Chapter Nineteen: Repair and Refit
February 1st 3003...
"She's starting to look good." Captain Frye remarked as she steered the shuttle around the giant Dropship. "Just couple of panels fixed and some paint and you'll never know she crashed."
I nodded, content to just take in the view of the ship and of the space around it. Despite having been on a ship more than solid ground over the past two years, I still found myself in awe of outer space a lot of the time.
"You sure it was worth the money to refit it this way?" My ground XO Lieutenant Sheppard asked. "I mean, a dedicated hospital and repair and refit ship seems a bit excessive for our current forces."
"With the current amount of people at our disposal you would be right." I smirked. "I'm looking ahead, we're going to need advanced repair facilities and the ability to care for our wounded soldiers as we expand."
"And the reason you hired those people from the colleges?" Lieutenant Peterson asked. "They've taken over one of the cargo bays entirely." Peterson said exasperatedly, tired of having to move equipment in and out of the cargo bays.
"Well, some of that is to help with any of our people who might want to continue their education." I paused, "and the rest is to hopefully help us gain an edge on anyone we might face."
"Alright, settle down everyone." I said, as all the officers and NCO's, took a seat in the room of the Messenger. "I know all of you have had questions about how I developed my skills, where my money came from, and all of that." I paused. "I've heard all of the rumors. Now what I will tell you is exactly what you've been asking for, though none of it may leave this room. So, before we get started, does anyone want to get out?"
"Now, I'm going to ask you to hold all questions till the end so that I can get through this without having to stop every few minutes to answer questions." I took a sip of the water that I had laid out in front me when I entered the room. "To start with, all of you are currently sitting in the briefing room of the Star League Pueblo class intelligence ship Messenger. And it along with the King Henry V were a part of a long term intelligence gathering mission before the dissolution of the Star League and Terran Hegemony."
From there, I spun my tale, a wild story of having been the only survivor of a Warship misjump. Of being stranded alone, having to fix it up and make my way across a ton of the Inner Sphere, the only thing I left out was being from a different universe. I saw as eyebrows were raised, and the surprise that a good many of my trusted companions had. At the end, I stopped and waited. Hoping that I could still trust these people that I now knew as friends and comrades in arms.
The entire room was silent for a good minute. I could hear some breathing and some muttering and that was it before Lieutenant Sheppard stood up at attention and saluted. "Lieutenant Jonathon Sheppard reporting for Duty Sir." From there it was a strange wave as all of the Officers and NCO's followed suite. It quite literally brought me to tears for a minute. I returned their salute and gestured for them all to sit down again.
"Now it's time to discuss our options." I said, "I need all of your input in order to make the right decision here. Now, I'm about to pass out the information of what I found on the Argo's computers. We need to decide if we are going to purchase some more dropships. Either way, we're going to need to hire some Jumpships in order to carry whatever we find as well as start on some new hires."
I paused to let them weigh in and I took notes on what the suggestions were. The majority were in favor of doing a contract with the Magistracy of Canopus for a bit in order to pick up skilled doctors and surgeons as well as hiring some of the people who had submitted applications from the Taurian Concordat. All in all, we would go from a over strength lance with an attached company of Infantry/Marines to a slightly under-strength Combined arms battalion when we finished up with purchases and hiring. We would complete our current garrison and Anti-Piracy contract before moving on. When we had built up enough people that we could all trust, we would come back and hit the SLDF cache on Artru. Until then, we would be spending money like water in order to get everything done by the time our contract was up in May.
"I always knew there'd be one of you." I said shaking my head. "No, I'm not going to monologue about how I caught you. I don't even care about who you work for. I'm just going to execute you." I shrugged. "Any last words?" I asked while Corporal Dunham and led him to the airlock. I nodded for the two of them to remove the gag.
"Blake will see you dead!" they yelled and began to yell louder and struggle violently before I commanded the two NCO's to step out of the airlock. After they left them in the airlock, I closed the internal doors and began the process of remotely opening the outer door. "See you in hell." I said and watched as their body flew into the void.
"Thanks for the assist." I told the two NCO's with me. "He could have gotten us all killed if he had managed to report what I told y'all to his superiors."
"Who did he work for Sir?" Dunham asked. "They could try and sneak more people into our ranks if we're not careful."
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you Corporal." I said. "I'll tell you what I know later, when I've got a decent counterintelligence team put together."
At the sound of that Corporal Dunham actually perked up. "Counterintel you say?" He asked. "I actually got some training in that before I left the AFFS. Now it was mainly in making sure that Mask teams didn't sneak up on us but I can build off of that."
"I'll see what I can come up with and maybe make you head of that team in the future." I responded. "But don't get your hopes too high. We've got a long way to go before we get there."
Authors note: Thanks to pbthhhht for helping with some edits and making sure everything looked good and flowed well. Next chapter will either be a Marksman POV or jumping into the next contract