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.

62. Chapter 62 3 Jan 3051

Chapter 62

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

3 Jan 3051 The end of Mission Three

L1 New Circe.

Two dots flashed into existence at the null gravity point high over the blue and grey life-giving planet. One was small, at only 4,000 tons and it had a vaguely airplane shape to it. The other dot of energy that arrived over the planet was massive, and it was of a more complex design made of a cylinder with large bumps. It was a lot more massive than the smaller craft that should not have been able to move faster than the speed of light all on its own. That is if that craft was just based on Inner Sphere or even Clan levels of technology. Even the smallest inner stellar craft known by the Star League, the Bug Eye, was larger at over 6,000 tons.

If this pair of space craft had not sent a faster than light message to this planet before arriving? They both would have been blasted apart before they could identify themselves. The two ships still did not make a move towards the planet or towards the space station that shared the location called L-1. They just "hovered" at this location in space, quiet as a mouse. Well quiet as a civilian spaceship of the 31st Century can be without going to a war footing.

They would wait until both local Traffic Control office and the Planetary CAP that they could see, both had told them that they could move. The two craft did not launch any fighters or other small craft while they waited for clearance. It was not long, but it was a very careful dance that had to be done or it would risk the lives of those living on the planet. The few souls on any inter stellar craft were not a concern in this little math problem.

Robert looked over to both Jules and Jess as the three of them stood in the middle of the bridge of the SLS Styx. Things were about to get crazy and all three of them knew it like the back of their hands. They had not risked sending the…more sensitive data by TacFax or even on the HPG hidden deep within the modified Tramp class jumpship. Stuff like this had to be hand carried, if only to slow the information leaking down to a manageable level. There was no way that they could stop all of the leaking, not after the Styx had arrived back over New Circe. The best they or anyone else in the upper reaches of the leadership could do, would be to limit the speed of the leaking. At least they would not have to worry about the Cylons or the other clans finding out this information.

Robert brought himself mentally back into the command center and faced the only woman in their quartet of leaders. Now he was very thankful for the Colonial made artificial gravity plates this ship had been outfitted with. With a head nod towards the hatch the small group started heading in that direction. "Jess do you have all the reports and raw data ready, for a short notice trip somewhere with lots of brass asking questions. Questions that they would have the answers to, if they had read your slides instead of talking?"

Robert was trying to keep his voice light and calm, but not trying to make a joke about what their near future was going to hold at the same time. He had made sure that the key members of his staff and the support team had gotten as much sleep as they could over the last two days. Being this close to home had not helped him in this task. Everyone was ready to finally be home, even if they were going to be just missing a few of the major holidays for the SLiE. They had never expected to be home this early, so that was not a morale hit that it could have been. Now they would be able to take some time off and the cost for vacations would be at off season rates.

The artificial gravity plates were activated, so it was just like they were in an office building, just one sitting over 60,000 miles above the planet. Both of the key staff for this next part of the mission walked a little closer to the mission or fleet commander. Jules gave a chin point to Jess, and she started updating Robert as they walked by one of the small craft bays.

She had half a dozen small noteputers on her person for the last few days. "I have all of the reports from the command staff and all of the other departments compiled. I have the raw data from the HPG teams along with the processed data, that they were working on during this trip. I have three removable hard drive sets already in their carrying cases already to go. When the call comes in? I'm ready to go, sir."

She almost stumbled when she saw an odd look on the mission commander's face. She had no idea why Copeland let a small smile come to his lips at a time like this. What he had just noticed, was that she had been around the Inner Sphere locals long enough. That she was starting to use more and more contractions in her "normal" speech, even when mission said that they didn't have to.

Robert quickly got his game face back on, and the smile was gone almost as fast as it had appeared. He gave a small nod to Jess before turning to his second in command. "Jules, I hate to dump everything on you with the convoy. But we have to let certain people in command know about the inflammatory information that we have found out on this trip. I know that we put the right hints in the house keeping messages. Still, we might need to send a more direct update to get them focused after the holidays. I think that we need to up their alert level. They might not have gotten all of the holiday bug juice out of their brains, or something harder, or they are just plain still hungover."

Robert saw the little nod from the Styx commander in understanding. They made it back to the command center of the jumpship a few minutes later. Jules raised his voice to be heard over everyone in the room. "Communication, please send a message to SLDF Navy HQ. The message is from the Resupply Convoy Commander to Admiral Franks' office, and the code is Tango Seven. That is the whole message."

Robert gave a soft chuckle and looked over to his friend. "I wonder how long it's going to take that one to reach Admiral Franks' hands. At least we had the time on the way home to come up with some plans, which might be useful when this all hits the air impeller. This is all going to be hitting them flat footed, but at least it is after the holidays. I would have just hated to ruin anyone's holidays when we start telling them all of the stuff we found out."

Robert had been looking at the calendar, and only he knew that he had made sure that they did not return until the end of year holidays were closed. That it had been him that had "adjusted" the fuel gage, and he had done what needed to be done in secret to achieve his goal. All so that they would not ruin a planet's full of people's holidays. Now they needed to get things moving at a faster pace, it was kind of a catch 22.

To do that Jules had used a set of exceedingly rare codes, that Robert had given him. He had messaged ahead, but it didn't seem that the right people had read them, or more importantly understood them. The code of Tango was only given by a resupply convoy commander if Clan forces had been seen on their mission to the Inner Sphere or at some points in between. They had different levels of Tango codes, seven was the lowest level of contact of all of the Tango plans. Tango one would have stated that the convoy had been in direct contact with Clan forces, and the secret of the SLiE might have been released to outside forces. It was a good code group to use if you wanted to get someone's attention higher up in the food chain.

########

It took 2 hours and 23 minutes, after that message was sent towards the planet for the next set of encrypted orders to arrive on the jumpship. Robert was ordered to get his files and be ready to leave the SLS Styx, as soon as a "specialized" Raptor docked to the jumpship that was coming up to them. The Styx and the Hobgoblin ship's warning systems had picked up alerts being sent to The Station on the radio. From there, the many layers of defense units moving around the star systems went on alert. All of this happened a little under half an hour after the codes had been sent to get the ground command a little more active. Jules wondered, aloud, about why it had taken almost 2 more hours to alert them with new orders.

It was 2 hours 35 minutes after the priority message was sent up to the modified Tramp class jumpship, that a 50ton Colonial made Raptor was sealed to a personnel transfer hatch near the bridge of the jumpship. Robert and Jess quickly carried all of the objects that they thought they would need to the hatch of the multi-use craft, when the craft was first seen on the Jumpship's radar. And in less than five minutes, after the craft had opened the hatch into the long craft. The Raptor was separating again from the Styx with its limited number of passengers and small cargo.

The crew of the two person Raptor were wearing the uniform of the SLDF navy, but Robert could not tell if they were Wolverine, Colonial, Victorian or something else altogether. After a few seconds of thinking on that subject of who the crew might be reporting to. Robert had just pushed that line of thinking away, and he tried to get his mind back onto the tasks that he thought were going to be hitting him in the forehead in the next few minutes. If he was a betting man? He was going to be looking at a lot of brass in the face in under 60 minutes.

Robert had a good view for a few minutes of all the ships under and near his command, before the little craft went to full speed. The craft streaked away and then down towards the planet like the pilot had to hit the latrine after a set of X-lax brownies. Robert and Jess had been in enough of these new craft going from the surface to ship and back, to know that they were getting the fast lane going down. The craft was built with artificial gravity, but the nose tilted down, and the planet suddenly started to grow in size at a too rapid rate. Between the speed of descent and thinking about the upcoming meeting. Robert missed something going on around his beloved jumpship and the rest of the dropships under his command.

