Chapter Fifty-Five: Time Crunch
Hilton Head Island, Terra January 15th, 3012
"The Taurian's have a Warship?!" Primus Tiepolo asked incredulously. "I thought the Tripitz Affair was supposed to prevent that?"
"It was sir." The adept responded, wilting slightly from bringing bad news again. "This one seems to be an old Corvette from the Reunification war."
"Well, delay the Narbonne for a couple of weeks." the Primus said. "I want to see if the Taurians make any sudden moves."
"Sir, it's a Vincent Class Corvette." The adept tried to argue. "It won't be able to do much against a Dante Primus."
"Ahh, but who knows if the Taurians have more of them hidden up their sleeves." Tiepolo replied. "Taussen started their regular updates anyway." He waved his hand. "We can afford to stall for a little bit longer."
Toyama City, Versailles (Currently Federated Suns) January 17th, 3012
"Ian, we're loading you up with some of my people, and they'll get you to the facilities on the Argo." We were headed out to the field being used as a launch area for the massive amount of material being transported off world right now.
"Mark, am I seeing things?" Ian asked me, looking at the nose art on one of the Kentares Guard's Sting gunships. "Because that looks like Katrina Steiner in a bikini…"
I just face palmed, Katrina's old fireteam had waaay too much fun. "It's your imagination." I told Ian, as I wheeled him into the bay of the Gunship. "We'll see you in a couple of months. It'll take that long to ship all of the material here off world."
"Mark, I need you alive to help me out with all of this." Ian said from his bed. "You're not allowed to sacrifice your life here."
"I won't." I told him. "Peterson's people are good at the looting thing, we're going to take everything that we can that's not nailed down, and set up ways to destroy the rest of the military manufacturing here when we leave."
"I'm holding you to that." Ian said. "If you don't make it out, I'm not sure I could stop your people from storming Terra."
"No promises." I shrugged," But I'll see what I can do."
I closed the hatch and the Sting took off, carrying the First Prince away to safety.
"Alright," I rolled up my sleeves. "Time to get to work."
I went to the Mech Works facility and began to designate some of Peteron's and Adamina Roger's engineers as heads of dismantling certain factories and split the varied Mithril clad Infantry between them to coordinate and make everything go smoother and as fast as humanly possible.
"I want any and all Lostech Factories prioritized over everything else." I told Major Packer. "Make sure Adamina supervises ERPPC and Gauss Rifle factories first."
"We're on it sir." Packer replied, "Anything else we should prioritize?"
"Any lines of extinct mechs, and grab all of the freezers that they have stashed. We want everything that might be useful stripped and gone before February 15th at the earliest."
"I'll make it happen Colonel." Packer got to work.
"We have a lot of things to do and not a lot of time to do it in Field Marshal." I told the Heavy Guards commander who was walking with me. "Sorry if I overrode you on anything."
"No, you were right about the delegation and Prioritization of Lostech." He agreed with me. "Now, it doesn't feel right to leave the civilians here to be potentially killed by Comstar for this."
"I'm not leaving them here to be killed Field Marshal." I said. "My people are setting up pre-fabs that are hopefully out of range of any orbital bombardment, and we're offering to use the Sting's to bring them there if they choose to move, we're leaving the choice up to them."
"Well, that's a weight off of my chest." The older man grunted a bit. "We're going to be extremely busy aren't we?"
"Don't expect a lot of rest outside of our rotations until we lift off from the planet." I told him. "I did make sure that all of our evidence and data made it out with First Prince Davion though."
"Good, that in itself might be worth this entire expedition. Even if we don't make it off world." He said. "You included the prisoners in with the evidence?"
"Mathis is guarding them for me." I nodded in response.
"Good man that one." The Field Marshal responded. "Any chance I can poach him?"
"No sir, I don't think you can afford his fees." I smirked a bit. "But you're willing to try when we make it back."
"We'll just have to wait and see what happens then."
February 15th, 3012
"Alright Field Marshal, that should be all or almost all of the Lostech out of here." I said as I escorted him to one of the last dropships lifting off. "I'll stay behind and try and evac the rest of the population for a week before I leave."
"You sure Hull?" The Field Marshal said. "I don't mind staying behind a bit longer."
"I'm one of the last ones here that can keep the HPG sending its updates." I said sadly in response. "I'm not going to be able to leave until close to the last second."
"See you around Hull." Field Marshal Felsner saluted me. "It's been a true pleasure serving with you again." He walked onto the dropship's loading bay and I waited for his Dropship to lift off.
"We'll see, we'll see." I muttered to myself, heading back for the city. I had one Dropship left, and the King Henry Vwas going to wait at one of the pirate points for myself and the Troy.
March 1st, 3012
"Sir, we need to leave, a message from the King Henry just came in that a Warship is here." one of the Kentares Guard infantrymen ran up to me.
"Alright, lets go." We both started sprinting for the Troy. Knowing that even a few moments could be the difference between making it to the King Henry and not making it at all.
We were the last ones to board the Buccaneer class Aerodyne, and just as soon as we were strapped in, the Pilot lifted off. Even with early warning, it was going to take us two days to reach the pirate point, and if the Warship were lucky, they might intercept us on the way there.
March 2nd 3012
"It's going to be close isn't it?" I asked the pilot.
"Yes sir, it'll come down to who can maintain thrust without passing out first I'm afraid." The pilot responded. "And they might handle the stress better. He grit out. We had been flying at 1.5 gravities for 24 hours now, trying to beat the Warship.
March 3rd, 3012
The entire crew of the dropship let out a sigh of relief as we slowed down to dock with the King Henry. Glad to be done with the heavy gravity. When we had firmly attached to the jumpship, the warning klaxon sounded, and just as we jumped, a Naval Autocannon tore through the Troy…
When we appeared into the Markesan System, we were met with plenty of rescue dropships waiting for us. I had been strapped in inside of one of the cargo bays when the Naval Autocannon ripped through the Troy. Thankfully, it had stopped short of the Jumpship, but some of the flying shrapnel had gone straight through my Mithril. "Fuck!" I screamed. My left eye burning. "I'm losing oxygen." I said. "We need to get to a pressurized area now." I had to be manipulated through doors and entryways until we reached the airlock to the King Henry. It seemed to take forever to cycle the airlock doors, and I could feel the hissing from my penetrated suit.
When we had cycled in, one of the Guard grabbed my helmet. "Sir, this is going to hurt." He said. "It's going to hurt really badly." He undid the clasps under my helmet. "If we don't get to this sir, you may bleed out."
"Do it." I said. clenching my jaw as hard as humanly possible. They gripped my helmet, and ripped it off quickly along with the shrapnel that had penetrated. It felt like fire had been poured into my eye socket and my brain couldn't handle it. I doubled over and threw up, then allowed them to work on making sure that I wouldn't bleed out from the eye wound and the now massive gash that ran through my eyebrow.
Unfortunately, this wasn't my first injury to that eye, and using my slight experience with the injury I made sure that there was something to hold all of the vomit that would be coming shortly. "Whoever is senior is in command right now." I said, feeling extremely tired and sick. "I'm not going to be much use. And I threw up again."