ALJ Chpt 96

frameless|right|300px|link=A Long Journey
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==Chapter 96 - A Long Journey==
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13 May 2788
Mackolla (Federated Suns)
SLS Implacable, Tracker Carrier Warship, was completed and would soon join her two sister ships as she took on her air wing of 24 ZRO-116b Zero and 12 HMR-HE Hammerhead Aerospace Fighters. With only one other Tracker left to convert, Warrant Officer Bart Cooks had slowed the pace down to give the folks on the surface to get the better fighters built to equip his carriers better. The ammunition folks had also busted their butts in getting a production line working to assemble bombs so that the carrier air wings would be able to better support the ground troops when they arrived. Though he did hate the fact that each carrier still had both collars, and he did not have escorting dropships to send with them. This he planned to rectify as soon as he could, but he also had several Merchant Jumpships waiting on new cores which were due to arrive very soon. 
Lockheed Galactic was working on two Davion II Destroyers that had arrived with battle damage and had another Congress D waiting to be repaired. Two weeks ago, an AFFS Star Lord Class JumpShip had arrived carrying four Mammoth Dropships loaded with replacement armor, spare parts of every size and even replacement weapons. All this told the Lockheed folks was to expect more business from the AFFS Navy in the near future. But it was work that paid the bills, so no one was complaining.
Excellent Electronics had a production line running nonstop making the Streak guidance boards for the Streak SRM-2 ammunition factory and another one building the boards for the Streak SRM-2 Launchers. But their primary tasking had been taking apart the last Large Naval Comm Scanner and working on putting that into production. While the Streaks were familiar, the Naval Comm Scanners were unknown territory, and they had to be extremely careful with every move as they reverse engineered each piece. Unlike most of the projects they had been given, there was no push for speed on this one, take your time and make it perfect was the marching orders given to them.
Trimble Precision Machinery had added four additional lines to handle the workload of the immediate tasking and orders. They had completed Newhart Industries equipment to rebuild their Battlemech lines which had already been installed and the fine-tuning process was underway. It had been a massive order to accomplish, and the additional lines had been the key to getting it completed as fast as they had done. They were currently working on the equipment to restore Buhallin Military Products vehicle lines and still had to start work on Ulston Armor's order. 
With 7.6 billion in the bank and a steady monthly stream of income, Gerald Mitchell was once again on the hunt for a steal. He had a major need to fill and determined to fill that need. It was the one piece of this enormous puzzle that had eluded his every effort to purchase and this time he was going to make it happen, no matter the cost. This time, he was changing his method and tactic. But not by much, but enough he hoped to have success where before was only failure, mainly due to the asking prices. But with the situation getting more dire by the day, he was bound to have some success this time.
His first offer went to Riga Interstellar Shipyards, he had previously made an offer to pay all their moving expenses from Inglesmond to Mackolla but had been flat out turned down. But their fortunes had taken a turn for the worst last year, being collocated with LTV Aerospace's shipyards had not been kind to them in the least when the Combine nukes the entire complex. But he had kept up with events as best he could and the Combine was not preventing people from leaving, but they were preventing any equipment from leaving their space. He just hoped they would accept his offer this time and he could get the people out.
His second offer went to Di Tron Heavy Industries, only this time he doubled his previous offer price with a five percent royalty offer. He was willing to go to ten percent royalty if they demanded it, but he was still paying a ton for the license. It would fill a critical need that was becoming more apparent every day.
His third offer went to Krester's Ship Construction, a previous attempt had fallen thru for lack of cash, but now he had the cash and wanted to make another attempt while he had the chance and the cash. It would fill three critical needs. 
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Panpour (Federated Suns)
Colin Blaine smiled next to Walter Ovilla as they officially opened the Goblin factory complex. This had been intentionally designed to manufacture 400 Goblins Tanks per day. It was as large as the Manticore complex. When he had informed the AFFS that they would take up the slack for Goblin production they had signed an open contract and even waived the AFFS discount which would add an additional 8% to the profit margin. It seems the AFFS really wanted them and wanted them bad. He still hated the fact that this made Panpour a massive target along with so much production located at one location. But it could not be helped right now, the Federated Suns could not afford the loss of production while they moved and rebuilt the factories. Plus, Panpour already had a massive infrastructure in place to support the expansions of the existing factory complex.
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