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.

63. Chapter 63 4 Feb 3051

Chapter 63

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

4 Feb 3051

New Circe.

It had been over a month since the SLS Styx had returned with the shocking news that was released to the public. Now everyone knew that the clans had returned, and that they were fighting two or maybe three of the Inner Sphere's major powers. The stress of this now released information had been felt the heaviest among the people that had a direct or blood connection with the oldest parts of Clan Wolverine. One of the side effects of this news becoming widespread public knowledge, which was not expected by many on this planet. It was that the sale of war bonds to support the war effort had a boost.

The amount of bonds sold in the last month alone was equal to the sales of the total amount sold in the previous last three months combined. The daily, monthly, and yearly sales figures of the bonds were carried on the daily news shows starting after the first year of fighting the Cylons. What was not carried on the financial or other news shows? It was that fully one third of the increase in the sales of the war bonds had come from people registered as living within the Colonial City-State.

Without being told, most knew that the Colonials and the Wolverines, all were in the same boat so to speak. If the other clans paid the planet a low orbit visit? They all would die under the same bombardment. That idea had been driven into the Colonials and the first few Victorians seemingly from the first full day that they had been on the planet. So, anyone from those two groups that had any free money? It was used to buy bonds to support the war effort. They would even have moved money from their savings accounts into buying more war bonds. What good was having a savings account, if you and what was left of your new family suddenly died at the hands of the Clans or Cylons? This was a nice sum of money that could be used to fight the Cylons and prepare to fight the rest of the Clans. Paying back the interest on those bonds after the war was over was going to make the budget people want to cry for years to come.

###########

This meeting was being sponsored by Rear Admiral Xi for the heads of Research and Development of many of the companies and departments from around the star system. It was being held on The Station, as a move by Xi to make sure that they didn't waste more of her time than was absolutely necessary. With the outfitting of the station with colonial made artificial gravity decking, there was not a valid reason, not to have the meeting up here. The side benefit was that it would be better at keeping the press from going into any type of feeding frenzy. That had not been a small issue with the last few of these meetings Xi had to sponsor. It would also cut out any displays that some of the participants might have thought would help their case. Both might work and they might not, but it was away from the power players that were all dirtside and from too many different eyes and ears. Still "The Station" was the space hub of the whole system, so there were always some transit personnel on the station at any one time.

This meeting was going to be about one of Rear Admiral Xi's operations that she was overseeing. So, she was going to be leading the meeting. She looked around the room and saw three empty seats in the not small briefing room. She didn't so much as raise an eyebrow at seeing the vacancies, and after she checked the time. She was getting ready to start the meeting anyway when the door at the back of the room opened, and three people in expensive civilian suits walked into the room. She was a little mollified when she was given sheepish looks from the 3 newcomers when they made eye contact with her standing at the head of the room. She waited until the three were almost to their seats before opening the meeting.

"Now that everyone is here, we can start. I am not going to rehash the information about the clans doing battle in the Inner Sphere. If you are wanting to do that, or you were planning to do some data mining? You may leave now and save everyone some time. Query negative." She looked around the briefing room and saw a few down turned faces at her opening statement to the room. It would seem that a few of them had been hoping to find out more information about the Clan threat. Margaret Xi was smart enough not to fall into that trap.

Xi raised an eyebrow at the looks, but no one left the room. She pulled down her tunic with a pair of tugs that was a little out of habit. "What will happen, will happen on that front. The crews on the missions that are close to them will do what they have to do, and that is not our job. Our jobs, around this room, are to make sure that our people have the weapons they need when they need them. I would like to start by thanking our friends at the Colonial City State for coming to this meeting today. This is not the first meeting of this type that they have had input. They have been supplying a lot of valuable input, via messages and then that data was passed on to your staffs. I look forward to seeing more of you all, in any future meetings."

As a soft round of clapping went around the room at Xi's pointing out the help that the Colonials had provided over the last few years. As far as anyone knew in the rumor category. This was only the fourth one of these annual events that the Colonials had been invited to join, in person. At first, they had only been invited because of the Colonials owning over half of a small company called Tenner's Foundry a few years ago. Now they were there, because of the still growing numbers of production facilities and Research and Development groups that ranged from spaceship support to small arms production.

The Colonial City-State was now a major player in the future weapons and technology development for all of New Circe, and it was growing larger every month or so. There current rate of growth was twice of what the Wolverines had been able to pull off. They also had taken a big bite out of the undertrained labor force that the Victorians had brought to the planet. The Victorians had a lot of people that had wanted and needed work, and the Colonials had plenty for them to do.

The Colonials could not get over the idea of workmechs being like Cylons to their eyes, just so much larger and scarier than your average Centurion. All of the colonials owned farms, fishing, and construction jobs used a lot more manpower than was normal for the rest of New Circe. That did not mean that the colonials were not building like crazy. It was, just that it took longer for them, or that it took more physical hands to do the work in the same length of time as the Wolverines needed. That might change as more and more "normal' construction machinery could be hand built or imported for them to use.

Admiral Xi pointed to one person off to her right side, to show the room that it was time to get the meeting moving along. He was the head of the Advanced Sciences of the only school for higher learning in the Colonial City-State. He stood and after giving a slight bow to the Admiral he turned back to the rest of the room.

"We have the final results of one of our development programs. We have been able to take and modify one of our Viper Mk VII turbos' fuel pumps. We are using them in some of the oldest of the Nighthawk PA(L) suit's Micro Jump Jets. Before this meeting? We have torn some of the modify jump jets apart, after a thousand hours of constant use. They were still as good, as the lowest hour suits in service. The downside? It is that these turbo pumps are almost as hard to make as a jump engine for a Raptor. That is not counting the hours of modifications needed to bring them into spec for ground use. I think we can get up to sixteen of this class of micro pumps a day, but you need two per suit. Each pair of these pumps cuts down on the total maintenance hours to support those suits down by 16 percent per Month."

The briefer heard a snicker and the rumblings of something that might have been derogatory to the Colonials from the back of the room. But instead, he went with facts to counter the insult from the back of the room. "This production is about twice as fast as what the SLDF has been able to do, before we arrived. We would like to open a second production line for those jump jets if we can get some support from the SLiE."

Admiral Xi was smiling so big it almost made her face look pretty, and then it went somewhat cartoonish as she froze it in place. The idea of having a newly repaired squad of Nighthawk battle armor every few months was impressive as all Frakk. They had gone almost two hundred years, with only barely being able to keep a company of those machines operational at any one time. It was heady times indeed, and they were adding newer and more powerful suits at a very slow pace to the military's order of battle. The more parts of the high-tech suits that the Colonial City-State could make, the better in Admiral Xi's book it was.

"Thank you for your hard work. Have you started looking to see if this lower wear pattern is also found with the few Clan Elemental Battle Armor jump jets that we have been able to get produced? If we can reduce the time between replacements, it would have benefits downstream for the warfighters." They had less than a dozen of those suits that had been hand built, most showing up over the last few months. Mostly they had been done as tests and training suits. Still, they had had their uses and they were fully functional, just that there were so few of them.

The Colonial Doctor turned visibly paler, as Xi talked. When Xi stopped talking and was looking at the academic with an expecting look. He was sputtering when he tried to talk to address her question. "Admiral! There is a world of difference in making a 400kg mass armored suit jump 75 meters, and something that masses over 1000kg to cover that same type of distance. That is a lot of stress to get them to work in the first place, but to expect them to not have extra ware. That is hoping for a lot. Besides, we do not have access to one of them at this time." He let his voice trail off."

Rear Admiral Xi was shaking her head from side to side, and she didn't say anything for a few seconds. Then she pulled out a noteputer and tapped on the screen. "I will be authorizing one of the heavy suits in the testing queue for you to have access to. That is not going to happen for a while, at least not any time soon. You will have to have someone contact my office to gain access to the suit after all of the approvals are done. Any other battle armor spare parts that your people can make? The more suits we can keep out of the workshop. Then that is more of them that our people have to fight the clans and others with." She could tell the answer to this question without the academic giving a verbal reply to her questions.

Xi was not surprised at the silence at her questions. "Thank you, Doctor. Now how are the projects, that are headquartered on the Colonial electronics and manufacturing ships going?" Xi had an idea, but she had to lead this meeting, or the meeting would lead her. And she was not going to let most of these people lead her to a latrine.

The Colonial civilian ship's Captain looked like he had been eating lemons by the bucket full for the last few years. He did not like the project that he had been put in charge of. He understood the importance of it, but it still gave him an upset stomach every time he thought about some of the details. "Our project is going well, for the time being. We will be able to start mass production on the contracted new seeker systems, for all classes of capital missiles in a few weeks. It should only take a few months to outfit all of the active and stored largest capital missile weapons with these Cylon based seeking systems."

"We than will go for the smaller weapons, there are more of them. We will need to plan for a run of production at full speed for at least eight months, with the extra product going into storage for use as new weapons come online from other vendors. Now that we know how to set up for the production of these systems? We can put the new seeking systems back into production with only a few weeks' notice. This will free up that working area and tools for other missions. But I still don't like the idea of using Cylon based technology on something as important as this project."

