ALJ Chpt 91

frameless|right|300px|link=A Long Journey
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==Chapter 91 - A Long Journey==
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2 January 2788
Imbrial III (Federated Suns)
General Samuel Mitchell could only count himself lucky that Imbrial did not have any vital industry that he would have to defend. Outside of the capital city and space port the planet was mainly agriculture and small mining operations. While this would allow him to mass his forces without having to defend multiple locations, it also made them an ideal target for orbital fire or even nuclear attack. His first thought on seeing the lay of the land was that they were sorely lacking in anti aircraft defense. There just was not enough cover, the capital city was surrounded by vast plains and massive farms. Setting up any extensive defensive lines would be a major challenge to conceal. It was decidedly not the best planet to make a hard stand on in his opinion.
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Panpour (Federated Suns)
Walter Ovilla, CEO TechniCorp Panpour Factory Complex, was proud of his people as they surpassed the two hundred per day mark setting a company record by ending December having averaged two hundred twenty seven Manticore Heavy Tanks manufactured. His suppliers had also performed miracles and managed to ramp up their production of raw material to feed his production lines. They had finished the year strong with 26,574 Manticore manufactured and delivered to the AFFS for a revenue of 63,777,600,000 and had even managed to eke out a 14% profit margin to end the year with a profit of 8,928,864,000 before accounting for the expansion costs for equipment, buildings, new workers and the massive depletion of their cash fighting off Jalastar Aerospaces attempts to take them over. But still no one would frown on still having 1.7 billion left over at years end. It allowed him to replenish the workers pension fund again and still have 300 million left in the bank to sustain operations. 
TechniCorp had always treated each factory as their own little entities giving the appointed CEO of each factory a massive amount of control over their operations. As long as they sent the required 40% up to the main corporate office they were left alone to handle business. He was not sure how his new owners were going to operate, nor how they were going to react to the slim profit's for this year. He had gotten word that Mackolla Enterprises was sending some people to help out but also a small group from the head office to look around due to arrive around the end of the month.
While he did not worry much about his job, he could retire today and live the rest of his life extremely comfortable, he just hoped his new boss would accept the fact that 2788 would be a record setting year as he was predicting to deliver 73,000 Manticores to the AFFS with a predicted revenue of 175 Billion. Even if the AFFS did not purchase all he was expecting to build, the Manticore was one of the most popular heavy tanks built and he could easily find a buyer for them. If the Federated Suns approves any sale. With the current war not looking like it will end anytime soon, he was optimistic that the AFFS would be buying his product for quite awhile.
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Mackolla (Federated Suns)
Warrant Officer Bart Cooks was very pleased with his people even with his last minute changes to the Carrier design. With Froy Industries pumping out double heat sinks and a good pile of Ferro Carbide armor he made changes. Removing the capital weapons, he wanted to remove any temptation from the captains about engaging enemy warships, he had installed 600 double heat sinks to handle all the weapons easily and replaced the armor with 86 tons of Ferro Carbide, maxing the armor the structure could handle. Every firing arc had three PPC, four Large Pulse Laser, five Medium Pulse Laser and a point defense of four Small Pulse Laser. It gave the ship better anti-aircraft defense than just about any SLDF built warship.
Heavily armored fuel bunkers were filled with 8,000 tons of fuel along with dedicated fuel lines housed inside a Ferro Carbide armored tunnel to provide fuel to both hanger decks. A small hanger housed four shuttles, two hangers provided for 18 Aerospace fighters each while a 12,614 ton cargo housed a massive 8,000 ton capacity Ferro Carbide armored ammunition bunker. After General Mitchell's order, the Mule Dropship containing the Alamos had been docked to the Olympus and completely unloaded and inventoried. They had removed 80 containers and each had held 8 Alamos. Six hundred forty Alamo armed missiles were currently stored under heavy guard. Each Carrier would carry 72 Alamo inside the armored bunkers. 
SLS Formidable, Tracker Class Carrier II, was slowly being pulled from the pressurized bay and would seen take on her air wing, 24 TRN-3Tb2 Trident and 12 ZRO-116b Zero, all newly built. The next Tracker was already waiting close by to be moved into the pressurized bay. Her planned name was SLS Audacious. Her conversion was expected to only take two months since they now had a firm plan in place. She would be followed by SLS Implacable and SLS Courageous.
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