Now her face showed a frown to the two outsiders. “We still have to import weapons for our defenses and to finish fitting out any of those small craft hulls before shipping out. Those weapons mostly are coming from MMM as payment for finished goods that we are shipping to them. They give us a nice price break for those weapons, but sometimes we still have to go to outside sources like the FWL or even the CC for items that MMM might not have when we need them. We even have been known to pick up the odd item on the mercenary market.” She gave Robert a knowing smile, but she didn’t say more on that subject.
She now shoots Copeland a side long look at noticing the silence from the man. When he did not say anything, she continued her walking/floating briefing. “During the Year of Peace, and maybe even more now that the Clans are back to taking planets. If it is packing decent amounts of weapons, you have very little problem finding a buyer or even having a bidding war for it to a point. That is unless you have something that they want more badly than the odd spare weapon.”
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Jess caught the look, and she knew that her boss had also seen that look, even if he was playing like he had not noticed it. What she didn’t know, was where that statement from the young woman might be going. And that worried Jess. They had already traded some of the remaining Star League grade weapons to BAC and the local government out of the cargo bays of the Hercules. They had even sold a lot of the infantry scale weapons to them.
Jess does her own fishing with the younger woman. “It also seems like your repair business is really booming. It looked like you had a few ships waiting to be worked on when we jumped in, and your holding pattern around the station was as full as we have seen in some of the more major worlds we have stopped at.” The last part was only mostly true, but it did hint that Robert and crew had been to a lot more high traffic worlds across the rest of the Inner Sphere.
Now Margit was positively beaming with pride at what the strange woman had said about “her” system. “Yes, we are. It has taken some time, but now we have about six months of maintenance backlog that we have been scheduled to work in our repair yards and bays. As with our production backlog, that is as far as we schedule out to keep the MoC investigators happy and off our backs. We have been working with other groups of repair bay owners to get the MoC to agree to a one year backlog for repairs. But they have yet to budge on that topic. We even have people waiting in case something may open up all of the sudden in the repair bays. That is why we have been building these two pressurized shipyards I was just showing you all. They are for us or reserved for the people from this system anyway, to use. I hope you were not wanting to get some work done on your dropships or the Styx?”
Near as Margit could find out, no one had ever worked on the Styx or one of the dropships that was known to have worked for Copeland in the past. She had talked to a lot of people about a lot of different topics.
Robert was watching as a huge chunk of metal that must have amassed a thousand tons being moved into the cave mouth holding the still building shipyard. He could not see what was being done in the smaller but working shipyard from this location. It just looked like a mass of metal, and it did not look like any ship that Robert had ever seen or heard about in all of his travels or study. He had never seen a Snowdon, so seeing one in action was lost on him. He had noticed that half a dozen new small factories were in different stages of construction in those shipyards he had seen.
Robert had to fight down a chuckle. “Oh no! We are good in that department. We have made agreements with another system that does all of our maintenance work that our crews can’t handle. I was just wondering what you are not showing me.”
Robert half turned and made eye contact with the “President”. It had been pointed out that the locals had done away with the title of “System Manager”, that had been normal for a few hundred years while this had been a company owned and worked star system. To Robert it was just another word to mean the same thing. At least this group treated those not in a leadership position as something other than slaves. That was something that SLIC had found in all too common occurrence within and outside of the Inner Sphere.
Margit looked around and then she gave Robert a level look. In a soft but flat voice. “Mom said that you were very sharp, and that I should be very careful with even blinking wrong around you. She also said, that if I was asked a question by you. That I should not lie, and you would keep anything quiet that I ask you to not spread around. My mother trust you, and the number of people that she trusts. Well, I can count them on one hand with fingers left over.”
She gave a slight shoulder shrug at the flat looks she was receiving from the pair of outlanders that had proven so helpful to her people in the past. “This is one of our public improvement projects. Do you remember that project where they turned a small hollowed out rock into a massive grow house on your first visit to our little out of the way system?”