#########

The two new spaceships that had just arrived, and the now almost third full Raptor were not alone in the L1 point above the planet. It looked like a pair of Modified Titans, another modified Leopard CV, and about forty other small jump and not jump capable craft had filled this local area over the last few minutes. It seemed that the SLDF Navy wanted to put a physical curtain of combat ships between the Styx and the rest of the star system.

Robert was thinking that finally higher command was taking his coded transmission very seriously when he looked out the front of the Raptor. He could see two fighters acting as forward escort and a quick look over to the EO's system, had showed that they had four more contacts to the sides and two more sitting aft of them. Robert didn't say anything, but he wonders about having a full squadron as an escort. The other part of Robert's mind wonders if the cordon of firepower was to keep the crew and passengers on this Raptor where they were, and not to protect it from the rest of the people living in this system.

Eighteen hours later Robert and Jess were exiting a hover car, and they looked like they had been chewed on by a pack of wild dogs. They were outside of an awfully familiar warehouse and hotel combination building, at one corner of the Franklin Hallis Airbase. It was very late or very early in the morning, it was all depending on how you looked at the clock. But the sun was only due to come up in about two hours on this part of the planet. It was just too bad that it had not been for fun that they were coming in at this time.

Robert and Jess were one of the few people awake at this time of night, when they were dropped off at the secure living area used for the supply runs. None of the people that were awake on this installation, had ever been part of Robert's command in the past. The pair did not stop and chat with anyone as they passed between the car and the front desk of the hotel part of the building. They just got the keys to their rooms from the desk clerk with glassed over eyes, and they went their separate ways with barely a wave of their hands to each other. They had not even talked to the faces that should have been familiar to them. They were not being rude; they were just that tired both physically and mentally.

#######

Robert was tired, but he looked out one of the rooms large windows that overlooked "The Handling Area" that stretched out before him. He had gotten some of a second wind as soon as the hotel room door had closed behind him. He knew it would not last for long, but he also knew that he would not be able to get any sleep until it had run its course.

While Robert and Jess had been in meetings with enough brass that the mass should have been enough to form another star? The rest of his command had been busy as one-armed wallpaper hangers. He could see the Hobgoblin far off to one side of his field of view, and the White Rabbit was all the way on the other side of his field of view. Its hull was just visible at the edge of the window frame if he looked hard enough. Both were in the area that they had used to park and unload the dropships, from the other resupply missions. The only hands working in the unloading, inventorying, and guarding in this area were people that would not take an order from him until higher command cleared him for "action". Action meaning that he had been accepted back onto the roles as a defender of this planet. It was all part of the rules that had been worked out over all of the lessons learned from the supply runs in the past.

Dead in the center of the handling area, was the 52,000ton Mammoth class dropship with the name Hercules painted in yellow on her battered hull. The name was in letters that were many meters tall and two meters wide. There also were half a dozen small craft class cargo carriers in the area stretching from Robert's left and right. While Robert was watching the organized chaos? He could see another pair of small craft, maybe landing boats, which were coming into land on the few open pads he could see from his window. He had no idea where they might have come from, or what they might have carried. He had been given verbal orders from some very high ranked people, which said he was not to go anywhere until they said so. And if he talked to anyone about what the briefing, he had given the leadership was about, he might find himself on a cold moon waiting for his discharge papers for the next few decades.

Robert lets the drapes fall and block the outside world from his room. It was a very nice room, and a lot larger than the one he had access to while on this mission. He walks around checking out the place now that his mind is not feeling like so much mashed potatoes. He could tell that this place had undergone a makeover since his last visit to this building. It was just too bad that he thought it only made the place feel more like a cheap hotel and not a Resort that it was supposed to be. Still, the updates had their uses. Robert had checked his electronic messages on the built-in computer after taking a shower. He had found half a dozen of them were waiting for him to address the issues they contained. In other words, it was just another day that ended in Y.

He had first opened the two that were the oldest, and both of them were from Jules. In those few lines of messages on the digital display. He had been told that the rest of the crew had been able to start landing the dropships. This had started a couple of hours after he and Jess had departed for their meetings. Just like on the last mission. The crew on the modified jumpship had been ordered to pack their personal bags and leave the Styx to a caretaker crew. It would be up to that new crew to inventory and ship down to the planet any "excess" supplies and parts, that the SLS Styx might have on hand. Jules thought that the caretaker crew also would be checking to make sure that nothing had been smuggled into this system by the crew either intentionally or unintentionally. It never had been said out loud, in public, or in any meeting that they had been in. But it made sense to the two long time spacers in the top spots of the supply run.

The next message he opened was from the head of the Stevedores on this base, and she had attached the first of the inventory lists. It was a living document, and it was probably outdated two hours after it had been sent to him, much less by now. Still, the inventory list had its uses for Robert, and it had been one of the things that he had suggested as a change after the first return from the Inner Sphere. What drew Robert's eye was that the first items to come off of the ships and at the top of the list he opened.

It had happened that not long before the jumpship's crew were allowed to land anyone, that the two complete orbital factories had been removed from the oversized cargo doors on the Hercules while in space. Robert knew that they were near the pair of the largest doors on the Hercules, just so that they could be easily removed on their return to New Circe. They also were so large that they could not be unloaded on the planet's surface, at least not without a lot of pre-planning and extra work. That had been the last work that "his" people had been allowed to do, that had any connection with the cargo they had picked up on this run.

Now she was on the ground and unloading truck after truck filled of smaller material, which was being carried into the massive warehouse off to one side of the landing area. Robert had to smile, when he reads the note that the head of the Stevedores office had passed along to him. It had been in reference to the two complete factory Satellites and the tooling that was almost enough to put together the guts of a third into operation. It would seem that this information had caused some surprise and disbelief when it was brought up to mid-level leaders of The Station.

Robert had been asked to find one, that is if it was possible to pull that rabbit out of his hat. To have two of those hard to find items show up? That would have been huge on a level that had not been reached since the last multiyear supply run to the Inner Sphere. Even then, they had not been able to find someone willing to sell one of those factories on any of the runs. So far, no one had been able to find out the last time that something like them had been recovered on a supply run. It now was the subject of a large betting pool in her office on how rare this recovery was.

Then to be told that they had all of the important parts, that could be used as spares or maybe to be used to set up a whole new factory planet side? That had caused the BS flag to be thrown each time it was kicked up to the next level, and then proving of the facts had to start the process all over again.

Robert was thinking that those additional machines would be put into operation as a new ground base production facility. That was not what he had wanted, but he did not have enough gold on his hat to push too hard for his idea. After those two factories satellites and the tooling was turned over to someone under Rear Admiral Xi's office. It was all out of his hands, and all he could do was spit ball ideas while he drank his beer and tried to find someone to put a bug in their ear. All without writing a check his butt could not cash.

#######

If the small craft were not coming from the Mammoth, then they should have been coming from the 100,000ton Behemoth called Big Kahuna in the skies over his head. Then again, they could have been coming from the Station or one of the spaceships in near orbit. The Big Kahuna was in a lot better shape, than the first Behemoth class dropship that his command had brought back to New Circe. But that did not mean, that it was in great shape, or even good shape, or even in the right shape to have a permanent crew assigned to her so soon after arriving over New Circe.

Robert already had known this, and he had reported that her engines were in a bad need of a complete and total overhaul. The Styx's ships inspector and head engineer had said that they could barely make a tenth of a g thrust, before red lights started showing up. Still doing that one test had caused so many "secondary issues", that they had not tried it again. In fact, every engineering officer and enlisted crew on the Styx and the other dropships had filed formal letters. That they would declare a trial of grievance, if anyone ordered them to try such a stunt again, before the ship had been in a repair slip on The Station.