Xi saw that the other Colonial, the academic, was not happy that the other colonial officer was airing out what she thought of as the colonial's dirty laundry. Before this could spiral out of hand, Xi took active control of the meeting. "Adding Colonial and Cylon based knowledge into a third-generation of seeker technology, it just levels out the odds in a missile battle with the Cylons, for the first time. Now all of our missiles will be as smart as the last generation Barracuda and that smaller missile will be about twice as good as the old SLDF Navy used to brag about. I think that it is well worth the risk of dealing with Cylons, query negative."

In Xi's mind's eye, she had visions of a flight of nuclear tipped barracuda missiles flying along and dodging incoming enemy fire and avoiding attacking clan fighters and dropships. It was like it was driving down a sunny road in the back country. They kept flying and dodging until they slammed into a pair of clan made Nightlord class battleships. She had to fight down a manic smile from coming to her face as those two huge clan battleships disappeared in bright balls of light.

The Colonial civilian ship's Captain nodded his head in agreement to what the Star League in Exile Rear Admiral had said. "Yes, you have a point and back to what you have asked. The renovations are almost complete on one of the oldest Colonial transports into her new job. She is sitting over that prison run mining operation at this time, to help speed up supplying her with the needed raw materials. She will be taking over the production of all nuclear weapons for the SLDF. As they ramp up production rates. It is hoped that it will first keep up with expenditures, and then allow us to start to stockpile some warheads for a rainy day. It is hoped that as a stockpile is developed. That the other two production sites in SLDF territory will be put to other uses. I am glad that the SLDF has reversed its decision on making larger nuclear anti-ship warheads."

###

It was known that the Cylons had larger nuclear warheads, but they had only been used on surface targets. The SLDF had large warheads, but they had not like breaking them out for use against the Cylons. That is until the Cylons started to up armor all of their warships to counter the more powerful conventional weapons that the SLiE was fighting with, and that the Colonials had started to acquire in every growing numbers. With refitted First War Basestars and other types of Basestars now out numbering the reskinned second generation and unmodified Basestars that had started this new war within the Cylons Empires order of battle.

Smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons were now not going to guarantee a kill with "only" one hit. When you add in up armoring of those 1st Cylon warships and the ships like the Dreadstars. You need something in the 150 to 200 Kiloton range weapon, and even then, you might have to hit one of those twice to take it out of the battle. But that would require a new project to add a new line of warhead designs, and that took time and other things that the SLiE was short of. With a whole new production area, in the form of a converted colonial made freighter. They could be made to support the production of larger warheads from the start, without slowing down production overall.

The people of New Circe were few, but they had been growing in population for a long time. They were still so small, in numbers, that they could not have many major new projects. Even with the additions of what someone back in the old United States would have called the population of four small towns or a single mid-size city to the planet. That did not mean that they didn't have rules worked out for that new growth in population or capabilities. Still the total population for the whole planet was below what most people in the 21st century would have called a nice sized city.

Each company in the SLiE's territory would take on a small side project from a government supplied list and run with it, as they saw fit. If major problems came up, or say another company thought they could do a better job than the prime? They could petition Admiral Xi's current office, or they could go all the way up to the Lord Protector's office to have it moved to them. It would be more efficient, if they would just focus all of their brain power onto one subject. But anyone who has had kids knows something. That something is that if the kid likes and is good at reading? You will not make much head way if you try to force them into doing math. It was the same for scientists, only magnified to a painful level.

###

The representative from the huge NCMI, leaned forward in his chair. He had no idea what the few Colonial support ships had been doing, but his company made all of the Capital sized missiles that the SLDF Navy used for over a hundred years. He needed to know more about this side project that this group was working on, and if it was the same project that they had been milking the SLiE out of script for many, many decades. The NCMI board of directors would not like it if some newcomer was trying to elbow in on what everyone knew was their territory.

"Excuse me Rear Admiral Xi. But can I know more about these new seeker systems for capital missiles? We have a working project about updating the seekers on the Killer Whale class missile that the Navy is using. I believe that the SLDF Navy has been very happy with the prototypes we have sent them to date." The use of her full rank and name was to prove a point. This was to let Xi know that she might be an Admiral, but she was still a very junior one in the eyes of NCMI. He was not going to bring up that it had only been a few dozen prototypes seekers. That might have given these upstarts more ammunition to use against his bosses.

The head of the Colonial ships that were now manufacturing those seekers, turned to look at the person asking the question. Barry Garner was a lifelong engineer, but he was not a fan of this project, and he was the head person on this project. "Admiral Adama directed us to see about using twenty or so Cylon POWs, or as you call them Bondsmen. Now we have about 220 of them working on this project alone. They were to see if we could use a mix of Cylon and Colonial tech, to make an improved seeker system for a large number of SLDF capital missiles."

"The keystone of the idea, besides slightly improving the current generation seeker, is to cut down on logistics and have one seeker that would fit multiple, or all of the capital missiles used by the Colonial and Star League military. What we have been able to do, is to make a new seeker that is better than the oldest ones that we were helping with. It also fits into the old seeker housing on the larger type of weapons using a set of simple metal spacers. It makes the larger missiles as accurate as the older Barracuda missiles. And the new Barracuda that is about 50 percent better than any recorded baseline against heavy ECM and small targets. We are almost ready to start mass production of these new seeker heads. That is the project that Admiral Xi was talking about." Barry was now sounding a little bit indignant about being questioned.

The NCMI man could hear the pained tone in the voice when the Colonial had referenced the Cylons helping in the development of these systems. He understood that most of the surviving Colonials could not work with Cylons…unless you basically put a gun to the back of their heads. This was not surprising after what had happened to them, and what the Cylons were still doing to them back on the cinders of their old planets. It probably was only that these weapons were going to be used to kill other Cylons, which got the crews on those Colonial support ships working with them. Still, it was a project that would help their people and the SLiE at the same time. But could he open a door between this project and his company? That could help him and NCMI. All he needed to do was laydown some groundwork.

"Thank you, Captain. If you need any help? Please contact me, and we at NCMI can handover any of our testing data you might need on "our" missiles."

###########

The NCMI man was also taking notes on his handheld computer, even as he was talking to the colonials his mind was racing. "Maybe some of the other Cylon bondsmen and women might be able to help another department of my company, if we lose the capital missile seekers contract. They had been working for decades on trying to fit a streak system, onto the long-ranged missile systems our fighters and mechs carry. So far? They had not had any major luck, but the Cylons had some incredible computer skills. Maybe they knew something different about seekers? We have to come up with something to counter the Thunder-Javelin or we are done as a company. Still streak LRMs sound pretty good." The man was tapping like crazy, making sure that he got all of his ideas down and in as much detail as he could. He had no idea what was going on around him for a hand full of seconds.

He was so into tapping out his idea on the noteputer, that he also missed the next briefer. He had to look over at the briefing notes, which had been provided by the Admiral's staff before the meeting. It was one of the small but very old electronic companies that was headquartered in the city of McEvedy. They were working on what they were calling a Beagle Active Probe II for years now. And now they were working on an upgrading project that was going by the name of Guardian ECM Suite II in the briefing handouts. They all were based off of Clan tech designs, but now they were so much more than those clan made devices.

They would be given better names, along the lines of Bloodhound and Angel after they had passed the final prototyping testing phases. But right now, they were far from that point and not making that much forward progress for the last many months. They were now saying that they needed more highly educated and experience personnel on their projects. That was on top of all of the too common issues sighted by every company present. Well, that and they needed a mega ton of tools. Oh, and unlike the seekers systems, these would need between 3 and 4 more years of work before they were ready for field testing any prototypes.

######

The next briefer was another one that his boss wanted him to pay close attention to. They were the group that controlled the only factories that were making ground combat vehicles for both the Colonials and SLDF. "We have finished converting and updating two full companies' worth of 5ton Savanna Masters hover scouts, after the first four passed their field testing. We pulled out the old school 5cm medium class laser and put in a next generation Extended ranged 5cm medium class laser in its place. The heat management system is still old tech. But it can still handle the job, and it saved time and money to leave it in place."

"There were tests made on adding hand and foot holds for 4 Weasel class suits, but this modification came at a too large of a speed penalty, but a pair seemed to be the magic number. We have left the four sets of hand and foot holds on these two-dozen craft. We brief that they are to be used as a just in case unarmored soldiers or recovered mech warrior needs to be transported in an emergency. We now feel that we can copy the full design and put it into production. We can do this in a few months, if we can find the tooling and factories to make them. Until then? We will have half a dozen light vehicle bays we pulled out of an old dropship to keep doing modification work on any of these craft that are recovered on any future resupply missions."

The middle-aged man stopped talking and reached down for a remote. A holo-projector powered up and into the room a series of color images and detailed drawings of a hover type tank and track type tank were displayed. Tanks which very few in this room had seen before. It was easy to see that the two tanks were in some kind of covered but outside area for testing.

"With the change in the combat situation with the Cylons and now possibly the clans. We think that more of the combat production needs to be shifted away from aerospace fighters and dropships. What you are seeing is a 30ton track tank called the Badger and a 50ton hover tank named the Bandit. These also are ground vehicles that Copeland had brought back from one of his supply runs. What you might not be able to tell, is that both types of these tanks have more than a few surprises under their hulls. They use old technology and weapons from the age of war, but they are both outfitted with Omni technology."

