Chapter 45 - Important People[]
In Orbit
Tharkad System
Lyran Commonwealth
November, 3097
[Tharkad Anchorage, 10:00 AM....]
It could have been worse. The combination of budget reductions, personnel reductions in force, and mothballing directives meant that the Anchorage was understaffed before the Coup. It probably made it easier for the conspirators to take control, but it could have been worse.
As it was, Patrick Ngo decided, it was pretty damned bad.
"The whole station complex is a mess," crackled Kapitain Johannes Krieger's voice in his helmet.
"Oh yeah," Patrick responded. Coast Guard personnel were going through the structure, extracting bodies. "It is. You guys really chewed the hell out of it."
"They didn't give us a lot of options there." explained Krieger.
"Not arguing, Kapitain." He hit the thruster pack's control and drifted over the main habitat module. Noting the rents blown in the structure by point-blank naval laser arrays. The reports from LCN and Coast Guard Survey teams were already streaming to his helmet's HUD. It showing exactly how much damage had been done to the vessels along Battleship Row.
It was a lot, and almost all of it was the expensive kind: Ruined jump cores, Ruined powerplants, and ruined sublight engines. "They knew just where to hit us." He added, "Like they had the engineering plans... which they appear to have had."
He found himself eye level with the Station's traffic control, where a team of Marines and LCN sailors were still collecting and clearing the bodies. "****** what a mess."
How bad? There were five thousand personnel stationed on the Anchorage, that's how bad. He frowned. "SAR One, how many bodies has Graves Registration recovered here?"
"Your Grace, sir, we're over seven thousand between Battleship Ring and the station itself, over."
"Roger that, out." He disconnected from the EMU and floated across to the hull of the station itself.
Most of the bodies being recovered weren't wearing their suits. They were in surface duties. The suited bodies? Had holes where there weren't supposed to be holes.
It told him a story he didn't want to think too deeply on seeing that.
"Kapitain Krieger, bring your boat back to slip sixteen," Patrick said. "We'll start with setting up a workframe around your ship, being as you're the closest to mission ready, I'll get the salvage teams to work clearing the Station and repressurizing sections. With fifteen battlewagons no longer jump capable. We're going to need to do the salvage and repair work here."