She also could barely hold a steady atmosphere on all of her decks, but still it was not pleasant to breathe without a scented rag of some kind near your nose. It was said that the smell could not even be washed off the outer layer of the Colonial made space suits, not even with the on-board biohazard decon cleaners carried on the other ships. And the less that was said about the sanitation situation on that massive ship, the better, it was just amazingly bad. The visiting crews had just held "it" or they used the supplied "diapers" in their space suits, if the call of nature hit them. Some who had to use that option still said that their suits smelled better after "the event", than what that ship's heads would have forced them to endure. It was said that it was like a lone port a potty at an all-week music event for tens of thousands of ticket holders. It was beyond burning your nose hairs. It was to the level of burning your eyes and giving you the not so dry heaves.

Five of the twenty small craft bays were declared unsafe, even after months of work being done by the engineering crews from the Styx and Hercules. They were not safe to be in, not without being in a full rated armored space suit anyway. When Robert had bought the Big Kahuna, he had turned over all of the small craft the ship had carried back to the owner. This helped him to get a better deal on the sales price from the MC government's front company.

After all New Circe had plenty of Raptors and other small craft that were available to help in moving cargo. Having almost two dozen more small cargo lifters, which had seen over a hundred years of hard use, was not needed much less wanted by the SLDF Navy. In fact, they would be a waste of both money and cargo space on the huge dropship. The engines on those craft might have been reused, but that was not a guarantee. And those small craft might have been enough to draw a pirate attack when the dropship had been floating without a crew or escorts in Duke Terry's controlled system. All of the outer hatches had been left opened from the time it had been dropped off in Duke Terry's system, and all damaged bays stayed that way until they had arrived over New Circe. The idea was that it would make the huge dropship look like a hulk and not worth the effort to attack.

The Big Kahuna, like other dropships of her class, were children of vacuum. They were built and spent their entire lives in space unless they had a date with disaster. There massive engines were larger than the size of a fully loaded Overlord class dropship, but they could not even provide enough thrust to leave the surface of the average planet or good-sized moon. Even their armored hulls were not strong enough to handle the passage through even a thin atmosphere at any speed or cross wind. There was only one way that they could get their 75,000 tons of cargo to the planet's surface?

That was where the twenty small craft that the massive dropship carried had come into the picture. Each of those small craft would be bringing down between thirty and a hundred tons of cargo on each trip down to a planet, or better yet, if they only had to stop at a space station. If a planet had a large enough economy to need to be supplied by one of these beasts? They also would have additional small craft available to speed up the unloading of the cargo, after all hydrogen was ridiculously cheap near a planet. On top of that, there were very few planets that a dropship of this class would be fully emptied or even fully filled by. The rule of thumb, from even before the fall of the Star League, about interstellar shipping, was that it would take an average planet per 15,000 tons of moved cargo on a dropship. After the fall of that government body and the close of the 2nd SW? The numbers had fallen to about an average planet per 7,000 tons of cargo going to a new star.

That same philosophy was true at New Circe, for the most part, if you were looking at a major or capital world from before the 1st SW. This one planet had more small craft than any four planets in the Inner Sphere or Clan home planets combined. With the coming of the Colonials a few years ago, this changed one more time. Now the number of small crafts that can lift cargo from a planet to orbit or even going all the way out to the outer reach of the star system had over doubled in number. At the rate it was going, even with those additional small cargo carrying craft? It was going to take a long time to bring down the contents of a dropship that was only about two thirds full of cargo.

######

Robert went back to the window and worked the issue about how to get all of that cargo down to the planet's surface that was both safe and quick. When Robert left the window one more time, the sun was still not ready to rise over that part of the planet. He was still thinking about all of the cargo runs those small craft would have to do, going first down and up the planet's gravity well to empty both the Big Kahuna and the Styx with her over 2,000 tons of cargo.

Even with the Colonial artificial gravity plating? It was going to cost more than it should to get the job done. If they had only wavered the SOP for a returning supply run to allow the cargo to be sent to the "Station", instead of down to the planet's surface first. That would have been a better use of time, energy, fuel, and wear and tear on all of those cargo small craft. Then they could use the larger cargo moving capabilities of some of the Colonial ships to bring down the cargo to the planet's surface. That had been above his pay grade, even if he had not been out of touch in the power meeting for the last eighteen hours. Now with this worked out, his brain was ready to talk to his pillow.

7 Jan 3051 The end of Mission Three

Behemoth class dropship Big Kahuna

L1 New Circe.

Spacer Mary Eastman was 17 years old, and this was her "first" space mission. She still was not even out of high school, yet. That would not happen until May of this year. This little fact had not stopped her from asking for "early assignments" as soon as she legally could. So, every holiday and school break for the last 3 years. She had been spending it getting ready for her "Draft" job after graduation. When you asked, and you tested high enough? You can get to choose from a list of jobs that need filling in the SLDF. It also helped in your selection for officer training, after you had spent the required time in the enlisted ranks.

Now Mary had the space bug from an early age, but she was not good enough to be selected to be a pilot of aero fighters and she was not thrilled to pilot a small craft. So, she had picked the career path that would place her as crewmember on Dropships and Warships when she graduated. She had dreams of riding one of the larger and new combat dropships and blasting a Cylon Basestar. Or being on the command deck while acting as counter Raider escort to the SLiE flagship as it rides into battle against the Cylons. All of that had sounded GREAT! Then she had spent time in space and the polish had started to wear a little thin on her morale. She still wanted to be in space, but the entertainment shows had not been 100 percent accurate on what "life' was like in space.

Take her current mission as a point of reference. Commodore Copelands mission returned a few days ago, much to the surprise of everyone on the planet. He was many months early, and he was carrying a full load of cargo and then some. The "normal" dropships on this mission had already been send dirt side, but that had left the huge Behemoth class dropship he had brought along floating in space. They had at first tried to use its few working small craft bays to start taking cargo down the gravity well in small bites. But after so many years of working with Colonials, this was not deemed time efficient when the scope and scale of the task made it past the forebrain.

The caretaker crew of the modified Tramp had "ejected' the well named Big Kahuna, and they had left it free floating in space at the very far edge of the L-1 point. Four small craft, the oldest in the SliE and in need of the most maintenance, were assigned to this mission. After all, why would you risk burning out newly made engines, if you didn't have to. This mixed bag of designs had been attached to the top of the outer hull of the dropship.

And now they were slowly, very, very frakking slowly moving the massive dropship towards the Station sitting on the opposite side of their current location at the L1. From there, it would be attached to the main orbital support base for the SLiE. Then the many of the cargo doors, small craft bay doors, and the aft cargo transfer point all would be directly mated to the more massive construct called "The Station" for offloading.

At first, she had been so excited to be picked to work in directly supporting a resupply mission. That she would have paid someone to be able to work on this mission, was a closely held secret. Now she was not so thrilled. After the first shift on the Big Kahuna, her roommate had asked her to leave her space suit in the cargo bay airlock. It had gotten only worse from that point, and now she thinks that she can smell the dropship threw the death pressure rated suit. She knows that this is impossible, but her nose was telling her something different.

The only good news had been when the attached small craft had fired up their engines and they had started moving the massive dropship all the way to the other side of the L1 point. Besides adding a little gravity while the duty crew was on shift on the Big Kahuna. Also, if they were moving? Then they were that much closer until she could burn this suit. Then she could start working on regrowing the hair in her nose and using enough scented soaps, lotions, and shampoos to drown a volcano.

