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Chapter 24 - A Long Journey[]
31 August 2785
Mackolla (Federated Suns)
After Major Paulina Flores and Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell had taken a shuttle back to her Jumpship for the trip back to Site 222, Gerald Mitchell and Colin Blaine started work on figuring out how to speed up the future recovery efforts of Site 222 plus repairing ships as they were brought back to Mackolla itself for future sell or use. The money he had already spent for recruiting experienced workers had generated quite a large response from the resumes sent back to him. So many that neither he nor Colin could ever hope to keep up, so he had hired a small staff of eight people to help handle the near non stop flow of resumes. They had been given very specific skill sets to look for and he got a report daily on how many offer letters had been sent out and how many were being accepted.
Today they were updating the skill sets to include experienced shipyard workers to man the Olympus Recharge Station. While Colin handled the staff and reviewed some resumes, Gerald Mitchell was in his small office at home staring at a small cork board that held a diagram he had drawn up listing the growing business'. It irritated him some that Governor Nelson had his hands in so many pies locally that he was bound to get kickbacks on everything they did. He leaned forward and made some notes before leaning back again, not enough money to avoid it right now, he thought.
16 September 2785
Cephei (Unclaimed)
SLS Bucking Horse, Star Lord Jumpship, materialized at the La Grange point and immediately began hot loading the ships core. With a minimum crew of volunteers it was hard work for the engineers as they had to constantly monitor the core and all systems during the charging process. No one really spoke as everyone went about their tasks, even the bridge crew were silent but all eyes kept a constant watch over the ships sensors, most silently praying that their sensors would not detect a thing.
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Casper Drone Warship
It had detected the incoming emergence wave at the nearby La Grange point, it noted the same SLDF IFF system as before only this time, instead of remaining passive, it powered up it's transit drive and decided to go have a look see. It lit off all it's active sensors to assist in navigating the dust ring.
The activation of the Caspar's radar was easily detected by the sensors onboard SLS Bucking Horse and everyone onboard soon knew that the Caspar was awake and sensors showed bearing changes so it was maneuvering. Major Paulina Flores and Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell exchanged looks as she said "Well, not what we wanted, the pucker factor is now real."
17 September 2785
No one dared catch any sleep as they watched the sensor plot until the lone Caspar Drone was firmly on their own radar screens. It approached at a leisurely pace, just over 1G of thrust until it began a deceleration burn that brought it to a halt just inside it's own weapons range. SLS Bucking Horse's communication system confirmed a laser communication lock established from the Caspar Drone and a message appeared.
Caspar 101A to ship broadcasting SLDF IFF SLS Bucking Horse. Authentication Code required.......Caspar 101A to ship broadcasting SLDF IFF SLS Bucking Horse. Authentication Code required........Caspar 101A to ship broadcasting SLDF IFF SLS Bucking Horse. Authentication Code required
Major Paulina Flores stepped to the communication board and typed in SL19375FYGP4857-BDMK and then hit send. Everyone held their breath.
Authentication Code accepted........status of replenishment?
Major Paulina Flores smiled as she typed, state current status.
Mission capable.....extreme low fuel....ammunition replenishment needed......minor armor damage......power feed fault to forward firing station. Shuttle Bay ready to receive repair crews.
She looked at Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell, "Would you like to board death itself?"
"Honestly, no. I am not that comfortable in zero g as it is, I prefer good old gravity and firm ground under my feet. Better with 100 tons of tank with me."
"Well, that is 680,000 tons of total bad ass sitting right there. I never got my warship command, always wanted one. Just sexy as hell." Major Paulina Mitchell replied
"You go have fun, when your done, can you make sure we can leave safely and return to start our work out here?" Lieutenant General Mitchell said