She waited for the older man to nod that he understood what she was talking about before she continued speaking. “There was a second rock that they had first tried and failed, on that modification from way earlier in our history. While they were working on it, the outer hull of the rock developed a crack that was large enough to fly a Monarch class passenger liner threw from the outer skin to the hollowed section if you had a good enough pilot. In that asteroid we are putting in a medium sized habitat, a pair of 17000ton class medium factory satellites, a small unpressurized yard, and then after all of that is done. We will start on putting a large unpressurized shipyard in that rock. One of the medium class factories and the small unpressurized yard have already been put into operation over there, and we are keeping that information from any visiting outsiders.”
“After that. We are going to be looking at making a real factory on a third rock that we have been mining on for some time, but it still has huge veins of ores we can get at. That way we don’t have to move the ores to the smelters, and then move them to our production areas. This should cut down on time, cost, and manpower to do all of the moving. We will have to pull in someone like MMM to help plan out that one idea. We need that because we can currently only grow past a certain point. We have been using that twinning function to sell those small factories, but the MoC has made it very clear that they are to know who is buying each and every one of them.” Margit kept her face still as ice, as she talked about the MoC’s main Intel department demands on her people.
Jess felt her jaw drop, but Robert was just nodding his head in understanding and asked his own questions. “Those sound-like the scale of plans of someone we know that lives around these parts. How were you able to swing all of that in such a short time?”
Margit was smiling again. “After Mom made that deal with you for the LF Tramp and the other dropships. Mom and I were able to do a deal with a few friends over at SelaSys Incorporated. Currently we are selling them some of the extra LF battery blocks we can make. We are only able to slowly make them, but every one of them is sold at a premium price. When we replaced those two small class factory sats without breaking a sweat to get back on track with other needed production. We traded some of those battery blocks off for a “complete” copy of the software package needed to run the larger factory satellites along with plans to make them by only using our small sats ability.”
Jess snorted; Robert raised his eyebrows. Margit smirked, and then she went on talking. “Yea that did not work out as well as we would have liked, but we had enough data to get the things done as we needed them. We had the small shipyard making more of the small factory class satellites as fast as they could. At first it was to get us back on schedule of our long ranged building plans that kept getting pushed back. The last four of that type satellites, four for our own use that is, are in the building yard now. The six you saw here.”
She points over her shoulder to the cavern. “Those are earmarked to be going to their approved new owners, when they are complete. After we get them done, then we are only going to be making a few more of the larger type of factory sats from now on for our own use. Most of their output, will be to get the rest of the shipyards we want to build into operation. It is a risk having larger factory satellites for an attacker to target. But we are running into the issue of having to little personnel to run so many smaller and less efficient factories. We might make more of the smaller class for the open market if MiM gets their act together and lets us do the business that will let us grow.” She put a little bit of scorn in her tone at the end.
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As the young lady was talking. Robert was pulling up the data on the Medium Class Factory Satellite in his brain and he quickly pulled up the information about the capabilities for what she was talking about. He was impressed, if the locals could pull off getting the factory of that size into “factory level” production. He could think of a few uses, so he went fishing. “That is a lot of support. Are you thinking about making jumpships?”
This comment got the other woman to laugh, and she started to twist in the low gravity. “No! Not even if we had a Germanium refining plant and the spinning facility needed to cast a jump engine core. We would not be going down that road, at least not in my lifetime anyway. It takes too long, and the specialized equipment needs too much support just to make one jumpship every other calendar year. We are looking at making dropships and other deep space items, but not jumpships. Right now? We will make the hull plates, frames, and other things for dropships like for the Leopard, Leopard CV and the Union class dropships. We then will work with MMM, who will load the operational software on the dropships for what we don’t have. As we get more copies of the flight and fire control software for those dropships? We will use their services less and less, as we get into full production of those core designs of whole dropships. It has worked out pretty well for both parties so far.”