Still one of the good things, was that this was listed as hardship duty for the working crew. And now she totally understood why, and it was not because you had to do 8-hour shifts stuck in your space suits. All while you were in Zero G or at best micro g. At least she was strapped into a command chair for this shift. She only had to not think about, that the chair she was using was welded to the deck was about ten times older than she was. She also tried not to think about the technology that had been used to affix that old chair to the equally old ship's deck. She had images of cavemen banging rocks to get a spark to heat the metal.

In the SLDF Navy, the more hours you had on your log as "hardship duty". Then the faster your next promotion would come along. There also were some other perks about hardship duty, like double pay, a bump on the housing list, and more leave time. The leave time was not so much of a use to her, at least while she was still in high school. But the boredom was starting to get… well boring. Now that they were moving, each deck on the dropship had to have a two person team stationed on it to keep an eye on things.

#####

Mary and Jacob were in the massive area simply called Cargo Bay 2 on the Big Kahuna. All they had to do was keep an eye on the half-filled cargo room, the areas diagnostic systems, the data feed coming from the nearest attached small craft and wait for something to go wrong. Oh, and try to block out the smell that seemed to be leaking threw your space suit as you waited for the chair you were sitting in to break free from the deck.

Mary had a little trick that she picked up to help pass the time and stay awake. It had come from one of her favorite uncles when he had found out that she was going to be volunteering for early service. He had told her that whenever she needed to stay awake on guard duty, and that it would happen at some point during a long shift. That she should play a game of "what if this happened while on duty, then what do I do about it.".

That sage advice had proven to be very helpful in Mary's limited time in the military. She had gone one step further with the base idea, and that she would write down all of those what ifs and what to do to "fix" them. You would be surprised how many of these ideas that would come up in just one long duty shift. Still, she tried to make sure that she came up with at least one new "What if", at the bottom and top of each hour of her duty shift. She had just finished writing down one of those What ifs'. This one was in reference to her crewmates turning into something like brain eating zombies. And that was when the alarm went off in the speaker mounted in her helmet and the lights in the bay started flashing red of an alert.

Her head went snake quick to look at the data feeds coming from one of the attached small craft, that was both housing unit and engine to move the huge dropship. Her blood went cold at first, as she saw what her training had said was an up dated Type 4 Cylon Heavy Raider. She had no idea how it got into this system without being blown out of space, but it was very close to the dropship she was riding in. Just as quickly as her mind noted that this was a Cylon small craft, that she realized that this was What If: Number 214.

Without her forebrain getting in the way of her action. Mary's hand reacted to what she had thought up to counter What if: Number 214. Before Jacob had gotten over the fact that an armed Cylon warcraft was so close to what was a toothless spaceship. The atmosphere leak alarms were added to the assault on his senses. He looked up just in time to see what happened, but not soon enough to even try to understand what had happened or even how to stop it. About all he could do was hold on just a little tighter to the console and hope that his safety straps held.

As soon as Mary's hand had hit the emergency fire button that would "smother" a fire in this bay, she looked up. "Only" four of the space access points in this bay were listed as fully working according to her last briefing. It turned out to be overly optimistic on someone's part. Only one of the small craft bay doors opened so that it could vent a fire, which was not there into space. All of the air from this bay was moving by fast enough, for a shipping container to overcome its mass and to be sucked out the nearest open bay door. The dropship was in almost zero g and the straps holding this cargo container down had not been checked after they had tried to shift the cargo planet side. This was the type of mistake that you would get with a green crew. It was also why you got safety briefings before each weekend.

The shipping container was almost as old as the Big Kahuna, and while it was good enough to protect its contents from death pressure. Well as long as it was not alive when it was loaded into this metal box. It mainly was there to help with loading, storage, unloading, and if it was exposed to the cold of space for a few days. It was not rated to withstand weapons fire, or things like that. It had a set of design needs. And it had been able to do those jobs for many, many years, maybe even a few years to many. But it was not designed for what was about to happen, even when it was new and not weather beaten.

The container looked a lot like what would have been seen on the roads, trains, and ships back on Earth in the 21st century. It slides forward and just misses being sucked out into space. Its right side hits the inner hatch knee knocker leading into the small craft bays. The force of the impact caused the long shipping container to turn and to twist at the same time. The force of the impact and the twisting turned the long metal box with the thin metal walls into confetti. The box ripped open and dumped its load of a dozen cargo pallets, parts of shipping container, and a huge load of insulation into space propelled by a lot of moving air going out one opening.

Two of those cargo pallets hung up just for a few seconds on the edge of the hatch leading into death pressure. This was just long enough for the thin fabric keeping the pallet together to rip. Then those pallets spilled their contents, which was listed as being kitchen appliances, into a growing cloud being left behind the dropship moving at many meters per second.

When the mini tornado had stop howling in their ears, Jacob turned and looked at the kid next to him. "Mary! What in the Frakk did you just do?"

Mary just gave the second-year spacer a blank look, and then she looked back down at the display. She needed to see if the way that she had come up with to counter What if: Number 214 worked as well in real life, as it had in her mind and what her shorthand math had said it would. Yes, she had spent some time thinking about Number 214.

Cylon Heavy Raider

New Circe system on the edge of the L1 point.

Heavy Raider 234512M was one of the newest Heavy Raiders deployed from one of the larger ships that were under the Cylon Empire's flag. Besides losing all of its 30mm KEW cannons for more missiles and armor plate. The M stood for "modified", in that the biomatter that ran this craft had been adjusted. At the start of this new war with the humans. It had been said that Raiders and Heavy Raiders came "out of the tank" about dog or dagget smart. After some time in combat, they would learn and become more dangerous to both their human prey and to the Number Ones.

By the time that Heavy Raider 234512M had made it this far from where this war had started. It was more of a programed actions and reactions machine with "only" the hunting instincts left in the Biomatter. Heavy Raider 234512M knew that it was looking for humans, and that "he" was to find out what it could. All before reporting back to "the home" fleet that had launched it. It had started out on this run with 5 others, but they had been diverted. This diversion of assets was for a range of reasons that ranged from mechanical failure to some whim of a human form Cylon. But most of the time that whim was not passed on to the Heavy Raider, or to the other human forms for that matter. Right hand meets left hand….kind of.

This star was just one on a list that the Heavy Raider was supposed to check for the disease called man. It had no idea of why it was hunting for them in a nebula for the last few months. It only knew that it had to do another few jumps. Before it would "be allowed" to return home for fuel to run its engines, and the biomatter that governed if not directed the craft. This nebula had another dozen stars that had not been checked by the Cylons. At least those were the ones that could be detected by the Cylon's powerful computers.

Heavy Raider 234512M had no idea how rare it was to find evidence of a planet in a nebula like this one. That had not stopped the Cylon craft for aiming for what was in the habitable zone, that was reading as a planet. It was only by luck that it had jumped into the L1 point near the small warship sized egg. One of the things that had been programed in this Heavy Raider was that the craft was to be as passive as possible to keep hidden from humans while it was on scouting missions. Then again it was to kill any human that it found while scouting, if it was an easy target.

The computer code was in conflict now that it was picking up humans for the "easy target" side code to be called up and activated. The odd moving metal that was only a few kilometers off its nose was huge, but it was very under powered with what looked like 4 small fusion rockets attached to its side. It had no idea about the huge engines this craft held, because they currently were facing away from the Heavy Raider. To say that the warbook loaded onto the Heavy Raider about dropships from the Inner Sphere was thin, would be one of the more gross understatements on the year.

The craft worked out that the huge slow-moving object was heading towards another but much larger object that was glowing in the RF bands like it was a dark sun. Still the coding conflicts were causing an issue for the Cylon craft. Heavy Raider 234512M held over a dozen missiles that should have no problem cracking open this dropship like the egg it so looked like. Instead, it adjusted course and used the slow-moving craft as a radar shield to get closer to whatever was so bright in the RF bands. It was very happy with this plan that it had come up with. One that seemed to make the coding conflict seem less of an issue, for the time being.

