ALJ Chpt 30

frameless|right|300px|link=A Long Journey
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==Chapter 30 - A Long Journey==
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24 November 2785
Mackolla (Federated Suns)
Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell shook Colonel Harold Tanaka's hand and said "Welcome home, Harold; great work on Bamburgh."
"Thank you, sir. I really hope you can help get these troops some slack cut for them. They gave us no trouble at all. They are long in the tooth for the average soldier, but we all are really. Soldiering is still in them, when they surrendered, most had beards and wild hair, now, they are all clean shaven and got haircuts." Colonel Tanaka replied
"Send the officers in. Might as well get this over with and see how they take the news." Lieutenant General Mitchell said
Hearing this, Colonel Harold Tanaka suddenly had a stomach full of butterfly's, I guess the General failed to get the Federated Suns government to cut them any slack. Colonel Tanaka walked to the closed door, opened it up and gestured the waiting officers inside with a wave of his hand, closing the door when the last had entered.
The four senior officers of the 11th Hussar Regiment stood at stiff attention before the fairly tall Lieutenant General, still wearing a SLDF issued uniform. The General looked each of them in the eyes, taking a silent measure of each person in front of him before he spoke. "I am Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell, commander of the 322nd Armor Division and attached troops. Your actions have placed me in a very hard place. You men went down a dark road, one with no light at the end. You took the easy way out of a difficult situation, quite possibly costing the lives of untold numbers of brave soldiers. I find that hard to tolerate, very hard, but we are now living in a different time. I know of several mercenary commands where former SLDF and Rim World soldiers are serving side by side, only a few years after we fought against each other. So I am going to give you two choices, and they are your only choices you will get. The decision must be 100% among all of you and your people. There can be no loose ends, loose lips could sink us all." He told them. 
"The first option is this, you join us. I will tell the Federated Suns that we drove off your pirate band, but lost contact when they jumped from the Bamburgh system. All of your equipment will be repainted SLDF colors and the 11th Hussar Regimental patches will be reapplied to your equipment. I will have every single one of your IFF codes purged and reset. There can be no record at all of the Battered Brood beyond Bamburgh, never spoken about, not even in a whisper. They just vanished into deep space. You never heard of the Battered Brood, you have been stranded on some uninhabited planet with a busted Jumpship that took you over a decade to repair. Then we bumped into you. Accept and you are soldiers again, you all know it is dangerous work, but that is the deal.", Mitchell stressed 
"The second option is you face the Federated Suns criminal court system. Your all guilty of piracy, which carries a maximum of twenty years in a FedSuns prison. Minimum sentence is ten years just for being part of a pirate group, much less actually committing an act of piracy. Then there are the compounding offenses of five years for each death that occurred during the commission of an act of piracy, and that is applied to every member of a pirate group. Possible additional charges of all sorts. Every single one of you and your people could face life in prison with no possibility of parole. Part of me says you all deserve the maximum, but like I said, we live in a different world now. One that even I am still trying to get used to after almost 20 years of non stop fighting.", he continued to explain.
"Those are your two options. You will be taken back to your troops and you have until tomorrow for the decision to be returned to me. It is all in on option one or you all get option two. In the past I was not very good at lying, but the last few years I have had to do my fair share. I didn't like it, still do not like doing it, but I am learning that sometimes, lying is better than the truth. I lied to General Kerensky to get all my people here and now I might have to lie to the First Prince to keep your heads off the chopping block. But I need troops to help me keep this system and the surrounding systems safe, and if a lie gets me what I need, so be it. I expect your decision by noon tomorrow, Colonel Tanaka, see them back to their troops. You are dismissed."
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On the continent of Minami's Hole, a 3.0 earthquake opened several cracks in the crust which allowed Sulphur laden steam to begin venting into the atmosphere. An uninhabited continent, no one was around to report this.
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