BoTH Chpt 43

==Blood on the Horizon - Chapter 43 -==
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===A Long Distance Update in the Dark===
Location: EidolonDate: July 4th, 3003
"Let's hope they have good news," I muttered as I sat down at a terminal aboard the Messenger, a text chat linked and bounced off of the Phoenix to the teams working on the Jumpships further in the system. 
 
"Captain Frye, are you receiving things, or is the delay too much?" I typed in and pressed send before sipping some water. 
 
About a minute or so later, the display lit up with a response.
 
"Major, it's good to see a message from you. Sorry we've been a bit silent, but we've been hard at work getting one of the Leviathans up and running."
 
"We've been just as busy here on the ground. But I'm not sure the stakes are as high if someone screws up as it is up there. Anyway, any updates on your progress? If you need it, we can divert the Phoenix to help manufacture whatever parts you need. Her machine shops should come in handy there just as much as they do here."
 
"If you can spare her, we could use the help. We've got most of one of them fixed, but we've had to strip parts from one to make the other work, and I'd like to have two Jumpships with eight collars instead of just one."
 
"Focus on just getting one of them up to speed for now. We don't exactly have the crews for the second Jumpship as it is. We're going to have to be very careful until we manage to pick up some new hires. Because any losses could mean a loss in good maintenance."
 
"You got it. We'll just focus on getting the Whirlwind up and running. Also, hope you don't mind that a couple of my guys named her, but she's been a lot of fun to get working, so we went ahead and decided on what we were calling her."
 
"Did she not have a name? I assumed that it'd be all over the data logs."
 
"Mark, we're lucky the computers were in as good shape as they were. All of the logs were corrupted and the paint had mostly peeled off. We've had to replace Helium seals and a whole bunch of other parts that have thankfully been standard since the first Jumpships left their docks. So yeah, we named her. Anyway, I'll send a report on the status of the Jumpships and the museum pieces up here in a couple of days. I'll probably rotate some of the techs through the Phoenix for some R&R when she gets here too. The King Henry's nice and all, but there's just something about having a zero-g pool and some other niceties that make a girl jealous."
 
I chuckled and shook my head at the upbeat Jumpship captain's words.
 
"Alright, try not to have too much fun, Thanks for the update. Hull"
 
With a groan, I stood up from the terminal and stretched. 
 
"Now we get to go back to helping piece together the Dropships," I finished off the water bottle before setting it down in the galley. It was time to get back to work.
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===Its Alive!===
July 7th, 3003
Can someone hand me that tool?" Hober asked, his hand outstretched as he lay underneath the main console of a dropship. "Thanks," he closed his hand around the screwdriver, the headlamp on his head focused on the circuit board that he was removing. 
 
"Now, I need the replacement board," he set the old one down on a towel that was lying down next to him. 
 
The board was handed to him, enclosed in a static-proof container that Hober gently removed before sliding the new main board back in. 
 
"And one more screw," he tightened down the last one before sliding out from under the console. 
 
"I need someone to turn on the emergency power," he told his gopher. "I want to check it before we get the reactor back online. I'd hate for us to do all of that only for it to get overloaded and us to replace it again."
 
A couple of minutes later, the red glow of emergency lights began to cast an eerie look in the cockpit as the main console began to light up. 
 
"She's working!" Hober grinned. "Let me run some tests, but I think we just got our first dropship finished."
 
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"Good work," Captain Victoria Jewel looked at the junior officer. "You're the first crew to get one up and running. So, you want your leave now? Or do you want to take it after you've helped out another crew figure out their problems?"
 
"We can take leave later," Hober looked at the DroST. "Besides, I'd like permission to take the old girl on a test flight. Just because everything seems to be working, doesn't mean that it is. And, we need to make sure that she'll survive exit and reentry of the atmosphere, otherwise all of our work here'll be for a bunch of nothing. 
 
"Well, the Leave is there for when y'all want it. And there are bonuses for each dropship that we get up and running."
 
"What kind of bonuses are we talking here?" Jill, Hober's second asked, a greedy look in her eye. 
 
"The standard ones," Hober gently smacked the back of her head. "You know what our contract says just as well as I do. And it's a good addition to our already good check. Now, if we want to really cash in on that check, we need to focus on helping out one group at a time."
 
"I'll leave you to it," Victoria turned and walked away, heading back to the Jumbo that was the current source of problems. 
 
"We could work on the other DroST first," Hober looked at the other aerodyne dropship. "Given we've already got one of them working, we should have an advantage there."
 
