WCGW Chpt 248

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==Chapter 248 - What Could Go Wrong==
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Thazi (Independent System)
15th December, 3046
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President David Mitchell sat watching the slide show put together by Brigadier General Herbert Horbaugh and Major Nathan Davis. Also seated were the other officers that made up the command staff for Search and Recovery Inc that were not deployed on the mission to Linden.
"Once the operation to Linden is completed or at a level that we can spare the ships, what we want to do is send the 199th Light Horse along with a Company of Engineers to scout certain systems. If they manage to locate something, they then call home, and the main unit recovers the located items. The 199th would then proceed to the next targeted system. We would then repeat as many times as needed. They would deploy off the Overlord Dropship and a single Seeker Dropship. They will not be able to carry enough supplies for an extended operation, but we can easily replenish them as the main unit arrives on scene before they move to their next target.
The first target we have selected to scout is Puttalam. It is close by, two jumps if we pass thru Wokha and we know of two cache sites located on that planet. We hit the target, locate the caches and then the main unit moves in. The second target would be Ddraig, two jumps from Pullalam but in the other direction. Both are a single jump from Wokha. We have no firm info on Ddraig itself other than it was garrisoned by a Conventional Regimental Combat Team. But since you said you wanted to establish a Cargo Transfer point at Sornath, Ddraig puts us down that pathway. We never fully scanned the systems on our way up here, especially the asteroid belts due to the limited time. That was an omission we need to correct; we seem to locate quite a few good things from them.
Systems known to have asteroid belts along our projected convoy routes would be, Ejeda, Rondon, Kent, Vonja, and even Waitur, which is only 2 jumps from Inner End. A single jump from Sornath is Ype-Jhu, which also has two asteroid belts but was also noted to have Heavy Industry on the planet. Which we could use if any is recoverable. Sornath is also on our list of intended targets as the 361st Dragoon Regiment was garrisoned there, and we do know of an established cache site there. We can kill several birds really quickly.
It is my suggestion to also await the promised Monolith and Star Lord Jumpships because we might need the extra collars they would provide. Though we are critically short on cargo Dropships. We already know that a single Mammoth is hard pressed to haul what we might find. Then there is also the matter of the cache on Valasha, we know where it is exactly, but we never returned to recover it. It got overtaken by events. This is a simple enough and straight forward operation, outside of the radiation hazards, that it could be accomplished with minimal personnel. We were going to sell it off to the Outworlds Alliance anyway, they can do the heavy hauling, we just need to see what is there, collect our money and let them do the actual recovery operation." Major Nathan Davis said
"I like the last one, Valasha. I completely forgot about that one. Minimal people and risk for a decent return is an excellent idea. But, before we begin this series of operations, I want to make sure the Linden people are settled good, and the shipyard is operational. Since you managed to use a SLDF override on the Krait, I want to plug everything SLDF related into that shipyard. The Lees, Pentagon, Titan, and even that Colossus if they ever get it repaired enough to launch. Before we hand it over to the FedCom fully that is. No sense letting something slip past us without checking to see if any of them also have the same sort of information buried behind a firewall. But what worries me the most is we will be communicating using those Black Boxes, operated by the First Princes people. They will be able to easily track our finds and moves via those Black Boxes. I don't like that; they could predict, and claim jump us before we get there." President Mitchell replied
"That is a risk, any code I could come up with would probably be easy for them to break. Same for anyone else looking at our messages. I am going to have to give that some serious thought." Major Nathan Davis said
"Do that. We have months probably. But we are not moving until we get those former SLDF ships into the shipyard and see if we get lucky. Not sure what we would do if they did. Ability to streamline our own Dropship fleet, sure, but selling new builds off would be like setting off a nuke on New Avalon and Terra at the same time. That is something I would love to avoid but be damned if we are going to miss out on a find." President Mitchell said firmly.
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