All of this thinking "only" took 9 seconds of time in the real world. After that handful of seconds, it had started soaking up all of the data that it could threw its passive systems. With all of the Bloat Code that had been added to his kind, after the start of this new war. And the handcuffs that had been added to the biomatter that made up the control system for this craft. It was overloaded and a lot more restrictive in actions, than a heavy raider that had been used at the start of this war. That meant that the Biomatter had to prioritize its processing capabilities. With the object it was following not deemed a threat, it was looking everywhere else but what was right in front of it.

The built-in proximity systems detected something coming towards Heavy Raider 234512M, but it was not a warcraft and it was not radiating "Terran" tech radar or Colonial type DRADIS. So, the over loaded biomatter did not try to avoid it. Besides, it might have been moving fast but it was small. So, what harm could a hit cause?

The demon murphy laughed.

#######

The Big Kahuna had been only moving at 1000 meters per second, and Heavy Raider 234512M was "only" moving a little faster than that. But the "boost" the "ejection" had given to the items cast out of the hull crossed a critical point when they crossed paths. A system that had been a throwback to the Cylon war of Independent screamed into the mind of Heavy Raider 234512M. Heavy Raider 234512M had just enough time to "look" out of its forward mounted eyes to see something impact the hull projection that held the biomatter of Heavy Raider 234512M.

To free up room for some cargo and for a backup control system for the human forms to use on the Heavy Raider's core design. The Cylons had a fixed what looked like a huge Centurion head onto the right side of the sloped bow of the Heavy Raiders. There had been some up armoring of this area of its hull over the last few years. But there was only so much that could be done, and it still be useful for the biomatter and the missions the human forms wanted it to handle. All of that armoring had been near the "chin", along the sides of the head, and along the ridge that connected the back of the "head" to the main body of the Heavy Raider. The rest of the armor mass had been added to the front, top, back and sides of the hull in that order of importance.

The double sided "farm style apron" porcelain sink was very heavy, at almost a ton of mass, not counting the protective shipping cover on the sides and bottom. But the porcelain part of the porcelain sink had not shown up well on passive scans or even active, if Heavy Raider 234512M had been using them in the first place. That was the last thing the heavy raider "saw with its own eyes". Then some of the heat from the impact caused the porcelain sink to flow just a little to bend, and it wrapped or covered the exposed face of the heavy raider. It was like a wet towel had been slapped into the face of the biomatter command center of the heavy raider. Only this happened at a speed that could have killed any unprotected lifeform.

That impact was not enough to "kill" the heavy raider. But it was enough of a distraction that the next part could happen. While the biomatter commander of the heavy raider was distracted, by getting hit in the face by a sink. The first of the objects were allowed to close in on the heavy raider. Then in quick succession a huge double oven hit the nose of the Cylon craft at the seam between two added armor plates. The hit peeled away those two plates like a banana. It was soon followed by more of the broken pallet of kitchen appliances as they started to sand blast the craft of its armored outer skin. It only took a few hits made by ovens, sinks, refrigerators, and other appliances to knock the Cylon craft off course.

Over 20 tons of kitchen appliances were coming towards the distress Cylon craft in one solid mass. When the biomatter jerked to one side "in pain", it unknowingly brought itself right into the path of a whole shipping pallet of ovens. The multi ton mass of metal and ceramic slammed into the bottom of the craft as one huge mass. That was what cracked the hull and opened the cockpit from below to death pressure. It only took a blink of an eye for the biomatter to die, but that can be a long time for something like a Cylon.

The biomatter died before it had really known what was going on. Only a small part of all of the data recovered by Heavy Raider 234512M was sent out to its "recovery ship". Even a Cylon could only do so much in a blink of an eye, much less one that had just been so overloaded with information and running its systems in the first place. When Heavy Raider 234512M had been about to die it did a data dump, just like it was programed to do. Only it was just starting to do those housekeeping tasks, when it "finally died", and it could not complete the job.

There had not been a rhyme or reason for the files that were sent back to a larger Cylon ship. The humans had just lucked out again, or maybe it was the Nebula, or something else effecting this Cylon's function. What really helped the humans, was that most of the data, that was recovered was from the earliest parts of Heavy Raider 234512M's current scouting mission. Very little would be passed along about why and where it had died to its human form masters.

Franklin Hallis Airbase.

New Circe.

Robert was in the warehouse apartment/hotel/resort room for two full days after the planet wide alert had been called, and then strangely reversed a few hours later. Strangely the SLiE military had not stood down from that alert. The current news said that it had been a false alarm caused by a bad computer software update. Still, in that opened time. He had not been called into for any more debriefs, asked any questions, and it seemed like the people that would talk to him. All were very stressed out for a list of reasons they gave when Robert asked. Most of the replies had not struck him as being even mostly true. He was just lucky that he had a lot of things that could take up those now empty hours of the day and night. He took the time to check out a lot of the comings and goings of the companies that he had invested in, had been one of those diversions.

Robert and the now growing number of other ship's crews in the apartments also were catching up on personal messages. There was not much for them to do as the cargo was off loaded and then inventoried by a different set of crews, all not far from where the old hands were twiddling their thumbs and watching. It was on the late evening of the third day, that Robert received a message on his official email account. It had seemed to hint, that things might be moving forward again, at least as normal as it got immediately post supply run.

The message had said that a car would pick him up at 8pm for an important meeting, and that he was to dress accordingly for this level of a meeting. That was it! The electronic mail had a whole three lines in the message, and that was it. He did not even know who he was having a meeting with, much less what the meeting was going to be about. Those would make it very difficult to know what dress accordingly might mean. He didn't receive a reply when he asked those questions by the time that he was required to meet the car.

Robert wonders if it had anything to do with his mission, not one word being given to the public yet about what his crew had found. The only "news" was that the whole SLDF Navy and Ground forces were on high alert for the last few days even before the "false alarm". It was now in widespread reporting, that even the Colonials also were on high alert. There even were rumors that they were bringing out some of the old MK V Vipers from their training mission rolls to increase the numbers of combat craft on active duty.

They had not even been able to fit those older Vipers with energy weapons. They just lost to much speed hauling the extra mass of a laser, and they could not divert the power to fire those directed energy weapons past one or two trigger pulls every 15 minutes. These older Marks of Vipers were just like they had been when they had fought and lost against the Cylons in this new war. Robert would say that all of that was pointing as not being a good sign. Still, it must not be too bad, or the Colonials would have pulled out the MK IIs and returned them to service. After all they had done that before when they were up against the wall, and by now that Mark of Viper had something of a cult following.

#########

Robert was surprised that Jess was not on the steps fixed to the front of the building waiting with him at the appointed time to meet his ride to somewhere with someone. At the time he had been told in the short message, a hover car came to the building within 30 seconds. He boarded the device as soon as it stopped, the only delay had been for the identification check. This was done by putting his id on a flat glass scanner near the back side hatch of the hover car. With the required check done on the sole passenger. The door hatches closed and sealed the passenger compartment from the rest of the world with a fluid and silent grace.

Very quickly Robert was taken deep into the City of McEvedy. It was only a few dozen miles away from this part of the huge military base as the crow flies, but it was longer having to stick to the ground road network. Copeland did not have any idea where he was going, for most of the trip, even with his rapped attention looking out of the tented windows. He used the long transit time to play a mental game with himself, of who would want to talk to him this late tonight.

