulls his head to look at her, and not over at one of the landing, loading, and repair dropship pits. "I think we need to get you back to your escorts, before they get more worried that we might have done something with you. I think that my ship is better at doing this kind of thing, or we can use yours."

Mike nodded his head, "Yes on both of those ideas Miss Xi and your ship will be fine." And with that small statement, the little group re-boarded the micro transport. Colonel Mann took exactly the same route back to the entry point and now exit point to the surface of the planet. Mike could care less about the route taking him back to blue skies and white clouds. He was reviewing some of the few hundred images, which he had taken of the drop port part of the base. He was going to have to send them all or maybe only most of them back to civilization. The more images he sent back to the main office. The longer it was going to take to get the information where it needed to go.

Mike didn't take his head out of his display screen, until he sat back down in Xi's offices on the White Skies. From this location he was able to get a detailed message and data packet radioed back out to the jump point at the speed of light. That alone, took almost half an hour of waiting. When the jump ship was ready, it would be going back to Dunianshire.

The message would be sent to the main radio room in one of the MMM buildings. From there it would be reviewed by his second in command, which would be sleeping in her office until he returned. Then an alert would be sent via HPG to the main MMM office on Canopus. The ant hill would have been truly kicked over in half a dozen star systems not much later. That number of systems in action would slowly grow over the next half year.

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After the message was sent to the jump point, it was time to get down to business on Cate's Hold. The three of them were still talking when the sun went down. When Mike went back to his dropship? It was more or less when Xi felt that her temper was about to get the best of her. Colonel Mann could only sit back and watch, for most of the meeting. She might have added a hundred words in the four hours for this part of the meeting. She would not be going back to her ship or fixed command post tonight. There were six empty cabins on this ship, and she would be taking one of them. The break gave Admiral Xi some time to talk with her second in command. That little talk happened over the very late evening meal.

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When they had some quiet time to enjoy a good meal. Xi wanted to ask this young commander a very important question. When her silverware hit the plate with a tinny sound. It had the effect of drawing a set of eyes toward her.

"Okay Colonel. Now that we do not have a set of ears sitting with us, and the whole ship has been swept for any surprises he might have left behind. Why did you leave that Dictator class dropship in the pits?"

Mann was waiting for this question, and she had been working on addressing it. She had been told to recover all major end items or destroy them to keep them out of anyone else's hands. A 9,000ton dropship was the very definition of a major end item from back in the SLDF time. Then again, the SLDF and Clan Wolverine gave a lot of leeway to the on the spot commander. That didn't mean that they would not be grilled over those decisions, at a later time.

Colonel Mann looked right into the eyes of her boss. "After we found out that it was not an Overlord. I had to find out what the different capabilities were between the two craft. The Dictator is not a bad design, but it is also one that we have never used, that I can tell. There might have been a dozen taken on the first Exodus from the Inner Sphere, but everyone that I talked to. They have all said that they did not last much after Operation Klondike had been concluded. And we do not have any back home or had any of them recovered before we left on this run. Then you add in that it had nothing in the way of updated technology, it makes it less useful to us. Now if it had been a Colossus, Lee or an Overlord? I would have it pulled out, faster than you can kill some skeet with a Hose Of Death."

Xi nodded her head in understanding. She had been the head of the long-range supply runs for a few years. This meant that she had to have very good operational knowledge of the ships that the Navy needed her department to support. She had been thinking about the ship class called Dictator, and it had not rung a bell ever since they had been down in the space port. "Your right. It would be hard to support a one-off design, much less one that is less capable than what we already have access to. Now how did the cleaning up go for the rest of the drop port?"

Mann did a half shrug. "We took images of everything, but we were more worried about getting it out of there instead of inventorying it. I was surprised at the amount of warship supplies that had been left behind. I think a lot of it is old, but a navel laser is still a naval laser and a cannon trunnion is still a cannon trunnion. Does it really matter when it was made and by whom?"

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It was a quiet night around the many dropships, and patrolling battlemechs. The negotiation started up again not long after the first meal of the next day. Mike came in refreshed and with pages and pages of notes in his file folders. Xi was listed as the seller, Copeland Supply Salvage and Resale listed as the finder of this port castle. Mann even handed over a report about the reaction gears and mechanisms on the "roof'. The emergency hatches were noted and identified on what ones would work and the ones that had not. With the use of the pair of Colonials Heavy lifters to recover the damaged dropships. They had "cold" launched the dropships out of the pits and the support teams had not marked the large hatches, except in a way that showed that someone had tried to open them. Still, it was information that MMM would find very useful. They just would not know how or why it had been gathered.