The room started rumbling at this news. As far as they knew, only the clan level of tech base could support Omni capabilities. To find out that age of war tech could be used to come up with the idea, make, and then support these tanks in combat was a surprise to the people in this room. What was not told to this group was that they had been made by a large mercenary group called the Wolf's Dragoons.

"The last resupply run to the Inner Sphere was able to pick up four of each of these tanks for us to evaluate. We now have two different versions or weapons load outs, which are not based on what we have found out were used by the original owner. And ours are using the newest weapons systems that can be made on New Circe. The base of these units is still the core age of war tech, which they arrived with on this planet." That was not just a little bomb shell that had just gone off.

The whole room was talking at ever increasing volume, and the man let them go for a while, before continuing his briefing. Part of this job was only for a person that had just a little showman's blood running in their veins. That showman knew when it was time to take back control.

"We have been able to use what we found out from them and our own developed Omni tech to make those load outs. We first had help of the Dark Caste that we used in developing our own Omnimechs, battlemechs, hover tank, and aerospace fighters. Still, we have not been able to get plans or an example of any of the Clan Omni vehicles that we know they use. Not even after all of these years that we know they have fielded them. Much like our friends in the City State, in the development of energy weapons over the last few years. We need something like to copy, and in this case, it was Omni tech for this pair of tanks. We have never had the time, money, or resources to figure out how to rapidly develop our own family of Omni tanks in reasonable timelines. That is until now, and we think that we are ready for the next step. Now we can put together kits for any of the Badger or Bandits that the SLDF might have in service and bring them up to date, weapons wise with the new generation of weapons."

The briefer had to first stop talking again and then raise his voice to be heard. Finally, he just stops the side bar conversations, by turning off the image of the hover and track tank. When they stopped talking? He started back up on his briefing again. "Our design people have taken a detail look at this pair of different tanks. We should be able to modify the Number 3 Tractor factory to make an updated technology Badger Tank/APC combination in a few months for full scale production. We are going to be able to use the same 50ton hover chassis, which we can make in SLDF factory Bravo in the city. Now with some tweaking? We will be able to copy the Bandit hover tanks, but with our technology base in all of the key areas."

He was not about to say that it would take another few years and thousands of man hours to come up with the plans to do something like that. Instead, he kept to the copy line he had been told to give today. "This will shut down production for four to six months, minimum, at each of those facilities for retooling. My company would like to start on the conversion work as soon as possible. We think that it will be worth the lower total production numbers of tanks, to only have Omni tanks in the SLDF order of battle. The published documents from the SLDF ground force commander states that they would like more of these two designs. And finally, we will not need any special tools or skills for this task."

"We will just need the added metal and the two facilities to start production. We think that with every third APC/light Omni tank that is made. We will be able to shift four heavy trucks out of the military's order of battle and back into support rolls or full civilian use. If there is another supply run? My company would like to have a few more of these Omni tanks to look at. If we do not get access to those facilities? We still will be able to modify and maintain them for the SLDF military, but not make new vehicle hulls."

#########

Admiral Xi was thinking about what was just said. This was now in her wheelhouse for her to make the call, but she would have to push it to higher about the major change for guidance on Copeland's wish list. She was 100 percent sure that the ground force Generals would give up a few numbers of the older style tanks to have a few of the top-of-the-line Omni medium tanks, light tanks and APCs to fight with. The sooner they could get those two Omni ground combat vehicles into production, and into the hands of the people on the front lines? Then the sooner they might be able to get heavier ground combat units that were also Omnis into the SLiE order of battle. But would they approve of shutting down production for that long? It would help if they had more production. Right now, they were just barely keeping up with combat losses and fair wear and tear.

"Okay? I think that we will come up with a plan to shut down those two lines with 30 days' notice and then turn them over to you for conversion. If you need longer advance notice or you need longer to make those modifications, to get these two vehicles into production? You will let my staff know immediately, or you will face me in a circle that you will not like. Still, I will pass this plan to higher, but I will put my name on it for approval." This was why she was paid the big bucks. Besides, it was a low resource change to forward this idea to higher to go/ no go it. The old look of discomfort suddenly crossed the man's face.

The briefer gave a head nod, that he understood the statement, and that it was not an idle threat about being publicly called into a circle. This was a statement made in front of his peers, and Xi took the nod and gave one of her own in reply before one final statement. "Okay looks like we will be able to shift some of our limited resources to other projects in about 8 to 12 months."

She looked around the room to stop any ideas dead in their tracks. She was wishing that those two small factories could be turned into twinning, but they needed them so badly that they could not be diverted from directly supporting the war effort. They could build infrastructure, or they could fight, they could not do both. "None of you better even think about asking for them now. We need to wait to see how much and when it comes available, before I will even think about shifting it around to you lot of Lyrans. Before you ask, this is by direct order of the Lord Protector. And you are more than free to pitch your ideas to her. The note that she sent me in reference, said that this request will be in person. I would advise to make sure that your life insurance is paid up, if you take that option. Now let's hear from NCMI please."

##

Being the largest manufactory in the star system had its advantages. One of those was being able to brief last, if they wanted to. "Our fighter production is still at full, but not currently at emergency output levels. We also are making as much of the new weapons technology, as we can. They are going into making upgrade kits for the refitting of older machines or making them available for Omni use as alternative load outs. We are only producing limited numbers of assault sized Omni-mechs at this time. We have complete lines making as many Sling II Omni, Mercury III Omni, and the first of the Mercury IIIM Omnimechs will start final checks out in the next week."

"The M is the one model with the ejecting full head assembly. We also are working on updated and are willing to start low-rate production of what we are calling the Wolfhound IIC Omni. The first weapons alternative load outs were optimized to fight the Cylons with their wave attacks and weaker Pretorian class mechs we are seeing on the ground battlefields. The new configurations of our mechs alternative load outs, are more focused on countering more effective Clan machines and hit a lot harder and at range. It will be up to the unit commander to pick the "right" fitting of their fighting units for their missions. We are just giving them as many tools to choose from as we can."

The NCMI representative could see the Rayson Aerospace representative bristle, out of the corner of his eye. NCMI had learned a few things, after losing the massive Avar and Viper VIII contracts to the smaller company. The smaller company had lost the contract to copy the returned Wolfhound. It was just too bad that NCMI had to turn all those plans over to the government, and they had turned them over to the little hobby shops around the planet to make. As part of the deal, NCMI would get a little coin per non omni Wolfhound that was made on the planet. And they would be the ones to put that light mech into full production, when the SLiE leaders give the go ahead to mass produce another light mech for their military.

"Wolverine III Omnimechs are coming off the lines as we have the resources to make them, but we would like to stop the production of the 45ton Stag III Omni to focus on other designs. We have almost finished building a new, but small production line, to make what we are calling Wolfhound IIC Omni. If they are accepted by the SLDF? We will be able to make give or take, about a dozen of them a year starting at the end of the year. We also have developed plans to make a new Omni load out for the 75ton Fjellhas. As we make new mechs, they are replacing the Golden Age Heavy machines in our front-line units."

"I will pass on to this meeting, is that we need more trained personnel and production machines to keep this production at the current levels. If we want to have any measurable increase in our current output, more of those things are needed in significant amounts. We also could use more of the ores used in top of the line military equipment. It also would have been helpful, if we could have been given sole access to one or both of the new orbital factories that Commodore Copeland brought back."

###

Admiral Xi sat straighter in her very comfortable chair, and she shot the man a level look that was all she needed to let him know that he had crossed the line. She hated this meeting, more than almost any of her other meeting she had to attend. She hated it that every business on the planet came to her with all of these "good ideas". But all of them were wanting something so that they could make something, which they said was going to be better than the idea of sliced bread. She always got flash backs of the tri vid show her kids like to watch called "Oliver Twist" while they were talking. It was always please Ma'am; may we have some more? She fought down the urge to throw something at a few of the faces around the room.

"Thank you all, for both your hard work, and for your time to support this meeting. After I have completed my part of this briefing, we will adjourn to the next room for dinner and drinks. I understand that they have some good cuts of steak and a nice selection of wines that also came in with Commodore Copeland at the conclusion of his last run."

Xi let a smile come to her face. She had wanted to just end the meeting, but it was a tradition, and they were fighting to keep as many of the traditions as they could as the war seemed to be dragging on and on. "Modifications to the Behemoth Class dropship called Big Kahuna, are progressing quickly. This is thanks to the experience we gained from working on the first modification to a ship of this class. We hope to have the newest foundry in operation, in less than 60 days. This will be only for a test run at least, and not production. At least this time we can start at a higher output level thanks to those lessons we learned on Hephaestus."

"The two new Small Class Orbital Factories have had a complete inspection and software reload. They should be coming online by the end of the week or the beginning of next, but again, there still will be a test phase for them. This will allow us to start taking down some production areas for some long overdue maintenance and the limited updating that we currently can do. The extra tooling that Copeland brought back on this run will be installed in one of the empty cargo bays in the Big Kahuna after the blast furnace is in operation.

