TBC32

==Chapter 32 - The Broken Commonwealth==
KCGS Ia Drang
Landmark Class Heavy Cutter
December 3149
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In LCN service, she would be a block 2 Duchess Class.  While the orders had continued, the Boojum shipyards had kept expanding slips, and building 'duplicate part sets' with a slight padding of the contract, the extra components (both duplicates unneeded, and 'factory seconds' that could be repaired) were diverted to the secondary assembly site orbiting Boojum's second moon, well within the gas giant's ring system and blocked from most non-optical observation by the gas giant's cranky RF growl and thermal bloom.
This gave Kowloon the perfect excuse to expand the Coast Guard's cutter force-well, this, and the executive order from the Archon laying supplemental training and recruitment duties on the system's local government.
So Linda Minh, whose last command had been a seventy five thousand ton cutter that sank a battleship, was is now riding high in a proper capital ship hidden under an innocuous name as part of the 13th Coast Guard Squadron. A unit technically detailed to provide emergency response and law enforcement services in the deep Kowloon Oort, where even the twin suns were little more than slightly brighter pinpricks in the starry distance more than one light hour away.
"Emergence wave portside, positive Z-axis thirty degrees, five thousand kilometers out.  Class Three."
Class three. son of a bitch. she through
"Shift to black-box comm on all channels; Fighters and shuttles away on emcon, cold thrust only, and take our lights down." Linda ordered
"Aye mum." Comms Tech replied
There are shoes that, in a gravity well, drop.  Since entering the war and being seen, Kowloon had been waiting for that second shoe-a Jade Falcon punitive strike.
"Telescope, do we have visual?"
"Visual now...she's a Potemkin class, red-orange reflective coating, count is eleven combat dropships...son of a bitch.  She's a Hell's Horses boat, rigged for fleet action." reports the Sensor Operator 
"Send to Thirteen Squadron, rally on me. Mirror send to Ten Squadron and base, send still imagery."
"Aye mum." responds the RTO
''"Also...General Quarters, general quarters, this is not a drill! Set all stations to condition one, battle stations! Depressurize in three, two...one!"
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