6

Two days after the battle ended, Farah Murad entered my makeshift cabinet in the Black Eagle DropShip. We had moved our landed DropShips to the pirate base after the fight had ended. The smallish, slightly overweight Pakistani/Iranian had been very active in the past days, inspecting every place of the pirate base.

'Boss, I'm ready to deliver my report on what we have in this system. What do you want first?'

'Start by the JumpShip then the Jumbo and last the Argo, please.'

'As you wish. The JumpShip has two helium seals damaged, several electronic components burned and one of the docking collars fused. Everything can be repaired if we get the necessary spare parts and helium to replenish the tanks. Expensive, but that would give us a serviceable JumpShip. The DropShip is a Trojan, not a Danais. It is fully operational but with the fused collar it won't move until the repairs are done. The Jumbo is almost repaired, these barbarians have done a crude but efficient job. With two more days I could finish it. The Argo is bad news, I'm afraid. With its hull broken in several places, one of the big engines ripped off and the fuel tanks cracked, there is nothing that can be done. I'm a good engineer, not a wizard. That ship will never fly again, not even if you had a Star League full dockyard in orbit. It is no small miracle that the ship didn't break in several parts.'

'Damn. Well, if we can't we can't (crap, in the game she could repair the Argo, but this one is beyond repair. That sucks). What can we salvage from the Argo? Tell me that the data-cores and the machinery are intact, please.'

At that question, Farah's eyes lit up with excitement.

'The data-cores are indeed intact, but protected by serious encryption. My guess? SLDF late period. There is Nothing we can do with the tools we have here. The machinery or rather the manufacture and repair shop is indeed operational, even if a bit banged. These idiots have used it to repair their 'Mechs and the Jumbo but they didn't know what they had in hands. This is the most sophisticated and versatile small workshop I have ever seen, it can produce almost everything provided you give it the necessary blueprints and raw materials.'

'So, we can't repair the Argo but everything else is repairable? Including a JumpShip and two DropShips ?'

'That's my assessment, boss.'

'Well, not a bad mission after all. Can you start repairing the ships and prepare to disassemble everything we can carry from the Argo and load in our DropShips? '

'Sure, boss, but that will have to wait until I repair the ships as I'm going to need the repair shop to produce components for the repairs. Thankfully the wreckage of the Argo provide us with enough raw materials for the repairs.'

'Take your time, we are going to stay here for the time being. By the way, do you happen to know how they got fuel and water on this God forsaken rock?'

'Oh, that's easy. They tapped in an underground ice field giving then water, oxygen and hydrogen for fuel.'

'Pretty clever. And lucky for them to have such ice field in the neighborhood.'

After she exited, I called Vasseur, and he told me that he was confident that some of his 'friends' at home could get access to good enough hardware and software to work on the files. After all, the TMI had plenty of experience playing with the SLDF encryption systems from the old days.

He also reported that our boys had been a little bit too enthusiastic in the way they had dealt with the pirates 'Mechs; they were all just good for scrap or at best to extract some pieces, none could be rebuild. Shame, they would have been a nice bonus.

We also talked about the operation against the pirate JumpShip. The only serious danger was the Leopard DropShip. To deal with it, the two Hammerheads would be loaded with rocket pods that while slowing the ASF's, would give then a lot of extra firepower against the single DropShip. If everything went right, the Intrepids would be able to board the JumpShip before the Leopard unlocked, if not, it would be the job of the two pilots to neutralize it, hopefully, without too many losses and without destroying or damaging it too much.