That report from Colonel Man had gone over better than Xi had hoped it would. It had shown that there was a way to get heavy support into and out of the space port, without having to remove the mountain top cover the Corps of Engineers had made. After a price had been settled on, and then some legal coverage was addressed, more compensation addressed, and then a bunch of "What ifs" were pitched back and forth. Then a final number was written down. It was an impressive number, and one that Mike was freaking out over. He would have really freaked out to know that almost all of that money was going to be pumped right back into the company over the next few months. It would be in the form of buying stocks in that company. The SLDF/Clan Wolverine and Colonials were going to own a major block of MMM in the next few months.

In return for Mann and her people staying on site, with their armed dropships and mechs with them. They were "paid" on a by day rate, until they could be relieved. It was not nearly what a similarly sized mercenary unit would have pulled down, but Mann and Xi had not told the MMM man how much firepower she had on call. Still, they now had a secondary contract that was more than enough to have a bonus for everyone and great food, while they waited to be relieved by some locals. MMM would also take care of any issues with the locals on Cate's Hold or in the MC in general reference this find.

McDonogh was not going to risk this area by even temporarily hiring local militia or mercenary units to look after it. Besides if someone did attack, and they pushed Mann's people off the site? Mike might have been able to get some of his company's money back. The next jumpship leaving this system was scheduled to do so in four days. There had not been an operational HPG system on this planet in the last few hundred years. Mike did not think that it would be long before ComStar would be putting at least a Class B HPG station on this planet. He had no idea how long this was going to be a secret. But it only needed to last long enough, for him to get enough reinforcements to arrive. It was a foot race, and the only advantage he had? It was that someone, a long time ago, had put into place a plan for if a major discovery on Cate's Hold did turn up.

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On Dunianshire, the local MMM office started working on finding those forces to get them to Cate's Hold at the first message. Thanks to Mike's effort on site at Cate's Hold. They had an idea on how big an area they were going to need to protect from an attack from anyone up to a major house lord. It was only thanks to the improved weapons coming out of that factory every few hours. That MMM's contract people were able to "find" a mixed mech battalion willing to take on an "extra" short term contract for the right terms.

This small political power on the edge of the Inner Sphere now had a higher percentage of upgraded weapons, than the CC and the FWL could claim. The MC was even slowly catching up on the numbers that the DC and FedCom could claim in their most classified documents. This meant that more and more mercenary units or someone connected with them were "stopping" by in their travels near the MC, when they could get the "free" time just to look around or maybe take a little vacation.

That Mech Battalion would be joined by a heavy weight armored company sized unit, which had worked with MMM before. The local Dunianshire Militia was "donating" a full regiment of infantry if it was needed. It was going to take a few weeks to get that last unit called up for a trip going off planet. MMM was on the hook to pay for transportation for all of those units. All of this information was sent to the main office along with a note, which said they were waiting for another update to come in. There were a lot of sweating and sleep deprived people on a few different planets while they waited to get an update.

On Canopus IV, they were making long term plans and laying the groundwork for possible needed reinforcements to be sent out to the newest addition to MMM. When word reached Dunianshire that a deal had been made, the mercenary Union and Condor lifted off three hours later. It was going for the jumpship, which had just been rehired to go back to Cate's Hold ASAP. By the time the Mech unit was lifting off, the recall orders were still going out to the heavy rated armored company. The Tank Company would be ready to go on the next dropship that was opened for a short notice renting contract. At the same time the notice was sent to the militia infantry regiment commander that he was going on a long deployment off planet.

By the end of the day. A priority HPG message was sent to Canopus. This message held a lot more detail, than the first one had been able to hold. After the home office got over the sticker shock of the cost for the port castle. They also asked for some help from the MC military. MMM also sent a message to Outreach, which said they needed some more support out on this edge of space. It would take months to get this new mercenary outfit. But when you offer a lance of upgraded mechs, as a signing bonus for the right unit to come for a security contract for a year with a second lance as possibly available as a retention bonus. They even would be able to buy weapons right from the MMM factory, if they had any extra money to do so. That kind of offer had units beating down the MC Representative's door in the Hiring Hall. The Wolf Dragoons even helped with setting up transportation for that newly hired mixed force Regiment…for a fee.

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Xi and Mann would not leave this system until the militia Infantry unit was able to redeploy to this planet. Mike had done all of the leg work in dealing with the local government. It had taken some hard work to let them know that MMM was about to put a major dropship repair base on the planet of Cate's Hold, and it needed to stay quiet. It would be with the heavy tank unit that had to self-deploy from the civilian space port to the new site, for the rumors to start to flow. That was the first hint for most of the locals on this planet to know that something big was up. The mech part of the unit had landed their ships not far from Mann's and Fallstaff's mech carriers. The Infantry unit had been able to try out the emergency hatches with an Excalibur class ship making the landing some weeks later. It had worked, but it had taxed the pilot's skills and the ground team's sanity. That would be the main way to enter the base for the next six months.

