Chapter 22

An hour and a half later when we left we were down to half the number we had started with. Sy Murphy in the Griffin was the lightest. We pushed and made the city at dusk. There were APCs waiting for us to direct us in to the compound where the Colonel was laagered.

I reported in and immediately asked about my people. "Calm yourself, Mick. Your people are all going to make it. Doc's got a busted arm and a concussion, Johns' leg is broken as well as stabbed, Gabby Hayes has a concussion but she should be ok and the other two are just cuts, bangs and bruises. You got off lucky."

"No I didn't, I lost two. Jo Briggs and Leroy Bennett. Jo was with Doc and Leroy was with Kevin Rogers when they got ambushed by the six heavies. We got 'em. All twenty-four. We shot 'em up and captured eighteen pilots. Six were killed."

"Damnit Zeke, there were the Mechs from those two shot down Unions. Milt screwed the pooch on this one. He didn't check far enough and my people paid for it. Milt knows better than..."

Before I could go any further the door was shoved open and a young pilot was thrown inside the office. Right behind him was Lt. Colonel Milt Jacobs. "Mick, I'm sorry. I just heard what happened and I brought Mr. Morgan to have a word with you. Go ahead Mr. Morgan, tell Colonel Leofa and Colonel Jones how you got out of your Mech, crawled inside the two Union Dropships and saw Mechs in each of them. When you finish telling them you lying little..." Milt took a deep breath and calmed down a bit. "When you finish telling them maybe you can go over to the hospital and tell Doc. Ravenhawk how you saw Mechs. Then you can go back and tell the two people Mick lost how you saw Mechs in that wreckage. And if any one of them, just one, believes you, you lying little shit I'll kiss your ass at high noon on Main Street!"

Again gaining his composure he went on. "If you have anything that belongs to you in that Mech you were assigned get it out. You have thirty minutes to remove your belongings and yourself from my sight. You are fired and you will be staying here. If I ever see you again I will shoot you on sight! Now get out of here."

As Morgan scrambled from the room Milt Jacobs turn to Zeke Jones. "Colonel, I screwed up. It was my responsibility and because of a foul up in my command Mick lost two killed and five injured. I'll take what ever punishment you deem appropriate."

"Colonel Jacobs!" Milt came to ridged attention. "You will... buy the first round. I think we need to adjourn to the club."

That sounded more like the Milt Jacobs I knew. He would cover all the bases like he should. An eight-ball in his outfit that was too lazy to do the job he had been assigned had cost us seven casualties.

At the area they had taken over as a club we were served drinks and tried to relax a bit. I finished my report on losses and how Rachel had black flagged another of my Mechs before I left.

"Why'd she do that?" Zeke asked. "Was it that bad?"

"I didn't think so but then I didn't check it out like her people did."

"I would have said something," Zeke replied.

"No you wouldn't. You're just her husband and her Commanding Officer. When Rachel down checks a Mech, the only person who overrules her is God and even He has to argue. You ain't God, you just think you are," I told him.

Milt's head was nodding in agreement and finally Zeke got that lopsided grin of his and said, "You know you're probably right. I have yet to win an argument with that woman."

"Now, what happened to that Battalion you were to tangle with?" I asked. "Did the Company get out of the Union Ok or did they auger in? We've been yatting about what happened to me, what about what's been happening up here?"

"Yeah, Zeke. Mick and I busted our buns to get up here in case you needed help and here we are sitting around having a drink as if everything is just peachy. What's going on?"

"Well, the Union that crashed only got some of its Mechs out. We got the others out. Most of the people were dead and the Mechs need a lot of work before they'll be operational again, if ever. The other two landed correctly after dropping their Mechs. Due to the attack and the evasive maneuvers the ships had to make they were a little off target when they dropped. Most of them landed in the big marsh twenty klicks from here. We moved in and fought the ten that were trying to help their friends out of the marsh and have all of them. The ones in the marsh we forced to surrender and are still trying to extract them from the goo."

"Milt, you missed all the fighting, my guys got a little and Mick, once again Phantom took the brunt of it. It's over. We did capture their two Unions. Nothing as drastic as your capture, Mick. We just swarmed all over them with fighters and then suggested they surrender when we pulled the Mechs up to support the fighters. The fighting is over and we can now relax."