When he passed a certain building, without stopping? He would mark that person off his mental list of possible conductors for his meeting tonight. As it turned out? It was not anyone on his mental list, which he was going to be having a meeting with. He found this out when the car pulled into the massive building, which was the main SLDF Defense Force Head Quarters building. He knew that there were very few people that would be setting up or taking a meeting at this time of night.

Robert was escorted to the very top occupied floor, after it seemed like he had been as good as strip searched and abused by a troop of mountain gorillas every 5th floor. In this building? The higher the floor, the higher the rank of the person would need to be to have an office. Robert and this round of escorts stopped on the very top occupied floor in the building. The only items above their heads were the support machines for the building, communication devices to send or receive communications to the planet and beyond, landing pads for a half dozen VTOLs, and many weapons emplacements to defend the local area in case of an attack.

When Robert was brought into the corner office suite, he ran into a person he had no problem recognizing. Jules was seated in a very expensive looking chair, in an office Robert had never been in before in his life. The two friends greeted each other warmly, as the door shut behind him. It had only been then, that Robert remembered that he had not seen his longtime friend after first leaving the jumpship.

The limit of their contact had been digital messages that just seemed to miss each other in real time. Only now he realized that this separation had been very much intentional by some very powerful people. But before the two friends could play twenty questions with each other? A team made up of a huge man and woman entered the other side of the room with looks on their faces, that they had just found something rude stuck to their boots. With waves of the dinner plate sized hands by these nearly clan Elemental sized guards, the pair rose and went into the next room. They were announced into the main office of the most powerful person in the SLDF Navy. The only person that said anything was a hard-faced Major that still had healing scars on his face. All Robert and Jules could do was fall back onto a few decades of training.

####

Admiral Franks and Admiral Whitfield were standing with their back towards the main door, and they were looking out over the night lights of the city threw the massive windows his new office had. Robert had no idea what they were talking about, or if they had not been talking between them in very low voices. The pair of more junior officers were directed to a set of seats, but they knew better than to take those seats without getting permission before doing so.

It was an impressive view, and one that you would expect for the most powerful military leader on the planet. If you had come from a major city on Earth in the 20th or 21st century, you would not have been as impressed. Tall buildings in this time tended to draw more enemy fire than shorter buildings. But when every building was shorter and thicker, it gave a nice view from a few hundred meters up.

The high admiral could see the "new" people enter his office, threw the reflection of the thick armored glass that separated him from the night wrapped city. It was one of the reasons that he was looking out this particular bit of glass. He did not even turn around when the two newcomers were halfway into the room. He waited and watched the two men as they stood by the over stuff chairs off to one side of the room. He needed to study them for long seconds without being obvious that he was doing such a thing. When Franks felt that it was the right time, he addressed the two men with his back still towards the other men.

"You boys always bring back a few bucket loads of surprises when you come back home, Query Affirmative?" Admiral Franks turned as he finished speaking, and now he was face to face with two people that had made his last few days so….interesting. It was not the nice kind of interesting, and it was a debate even if it was useful interesting. It was being looked at as being more of the Chinese kind of interesting, more than anything else at this time. It was kind of like dealing with having to deal with a puking kid in a kitchen kind of interesting, after they had eaten too much multicolored candy in too short amount of time.

Robert and Jules gave parade ground quality salutes, and the head of the SLDF Navy returned the gesture of respect before he said anything more. When Franks drops his arm, he then pointed to a pair of overstuff and deep office chairs. This set up was away from Admiral Franks "working" desk and was like a sitting room and not his office.

The four of them took seats and a very junior officer entered the room from a third door as quiet as death. He quietly pored and passed around four short glasses of something that probably had come off of one of Roberts past supply runs. There were not any toasts given, it was just four officers, late at night, and sharing a drink while they were still technically at work. It also was a group of officers that had the world on their shoulders, or the lives of the planet resting on what they knew. This was not "normal" for the rank of two of the people in this room, but they had been around long enough to have more experience than was normal for someone of their current rank.

Admiral Franks took a slow sip of the amber liquid in his glass, enjoying the taste more than the warming of his stomach. Then he had to get down to business as soon as everyone had one drink and the glasses had returned to their laps. The one drink set the stage for what was going to happen for the next few hours. It was a well-known SLDF regulation that you were not on "official business", if you had even a single drink of alcohol. It was a modification of the old saying on "no rank in the bar". It didn't flush all of the regulations out of the air lock, but it gave younger officers some cover to make a few missteps.

"I will cover the Cylon in the room, first. The Lord Protector will be making the announcement about the Clans battling the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere, soon. Both of you know about that cutter that we recovered from out of time. That information has not proven to be perfect, and it seems to get less accurate as our timelines separate. That is something that will be not disclosed again, outside of this room. I just wanted to let both of you know this. She is also not going to put out information about all of our projects in the Inner Sphere, but "she" will be releasing a lot of your reports to the public. She also is going to stop any missions that are heading in that direction. I think that this is going to be a short-term order, and that this is going to be a public and political necessity. But this is something that she really thinks is not the right long-term idea."

"She has issued a recall of all combat units to New Circe, to re-evaluate their mission and risks that they might be under. I am not expecting this to affect our battles with the Cylon Empire, but it will affect a lot of our other missions that we have been running around the local area. One is the recovery of any more assets that have been abandoned between here and the rest of the Inner sphere. Still, I will be pushing for these missions to continue. But only after the political blow back dies down to a low roar from the screaming, they will be doing shortly. I will suggest that we draw a line, and we will not cross that line until we know more."

######

Robert felt his heart sink at the statement. He mentally pulled up a map of the inner sphere and all points between New Circe and it. Every line he mentally drew on his map was short of one system he wanted to go back to. They were even short of the Split system, much less Litzenho. It was very hard for Robert to keep a frown from coming to his face. He was thinking about not seeing Duke Terry again so hard that he almost missed what Admiral Franks said next.

"What I am going to suggest is that the base of that red line, will be the Terra star system. That will still give us access to a huge expanse of the Inner Sphere, all without risk of dealing with the rest of the Clans for some time to come. As we find out more information, that line might be drawn closer to us, or pushed out north and closer to that line that we think the clans are attacking down. The Inner Sphere is huge and the Federated Commonwealth and Draconis Combine have large, powerful, and many combat experienced units at their command. The wild card will be warships and the number of clans attacking those two powers. From what your HPG team has found out on your last mission. It would seem, that ComStar is helping them fight the Great Houses. But currently there are only four clans in the invasion force, and they are not actively using warships in their battles to take planets. This is something that we can use against them."

Robert had only taken one small sip of his drink and listen to his bosses, bosses, boss, and when he stopped talking. He thought that maybe it was a good time to open the floor for questions that have been bothering him. Robert steps forward into the gap with both feet, and he was hoping that he was not going to find out what his shoes tasted like.

"I was expecting that we would pull in all of our assets back to New Circe, and maybe end my clandestine supply runs to the inner sphere. That is what drove my buying strategy the whole trip this time. Have you had a chance to review our manifest?" He had to fight to keep his voice calm at finding out that the red line was well forward of what he had thought.

Robert was not going to bring up, just yet, that he still wanted to go back to the Inner Sphere if they would let him. He needed to save that card in case he needed to use it for a bargaining chip further down the negotiating road. Robert had been relieved about most of what Admiral Franks had said, so far. If the head of the Navy was leaving the way open for more missions into the Inner Sphere, than Rear Admiral Xi was also going to be open to the idea of at least one more run. Now all he needed to know was what he might be looking for, besides information that Franks had already laid on the table. It was all about preparing his battle plan.

Jules shifted in his chair, now uncomfortable at the pointed question that his friend had just served up to the head of the Navy. Admiral Franks just gave the convoy commander and merchant captain a sly smile. He noticed the uncomfortable look the father of the Lord Protector gave to the Commodore. But he keeps his eyes locked onto the mission commander when he addressed the question.

