20 August 3047
Thazi (Independent System)
"Penny for your thoughts." Brigadier General Herbert Horbaugh said as he walked up behind President David Mitchell who was sitting on a stool looking out over the vast fields.
Without even turning around President Mitchell said "Pay you a C-bill if you can help me get them all into some sort of order." He reached down and picked up another folding camp stool.
After taking a seat, Brigadier General Horbaugh rubbed his aching leg. "Long walk for an old, crippled man sir."
"Anything important or just wandering around Herbert?" President Mitchell asked
"Nothing stirring. Mainly wandering around and spotted you up here. That usually means your working on something." General Horbaugh replied
"Well, then I will use you as a sounding board on all the junk running around my head." President Mitchell said
"Fire away." General Horbaugh replied
"Okay then. Seems the NAIS is having problems reading Star League code and it just so happens that we have just recruited a bunch of folks that only know Star League code. I have been trying to figure out what we can do with that particular knowledge. So, what do you think?" President Mitchell asked
"Well, I know the folks that maintain the Corean factory on New Avalon pray really hard that nothing ever happens to their main computer system because no one really understands the damned thing anymore. Seeing as that is a problem with building our own, via the NAIS, HPG network without Comstar having a field day reading the message traffic or something more sinister, I would advocate we setup a school to actually teach the damned computer code to the NAIS. Or offer our own experts to help them out." General Horbaugh replied
"Not sure about setting up a school, someone is liable to talk about where they suddenly learned it. If there is one actor in the known universe I do not trust, it is Comstar. We would be painting a bullseye on our people. But I am open to letting our people help them out. Think we should ask for something in return?" President Mitchell asked
"Not yet. Maybe bring a couple over from Boulsi, figure out how to get those NAIS folks to let them tinker with the HPG we have here. If they manage to actually make something happen with the HPG, and with the NAIS folks standing right there watching, it provides proof that we can do what we say we can do. Then we keep that particular ace up our sleeve until we need to play it." General Horbaugh replied
"Holding back from the First Prince, that is what your saying Herbert. What gives?" President Mitchell asked
"Seems like the smart play. We or should I say you, have a tendency to find a way to irritate him every so often. We might need that particular get out of jail free card." General Horbaugh replied
"We might need to play that card sooner than you think Herbert. I want to build at least four more Tracker's. We are going to need a few Naval Lasers and missile launchers to make that happen, not to mention the actual missiles. He is not going to like that idea." President Mitchell said
"You know of a threat I don't know about?" General Horbaugh asked
"No, but we do have quite a secret to keep. Five Trackers lets us use three on deployments while two remain here at home. They are not true warships, but if anyone without an actual warship comes calling, they can put the hurt on them. That they are identical to a Merchant when not under thrust is an added bonus. I am not real keen on our soon to be convoy's running around out here without an escort. I figure a single Tracker carrying an Intruder and Titan will be more than enough to handle any pirate force that might trip over the convoys." President Mitchell said
"Okay, I can see the value of that. But we only have one combat worthy Titan. Those other two are more like system defense boats." General Horbaugh replied
"Not for long. Once the shipyard is functional, I plan to haul both over to Boulsi and figure out what is wrong with them or what went wrong. Then we are going to fix them up. Chief Zuniga says that shipyard can build two Titans every two months. In my brain, I want to fix these two Titans, build a Tracker, then two more Titans and then another Tracker. But until we get those particular weapons, we will be doing straight Titans. I figure old Hanse will just have to buy them from us." President Mitchell said
"Instead of playing our ace, how about just taking our own Titan over to Wokha and download it's data into his computer the same way we did. We go for just selling them to him, he is going to suspect we gave him bad info somehow to put the squeeze on him down the road." General Horbaugh replied
"But he got that information years ago. Long before we stumbled on our shipyard." President Mitchell said
"You really expect him to believe that? Even if it is the truth, that very thought is going to be rattling around in his brain. Best to explain what and how it happened and provide him with the ability to build them like was agreed to originally. Of course, he will then have to either fix his warships or build his Titans. I figure he will opt to fix his broken ships, so he can buy from us in the meantime." General Horbaugh replied
"Not really, part of me hopes he trusts me enough by now to know we are on the straight and level with him. On most things anyway. Next issue is we need to solve the problem of not being able to sell our raw mineral resources on the open market. That means getting Solar Metals in operation in the Federated Commonwealth. I checked with Derek, and he says getting a mining permit on virtually any FedCom world is going to be almost impossible and put up for open bids to other companies. But he also told me that there was very little orbital mining going on and that was only in selected systems. So that is where we are going to focus our operations. But that then leads us to the next problem, how do we explain our orbital mining stations?" President Mitchell said
"That is going to be a problem. Possibly a very big one. Of course, we do not have any extra stations to deploy anyway." General Horbaugh replied
"Yet. There are four asteroid belts located in three systems along our planned route to Inner End and they are all before we reach Sornath where we will establish our maintenance yard and cargo station. If we are lucky, we will continue finding a few stations along the way to recover. Davis is over on Boulsi digging around in that DoME database for any goodies right now but should be back in a few days to report in on what he found. Hopefully, it is good news. In a perfect world, we would be able to build our own, but that is probably many years down the road. You have any thoughts on the matter?" President Mitchell asked
"Easiest way to explain them would be for someone to actually be building them for sell. So, unless we make those kinds of arrangements, we better come up with some sort of cover story." General Horbaugh replied
"Who could we trust but a more important question is who has the extra yard space to even make it believable?" President Mitchell asked
"Good question and one I do not have the answer for right now. I cannot even come up with a cover story that would not open a flood gate on explorers out here trying to find the same thing as we hunt down." General Horbaugh replied
Standing up, President Mitchell offered his hand in support to aid Brigadier General Horbaugh to his feet. "Then let's go get some dinner and try to figure this problem out."