She did a little head shake and kept talking. “I had pushed for making cargo lifters instead of military dropships. We would not be targets for raids by people who want to add a few military dropships to their order of battle or dump them on the black market. When we talked to MMM about working together? They had a threat assessment for our system already generated, and it showed that it did not matter what we make dropship wise. We will be targets no matter what, for pirates or just “other groups” around this area of space. That pushed us into this direction of making combat dropships for sale to the MoC or FWL.”
Robert could tell that the woman didn’t want to believe what she had been showed by the largest military supply company in the MoC, but she knew that she had run out of cards to play in this game. She was a very good politician after all. Robert kept his head moving as the young woman kept talking. Maybe she was talking a little slower or Robert’s brain was having an easier time of keeping up with her. Her voice was light on the cool atmosphere of the cavern.
“They did have a point about a few things. We should be able to make four Leopards for almost the same effort needed to make a single Mule class dropship. MMM is okay with us making Leos and Unions, they have been overloaded with building orders for years now. I think that they are getting pressure to make more Lion’s and looking to make maybe larger combat dropships. I think that they are going for the Overlord class, but that is just a guess. MMM will get a small cut on the sale on each of the dropships that they have helped with in any way. We are still working on a shopping list for what we will build besides spare parts that we are now known for, but that will be only after we get all of the “real” production lines well online and all of the bugs worked out of them. We can always sell more of the small attack craft to keep the out system cash flowing into our coffers.”
Robert started talking when the women let the air go still for a few minutes. “So, you are sticking with only large item production and the support local repairs plans.”
Margit snorted. “Oh, no!! We also are supplying spare parts for jumpships and some dropships as well as, Endo Steel, Ferro-Fibrous armor, and thanks to another merchant ship that we made a deal with. We can also make some of the components for the new high efficiency heat sinks to go along with the LF battery modules. It’s not as well rounded industrial production as I would like, but it is what we have.” Jess and Robert were impressed by the information they had just been given by the local leader. Other information was passed along as they were shown around this still growing production abilities of this asteroid base.
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The last of the anti-missiles systems were snatched up by the Bivouac Aerospace Company, not long after Robert and Jess had returned from their tour. Those systems had not been selling that well so far in the travels of Copeland and his dropships. Everyone wanted things that went boom or zap and not what might be “only” a specialized machine gun in their eyes. Purely defensive systems like that one just was not sexy enough for most mech jocks to want to cough up the money to buy them. But out here without an atmosphere to help defend you from space, the ability to thin out a missile attack was worth the expense to these locals. Robert moved over 100 of those systems in just a few days, and Robert made notes that the market for them in this system was still not saturated.
They were also able to pick up some more ores and refined metals as payment to transport two dozen small craft for one of the Magistracy’s quickly building or expanding military Academies. Robert had been planning to go that way before they had stopped over here. SLIC had said that they had wanted to get some detailed updated information about that area. This just makes it easier to explain why he was heading into a new area of the MoC. It also was a good use of his time by making this deal with the locals. Besides it gave him a reason to do a little more sightseeing and testing on what might be available on the markets in that area of space. There was not that much known as major manufacturing in that part of space, besides were he was heading. The MoC just didn’t put an academy on just any planet under their control.
They could not leave this system until the Styx returned from her mission, so Robert and Jess did their jobs and let the crews on the dropships have some down time with the locals. When the Styx returned to this system? Robert would open the floor to see about taking some more of these ”new” factories with him. If he couldn’t get the whole deal, the satellites? Then maybe the locals would just sell him the tooling that made those small habitats into “real” factories. The SLiE didn’t so much need the factory small Satellites. But they very badly needed the 250 tons of tooling that was fitted into the factories like there was no tomorrow, and Robert would do whatever he could do to fill that need for New Circe.
It took some effort and many meetings before it was brought up that MiM only wanted to know who was buying these factory “satellites”. But he had asked, if MIM or others in the MoC had said that they would restrict the sale of tools and tooling that the locals can make? After the local legal department had checked the communications, Robert’s guesses had proven to be correct. Robert was now able to get a thousand tons of tools, or what was equal to four small class factory satellites. That was for some first-generation extended range 8cm lasers, 5cm pulse lasers, about a dozen more of the anti-missile weapons, and some cash that Robert had collected on weapons sales in this star system. Both parties thought that they got the best part of that deal that had been worked out. Besides the tooling, Robert was wanting information to be leaked out that “his company” was now taking cargos, if the right conditions were met.
