11

Returning home in New Vandenberg (home being a relative thing for someone that is from another time and universe), now it was time to do a little rebuild / maintenance before going again in deep space adventures.

The hardware that came with us from X432-C775-45T0 – our first visit – was put to good use.

The fusion reactor, after being reassembled, provided V4RU and the Revenants base with energy independence. A good thing for security and an excellent one to reduce the bills.

The Buster industrial / cargo 'Mechs were a welcome addition for a company that moves so many heavy items.

After analyzing the defensive turrets in detail – they were nothing special, really, only a heavier version of the more common models sold all around the IS and Periphery, even the weapons were all standard – we put them in positions to defend the most vital places of our complex.

The mainframe was integrated in our network as no company can seem to have too much computer power – even less in this God forsaken era in the Periphery.

While the Mauser 960 was an excellent weapon, it was too heavy and by far (10.5kg!!!). I ordered half to be stripped to the minimum – removing the bayonet, grenade launcher and survival kit – which provided us with a more manageable 6.5kg weapon. It was still heavy, but much better. In case of necessity, all the extras could be re-attached. That provided the Revenants with an excellent pulse laser rifle loved (yeah really) by our infantry troops.

The techs had finally brought the Marksman back to operational status but to do that, they had to create a complete new electronics package (we didn't have the blueprints of the original which prevented us from trying to create one with the ex-Argo workshop ) – bigger, less capable, but good enough.

Another team of techs had been busy creating an expanding database of blueprints to feed the Argo workshop – apparently it could build anything they had tried so far, provided that the right raw materials were at hand and that the dimensions didn't exceed the capability of the machinery. As far as I understood, it was like an advanced 3D printing / manufacturing system that started to be used in my time. The production was both very small and time consuming and I kept on hearing about the energy used (even if we had our own fusion reactor) but focusing its use on several components that were very expensive, rare or not available made it a real wonder tool for our company.

The small but very well equipped hospital was also useful as one can guess that with a mercenary force and a company working with dangerous items, accidents were more common than what I would have liked unfortunately. Before, V4RU had a decent infirmary with nurses but now, we contracted two full doctors. They loved the equipment they had.

As I suspected, Vasseur didn't get any fighter jock from the Magistracy nor Herotitus. I talked with him, and we decided to try to contract some from the Outworlds Alliance, not an easy thing to do because of the distance, but our best bet.

Meanwhile, the people that had stayed on C47U-231Z-603F returned home with the Concordat Navy taking control of the place. All our JumpShips and DropShips received a complete maintenance revision, always a good thing to do if you could afford it.

With all the money that the Concordat had paid for the cache, I had more money by mid 3017 than when I arrived at V4RU, and a lot of more options and toys to play with.

Talking about money… we received a 'surprise inspection' from the finances department – the local IRS.

Nothing fun during several days, until they departed with dejected looks on their faces, giving V4RU a clean bill. I bet good money that this was a 'gift' from Emma Sartre from the Exchequer – the bitch revenge for being forced to pay more and to give it tax free (a capital offense).

I also had an interesting conversation with Dr. Murad about the Argo K-Boons. Cutting edge but an evolutionary dead end. Much bigger, complex and expensive than the normal ones, they not only needed almost the double of energy to operate compared to the standard model but they could also only be used by DropShips of 50k tons or bigger and you could only pack one for every 50k tons – but are restricted to expand the field to a mere 2k tons dropship. I had at last the explanation why the Argo had only two and why this K-Boons were never seen again.

Meanwhile, Vasseur had made deals with the local defense forces, militia forces that is, but that's the Concordat for you – New Vandenberg is one of the most industrialized worlds of the nation but is barely defended, most of the forces being in the Hyades Cluster or in the frontiers - to make joint training exercises and if necessary to act as a second line of defense in case of invasion or raid. Since the Revenants had more firepower than the militia, we were a strange second line of defense..

More seriously, it was time to start planning: I planned to either aim at Artru and Castle Nautilus or a new round to the last set of near small caches; but these were almost at double the distance, which meant two years in a DropShip (brr) to visit all of them. Not much fun in that I'm afraid.

All that changed because of outside events – In early 3017 Thomas Calderon took the title of Lord Protector of the Realm, succeeding his mother Zarantha Calderon. Soon after, a contract to defend Althea's Choice from Federated Suns invasions or pirate incursions was offered to the Revenants with a duration of a year, with an option for four yearly renewals.

At first I wanted to refuse as I had made plans, and accepting would have put a big delay on them, but a simple look at the commanding officers of the Revenants remembered me of the gold rule of the military: never give an order you know is not going to be obeyed. Crap – I was going to have to rely only on the Recover team. There was no way I was going to go after the Nautilus with such limited forces, so the Recover guys were going to explore the remaining caches around, but I was not going this time – no DropShip for me for a time. I had had enough of them for the time being