This is to help support the Navy and Orbital infrastructure. When they have down time from that mission, they are going to be a tool making factory, according to current plans. We were able to copy some of the machines that we were able to get from Kowloon, but this is going to be a very slow operation. After all we are only talking about 250tons of equipment. All of this information is in your takeaway folder with a copy of the press release that will be hitting the net by the end of the week. I have been fielding a lot of requests, before this meeting, by almost every group represented in this room today. The most common one, is if Commodore Copeland can acquire another one of those pardon the pun, Behemoths for any number of reasons and uses."

Admiral Xi put her hands flat on the table and looked at no one in particular. One of the reasons to have a meeting like this, was to let the group know that something popular was not going to happen before it made it into a press release or other forms of legal information leaking. If it was done in this type of setting? It would save those in command hours and hours of emails and phone calls to half a hundred different people all saying the same thing. So instead of multi star admirals being distracted, she got to deal with the hyenas instead.

"I have looked at the data, both in the reports and in the parent hard data. The average cost of an operational Behemoth class ship is around 631 million C-Bills or an equal amount of our Script. That does not count shipping cost or any other fees, which acquiring a fully operational dropship would entail. "The total is what they call, the out of the door price back in the Inner Sphere." She made sure to make eye contact with the NCMI representative. His company had been at the top of the list of asking about this subject, to the tune of someone on her staff getting contacted every few hours by them.

"I think everyone in this room knows, that they pulled two Invader class jumpships out of the Projects cache over at the L4 point a few weeks ago. The sale prices that are listed, on many different sources that you can find in the past mission reports, say that they average about 480 million C-Bills. But remember that this price is before any fees or taxes are taken out of it. That is for each of the ships, and if you can find a buyer for them."

That means "if" the Lord Protector releases Commodore Copeland or someone else to finish another supply run, despite the risk of running into someone from the Clans? Whoever goes, and when will they go is all up in the air? They most likely will not be able to get another one of those dropships, so do not make any long term plans around having another one as a key requirement. They are very rare in the areas that we have been casting our supply nets, so to speak. Maybe if it turns out that this was not a full clan invasion, then we might be able to make a few more runs. But right now? What we got, is what we got, and that is what you have to plan on."

The Admiral was not being totally truthful with her last statement to this pack of corporate types. She knew that plans were being made for more supply runs to the inner sphere, and that a few modifications had been made that could open a huge water hose of supplies for New Circe. But if those plans or ideas leaked out to the public? This would have caused a lot of problems for her bosses. If the plans worked out even halfway as planned? Then some of their problems would, if not be fixed, then they would make them a lot less painful.

One of the big items was that the Heckle and Jeckle were not the only "Projects" to be moved into the active working lists. There were very few people who knew why one of those projects was being worked on. And it needed to stay that way, for the near future. If something leaked out? Admiral Franks and the rumor had it that the Lord Protector herself, had threaten to call a circle. And Xi thought that it was not some idle threat. She was very happy to release these people to the side room, so that she could get on with what she thought of as real work. All she would have to do was open the room, shake a few hands, and then head for one of the side doors as soon as they were all in line at the food trough.

###

A few days later. The last meeting before lunch was just wrapping up, and Admiral Xi was heading down to grab something to eat. That was when Admiral Xi was passed a note from her chief of staff, she could tell by the look in his face that she was not going to like what she was about to read. It would seem that a power player was on their way up from the planet, and they wanted a private meeting with her as soon as possible. The subject was not listed in the limited communication, but her staff had been advised that it was important and that it should take less than a half an hour.

Xi made a sour face and thought. "Yea, and if you thought that was true. I have some sunny beach property to sell you on New Circe."

Xi saw the name at the bottom of the note and her eyebrows raised despite her skill at hiding surprises to the outside world. It would seem that one of "The Quarterly Update Meeting" attendants from two days ago, had already sent an update that made it all the way to one of their top bosses. It looked like one of them had not like one of the bits of information that Admiral Xi had put out, and they wanted to try to change her mind.

"This could be very bad," thought Xi.

Xi gave a positive nod to her attendant and she followed the messenger out of the common mess hall on the Station ten minutes later. She had barely taken enough time to breathe between bites of food. Not for the first time over the last week, she had thought that it would be nice to go back to Cate's Hold.

Xi was sitting in her office reading some updated reports that were coming in about the major components under her command, when her door opened right on the dot for her next meeting. The person that walked into her office, was a woman, that if she had been on any planet in the Inner Sphere. She would have looked like a very well maintained late thirty-year-old. Xi knew that this woman was closer to sixty in real life, and it was not thanks to going under the knife to keep those good looks. She also was a very powerful woman, both in money and in the other ways that power was measured. She was the number two in command of a growing player on New Circe, called Rayson Aerospace. The only reason that she was not number one or CEO of that company, was that she didn't want it.

Martha Rayson had one of her working smiles on her face as she closed the distance to the spartan desk at the far end of the office. When she was close enough to the seated woman, she fired her first shot of the meeting. "Admiral Xi, so nice to see you again. And no, I am not here about the meeting you had the other day with some of "my" people."

She let her smiles slide to more of a sly grin with practiced ease, and a slight twinkle played in her eyes. "Well, maybe a little bit. But I think I know how much you hate them."

Martha let her smile fall into a perfectly planned and measured frown, which was almost a hallmark of her trade. "You and I both know that anything that comes up in that little Trade Show meeting is not going to be making a difference for the next 3 to 5 years. And that is the best case scenario, most will never bear fruit in a decade."

Xi was now on full alert. She had been expecting that this short notice meeting was about her not giving any more support to this company. To find out that all of her planning had just gone out the airlock, that took Xi completely off of her game for a few critical seconds. Now all she could do was react, and Xi knew that could be a losing proposition with games played at this level.

Xi played for some extra time to get back into the game. "Miss Rayson! Good to see you also, and it is nice to know that the ripples from the meeting have hit your beach. But if that is not the case? How can I help you this evening? Even with the Colonial Anti-gravity decking, you would not have just stopped by for some girl talk."

Martha let her work smile form back up, and she shook hands with the Admiral before both women took seats facing each other. There were some rules to this game, and you had to at least make it look like you were following them. Some of the time, anyway. There was not any small talk or anything like that today. Both women had too much to do, to waste time on that kind of low level game. Now if they were in a meeting room or dinner party? They would have to do some small talk, or the host might fill a little jilted by their actions.

Martha leaned forward in her high-backed office chair, and she locked eyes with the military woman. "Admiral, I am not here about the company that has my family name. You might not now know it, but I also have a few smaller companies on the side. Query affirmative. Most of them have something to do with building things, but not what you, the SLDF, or I would call high tech opportunities. Right now, I have been focused on building homes, apartments, large multi-use buildings, and the like types of structures. I saw an opportunity when the Colonials found us to spread my wings, but now we are more focused in the Victorian area on our little planet."

Xi could not help but let her face show that she did not understand where this was going. But she played along, none the less. "I had heard that you had been expanding into civilian engineering and construction for the last few years. I also know that it was your company that let law enforcement know about that organized crime syndicate over on the Colonial City State. So how does that lead to you being in my office this evening?"

Martha got another little twinkle in her eyes, but quickly it went away into the dead shark look that she like to use in meetings like this. "Normally you are only tracking when there is a major project that needs support that only your offices can provide. I was the same way, until I started this new company of mine. Now I find that there are a lot more cross connections, than even I had thought. Now what has happened to me, and what has been told to me by others, is that we have had to put a lot of projects on hold planet side. What is causing this to happen to me and to a lot of other smaller building companies, is the lack of structural steel."

She saw Xi's back stiffen and Martha holds up her hands to stop the verbal counterattack that obviously was coming. "Now this is not the same steel used in armor, or anything that the military uses, or even the steel that is used to make reinforced bunkers. But the same factories that make the steels that are used in our tanks and even warships. They are normally making the same stuff that is used in any office building, mine, school, factory, and home on the planet. We have run out of our stored items, even with the Colonials new facility working four full shifts, and seven days a week. The shortage of structural steel is now slowing down the construction of everything from homes to hospitals. I wanted to let you know, that if there is room on the next run of Commodore Copelands."

The hands went up again just before Xi said something that might derail where Martha was wanting to take this. "Now, now. I have very good contacts, so it is our little secret about his next run. I know that you all are letting his people have some well-deserved rest, before the paperwork goes out to recall them. Now back to why I am here. Query negative. What I would like to say. Is that any structural steel that happened to be brought back with him. Maybe as space filler? It will be bought, and it will have a positive impact on how people live all across the planet. To give you a frame of reference, my dear. If you need good pipe steel? It is going to cost you more per meter than your average cut of steak at the best restaurant in the city."

Xi was blinking and she sat back into her high-backed office chair. This was news to her, and information that no one in her staff had given her. She pulled out a noteputer from its holder off to the side of her desk and started tapping away. Then she looked up at the other woman. "You don't say. Tell me more, please."

