WCGW Chpt 38

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==Chapter 38 - What Could Go Wrong==
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15 August 3041
Inner End (Federated Commonwealth)
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Sergeant Nathan Davis had gone recluse again while digging for information worth acting on from the mountain of stuff recovered from the Tramp Class Jumpship. After studying the Tramp's recovered logs, he at least knew what types of Dropships were delivered or picked up. This information had already been added to the massive Holo data base by him. This Tramp in particular had made many more drop offs than pickups during it's last year. But after 2 days searching the recovered data bases, he had been no closer to any sort of information they could reliably act on. He had then resorted to slowly reading all the recovered paper items.
Yesterday he had been ready to give up on reading the numerous personal journals of the crew, but he had decided to give one more day. He was on his second journal of the day, the first almost boring him to tears, and this one was not turning out any better. But then he turned the page and sat up a little straighter.
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2 April 2765
The flu continues raging among the crew, had to have been from the Dropships crew, but no matter, it worked to my advantage. During our stop at Blommestein, I was a lucky one and volunteered to assist the flu ravaged Dropship crew on the planet's surface. We came in at a pirate point only 2 days from the surface, so it was a short hop. On the ground, we began unloading the large Mammoth Dropships of its cargo. During the ride down, I spent time talking with the Dropship crew. From them I learned that a major upgrade was taking place inside of 18th Army.
That at least answered some of my own wonderings, we had been very busy hauling Dropship to what seemed like every system out here. I spent the day helping to unhook the cargo nets from over 100 Night Hawk Battlemechs fresh from Mountain Wolf BattleMechs Alpheratz factory for the 135th Mechanized Infantry Division. The second day on the surface, I spent the day repeating the unhooking of cargo nets but this time on Crab Battlemechs. The third day was spent watching hundreds of Turhans Urban Tanks roll down the ramps. When we finally lifted off, the massive cargo bays looked weird being empty. I asked one of the cargo deck people why we did not load cargo and he told me that the old equipment would be cached on planet for future use by the planet's militia forces.
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He quickly scanned more and more journal entries until he found another that looked promising.
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19 October 2765
He participated in the evacuation of the 37th Royal Dragoon Regiment from Joshua. We even had warship escorts for the mission. After they docked, I got to talk to a few about the fighting they had seen. One said that they held out long enough to for the engineer's to properly seal and hide the entrance to the large cache of equipment meant for the local militia of Joshua and several other nearby systems. he told me that they were outnumbered, and the rebels freely used nukes. That is scary.
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Scanning more pages, he stopped another time.
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3 December 2765
The fighting in the region has been brutal. Today we departed Onverwacht with Dropships from the 199th Light Horse Regiment. This surprised me as I have made supply runs to Thazi where they had been based.
19 December 2765
Been spending time on the grav deck during my off-duty hours. I finally found out why the 199th Light Horse Regiment left Thazi. The rebels pumped poison gas into one of their Battalions Mountain base, when the gas was detected, the computer locked the base down. They never heard from the unit again. These rebels deserve no mercy. We are taking them back to Baliggora to regroup.
13 February 2765
We took on 18 crated Aerospace Fighters ferried up to us from Baliggora. Major pain in the ass to get stowed. We also docked two Titan Dropships. Emergency reinforcements for the 125th Independent Aero Wing at Toten. Should be a quick run. It has been busy, and I am due some leave.
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Sergeant Nathan Davis smiled; he finally had some information they could act on. He powered up the recovered drive from the Tramp Jumpship and waited as it loaded up. He typed in a command and the projected Holo map zoomed in on Blommestein, he slowly zoomed out. Too far. He then typed in another system and again the Holo image zoomed in on Joshua, he slowly zoomed out and saw that Joshua was only three jumps from where he was right now. One of those jumps an uninhabited system according to the map.
Curious, he changed data drives and pulled up Valasha, which they would have to pass thru to get to Joshua. Viewing the information, he saw that the 318th Battlemech Division had been stationed there and had taken enough casualties to be disbanded in 2766. Curious he started culling thru various After-Action reports submitted to the 18th Army. Most detailed specific fights against the rebels, with nukes being freely tossed around by both sides. Then he found a very small report from mid 2766 that reported they had been unable to recover Cache Five due to high radiation levels on the continent of Menard. Overflights reported the Cache looked undisturbed and sealed.
Time to go see Leftenant Colonel Mitchell with this information., he thought.
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