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Jules was on the edge of his seat as he sat in the command chair on the bridge of the SLS Styx. This ship was almost defenseless, as it made its way to Canopus without carrying any dropships on her long round hull. The Bad Kitty and the Hercules needed the firepower that the escort provided in the form of the Hobgoblin and her heavy fighters while they were left in the Bivouac System. The Styx “only” had her clan grade ER 8cm lasers and second generation anti-missile systems. That was way more firepower than any other jumpships outside of Clan controlled space could claim. As part of her defenses was that she was staying away from any star much less any star, which might have people living in it for as much of the trip as she could. The jumpship should be safe, as long as they didn’t break something along the way.
That was also one of the reasons that the jumpship held both an HPG and TacFax along with the highly trained crews needed to run them. The crews could not just relax on this move between trade centers. They also had to do some paint work and reload the jumpships IFF while they traveled on her hidden route between the stars. The altered IFF would electronically hide the identity of the Styx as the M/V Uncle Ralph and state that she was part of Copeland Supply, Salvage and Resale Company to anyone with the right equipment to pick up the codes. A few of the specially trained paint crew would change the physical look of the Tramp class ship or for anyone that would see the Styx at something near to close range as measured while in deep space.
When Jules got to the Canopus system, he had to order the artificial gravity shut down as the massive dropship was attached to his ship. Jules was able to see the plasma flares from the pod mounted Bally Tech Super x40s as the huge dropship drew closer to the jumpship. The 277m x 277m x 170m dropship seemed to be larger than that, as it slowly closed the distance to the Styx. The crew of the Tramp would have to float like that, at least until the “prize” crew of the mammoth class dropship had been sent back to the growing number of support craft at this jump point.
The stay in this system was scheduled to last for at least seven full days. They were “recharging” the drive and those times were known down to the minute by anyone that was in this line of work. By local regulations, Jules could have let the locals know that he was going to be using the LF battery. If he had gone that route, they could have been gone at the end of the first day. But picking up the Mammoth class dropship and her cargo were not the only reasons to be in this star system. Besides one small company owning two rare Tramp class, and both fitted with the extremely rare and newly rediscovered high tech battery would be very hard to explain. It was not unexplainable, but it would raise some questions.
They had to check in with Lora, and she updated him on the Resort with coded and decoded messages. They were sent at the speed of light from the planet towards the jump point, just as if she was updating the parent company of the Resort that she was running. She was reporting that it was going well, and the first families had landed, and more were known to be currently in transit. Jules could have picked up a dozen of them right now, if he wanted to wait for a long range shuttle to make the trip all the way to the jump point. But that was not part of the plan, and he passed along that it was better to wait until there was more of them.
While he was just sitting here at the jump point, Jules had released another set of funds for Lora to use for her project. Still, all of that data transfer was done in less than a day. But still they were “recharging” the jump drives like any other jumpship known to the Inner Sphere. The main reason to stay for the full seven days at this jump point was to “tap” into any messages that the planet’s HPG might send out for the week that the Styx was sitting at the jump point. Even a HPG station on a capital that was the size of Canopus could only send messages out only every other day. So, they would have to wait and collect as much data as ComStar might be sending out or receiving from this growing power. Those intercepted messages would help the leadership know about how closely ComStar was tracking this company.
It was with some relief when the Uncle Ralph (Styx) was able to leave this system. While they had been “recharging there jump drive”, they had been messaged every few minutes for information about their travels. It was the opening move to find out if any of the many waiting dropships could catch a ride on the two visibly empty drop collars on the jumpship. Blowing off those attempts to contact without letting the rest of the system know that they were being blown off, had all fallen onto the shoulders of Jules.