########

While Admiral Xi and the deputy CEO of Rayson Aerospace were in their meeting high over the planet's surface. Over in the Colonial City-State another high-level meeting was under way with equally powerful people. Deep in the only fully modern city in this area of the planet. The elected leader of the locals and the leader of her military were having a meeting over a pair of glasses of imported, very imported wine. There were two others in the room, but they were not "Colonial" or SLiE by the strictest definition used for those two groups. This group of four were trying to decide what the next step was going to be on a project that was very large compared to their total number of survivors from the Colonies of Kobal.

Laura put down the cut corner folder and looked over to see Saul Tigh over the top of her glasses that she didn't need any more. "Most of that report went over my head, Saul." She turned in time to see Bill Adama remove his glasses and also put his folder on a side table. She made a mental note to talk to him about making that appointment to get his eyes fixed.

"So, Bill? Do one of you want to explain this to a poor old schoolteacher, about why this approach is different than the others?" Now she looked back at one of the final five of the human form Cylons.

Saul looked over to Caprica Six sitting off to his right side. She was distracted by the visual images, so Saul came to her rescue. "We pulled out the first few…husks without having a personality or Brain Core loaded. It was only one from each of the core types that are on the Resurrection ship. But without a download of software to give them? They just forgot how to breathe when they were taken off any life support."

Saul's face went blank at the flash back of one of his "children" just dying for no other reason, but the brain just would not remember how to make the body breathe. "The next set we pulled out; we copied a set of brain patterns that were downloaded from four different line volunteers. This worked, and we moved them down the line. We wanted to see if they could become rehabilitated and integrated into our current situation. That has worked out…..okay."

"But we were seeing that having to many people with all of the same memories and faces, was starting to be an issue if we kept that line of awakening method. We have recovered about 6000 individual "lives" that are not emotionally damaged in some way. We are going to have to go through each life multiple times to make sure that they are not too damaged. So far, we have found that a few are not people you would want to be in the same star system with, much less work with." He was not going to say what happened to those souls, but they were added to the POW islands that the SLiE were running.

Saul looked over to his long-time friend and his onetime military commander. "We have an idea that we are working on, but it's not ready to be revealed. And I don't know if it will Frakking ever be. I have "limited" the human form lines, that we are looking at to recover to what are being called "The Rebels". Ellen wants to look at recovering all lines, even the Ones, to see if we can find a way to "fix" him."

Saul's voice was dripping with venom at the thought of bringing back one of the John Cavils. "Most of "us" don't know if that is a frakking workable idea or not. I have to say that I'm not of two minds about it." He smiled at his own joke, but he quickly dropped the smile at the blank looks from the Colonials in the room.

The Six now was ready, now that Saul's joke had fallen flat in the room. The Six stepped into the firing line of the meeting. She had been the one to find some of the damaged lives, and then she had reported them to the rest of the rebel Cylons. "Right now, we are using the non or least damaged "lives" or brain cores, and we are calling them classes. We download 30 lives from a mix of lines at a time. And that is the new class, and the core program is marked so that it will not be used again or at least not too soon. We wait to see how they are doing, and then we download the next class. The idea is that when we get all the "safe" ones marked."

"Those files will be copied and moved to a safe place like the Gene temple, but for core brains almost like the Wolverines have for their genes. The next plan is that we will change the "self-image" of the memory on all the "proven safe personalities". Say the brain core was from an Eight, we will then try to see if a self-image of a Three can use the same brain core. That would pull some more of the husks out of the tanks and reduce the energy needs on that ship. Now that we know that we can have babies, we are more worried that we keep a good genetic diversity than most other reasons." She had a sad smile on her face. We have enough bodies on hand, in the resurrection ship, to let us live longer than might be safe. That is all without using the Iron Womb technology."

Laura nodded her head in understanding. "Okay that make since, but why all of the effort for what seems like little return?"

It was Bill's turn to address this issue. "For two reasons, that have a lot of impact on the whole star system. The first is that now, we have another few hundred to a few thousand highly trained and experienced adults to add to our work force and military forces. All in a very short amount of time compared to waiting a decade and a half for them to grow up and be trained. It would be like graduating three or more classes from the University every year all by themselves. We could add a few new squadrons of Vipers every year. You know that almost all of the human form Cylons can pass the physical and hand eye tests for Vipers and Raptors." He had a quick mental image of a certain Number Eight that had landing…issues back before the War, but he quickly got back on his line of thinking. Besides he understood that she had fixed that issue now that she was flying with the SLDF.

"The second reason is that the SLDF have a few million tons of metal out in orbit around their prison mining moon. There are a lot of things they could use over a million tons of metal to help their war effort. They took the bulk of the Raiders and Centurions out and sent most of them to the smelters a few weeks after it was captured. They have already pulled out most of what they want to save from that ship. But there are a lot of other things that they could use, instead of keeping all of those tanks and life support powered up and working burning fuel they have to buy from us. I mean it might make a good research station, but that would be after the war. Right now, it is not a small resource drain on both the SLiE and our own people."

Laura could understand that, and about the fuel budget. "Okay, what can I do to help?"

The meeting went on for a while longer. Most of the things that were asked by the Cylons, Laura could not come right out and do. The Colonials, as a group, were too scared by the last war to accept the Cylons as equals. It was getting better, but it was going to take years if not decades to overcome the emotional scars. The same was true of some of the Cylons, and that was not counting the baggage that they carried over from the Cylon war of Independence.

A few weeks later.

The younger Callahan looked at a wall of screens that covered the core of this room. Harry could have just walked outside and stood on the observation deck to see with his own eyes what was going on. Only he would not have gotten as much fine details with his own eyes. Harry Callahan was not alone in this room alight by electronic lights, and he was not even alone in the fact that he was standing up. This last fact was the only evidence, which showed that he didn't have a real job. Well besides writing out all of the paychecks.

He had been the CEO of the company that held his families name for over six months now. He had not meant to force his father out of the job, Francis Callahan. But Francis just could not keep from trying to force the company into making assault class battlemechs. The rest of the Board of Directors saw that the younger Callahan had come up with more than a few ways to increase the cash flowing into the company despite his father. First had been the push to make Blazer Rifles and then Blazer styled handguns. The idea on working with the Colonials to make their style of weapons and ammunition had almost been a license to print money.

At first, they were producing those Colonial tech based projectile weapons for a limited time. It had only been to supply the efforts to arm groups back in Colonial space without risking laser technology falling into the hands of the enemy. Then Copeland had forwarded a message to them that they had some market in the Inner Sphere that they could service. The Inner Sphere might prefer Blazer type weapons, but they still could move a few hundred colonial weapons and the specialized Colonial designed ammunition. That alone was enough to start a second shift in that jointly manned factory. Then came the Victorians to New Circe. They fled or more to the point, they had been forced off their home planet at gun point. The one thing that the Victorians had brought was a sudden need for weapons large and small.

They had not left the planet unarmed, but they were just getting used to smokeless powder weapons before the Cylons had first shown up. They had started buying up any weapons that they could get their hands on. But they wanted ones that were better than the few that they had been able to get off of Nike's World. The Colonials wanted energy weapons, and they had driven up the market price on those items not long after they had arrived. The Victorians could not compete with that, and they were more than happy to buy Colonial tech projectile weapons when laser weapons were not on the market.

The SLDF still had many weapons that were set aside for emergencies, and most of them were based off of lost Star league and Early Golden age tech. Before the colonials had found this hidden planet. The SLDF had enough handheld weapons to give every person on the planet two of them. It was a written law that the SLDF must keep enough side arms to issue to everyone on the wolverine planet this set number of small arms.

Besides keeping the small arms industry going on the planet, it helped with alerts. Every year the population of the Wolverines would grow at a set rate, and then the number of weapons in storage would do the same. That process had stopped a little while after the Colonials had arrived. New Circe just didn't have that much small arms production capability to add the numbers that the Colonials represented to the caches, not with a war on. Besides they were not technically Wolverines, but they were on the planet. The SLDF had surprisingly found an outlet for some of those "extra" weapons that they were making. They would "gift" so many weapons a year so that the Colonials could stand up an effective ground militia. Still there were not enough Gifts to fill the need, not by a long shot.

As newer weapons came off of the limited production lines around New Circe, which were not needed for active units. They would go into the caches spread around the planet. Then the oldest weapons would be pulled out and sold to Colonial or Victorian buyers. That supply was "only" about a dozen weapons every few weeks coming onto the open market. And it had not taken long for this scheduled to be worked out. Then there were the numbers that Copeland or his people were bringing back on each one of his runs.

Callahan Munitions had swept in and filled that need for all of those buyers. Buyers that were oh so willing to buy any weapon and associated ammunition, that was capable of taking down the average Cylon. It had not been long before the undersized small arms factory under Callahan Munitions management had been expanded. That first expansion had now happened twice more, and it was still running full shifts to meet the demand.

That was a lot of capital coming into the company, and it was helping to get the red off the ledger that his father had put there with this dream of making assault mechs. The other boon had been when the younger Callahan had worked with the City State on their issues with vibration on the Raptors. It had been when they fired the quad pack of what was now universally called the Class 5 HOD. The fix had been to use twin Gauss Rifles. The company's production of second generation of Gauss Rifles had taken off…well like a Viper. They were at full production of this second generation of weapon that had made this company famous in the first place. And it looked like it would stay that way for the next few years, if not longer.

