ALJ Chpt 43

frameless|right|300px|link=A Long Journey
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==Chapter 43 - A Long Journey==
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29 April 2786
Mackolla (Federated Suns)
Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell, Gerald Mitchell and Colin Blaine had taken a shuttle to see the Tracker and it's upgrades. They had listened to Warrant Officer Bart Cooks explain the upgrades and why they had minimized them to the absolute minimum needed. 
"This is the prototype, we learned quite bit doing this quick upgrade. For the next one, I need three of the Naval Lasers 55s from Site 222. I am going to mount all three in the nose. Instead of the Pulse Lasers, I am going to downgrade to standard Lasers, we just do not have enough unless I start pulling from the ground forces replacements. I doubt that will go over too well. I am going to boost the Double Heat Sinks to 358 which will handle every weapon firing at once, but only if the point defenses are not being taxed. Until we get some more, we only have enough for two more Trackers. We used every Barracuda reload we had to arm this Tracker, so I am removing the tubes from the next version until we get more, which I have no clue where or how, not like the SLDF where we could count on an easy resupply. But I can also easily install Single Heat Sinks from that Athena we are tearing apart. We have the tonnage available easily.
But back to the next Tracker. I want to rip the armor off, all of it and replace it with Ferro Carbide. We have eleven hundred tons of the stuff, I only need less than half to heavily up the armor rating on each Tracker to the maximum it can handle without boosting the internal structure more. Will make the ships tougher and more survivable in a fight. I want to boost the fuel load to five thousand tons, almost double. We will run protected fuel lines down to the hanger deck because I want it to carry twelve Aerospace Fighters along with the four shuttles. But, we will have to make the fighter cubicles from scratch. The shuttles will be for the two platoons of embarked Marines for defense or boarding actions. We have enough Large Naval Comm Scanners to outfit all the Trackers, which I intend to install. They will still register as a Merchant Class Jumpship on a ship's sensors until they either get extremely close or we reveal ourselves in some way to them." Warrant Officer Cooks paused when Lieutenant General Mitchell slightly raised a hand.
"I would prefer to save the Double Heat Sinks for the ground troops and SLS Second Chance. No telling when we will get a supply of those. We are way down the priority list for the AFFS and they are buying out every production run, I already tried to get some." Lieutenant General Mitchell said
"Very well, 800 Single Heat Sinks it is for some redundancy. We are sure going to eat up whatever we pull from the Athena doing so." Warrant Officer Cooks replied
"Single Heat Sinks we can purchase if need be. The best stuff for everything made is hard to get. Standard weapons, easy, Pulse or Extended Range, almost impossible. Standard armor, easy, Ferro Fibrous, almost impossible. It seems it is a sellers market across the entire Inner Sphere right now and everyone is buying everything they can get their hands on. We are going to have to carefully manage the good stuff." Lieutenant General Mitchell said
"Yes, sir, go easy on the good stuff." Warrant Officer Cooks replied
"I have a question. What exactly can you manufacture?" Gerald Mitchell asked
"For a black water ship, almost everything except weapons, ammunition, reactors, jump cores or forge the armor itself. We can self manufacture the Aerospace Fighter cubicles if we have the raw metal to work with and the Athena is going to provide thousands of tons of that. We have all the parts in the database, built quite a few during the war. Even built some Battlemech and Armor cubicles when we worked on some banged up Dropships. Royal pain in butt working on those in Zero G, too small for a Tug so we had to EVA the damned things all the way. I plan to make those right here on this station. As soon as the Tracker is removed, I plan pull the equipment off the Tramp and get it installed here." Warrant Officer Cooks replied
"The database?" Gerald Mitchell asked
"Yes, sir, we have the exact parts specs already loaded into the machinery computers. If it was installed on a SLDF ship, outside of the previous items, we can make it on site if we have the raw stuff to work with. That Athena is going to give us several hundred thousand tons of material to work with once it is stripped clean. We worked pretty alone, no shipyards, bringing near dead ships back to life enough to make it to a proper shipyard. That meant we had to be able to manufacture replacement parts on site. A proper shipyard or Newgrange just needs the raw ore, it can manufacture every single part needed to build from scratch anything up to 2.1 Million tons. Damn thing was a marvel, a self deploying shipyard." Warrant Officer Cooks said
"Wish we had one." Lieutenant General Mitchell commented
"You and me both, sir. It would sure make Site 222 go years quicker." Warrant Officer Cooks said
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