Now the clean up process started. What could be salvaged from the wreckage of all the Mechs and Dropships we took. This began one of the weirdest operations I have ever been involved with. Rachel took parts from the twelve Phoenix Hawks and put together four P. Things as she called them. She took the guns and two thirds of the armor off the P. Hawks and used the Mechs as handed field cranes. With them she stripped the three crashed Unions down to nothing. She took tons of armor off of them. You figure each one had forty tons before it got shot up. Removing the armor allowed her to get to all the good stuff. They pulled off attitude thrusters, the radar, landing gear, heat sinks and docking collars. With the engineers there to tell her what was good and what wasn't, they took relays, conduits, terminals, actuators, gun turrets with the guns. Computers, gunnery circuitry, life support and so on were taken. They removed engine shielding, ramps, doors, cross braces, traveling cranes, drop mechanisms and then they got to the inside. They found the spare parts bins and took everything from there. They took all the spare cannon shells and missiles they had to reload their Mechs. They took the feed mechanisms for the AC-5s as well as the LRM-20 that were mounted on the ships. They disconnected and removed the entire cockpit from four of the five downed ships. From the fifth they took everything that they thought was still in one piece. With everything out of the way they were also able to get to the wrecked fighters and the Mechs that we had been unable to get out. While it would take a lot of repairs to get everything operational again they had spare parts if nothing else.

From the two ships that were total crashes they weren't able to salvage much. They were too badly crunched. They were sitting in a hole several meters deep and the ships themselves had been shortened by nearly half. They just compressed in on themselves. One hit at a slight angle and when it crumbled it saved the cockpit and that was the only reason that could be removed. Again they were able to reach the cocooned Mechs and remove them. Some could be salvaged and others would be used strictly for the parts that they could get from them.

Many of the parts it was doubtful that we could use however we could sell them. As I said before the Concordat has two plants that produce Union Dropships. Anything that we took that we couldn't use ourselves we could sell to them. There were many megacredits of parts that we could save from the five ships. Anything that we couldn't use or sell I'd take to the smelter and turn into something useful. Unlike many, our Mech bays didn't have large piles of unsightly scrap metals piled up behind them. When a leg, arm or some other large Mech part had been stripped of everything that they could use, the scraps were tossed into bins that were removed to the smelter. There the scraps were recycled into things that we could use on the planet. We're determined that our planet wasn't going to become one vast garbage dump like so many planet had become.

We loaded my Mules with captured Mechs, parts of Mechs, our shot up Mechs and parts of the Unions and blasted them off for the moon. One of the Unions we loaded with a Phantom Company and blasted them off also. There we had the Jumpship hidden on the lee side. Using the chemical rockets the captain of the ship got it into proper position and jumped for home. There the Mules were to be off loaded and return to pick us up and any additional salvage.

Much of the stuff from the three Unions that crash landed was transferred over to the two Unions my group had shot up and used to repair them. Again using the P. Things as portable cranes they lifted out the damaged engine shielding, shot up parts of engines and damaged internals. You figure the engine alone on a Union is over six hundred tons of dead weight. That was the easy one to repair. You could see what damage had been done and repair it. The burned one caused many headaches.

The fire had burned out many connections between the bridge and the engine room. Many of the controls no longer worked properly and much of the internal bracing had been weakened by the heat. The metal had been detempered, untempered, what ever the word was, anyway the metal had lost its temper due to the high heat that had been created by all the fuel igniting and burning inside there. They made the repairs that were necessary to get the ship back to the jump point. Control leads were jury rigged, many of the braces were replaced and the vacuum seals were all replaced. Some of the replacements were not in the best of shape. That one we decided we did not want to keep and were going to sell.

Three weeks later the Jumpship was back. When the two Mules landed we transferred as much fuel to them as they had hold and loaded them with the rest of Phantom and the Night Creatures. The room that was left we again loaded with parts that had been taken from the Unions while the Jumpship had been gone. With as much on board as they could carry they again blasted off. This time they carried parts of three drive systems and large parts of engines. Again we sent one of the Unions back with them. When they returned this time only one of the Mules was to come back.

With fuel bowsers we had transferred all the salvageable fuel off the downed Unions. The fuel tanks were them removed and steamed. They were then checked for leaks and cracks. Going through the rigors of a crash can cause stresses that design engineers don't figure on. The inside of the tanks were filled with fire retardant foam and then repairs made. With all leaks repaired the foam was flushed out and the tanks used to replace the shot up and burned tanks on the fire Union. They were then filled with fuel as was the last Union waiting to be removed.

By the time the Jumpship and the lone Mule had returned all repairs that could be made had been and the techs and engineers had enjoyed a few days shore leave. Things on Dindatari had pretty much returned to normal. Much of the management and many of the workers at the Shilone plant had returned to see how much damage had been done and how long it would be before they could return to work. They were totally surprised that we hadn't shot the place to small pieces. There was very little damage inside and none to the production line. They were so grateful for what we had done that we were to receive a bonus. The first four Shilones off the line were to be sent to us.