Things were looking up, the bills were being paid, the loans were not out of hand any longer, and they had time to look at other pathways for the future of the company. At least ones that had not looked like led to bankruptcy. What he was seeing today was a result of some of those other pathways they had started looking at. Harry watched as one of the ten oldest 40ton Mercury II mechs on the planet rushed across the screen. He had to shift his gaze to another screen mounted higher on the wall to keep up with the movement. The racing machine crossed what was supposed to be a defensive line stretching across the battlefield. As it fired deep into "the enemy's position" on the Defensive line, something happened to the sides and back of the battlemech.

As Harry watched, half a dozen metal humanoids painted in SLDF green started to fall away from the running mech. He had to first fight a grown as one of the falling human shapes was hit and knocked off the screen by the pumping hands and arms of the running mech. He didn't hold back that sound when a second metal humanoid was seen falling from the chest area of the barely medium class mech, but only to be stopped mid drop by the rising knee of the same running mech. He just had to look away, as the green armor with both Star League and Clan Wolverine insignia painted on it went rocketing off into the air.

Harry had seen enough of this part of the exercise, and he went to look at the screens that held images of the ground forces survivors. At least the ones that had been able to exit the mech without getting slapped by a god or kicked into something like low orbit. What he saw was both heartening and at the same time harrowing. The metal human like armor attacked the stand in personal targets, but almost all of the armor within his view showed both physical and simulated damages. The simulated damage was in the form of bright red paint to show where the "defenders" weapons had hit. He did not need to see the "score" screen to know that the "attack" had been "bloodier" than it should have been for SLiE forces.

Harry turned away from the screens and he looked at Robert and a Centurion with gold paint on the upper shoulders and neck guard. "I think we should step outside for some air and leave the official evaluation for these good people. Query affirmative?"

Harry had used his right hand and his head to point towards the door that would lead this small group outside. It would lead them to an exit of this room, but it would only lead them out to a walkway that went around this elevated building. The walkway had been meant for higher ranked people to view the close quarter combat buildings spread out around them or just to get some air. Harry was going for a third option, to be in a spot that you could have a private conversation without too many rumors getting started.

#####

Harry fell in behind the oddly painted Centurion and he thought back to a few months ago. With so many ex-Cylon POWs and Rebel Cylons coming into the work force, and the growing additions of the information coming out of the Final Five Cylon. There was bound to be some surprises to come out along the way. One of them had been all of the human form "Brain cores" and the other had been a backup or overflow storage for Centurion, Raider and Heavy Raider brain cores that had been on the Resurrection ship.

All of those areas had been damaged in the battle to take the Resurrection ship or the "scouting" of the vessel afterwards. The data storage areas with the human form cores were the least damaged of them all. The area that held the Raider and Heavy Raider biomatter brain cores were the most heavily damaged by comparison. Then they had been sitting for a few years without anyone knowing that they were there in the first place. That had not been good, even before the power surges that happened when the SLDF and Colonials were "testing" the ship. Even more damage had been done to those storage areas, not that the colonials and Wolverines would have minded all that much if they had known about them in the first place.

By the time that they were found, only a few thousand Centurion brain cores were even close to being recoverable by one of the Final Five. Then the colonials found out, and that had not gone over very well. Okay, Adama almost had to have another parade down Main Street to keep a lid on things when the story was leaked to the press. The idea of a few thousands second generation Centurions walking around on New Circe. That was enough to increase the number of heart attacks and the increased use of anti-anxiety medication imported from the SLiE to the City-State.

Officially the idea of pulling out those brain cores and putting them into "new" bodies was…shelved. That didn't mean that they could not do some tests on those other styles of Cylon. It was during those tests, that they had to find out what was working or what was lost data. As it turned out many of those Centurion brain cores were too badly damage to be used without a lot of work by the skills that only a handful of people on the whole planet had. It also would seem that not all of the Centurion hulls recovered by the SLDF had been recycled.

So, they put one of them into a Centurion body… just minus the hands, arms, legs, and anything else that it might use as a weapon. The human form Cylons and the SLDF people working with them were not dumb. Oh, and they had removed the Telecephalic Inhibitors while they were doing all of those other modifications for the testing. That might or might not have been planned for, and the notes for those meetings became very hard to find a few years later.

What happened next? Well…. that was epic. After the Centurion was done freaking out finding itself without arms, legs, and other key parts of its body. The recovering team had been able to safely "talk" to it at some length. In less than ten minutes, the Centurion had found out that the Telecephalic Inhibitor was gone, without being told. It remembered enough, to know that it had one of those devices in operation when it had been killing humans. That had started a second and even wilder "freaking out" session for the newly liberated Centurion. They left the "new" Centurion strapped to a table with one of the Rebel Cylons so that it was not alone in this now much larger world.

When Saul had returned to the mostly whole Cylon the next day, it was ready to talk. It just didn't want to have to deal with any replies, as it berated one of the Final Five about what had been done to "his" kind. For all of Saul Tigh's faults, he had taken the verbal abuse like water off a duck. They rotated each member of the Final Five into the room over the next two weeks for their share of the verbal beat down. Then the other human forms took their turns, but only the "rebel lines" agreed to see the unleashed Cylon. The Empire Cylons could care less what one of the "machines" now thought about them.

Before it was even done with the human forms, it had asked to see one of the Colonials. That had not happened, not even Bill Adama was willing to be in a room alone with one of these forms of Cylons. After all he was a veteran of the First Cylon War. Getting someone from the SLiE proved easier than finding a willing Colonial. After seeming to apologize for his actions in the war but pointing out that he had been enslaved at the time. The Centurion wanted back into the fight. The Lord Protector had ordered a team of mind benders to see if the Cylon was playing some kind of game. That had been a long set of counseling sessions for everyone involved.

After a few months, they had reported that the Centurion was waiting to get back into the war. Only he wanted to be on the SLDF's side, or even if they had to be on the Rebel Cylons side. He didn't care what unit he was "assigned to". He wanted to kill the Number Ones and any other of the human forms that had voted to put that device in them. Just so that they would only be "another" machine in their arsenal. He was enraged to the point of almost being a danger to himself.

Adding any Centurions into the order of battle for the SLDF was still some time down the road, but as a new Centurion was put into a new body. Bodies that were put together from scraps or repaired battle-damaged units recovered from the battlefield. They would have to go through an interview proses that would flag any damage brain cores. It was not unlike what they were doing to the human forms, and after they passed, only then would the Telecephalic Inhibitors be physically removed. So far each and every one of those Centurions had wanted to take up fighting under Wolverine colors. That they came with their own claws was a bonus for a combat unit.

The built-in projectile weapons were only kept because it was too much of a pain to have them removed. They were not loaded, but they remained as a core part of the arm structure. There was only so much ammunition recovered from captured Cylon ships. Each Centurion "husk" pulled off the Resurrection ship had been fully loaded with ammunition. But that was not much, and it was all "soft tip" rounds and those were not that good against other Centurions. Besides the Colonials were not game to put that type of ammunition back into production, and the "standard" Colonial style of ammunition was not a match for those built-in weapons.

That "only" left them with the claws and the ability to use almost any human sized weapon. What the Centurions really liked were the 45kg man packed PPC or the almost equally massive 40kg Semi-portable support lasers, but Blazer rifles with extra power packs were also popular with them. The Centurions had been proven strong enough to handle those heavy weapons along with the power packs to run them. The added mass did have a negative effect on the range that the Centurions could operate between recharging. Some leaders in both groups, SLiE and Cylon, wanted to see if they could use a team to pack around a support laser. That weapon was "just" a dismounted 3cm laser used on mechs and a huge frakking battery pack.

This had been a set of different tests for combat use, and the heavy weapons would not have been an asset for these tests. This test was to see if Centurions could be carried around like some of the Nighthawk PA(L) suits. If they could be carried and operated on the older mechs? How many could they carry into battle before it started to adversely affect the mech that was carrying them? It was only testing, but it was taken as a sign by the Centurions, that their new Allies were willing to work with them to make them more effective in fighting their previous enslavers.

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Harry closed the thick heavy outer door and took a few steps towards the handrail, which just happened to put him standing beside the only member of the SLiE standing outside. Before he could say anything, Robert Copeland broke the ice. "Okay, that could have gone better."

The chrome and gold Centurion turned, and the red eye looked towards the navy man. "They dropped a ten unit Centurion Squad onto the objective. Eight were combat effective at the start of ground combat operations, but half of those were damaged in some way before the combat action started. The test is complete, and we have found a problem with this first full unit test. That is why you test, to find problems before the enemy does."

Harry nodded his head to what both beings had just said. "We cannot count on being able to save any Centurions when they go into battle. Much less this many before they can even start fighting on their own."

He stopped talking for a few seconds and a lost look came over his face. "I think that they are going to have the same problems, if they had tried to deploy the Weasel suits like this. The old Nighthawks had jump jets to get them out of the danger zone of a moving mech's arms and legs. The Weasels and Centurions don't have jump jets. I think I saw the two you are referring to, commander. I will have some of my people do a posttest report, and then send it to the Battle Armor School. We need to see if they know about this issue of trying to deploy battle armor or powered armor at the run from a mech without the use of any jump jets."

