// People who are supposed to post here know who they are.
Harold walked into a bar turned mildly sleazy cafe on Barrier Gate Station and looked around. It had been a while since he was last here. A very long while. And unlike last time, this meeting would not end with him getting laid.
He spied a booth in the corner, sauntered over, and took a seat. A server came to him and asked for his order.
"California Pale, and a small bucket of fries, please. Garlic salt on the fries."
Sure enough, minutes later, his tasty beverage and snack appeared. He thanked the waitress and bit into a fry. Not enough garlic salt. Still good, though. Better than last time.
He waited for a few minutes before spying a familiar shadow at the door. He raised a pair of fingers, signalling the person over to his booth, and took a sip of his beer. This better work out, he thought. He wasn't armed enough for it not to.
VR-VGB-Never.Enough, California System
A green light blinked on the Comm Panel. Blain punched in his access code and opened up the message.
Mr. Spike, We need to speak. Barrier Gate, the bar.
Oh great, cryptic messages. Well, I am not doing anything, lets see what Mr. Anonymous wants.
Barrier Gate Station, The Bar
Blain walked in past the doorway, and scanned the room. Halfway through his scan, he saw him. Harold Kane, Taskmaster. Blain crooked a slight smile as he walked over and sat down.
Well well well. Garlic Fries? I'm more partial to the cheesy bacon fries. So, cryptic message aside, what do you want?
"Cheesy bacon gives me gas."
Kane tossed a garlic fry in his mouth, chewed with a smile, and swallowed.
"I'm here because, well, we need the Metropolis back. Yes, we. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, he's nuts, the Metropolis is no more, it has ceased to be, it's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Well... not quite. The Metropolis is a hulk, but I have a few resources and we're getting it back."
He pointed a fry at Blain.
"Here's how: Somewhere in California there's a large wreck. And that somewhere, is here." He passed Blain a datapad containing a map and coordinates. "We're going to take a couple ships, maybe that fancy gunboat of yours, out to the wreck, weld a couple engines on her, fire the engines up, and help tow her to Cortez. We jump her, fire the engines towards Kansas, jump her, and park her near that old station wreck. The NTF's not gonna bother her at all."
Biting the fry, Kane said, "And that's how we're going to restore the glory of the Raiders."
Well, it looks like you have got everything planned out. Something I never did well was plan. So you want to somehow sneak a large battleship out through California, then through Magellan, all without alerting the Navy, the LSF, or the Hellfire Legion. Not to mention while the Metropolis is about as structurally sound as a pencil. But ok. Assuming this all goes to plan, and Im not saying it will...
A waitress appears out of the kitchen and approaches the table Kane and Blain are sitting at.
Can I get you something sir?
Uh yea. Coffee, Black. Thanks.
The waitress nods and walks off to get Blain's order.
So as I was saying. What do we do when the Metropolis is in Kansas? How exactly will we defend the Metropolis from a Hellfire Legion that wants nothing more than to wipe the Metropolis off the face of the earth? I don't know, I'm skeptical Kane, but I'll run with it. So. You seem more leader material than me, what do you say about assuming leadership of the raiders? I can't say i'm doing that great a job. What'cha say?
The Waitress returns with Blains coffee. Blain takes the cup and takes a sip from the coffee.
"The Legion wants us dead? Surprising. We piss in their cornflakes? No matter. What we'll be doing once we have the Metropolis in position is we're going to build a new hull with recovered parts from the Battle of Freeport 1. I've taken some photos of a supposed Spyglass core based battleship. I'd like to replicate the design using one of our upgrade project designs and the hull schematics I had made up from the photos. With me so far?"
He paused.
"Good. Until we get the whole thing built, it'll be a starbase, and a pretty immobile one at that. First thing to go up in the new shell will be a docking port, and a generator so we don't have to wear pressure suits inside the ship. Then we can worry about repressurizing the internals as we finish sections of the hull."
"This isn't going to be easy or cheap, but f**k it, man, we're the Vagrant Raiders. Sound good?"
Well, we DO deal in cardamine and like to steal stuff from their precious civilians. Frack the lot of them if you ask me.
Blain pauses to sip his coffee
Say, you know the Junker Congress? They have themselves a spyglass as well. lord knows how they got the damned thing, but its there. I was thinking, we could use their help. Plus they are ya know, good at fixing crap that's way beyond its expiration date. I could make a few calls and see what they would like for compensation. Regarding the battle for freeport one... that might be a bit tricky. There was another feud there. Rheinland declared war on Bretonia for a week, and Freeport 1 got stuck in the crossfire. So there might be extra scrap to sift though to find the original Freeport 1 fight debris. Otherwise, Im all for reviving the Metropolis from its broken and otherwise useless state.
The other heavies we had...well other than the Silver Lining which you hid somewhere in the Omega's....are either damaged, or gone. The Nightmare took some pretty hellish damage to its drive core, I know where it is however. The Black Cloud is gone...as in the thing took a heavy mortar while shielding the Metropolis while we abandoned her... and I havn't got the slightest clue where the Systematic Chaos went. The ship sorta just disappeared. Shame to, because I left a crate of some nice wine onboard.
"Damned if I know where the Lining is. Probably somewhere in that same debris field. To hell with the Lining, though, we have a Spyglass to reconstruct. Get one of the boys to pick up a transport and meet us in Omega-3. Bring a pressure suit and a plasma torch."
One step at a time. But we should have plans to salvage the other assets we had. Ile see who I can round up for an incursion into Omega 3. See you around Kane.
Blain stands up, tosses some money on the table to pay for his coffee, and walks out the door.
* * *
The appearance of a plasma torch in the vacuum of space is interesting. There's a small flash of light at the end of the barrel when it ignites, and then nothing. The only ways to tell if it's on is to either check the power switch or stick your hand in front of the business end. That, or push it up against something else. And when you do push the torch up against something else, if it's on, there's another small burst of light and a scattering of tiny, white-hot sparks that shoot out and keep going in whatever direction they're travelling in until they hit something else, losing no heat in the meantime. Space is odd.
As you slowly drag the plasma torch and its glowing ball of ionized whatever along the sheet of metal you're cutting apart, sparks continue to fly freely out the back, and the edges of the now-sheared metal appears scarred, jagged, and slightly glowing. Even through an EVA repair suit's hard exterior, it's warm to the touch. When the sawn-off chunk of metal finally breaks free of its mother piece, it floats gently in the vacuum of space. EVA repair suits, thankfully, tend to have electromagnets in their gloves to help carry metal surfaces.
And then, finally, you place the metal in whatever heat-proof container you're storing it in, and go back to cut another chunk.
This process, known as salvaging or reclaiming, was one that Harold Kane had plenty of time to make detailed, intricate note of in his head in a small debris cluster behind Planet Sprauge in Omega-3, as he manually salvaged parts of the wreck of the VCS
Black Cloud and sent them to a Borderworlds Transport to be eventually sent home to the Kansas system.
Kane brought another piece back to the transport and looked at the parts of the
Black Cloud he had been salvaging from. A few groups of random Raider lackeys were salvaging as well, though fairly slowly. He sighed, and activated his comm link to the transport.
"Hey, uh, guys, how much do we have in the back of that thing? We've been at this for hours. The Corsairs could appear at any time, and that would most obviously be terrible."