The area of the once hidden drop port would be a hot bed of attacks by mostly battalion mech sized units, but also some small units down to SF teams for the next few years would give it a go. Most of the attackers were pirates or lostech prospectors looking to take what others had found for themselves. Thanks to the hidden nature of the drop port. The attackers have very little clue to the number of defenders or where they might be. The defending mercenary units were able to rake up the salvage from those attacks. All of the operations for repairing of the defender's weapons and defense turrets was being run out of the rapidly repaired Command Dictator for the first year.

The first dropship that would come in the Cate's Hold base for repair would be a Mule class ship MMM used to carry repair teams and equipment to that base. This one repaired dropship would start the long climb of repaying the cost of the facility. The base would at first only be able to repair ships, that had parts shipped in from out system.

That would slowly start to change and the first "new" built ship, a Fortress class, which would be launched into space by the end of the first full year of operations. Every part used in that new dropship had been made by MMM on either Dunianshire or Canopus and shipped to Cate's Hold. The second dropship launched a little later, but this one was a Lion class. And then every six months later one would be commissioned, a new Lion class ship would leave the planet to be delivered to its new owner. That building was taking up only four of the two dozen massive pits that the hidden drop port had access to at the start.

It would not take long for ten of the pits to be filled with ships needing repair from all over this part of space. The main drop port on the edge of the planet's capital was still the center of supply to the planet. But any spheroid needing repair would contact MMM, and soon money flowed into both the local economy and into MMM's coffers on other planets. Half the money going into the Coffers would go to paying down the debt owed on the new drop port to the paper holders at the highest levels of the MC government.

It was a major bit of debt that MMM was working under, but their stock prices were going through the roof despite this public information released not long after the deal was done. The public cost of this age scarred drop port was equal to having to buy almost a dozen Behemoth class dropships from a different company. The one good thing? It was at MMM did not have to pay the price all at once or any interest payments on the debt. Admiral Xi knew that MMM was going to invest a lot of money into the newest drop port on Cate's Hold, before they saw a dime of profit.

That was why now MMM would put 500 million C-Bills into the accounts of Copeland Supply Salvage and Resale company every six months. That would give MMM seven and half years to pay for the find that they had just bought. That was the minimum payment schedule that had been worked out on the White Skies. Xi, McDonogh and the rest of the Key staff of MMM knew that they were going to be paying off this debt as fast as they could. With all of the money coming in for heavy aerospace support from across the MC? It should not take that long to pay off the find of a century. That was including the cost of rebuilding the base and adding new production facilities on Cate's Hold, Dunianshire, Canopus and other planets.

The SLDF were not only getting a massive amount of money for the navy side of the base. They were able to pull a repairable Titan carrier, the two Confederates, a much-needed additional Lion, and of all things a cargo conversion Triumph. The main port castle and one small base might have been found, but there should be at least a dozen more "Small Class" independent bases scattered around the planet that had not been found. But would the SLiE return to this planet? Well, that was something that only the very top leadership of that group would be able to decide. For the near future, Cate's Hold and Jess's toy box was going to be a very popular place and the SLiE was not interested in being one of them. The SLiE were long term planners, so nothing was completely off the table.

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Notes.

Rear Admiral Xi's mission. Zephyr with 8 drop collars. Astral Queen with 4 drop collars. They left New Circe with a Monarch, 2 lions, 2 Cargo Kings, 1 Cargo Master, Elephant Tug, and a cargo hulk Mammoth.

Found Dropships: The Dictator (stays behind), Titan, 2 Confederates, Lion, cargo (smuggler) Triumph class dropship. They are attached to the outer hull on the two Colonial ships, but they are not accessible by those ships without a space suit.

Second major run to the Toy Box. Two thousand tons of repairable war machines, hulks, tools, and even three full and mostly complete mobile HQ trucks complete with mobile HPGs. They also found Cooling trucks, maintenance trucks and MASH trucks, a pair of large Buffalo like hover trucks, 4 Oppies, and 4 Galaport Ground Tug Elite Series 3 land trains. It also was the backup base for the SLDF Navy's 9th and 7th Fleet as well as the collection point for the confiscated materials needed to support the MC's combat warships and dropships. 14k tons of dropship, jumpship, warships repair parts recovered and 30k tons of other materials recovered.

Status of SLiE Fleet support at this time. The SLiE is stretched to the breaking point with the war against the Cylons. They are to the point of robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep their warships in operation, and they were running out of Peters and the number of Pauls were growing. They are just too small of a population base to support this many warships, aerospace fighter squadrons, Mech, tank, and new battle armor units. More to follow in the next chapter.

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