"Right," Jill rubbed her hands together. "I'll go ask who wants to take leave and who wants to help out."
 
"And I'll let the other crew know that we're not there to get in their way. But that they've got a bunch of extra hands."
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===The Fun and Games of Paperwork===
July 12, 3003
 
"Who'd have thought the paperwork on the salvage was going to be worse than actually working to get everything fixed up," I sighed and sipped at a cup of black coffee as I continued sorting through the various reports and filing them away. 
 
"At least we don't have to register anything," Sheppard offered. "After all, the unit owns everything, and you own the unit."
 
"Not quite true," I set my mug down. "I directly own the King Henry and the Messenger. Those two are mine."
 
"That's fair," Sheppard shrugged as he scanned another report. "Look, at least you're inside instead of in the rain."
 
"I'd rather be out there working in the rain," I muttered as I made some notes. "Paperwork can go die in a fire."
 
"No, it can't," Naomi said cheerfully as she dumped more reports onto the desk. "Love it or hate it, but we need to make sure that we have actual data we can use for the wrecks we're getting put back into service. So this is just as important as anything else in the long run."
 
"I thought I specifically hired admin people to do this," I paused and stroked my beard. "I know for a fact that I wanted stuff sorted and gone through before it reached my desk."
 
"This is what's let," Naomi shrugged. "A lot of it is them finally catching up to some of your backlog. So once you're done here, you'll be able to just do maintenance."
 
"And it's not like you're suffering alone," Sheppard offered. "Peterson's supposed to rotate out with us soon?"
 
"No," I sighed, "He got roped into helping some of the Dropship salvage crews. They're having some sort of contest, and his wife wanted them both to help out."
 
"Fuck," Sheppard laid his head on the table. "Well, the faster we finish this, the faster we're done?"
 
"Right," I started scanning the document again. "Let's get this done."
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===Salvage Report (Eidolon)===
8 Assorted Ballista artillery piece clones
2 Black Eagle Class Mech Carrier Dropships
1 Jumbo class Cargo dropship
2 DroST Class Transport dropships.
 
Salvage left behind and/or used for replacement parts.
 
4 DroST class dropships
1 Black Eagle,
Assorted Dropshuttles varying in tonnage from 200-5000 tons respectively. No specific models were identified as useable for our purposes.
 
Out of the DropShips left behind, we have identified that at least two more of the aerodynes are salvageable, and the remaining Black Eagle will be able to be repaired provided we are able to obtain extra replacement parts.
 
Estimated time to repair on total salvage… One year six months assuming that there is something that was missed in initial overview.
 
Total time allotted for current dropships. Eight Months, rough estimates put us at 1 Black Eagle, the Jumbo, and both DroSTs, the Artillery pieces can be repaired during transit.
 
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Reported Salvage from jumpship fleet at zenith point.
 
Total vessels at jump point… 16
2 identified Aquilla Class Jumpships, given their age, even if they weren't in a slight state of disrepair, our technicians would have no idea how to bring them back up to anything resembling working order.
 
2 Identified Leviathan Class Jumpships, one of them is more damaged than the other, but they are confident that they can get one working at full capacity before we are due to exit the system.
 
Other unnamed JumpShips, but design standards indicate the potential for manufacturing outside of that widely known in the history or warbooks. There appear to be several Conestoga knockoffs or homebrewed designs that may have been known in the periphery prior to the Reunification Wars.
 
While many of our techs had hoped to work on or salvage one of the larger craft, there are multiple issues that arose when repairs were first attempted.
 
The first of which is that none of our people had worked on or attempted to work on anything larger than an Monolith before, and even that experience did not lend itself to working on the ships that were nearly as old as the beginnings of space colonization. As it is, we are going to take a look at some libraries for any documentation that might be available once we reach inhabited space again. It might be worth it in the long run for us to attempt to salvage and reclaim these vessels, even if it's just to park them in the orbit of a planet or two for people to visit as museum pieces.
 
In summation,
 
Recovered in initial salvage and inspection run
 
1 Black Eagle
1 Jumbo
2 DroST
8 Ballista artillery pieces
1 Leviathan Class Jumpship
 
After completing other contracts, we'll be making another sweep when we're not on the clock. You never know what someone might have missed.
 
Potential future salvage
 
2 Black Eagles
2 DroST
1 Leviathan
 
Whatever else we may find on another sweep of the city.
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Chapter 43