BoTH Chpt 16

==Blood on the Horizon - Chapter 16 -==
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===Frustration===
"I! Hate! This! Stupid! Fucking! Place!" I slammed my bloodied knuckles into the punching bag with every breath. The tape did little to stop the red droplets from dripping down. 
 
"I just want to go home," I breathed, stilling the punching bag and turning away as the rage left, my gut churning with emotion as exhaustion seeped in. "I'm so tired."
 
I shuffled slowly to the door, sweat and blood mingling together on the floor as blood dripped from my knuckles. 
 
Moving through the hidden base, I eventually stopped at a bathroom and pulled a medkit off of the wall. Then, sitting down on the toilet, I began cleaning my knuckles with an alcohol pad, a slight hiss the only noise I made before I taped my knuckles together with more medical tape and gauze. 
 
Everything was dull, now that I had spent all of my emotional energy, I felt drained as if I were merely a robot operating in human flesh. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, I wasn't going to be getting out of here. I mean, I couldn't even get the King Henry V to work with the runtimes I had isolated! 
 
Standing up with a slight groan of pain as my left knee twinged, I left the bathroom and found the nearest bunk. I didn't have the energy for any of this today, maybe things would be different in the morning.
 
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Things weren't better in the morning. I was still stuck here, and now I was in pain because of yesterday me's stupid choices. 
 
"Yesterday me was a fuckin' idiot," I swore. "I still have to do the work, now I just get to do it sore, tired, and bloody."
 
Climbing out of the bunk I slept in the night before, I figured out my location relative to the mess hall and made my way back there. If I were going to have a bad day, I'd at least start it caffeinated.
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===Sign of Addiction===
June 7th, 3001SLDF Hidden Repair and Refit Facility on the border of the Federated Suns and Taurian Concordat
 
"And that's two years I've been stuck here," I sipped at my coffee while examining the code that was so close to working. 
 
"Wait," I leaned forward, spotting an error that I hadn't noticed before. A definition hadn't been assigned properly. One simple missing closing parenthesis had thrown off the results I had been trying for the last few months. Weeks of pain and headache, all due to one minor error that was left over from the original AI's runtimes. 
 
"Stuff like this is why I didn't pursue programming as a career," I shook my head as a migraine started to push to the foreground of my mind. "Guess I'll run this again before I deal with this."
 
Plugging the corrected runtimes into the Jumpship's software, I set it to run the tests before stepping away. I needed to find something to fix this damned headache. 
 
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"You're addictive," I set aside all of the opioids as I dug through the doctor's medicine cabinet on the Manassas. "I just need super aspirin or something. Future of the eighties, don't fail me now."
 
There! I found what I was looking for. 
 
"Thousand milligrams of Ibuprofen, some caffeine, a little bit of B12. I'm thinking this was someone's attempt at a hangover cure, but I'll use it for a migraine instead."
 
Swallowing the pill as directed, I tucked the bottle away into my pack while sucking down a bunch of water. 
 
"I'm going to have faith that those runtimes will work," I muttered as I began to head back to the main cargo bay. "And start transferring the gear and kit that I want over to the King Henry V and her dropships."
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===Built to Blend In===
"Information security," I shook my head as I entered the password that the captain of the Messenger had so helpfully written down. "It's not many people's strong suit." 
 
Typing away, I began devouring the information inside the terminal, the Messenger was important, and for more than one reason. 
 
The Messenger was a Pueblo class dropship, used by the SLIC to maintain their intelligence networks. It was normally armed to the teeth, more heavily armored than other aerodynes, and able to both transmit and receive classified information with the HPG that was hidden away behind a secret compartment. There were passenger spaces, and cargo spaces as well. The ship being cleverly designed to look and act like a normal trade dropship, it was able to slip by unnoticed by most of the Inner Sphere and Periphery worlds. Collecting data and relaying what information they gained back to Terra.
 
Interestingly enough, this ship was part of a larger trade network, and her captain was the sole 'owner' of the larger company, with funding and cash reserves stashed in various banks across the Inner Sphere. And while I knew that some of those accounts would be gone or otherwise inaccessible, I would be able to get access to some of them with the account numbers and passwords that had been stored here. 
 
It might not sound like much, but it would be a start and would enable me to find and hire those who might be interested in making my basic idea of a mercenary company come true. 
 
But for now, I needed to focus on what was happening right in front of me.
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===The Idea of a Future===
"Four 'mechs," I ensured that the four Battlemechs I had loaded into the Messenger were tied down properly. "One Warhammer, one Mongoose, a Griffin, and a Crab." I patted the crate that I had brought over. "One crate of SLDF mechwarrior uniforms, one crate of SLDF grade neurohelmets. And enough small arms to arm two companies." 
 
"Dropships are loaded," I cheered to myself. "Now to make sure all of the trade goods are intact."
 
I took a fresh notebook and went over everything with a fine-toothed comb. Every small bolt, the spare parts that I had for the machines at my disposal. Everything had its place. 
 
"Only thing that's left is to move the simulators over to one of the dropships," I pinched the bridge of my nose at the thought of the hell machines. "I'm gonna regret this, I just know it."
 
But, at the thought of finally getting out of here and making contact again, my mood immediately changed, with a fresh wave of energy arriving with the rush of dopamine. 
 
"Let's just get it done," I said to myself. "Sooner it's finished, the sooner I get to leave and see people again. And I've had enough of being alone for a lifetime."
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Chapter 16