ALJ Chpt 23

frameless|right|300px|link=A Long Journey
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==Chapter 23 - A Long Journey==
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29 August 2785
Mackolla (Federated Suns)
"Patricia is still huddling in the spare bedroom. That doctor of yours suggested a shrink and possibly a chaplain, says she has some serious Traumatic Stress. He gave her some tranqs to help her sleep." Gerald Mitchell said
"She gets all the time she needs to get better and all the help we can find. Pop, this is Major Paulina Flores, she is Patricia's executive officer, but also the commander of the Star Lord the took to Site 222. Tell her what you told us." Lieutenant General Samuel Mitchell said
"There was wreckage at the Nadir Jump Point, it took a few days to locate something to work with and that was when the fighters tripped over the two Caspars. We have a good fix on a stable La Grange point near where they are located, unless they have moved. Which was sort of weird, neither Caspar pursued Tug One, usually they would have run her down and blasted it to pieces. Now, none of us original members with Patricia have not had to face Caspar in battle, but we have seen the very horrible aftermath. We have crew on the Vigilant that have faced Caspars and I have reports a few cases of near panic when the word spread. Most of your Dropship crews faced them at Terra and I am sure there are some panic attacks among them too. Those Caspar Drones are just ungodly good at what they do."
"Patricia went EVA during the Terra recovery and helped with body retrieval, quite a few times actually. Can't ask the crew to do what I am unwilling to do myself, was what she always said when she suited up. It finally caught up with her, and she needs some serious downtime. She never let me go EVA, said I was the only one she trusted with the Squadron if something went wrong. The Navy lost quite a few people to psych cases when it was all said and done. We were lucky and only two quit on us totally on psych. But I bet there are more like Patricia that buried it deep and pray it never comes back out."
"Now on the ride from the space port you said you think you have an authentication code for those Caspars. If so, then this will be a piece of cake, if not, then it is going to get very exciting very quickly and very unpleasant. I assume that is what is on your mind in bringing me down here. If so, the answer is yes, I will take my ship back, but my crew is all volunteer, no way am I going to ask them to risk their lives poking a Caspar Drone. We will jump directly to the La Grange point but we do not make a move until I have hot loaded our drive from the reactors. Standard SLDF 48 hour hot load, my ship has enough room on it's jump count to handle a few more safely. Only then do we attempt to make contact with the Caspar Drones, we just have to pray that they do not come out to meet us before the hot load is done. But I at least want a chance of escaping certain death, nothing we can do if they are waiting on us. No Dropships, we use a shuttle for the contact." 
I pulled up everything we had on the Caspar protocols, which was not much, but there was always a chance we would trip over one, maybe not under the Rimjobs control after we were on our back here. Epsilon Indi was the last brief we had about possible stray Caspar, but also Terra itself. There was a so called master authentication code that was supposed to stand down the Caspar Drones if we tripped over one, if it was not under Rimjob control or had not lost it's mind making jumps. Both codes were identical, never noticed that before until I looked up the briefings again. I assumed they would be different codes for different systems so was kinda shocked when I compared the two on the way back. I brought one with me so mind if I see that code you have?" Major Paulina Flores said
It took Colin Blaine a minute to find it and then passed it over and Paulina compared the numbers.
 SL19375FYGP4857-BDMK
"Same code, so I am going to say we are a go. This makes me more confident but not enough to risk any more lives than I have to. Same terms above, but I think we might actually survive this." Major Paulina Flores said
"Your pretty sure sounding Major, not sure I would be so sure about anything when I am about to possibly provoke a Caspar Drone, much less two of them." Colin Blaine replied
"Told you, it was weird, neither pursued the Dropship. But then again, the Rimjobs never took over that location. Outside of the Periphery Uprising which did not have the Rimjobs actually participating in, they took over the Hegemony Caspars, bet they didn't even know these were out here. Even if they did, as far as I know, they took those over purely by taking over the system Drone Control stations. Not by any authentication codes. We are still using SLDF transponder codes, maybe that bought us time. We didn't hang around to find out either. Now, as to what is out there, I can give you a real good idea on that too from analyzing the sensor recordings. It is a pretty exotic collection, what is usable, no clue, but it can all be salvaged. As for what we have identified well here we go.
-1 New Syrtis Carrier
-1 Athena Cruiser
-2 Conestoga Transports
-4 Aquilla Transports
-5 Liberty Jumpships 
-19 Merchant Jumpships
-6 Invader Jumpships
-2 Leviathan Jumpships
-3 Snowden Mining Stations
That is just what our sensor sweeps picked up during the quick sweep, no visual eyes on, not close enough too most but the sensors and computers are pretty good about comparing the data and giving pretty accurate identification on those readings. All those I listed scored a 90% or above accuracy percentage. If Chief Kellog is right, and the SLDF cracked all those cores, then we are going to be working this site for years. Only the Merchant and Invader are currently in production, so my advice is to purchase a Merchant core and Invader core, like as quickly as you can, then we can remote jump it out to the site and get the ships back here, pull the core and repeat the process all of those are back here. Patricia briefed me in on her ideas before we went to Site 222 for our scouting mission, we grind the cracked cores up for transport for a recasting. If your really feeling lucky, you could try and get a core for the Liberties from Blue Nose Clipperships, they are still in operation and might be able to cast you one, heck all they can say is no." Major Paulina Flores said
"That is a bunch of money, we don't have finite amounts of money." Lieutenant General Mitchell replied
"The it will just take much longer to accomplish the mission. It could be decades to complete the recovery operation. Go there, grind up a core, once we get a core grinder, haul it to a shipyard, have them cast a new jump core, then remote jump it back to Site 222, install it, jump the ship back to here. Your talking maybe two to three years to recover the very first ship, and then about 6-8 months for each ship of that type, so for the Merchant alone, your looking at about 14 or 15 years. That is to get them back here, not returned to service for sell, we cannot be in multiple places at the same time, so then they have to wait until we are done before that kind of work can start. My professional opinion is spend the money, get that first core out here quick as we can, we shave a couple of years off that timetable. 
Sell another Monolith if you have to. They are nice ships, but we can always buy another one once we really get rolling with the recovery. If we have more trained shipyard workers, they could start repairing the Merchants as we get them back here while we do the recovery work out there. That New Syrtis Carrier is a Federated Suns ship anyway, how about asking the First Prince for a finders fee, that would be cheaper than building a replacement. Standard salvage fee is usually 10% of the value, this will require some serious work, so I would boost that to 25% of the value. Rough math, that is about 2.4 Billion right there. As proof, we even have some nice gun camera footage of the ship at anchor, so to speak, even with the hull number and name, FSS Chesterton. But I would be real careful in what I agree to or risk losing that entire site." Major Paulina Flores said
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