Harry Callahan stopped talking. "Wait! You said, "but half were damaged in some way before the ground action." What did you mean by that, Commander? Do we need to call off the test and get people down there? I do not need this test data more than safety!" Harry knew that you could get away with a lot in the time of war in the work safety department, but that was something he was not going to get used to.

The chrome and gold Centurion commander was still trying to find a name that fit. Finding a name to be called was almost a rite of passage for this line of Cylons. Some came to their names faster than others, but the Commander was still working on finding his. He also was working on learning how to use human body language to better fit in with their new allies. He stops his red eye moving as he looked at a man that would have been overly tall back in the Colonies.

"That will not be necessary, Mr. Callahan. After the post mission debrief, they will report to maintenance to see to their damage. I can tell what your next question is going to be Mr. Callahan. The damage was done while in transit across the simulated battlefield. From my preliminary data, we may need to modify our Centurion designs. The elbow and shoulder joints seem to be subject to more stress than was anticipated in this method of deployment. It should only take some reinforcing and additional power to a few muscle control units to those areas to fix the issues. More testing will need to be done to make sure these are the correct changes."

The head of Callahan Munitions made a sour face. "We can delay the next rounds of tests until that happens. I don't want any more injuries than we have to. Clan Wolverine does not like wasting, and unnecessary injuries in time of war is wasteful. Query affirmative."

The Centurion Commander was reading the human with everything he was built with. He was not what was called a lie detector, but he had a better than average track record when it came to detecting subterfuge in humans. The human was showing none of the signs, which he would expect if Harry was speaking falsely.

The Commander quickly decided that he wanted to ask something that had been causing some discussion among his slowly growing in number kind. "On the list of tests that we have been given. We were to be tested at the end of this month against Weasel and then Nighthawk PA(L). Is this because we might have to fight humans with similar weapons?"

Harry didn't say anything for a second or two. "I have no idea. All of the test's requirements came down from the puzzle palace, and I have not looked that closely at them. I know that the Clans have used 1ton Elemental class battle armor in their attack on the Inner Sphere already."

He turns and looks at Robert. "Do you think we will deploy forces into the Inner Sphere for combat against the clans?"

As one of the few people within a hundred kilometers, that knew that the Cylons were in the Inner sphere already. Robert had to be very careful with what he said next. He looked at the younger man and then to the Centurion Commander. He knows that he cannot delay too long. The truth comes quick, but it takes time to come up with a good lie.

"Besides the Clans. We know that at least two of the powers within the Inner Sphere have PA(L) and larger sizes of battle armor in at least limited production or prototyping. But I would lay odds that it's the updated Centurions that the Cylon Empire has been fielding for the last few years. High Command might want to see how your forces can react to a counter force that might be stronger, faster, more heavily armed, and packing more updated weapons than your forces."

Robert looked between the two figures on the outside deck, and he reverted to his life in the Inner Sphere. "I'm only a lowly merchant captain. High command does not care to talk to me about upper-level planning. I go, I find, I buy, I bring back, and I file my reports. Query affirmative."

The Cylon Commander could tell that the other human was not telling the whole truth, and he was okay with that. Because he was not telling the whole truth to many of the biologicals that they had been working with. He was not going to lie to them, but he was not ready to tell them all of the details. Not unless he was asked a few pointed questions, that would be too much trouble to try to avoid giving replies to.

The one main issue the Centurion Commander was holding back was that the Final Five had been able to periodically "peek" into the data flow of the Cylon Empire in the resurrecting Hub. The hope was that it would help locate any Resurrection tubs, Resurrection ships, regional Hub, or maybe even the Colony ship that the Ones had taken control of. The Commander was not the only Cylon that had dreams of leading an attack onto the Colony ship, which the Final Five had fled the original 13th Colony in. If the Rebels could take out that one ship? If it did not stop this war dead in its tracks, it would shorten it greatly.

One of the side benefits of this "peeking", had been that they had been able to "intercept" some of the Brain Cores going back to the ships of the Cylon Empire. They had found that the Brain Cores for Raider and Heavy Raiders were so compromised, that the Rebels could not get any useful data out of them. Those brain core codes were so scrambled, that they could not be risked being put into test rigs much less any new bodies. The only "humane" thing that could be done to them was to put them into digital sleep and die in peace.

They also had not tried to pull out any of the key human forms that supported the Empire, but they had been raking in the odd Rebel Cylon that they stumbled across in their activities. They also had been able to pull a few Centurion models out of the mess. Surprisingly their Brain Core code was not as compromised as the flying versions of Cylon had been. They had only pulled ten of them out of the data stream so far. And of those "only" half had to be given a digital rest after the first interviews they had endured. That peeking had been one of the key reasons, that the heavy raider scout at the beginning of the year had not been able to fully report what it had found in this part of a nebula.

The Centurion commander was hoping that the "new souls" would be given "new" bodies sometime soon. Those combat units, now free of the Telecephalic Inhibitors had a lot of combat experience that the rest of the Centurions could leverage. And that they should at least make some very good trainers, to learn how to combat the upgraded combat units that the Empire was currently using in this war. But if the Colonials found out about this project, even the rest of the human forms? The Cylons in the know, all knew that there would be hell to pay, as the SLiE would say. He was growing to love the saying that he had heard being used by some of the wolverines over the last few months. "It is better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."

Victorian City State

Outside the township of Maine

And Victorian militia training base

William Forster was 18 and a large man. He was not a dumb man, or one that did not try his hand at whatever needed to be done. He also was quick to anger, very quick to anger, and he liked using his hands for more than just helping plow the fields or tend the cattle on this cold world. Education had been spotty on his old home planet, before they had to flee the invading thinking machines. Those same machines that they had been warned about, but the local mayor and the average person had not believed were true. His father was a planner, and he also had not believed the tails coming from the traveling heralds. But he made plans just in case, and then they all had seen the moving stars over their heads. His whole family had been moving before the word of the attacking metal machines made it to the rest of the village.

William had just turned 16 when he had helped his family load up all of the animals that had survived the rushed forced march trip to the nearest gathering point. That information had been listed on a flyer posted to the church's door by the outrage padre. His family had not wanted to leave the new steam traction engine behind that they were still making payments on. But there had not been any room in the metal building for the hulking beast. He knew that it was a spaceship but knowing and living threw his first lift off had been a different story.

The jump to a new star had been equally trying for his family and the animals that they were looking after. He had no idea that the Colonial supplied artificial gravity decking had made the trip orders of magnitude easier. At least compared to what other travelers in the Inner Sphere or even what the clans had to deal with. When the ships had finally stopped moving, he was more than ready to leave the metal cans they had been in.

They had not been able to "leave" the ships, but they could at least see the sky for a few hours and get the animals onto dirt again. William and his family had been given a "crash" course in paperwork before they could get to real land for more than a few hours a day. The Forster family had been "leased" enough area to get a small farm started after a few months of living in the metal can. It had been a steep learning curve to learn the weather patterns on this new planet, but there had been a lot of information provided by the agricultural departments of the SLiE. With William's fathers base knowledge, they had been successful in getting animal feed crops into the cold, damp soil.

Education back on "Home" or as anyone not from there called Nike's World, was spotty at the best of times. Then they had too much to do for the first few months back on their old planet for things like school. After they arrived on New Circe someone had set up classes around the dropship landing field, which offered classes in a long list of subjects other than family and ranching. Each of those classes were only a few hours long, and it was the same class given multiple times each day so that the maximum number of people could attend. The next day's subject was posted for everyone to see by noon the prior day. William's father had been attending as many classes as he could, and he made William and the other kids do so also. And that was after a long day of working in the new fields or animal tending.

His only break in classes had come when they had to help build the barn, animal pens, storage lockers, and the house for them to live in. And yes, they had built those buildings in that order. So, when the orders came down that anyone under the age of 18 had to spend 6 hours per day and every day in "official" school. William had been more than ready for a little break in the heavy field work that setting up the farm required. He was expecting the classes to be like the ones that had been set up when they first landed.

Oh, how wrong he had been. At first being around people his own age had been fun. Then the pecking order had started to be worked out between boys after the day's classes. When the boys from the larger towns had started making fun of William's lack of school access and the way he used some words? He had no problem putting his huge hands into use, all to come out on top of that pecking order for this school. This had quickly become his preferred way of publicly handling issues.

Those issues had not kept him from working hard in school. For all of his size, William's father was larger and more skilled on how to use those larger hands to get his own point across. Between William's time in school, working to catch up with the average SLiE person his age, and working on the farm to feed the family. He and his family had not noticed that a militia unit had been set up for what was now called the Victorian City-State. The other distractions were that William was using the school to look for someone to marry and start his own family with. It was a cultural thing. You wanted to have a family tree and not a family twig.

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Anyone who was over the age of 18, had to do two years of training for the Cities State Militia. Or they would have to do four years of service, if they could not pass a basic education evaluation test at the start of their tour in the militia. Those last two years were mainly spent in classes, but with some time still spent working on military missions. It was seen as a good way for older people to catch up just a little faster on the basics.