"Are you referring to finding and bringing back those two complete orbital factories, and the core of a third one? That is going to make a lot of people very happy, after they can be brought back online. This is something new, so they are still working on how to check them out before they will be cleared to be added to our infrastructure. I was told that Admiral Xi will have the two orbital factories operational in a few weeks or a month at the outside. She just needed to find over 100 people with the right skills to run them for her. Ones that are not already spoken for and doing other things for her. It is not like these were automated factories like some of the ones that we were able to pull out of Clans space with us."

"The machines for the third one will be going into the orbital station somewhere, which I am not going to be talking about in this venue. "We" already know that this is going to cause some issues with the small manufactures around the planet. They would have loved to have been allowed to bid on taking control of any of the three of them. At first, it was looking like both of the ready to use factories were going to be reprogramed to make Weasel Battle Armor. It was pointed out that it would help the ground forces better counter the Clans."

Franks could see both Robert and Jules perk up at his news. Then he sees Robert's face change as he picked up on the qualifier of "at first" that he had just used. "The Lord Protector had to step in and squash this idea. When those two new factories are cleared for use, they will start taking up the slack as they start cycling our ground and orbital manufactory assets threw a maintenance and updating program. All they will have to do is load the needed programs, then add the material, and then wait. It will only depend on the designs of the needed parts on how fast they can make them. If things work out? Those two new factories will not be adding any new capabilities for almost a year. After that one or both might be turned into a tech school. Right now, we are as short in trained personnel as we are in manufacture sites. That is, if that is the way that we go with those new factories. I know that a lot of juggling is still going on behind the scenes. I would say that any plans that we have now, are written in quicksand."

Both Robert and Jules looked wide eyed at Franks. Robert had to take a second sip from his glass to hide his face from the rest of the room. Franks just smiled as he knew exactly what Robert was doing. He was not going to give the Commodore that time to get his mental feet back under him, just yet. He was having too much fun at the moment.

"You have a lot of catching up to do about local production, it is a list longer than the Zug. Now the big Frakker you brought back. The Big Kahuna, I think she is called. It is going to take months of work before it will even start paying for itself. Even if it works out half as good as the other one, the Hephaestus, you brought back. It would be a huge asset in addition to "The Station" when she is attached to that monstrosity in orbit. The extra Union engine would be useful, if we do make another run of that class or one of the ones in service takes battle damage in that area. At worse, it will go into long term storage."

Franks made a show of looking down at his watch as he addresses something new. "The rest of the items will start to go on the market after midnight. By the way. That was a very good call on getting all of those kitchen appliances. The Colonials are making a few to supply the whole planet, and as my wife would say, they are spitting in the wind. That production is not coming even close to cutting it for what we need to just replace the ones that are wearing out. And that does not count now that the Victorians are now waiting to do some upgrades to their homes, or our own still growing population. Whoever pushed that idea, that they would just be happy cooking on open fires needs to be removed from the gene pool. Someone that dumb should not be allowed to have kids, for the betterment of our clan."

Admiral Franks stopped talking and looked down at his watch. "Call it three hours and some change for the first lots to hit the global sales net." He seemed to be done talking and he was looking right at Robert to see what he was going to say. Franks knew for a fact, thanks to some computer work by SLIC. That Robert had not had access to this information before he came to this meeting.

Robert was a little confused and just gave up trying to work it out. "Sir, what about the mechs, hover scouts, submarines, passenger jets, and trucks?" Robert had worked very hard to get those deals on this trip and he was hoping that they paid off.

Admiral Franks reached over to a side table and retrieved his noteputer. Then made a show of looking down at his tabletop screen. He made a few finger movements before looking back up at Robert. "Most of those kinds of things are not my concern, and not why you both were brought here tonight." Franks put just enough force into his voice to let the lower ranked officer know that this was a firm line, and it was not to be crossed.

Franks finally relented a little. "I did have lunch with one of my buddies today. She had read over the reports you sent about those war machines you picked up. She was very impressed with all of them, at least for the limited amount of time that her people had access to them. They liked the Axman's full head escape system in particular. They thought the Wolfhound based one was just a one-off design idea, even after you dropped all those books into their laps on that other trip. The ground pounders are thinking about a way to copy that design feature and then retrofit it to other machines in the whole SLDF ground forces. I have asked that they look into seeing if there is some way to modify the idea into my fighters. Those Colonial made spacesuits have saved a huge number of lives on my fighters. I have ordered all other crewmembers on space duty to be fitted with one. Having an ejectable cabin seems like a good next step."

A shark's grin came on to the old admiral's face. "I do think that they are in fear of the other two war machines you brought back. I remember someone saying, that if they had known about this modified Charger design? They would have held on to some of those dozens, that they had sent on that first supply run. I would say that it has Challenged their perceptions of a Charger."

Franks started softly chuckling at his own joke on playing on the name Challenger, the posted name for this modified Charger before getting back to business. "The mech they call Awesome is also giving them kittens, and they only have had a few days to look at them in person. If I was a betting man? I would say that they had not really believed your early reports on their capabilities." Franks gave a soft chuckled that was anything but friendly. Then it built onto itself.

Admiral Franks had a full-on laugh going and he took time to take another sip of his drink before he finished his line of thought. "I am told that this Awesome will blow the frakk out of anything that is in its weight class, unless it is using a good bit of top of the line Clan tech. If the House Lords can put enough of them into production, and then have access to halfway decent pilots to put into them? They should give most clan units a hand full."

########

Jules was staring wide eyed at the high-ranking officer. He did not think much of Inner Sphere technology and their military's ability of being able to stand up to the military might of the Clans. But the head of the SLDF Navy seemed to think highly of what Robert had brought back. Jules took a drink and remembered how old he was. He then held up his glass to his longtime friend in a mock toast. "I did not think that they would be that good. But now that we picked up a Royal equivalent technology mech, and it was out on the edge of the Inner Sphere? That does seem to change things."

Jules then turned and looked back to the head of the SLDF Navy. "But you called it Sir. That is if they could make enough of them? Then yes, they might bleed the Clan dry. It is going to cost them a lot of blood and money to do it. Still, they are behind the power curve in battle armor, weapons, the base skill of pilots, and armored larger spaceships. That is a lot of pushing up hill."

Admiral Franks shrugged his shoulders. "Could be, and maybe they will just drag out fighting long enough to use their number advantage. They also are not as far behind in weapons tech as you might first think. Two days ago, they broke some more of the ComStar codes, which your people were having trouble with. We have already known that ComStar has both old Nighthawk suits and these newer and easier to make Tornado suits. What was new information that came as a shock was when our people started reading some of the post battle reviews?"

"It would seem that the FedCom also seems to have three different types of combat suits in production, or that are in combat testing phases that has those religious nuts on edge. One is a 1500kg four-legged design suit that is called the Sloth. That is not a name that I would have used for a piece of military hardware, but it could have been an opsec issue. But maybe the name fits because it packs two 3cm lasers and some kind of anti-mech mine dispenser for the weapons layout. They also have a smaller 750kg suit called Infiltrator suits, which has some kind of rudimentary stealth armor for scouting and light weapons. The newest suit is also in the same 1ton class as the Elemental class suit, but this version was being tested by a mercenary unit against the Clans. That is something that the old Star League was not able to do, in its hay day. I would bet that if this FedCom is working on three different types of armored suits, than the other powers are doing the same."

Now Robert's old friend Admiral David Whitfield was looking at his boss with wide eyes, this had been news to him. Franks took the look and then decided he was going to let a few more facts into a wider audience tonight.