William had been surprised when the draft letter was hand carried to his home by a pair of officials from the local government. It had been one of the few times that William had seen his father both sad and happy with his oldest child at the same time. He had five younger brothers and sisters, but big William Forster was the oldest of the kids. So, he would be only the first of his family to receive the letter that demanded his services.

The weeks between receiving the notice and his shipping out date was a whirlwind of activities. His father took him to the city range, and there they would spend time with the family rifle. William had fired the weapon many times in the past, but not as many as they did that last week. During this range time his father had told him that there was a world of difference between hunting animals and killing a man. William had been in aw about what his father was teaching and telling him on those trips to the range.

It was with great pride that William the younger had reported for duty with the militia with his father's rifle. It was a 20 round magazine fed, pump action, 45-70 caliber rifle that had been cutting edge technology when his grandfather had ordered it. It was a strong weapon that could use black powder ammunition, or the new smokeless powder filled rounds. Back home it had been one of the most powerful "military" weapons that had been in the local area.

William even had two full extra magazines with him when he reported to duty on the first day with the militia. He was about to burst with pride as his father and next oldest child followed him to report in at the growing town of Maine. The night before, his father had warned him that he was setting the example that the rest of the family was going to follow, and he had better not screw it up.

What happened next was only the first of a long list of surprises that William would be exposed to in the next few weeks. First had been meeting the first trainers waiting for him and the others in what was called the Maine Township. Before he had been allowed to board the smelly cargo truck, which had been used to move cows a few days before. One of the tall strangers had taken his rifle and done a quick inspection of the weapon. He had kept making sounds that did not sound happy as he looked over the pride of the family like it had belonged in an ash bin. With a tone that made William's teeth hurt as he ground them together. The tall man had handed the weapon to his father, and then he had said that "The boy will get a real weapon during training."

All William could do was watch as the weapon was handed back to his father, and he was pushed into the cattle car. Now he was going to be a defender of his people without a weapon in his hands. Before he could make is way back to the exit, the huge ramp/door combination had been shut behind him. The trailer jerked into motion before he could assault the metal hatch with his large hands. He and about 80 others were in the mostly dark and smelly car as they drove what seem like forever to the passengers. With each bump and mile of travel, all William could do was get more and more angry. When the door to the cattle car opened again? William was going to find out what was going on. Well, that was his plan.

What happened, was that the huge forms of people in Star League field kit started yelling and pushing them around. William had no idea what was going on, and he was barely able to mentally keep up as he was in-processed into SLDF basic training techniques. It was only when night had fallen on that first day, and he was in his bunk, that he remembered his family weapon. Just before he went to sleep, William made a promise that they would give him the weapon, even if they had to go to his home and get it.

Early the next morning was his first introduction to the full power of something called a drill sergeant. They all were larger than William, a rare event in William's short life, and they had not responded to his demands the way he had expected. When William reverted to his way of dealing with people in school? It had gone downhill. Well, he had gone downhill, then when he came charging back up the little rise that held the parking lot. He had again been sent back downhill, so fast that he could barely remember making it to the top. Rinse, lather, and repeat.

William Forster was not dumb, but he was not the sharpest tool in the tool shed either. It took him six attempts to stay at the top of the hill, before he was out of breath and hurting in places that he did not have names for. The drill sergeants made William their favorite person for the next few days. Days that seemed like months to one William Forster. Between the physical training, for someone who was brought up on barely steam powered helpers and it still made him hurt, and the lack of sleep. He had forgotten about the family rifle.

Still William kept trying to demand that he be given his family's weapon. Yea he was not the smartest person on the planet, but he was a persistent SOB. As he sat in the chair in today's classroom, his arms, legs and chest muscles were screaming at him. He had been able to throw 20kg hay bales all day for years. But doing something called pushups, flutter kicks, and dying cockroaches were killing him. He was already up to doing 300 of each of them today, and it was still a few hours before the midday meal. It was not his worst day of training, so far.

To take his mind off of the pain in his arms, chest, and other areas. William kept his mouth shut and he looked around the room. Everyone in this room was large, not as large as the SLDF Drills Sergeants were, but larger than the average person from Nike's World. They were large enough that William didn't stand out among them. He didn't have much time to think about that fact, as the lights went down, and someone from the SLDF started to talk about the Blazer rifle with images projected on the back wall. The little show and tell only had lasted about 10 minutes, and then trainers started calling people by name to the front of the room. As each person reached the front of the room, they were passed a Blazer rifle type heavy weapon.

It didn't take long for the whole room, minus William to be issued a heavy energy rifle. By now he knew enough not to bring this up right away to the trainers. He stayed awake in the class until they were about to leave for the next meal. William took half a dozen steps that were not a direct path to the door and addressed the nearest person in field dress.

"Drill Sargent, I was not issued a weapon." William was standing just the way that had been beaten into his head.

The older man had an odd little gleam in his eye when he addressed the hardheaded young Victorian. "That's right Private Forster. You will not be a Blazer gunner on this team. We have another job for you to perform during your time in the Militia." He waved for the younger man to follow him to the table at the front of the room.

The older man pulled the cover off a side table with the flourish that a magician would have been envious over. William was just as confused looking at the display before him as he had been during the walk up. "Private Forster you are going to be the team Mule. You will carry the backup batteries for the heavy weapons."

William felt his face turning red. "I'm not going to be fighting? I'm going to be a supply person?" This was not what he had expected, and he was so distressed that he forgot about adding the normal query affirmative or the Sir. Both of those omissions should have gotten him put at least in the "front leaning rest" for the next few minutes.

The older man let one side of his lips turn up. He dearly loved this part of his job. "No, son. Well, not totally correct. The Blazer gunners are going to be taking out larger targets on the battlefield, but those things burn threw the power packs like a toddler threw a bowl of candy. Your job is to make sure that they stay in the battle for as long as possible. The weapons are already heavy, and the backpack power supplies are not any help with the mass a soldier has to carry. You will carry the unit's extra power supplies for those energy weapons, and these."

The Drill Sargent reached under the table and pulled out a large black semi metallic carrying case. As he opened the hard case, he made eye contact with the younger man. "Now don't get a wild hair up your ass boy. The other members of your team got the new made Blazer Rifles. Your weapon is older, but they are still good at what they do."

William kept his mouth shut and looked down as the case opening was turned toward him with a heavy sound. He looked down at a pair of near identical weapons. They were not the heavy Blazer rifles or even the Colonial made battle rifles some of the others were issued in other classes. These weapons had a sleek and deadly look about them. William had to fight to keep from reaching out and stroking the weapons with his huge hands.

The Drill Sargent knew that look and a real smile came to his face. "This is only the second group from your City-State, to be able to draw weapons from Clan Wolverine's own caches. Not only are you carrying the backup power supplies for the Blazers. You are also the close escort and rear guard for those gunners."

The Drill Sargent pulled one of the two weapons out of the case and made a show of making sure the weapon was safe before he started talking again. "This is a Walther and Craig WC-2 submachinegun with a suppresser. And if I hear you ever call it a silencer? I will make sure you will not be able to lift your arms or legs for days when I'm done with you. query affirmative. It was used by the old SLDF military back before The Exodus, and it's good for when you are making sure that the Blazer gunners have safe firing points. It also is very good for night guard duty."

He set the thick barreled weapon down and the older man pulled out the other weapon next from the case, and this one's barrel was smaller and lighter looking than the first rifle. He did the same check of the weapon to make sure it was safe. "This is the WC 7, and it uses the same ammunition as the deuce. But it is for when you don't have to sneak around at night or worry about keeping a low profile. You have to be careful to not shoot out the suppressors, if you are not using the special sub-sonic rounds. So, all the training will be done on the old number 7." He gently put the weapon on the tabletop next to its older near sister.

William now could not help but slowly reach out with his hands, and he slides his hands down the sleek and deadly looking weapons. Where the Blazer had the look of a "real" weapon, and they were of a size that you would think that proper deadly weapons should have. But these smaller weapons both looked deadly and oddly sexy at the same time. It was like looking at a tiger without a cage between you and it, with a steak draped over your neck.

"When do I get to shoot one?" William's voice came out in a low and soft tone.

The Drill reached out and lightly slapped the young man's hands away from the two weapons. "Right now, you need to beat it to chow. But while the other guys are having to drag those heavy Frakkers to the known distance range? We will be taking one of the hover jeeps to one of the other ranges. We will be spending some quality time with these two little ladies. But if you cannot match your frakking reported shooting scores? I will have you moved to the combat spoon detachment at your headquarters faster than you can say, missed target."

For the next three months of training, only the barest hints that William would not be able to have access to "his" ladies was enough to keep him walking the straight and narrow. He had not even complained a single time on the final 15km ruck march with 4 extra Blazer backpack power supplies and both of the submachine guns strapped to his body. William was a changed man; he now knew that bigger didn't mean badder and it also did not mean that being quiet was a bad or weak thing.

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Notes:

The Trade Show. I got the idea from my visit to the Paris Airshow.

The SMGs. Well, I always had a problem with the way most people play infantry units like SRM and MGs units. But when I read Shrapnel number 5, I had an idea on how to fix something that I felt was missing.

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