"You know that Admiral Xi went to Cate's Hold, and they found that old space support installation from before Stefan's rebellion. What you do not know is that she had a two-part mission. Only one part was looking at Cate's Hold. What you do not know is that the deal with the King Crabs was not the only one she made with MMM. We also not only traded them the specs on an improved model over the late Star League H class ER PPC. We also modified one of the production lines of MMM to make the things, and she made sure that they could duplicate what we had done. You all know that even with this improved weapon. They are still not as powerful as those Clan bastards, but it is better than the Star League weapons being made by the rest of the Inner Sphere. The base idea had been to just to try to put ComStar in their place after an attack on our people. Now it looks like they will get to be used to put down some clanners, again after all of these years from when it first went into production. A lot of the money was used to buy more and more stock in MMM. In the future, we might even take over parts of that company. I do not need to tell you all that this is close hold, query affirmative. Even if most of it was Commodore Copeland's idea in the first place."

Franks looked around the room, and he got nods of heads from all three people in the room. He might have forgotten that these men had been read into a lot of what he had just said. Still, he had just officially connected a lot of dots that they had only guessed at. Franks wanted to get this meeting back on the track he wanted it on, in the first place.

"Good. Now back to what I wanted to talk to you both about in the first place. It is these plans that you have both outlined in different de-briefings when you first got back. Why should we send you back to pick "them" up?"

Robert felt like he was looking right down the twin barrels of a gun turret on the Zug. Then again? Robert had been expecting this attack, and he had a preplanned response. Only the person he was going to give it first to, was a lot higher ranked than he had planned. It was hard for him to keep his poker face on when he counter punched the head of the navy. It was just lucky that he had been on an independent command for so long, and one that required him to do out of the box thinking almost daily. That and he had spent a few months thinking about this one subject, and his top boss and his whole staff had only a few days to do any thinking and wargaming. Robert was hoping that this was going to be like taking candy from a baby. Just it was that this particular baby? Well, it could beach him for the rest of his life.

"Sir, you know how into genetics the Clanners are, and what they do if someone comes onto their radar, they will be put under narco-interrogation until they find something. They will be genetic testing everybody and everyone that falls under their control within weeks of them taking over a planet. It will not matter if they are alive, dead, military, legal prisoner, or the smallest school child. I would not be surprised if they dug up any graves with the last names connected in any way to the 800. What do you think is going to happen, when they find someone with known Clan Wolverine genetic markers, even in the smallest amounts?"

"We were careful, and we did our tests. But how much has Clan gene tech changed after we left? Are we sure that we were good enough to spoof a test at those levels? I think the Whole Clan will pull out all the stops, again. And they all will start looking for us with a passion of the converted, for as long as they need. And every time they find a new person with a few genes connected to us, either real or imagined? It will recharge them into looking that much harder and going further out from their space to do it. How hard will they be looking for us, after they find a hundred or two hundred different people with those gene markers?"

Admiral Franks rocked back in his expensive chair and roared with laughter. David handed over a hundred script note over to his boss. Franks took the note and smelled it, and then he put it on the table beside him. "Thank you, Robert. That is just what I had to tell some young kits sitting in Parliament, this morning. I had to use more and smaller words to get my points across than you had just used. I also had to repeat those same small words a few times, when I was asked the same question three different ways from two different oxygen thieves. Now Commodore Copeland, nothing has been decided. Publicly, it is just too early for those steps to be taken. But we are lucky and that the Lord Protector also agrees with you."

The Lord Protector was not happy with the intelligence department after what was now called "The Commodore Copeland's meeting". Franks mentally drifted off for a second, before coming back to the room. The sly smile had slowly formed on his face while he had had the mental image of Lord Protector venting some anger at the head of SLIC. He had no idea where she had heard some of those words, and she had strung an impressive length of them together.

"She made a few pointed information requests of SLIC, and she waited in their office until they had the information she was looking for. As it turns out, this escape idea was just a carrot used by SLIC. And they had not told anyone but the people leaving to join the rest of the Inner Sphere about it. Let's just say that the Lord Protector was not happy with them, and she is going to feel that way for some time to come. The way I understand it. She feels like they stained her and her families honor with that fabrication of theirs. What I would like to know, for any future missions from you. Would you like to take command of any recall or resupply mission that might be approved to help clean the honor of our Lord Protector Query Negative?"

Robert could not fight the sly smile that he knew was showing up on his old face. "I think I can be talked into doing that. I would like to be the one to come up with any plan that I would have to work under." That was his big roll of the dice.

Robert had been thinking about this for some time and had lost many, many hours of sleep making and then casting away plans that numbered in the low hundreds. Franks might not know it, but Robert had been keeping track of what was going on with the home planet. He even had set aside some expensive computer time, that would keep track of certain subjects even while he was gone. Those reports were compiled and waiting for him to read when he had the time. And amazingly, he had a lot of free time for the first three days he had been planet side this time. The hard part? That would be convincing this man to back one of the four plans Robert liked the best. Or making sure one of the plans he did not like, from getting approved by higher authority over his objections.

Admiral Franks smiled so big that it looked like his eyes disappeared into his face. It was a very Russian look, and it went away just before he addressed the Commadore. "I will see what I can do about that, but you know as well as I do. Robert, sometimes you must go with what you have been given by higher command. Now you and Jules, both, also put together an idea about using a forward staging base in your notes. Tell me more and why, you think now is the right time to do something like that?"

Robert and Jules spent the next few hours going over some ideas, which they had worked out before coming back to the home star system. They had a few months to work on it, as well as having now three resupply runs to draw upon as experience on what was needed to support the mission on both short-, medium-, and long-term support. They also had some idea what would work and what was less likely to work, to meet the needs of the SLiE.

They knew the power players and even the clans they would be dealing with stirring up the pot. What they did not know was what the higher command of the SLDF wanted to have as the set end state for any big picture mission. The two lower ranked men knew that all of this work might end up being a lot of wasted effort and brain sweat. They still were giving it all of their combined brain power to make this mission work, as they had been directed. One of Robert's more left field ideas had stopped the whole room for almost ten solid minutes. Then again, the idea of a blockade runner was something that was so new or different. That the SLDF had not thought of the need for them in almost five hundred years.

Just before the two junior officers were about to leave for the evening. Franks dropped another little surprise on them. "Oh Robert, I almost forgot to tell you. You are going to be a little short on your cargo that the big Frakker was packing. That alert was not just some kind of a false alarm, like the news has been talking about the last few days."

Franks gave the pair a level look, and he could see that they were sitting at the mental edge of their seats. "A lone Heavy Raider pulled an Adama and popped into the L1. It tried to use the dropship as cover while it scouted us. None of the weapons were manned or even powered up on the Big Kahuna. But it seems that a young cadet used everything, including a kitchen sink to kill that Cylon Frakker."

With this tidbit of information Jules and Robert spilled their drinks onto the carpet. Jules much less Robert, was not going to let that just lay. So, for the next hour they were brought into "the know" about the attack. By the end of the little briefing the group of four men gave a heartfelt toast to the quick thinking of a young woman.

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Notes:

Why bring back kitchen appliances? It was going to be industrial sand and rocks like S.L. Lewis dump for those Omni 25s. Then my stand-alone Freezer died during the pandemic. I had to wait 6months and still not get a like one. Then my fridge started to have issues and it had to get replaced while we waited on the Freezer, and again we could not get a like one. I had to just take what they had and wait for more months. If that happens just in a few months? Then what would it be like not making them for a few years like on New Circe needs to do to fight the Cylons.

Why use kitchen appliances as a weapon? I was challenged by hotpoint, so I went for it. So that addition is his fault.

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