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Diego Rodriguez stood up after the ship rematerialized. Omicron Alpha. Home of the Outcasts - his home. Beleaguered by invaders from all sides, the once proud Nacion had fallen into disrepair, with the notorious crime family, the Contari, all but a memory now, and the once stalwart guard of the Omicrons, the 101st Ghosts, reduced to but a paltry fleet of destroyers and picket vessels.

As he began to maneuver his vessel towards Malta orbit, he thought of the days to come. The reborn Contari crime syndicate, the Campania Cartel, the 'Guardia de Malta', and others would try to take hold of the now exceedingly fragile Maltese worlds. He was one of them.

The Crimson Cross, a rebirth of the original Crimson Cross c. 700 A.S., an order of Maltese warriors designed to combat the scourge of the Omicrons, the Imperio del Corsario, is the movement Diego found himself a part of. The present day Cross maintained nothing of its original grandeur, save for a 100 year old prototype Ranseur, the MNS Syracuse, and the MNS Comino, a RM-1 Outcast Destroyer-class vessel designed to support the Syracuse during the original Corsair Crusades.

100 years later, the Cross found itself reborn, although with not much more than two aging vessels, barely functioning at this point, and a host of small Outcast-manufactured snubcraft assigned to the Syracuse. Diego, a transport pilot and handyman, had been brought aboard by the Cross to see what he could do to change that.

Which brought Diego to Malta. He piloted his vessel, the Expedidor, a train manufactured by the pirates of the borderworlds, into dock at Valetta Shipyard. The Shipyard, now bustling with activity after numerous supply runs by the Junkers, was in a state of near disrepair. The sheer volume of shipments coming in each day left the workers of the shipyard completely overworked, and they were constantly losing money. Diego, an enterprising man at the best of times, decided to use that to his advantage.

Within a day of his arrival, Diego had managed to persuade the Valetta supervisors to allow the once prestigious Cross to utilize the lower scaffolding as a shipyard for the Cross' efforts. He then spent the next two weeks coordinating with local officials and his assembled technical experts to overhaul the drydock of Valetta to accompany any new vessel. The first mission was to repair the ancient Syracuse.

The Syracuse was in a much worse shape than anyone in the Cross cared to admit. While it flew, technically speaking, it was in no shape to do so. The primary fusion drive was offline, the super-structure was failing in multiple points, and the main weapons battery was heavily damaged.

Diego had a conundrum. Valetta had resources, but only in terms of valuable scrap brought up from the Texas fields. That kind of scrap has a good many uses, in most cases being workable parts that fell off of wrecks of vessels, but there were still a lot of things you needed new, or at least used - not salvaged. As work began to repair the gargantuan Syracuse, Diego headed out on the Expedidor toward the inner worlds. Hopefully the seedier side of Sirius had survived what had struck the Outcasts, and he could get what he needed to finish the job.

The Expedidor cruised through the asteroid field of Newcastle before mooring at Belfast Production Facility. The Mollys were good people, similar in effort to the Unioners and LWB of Rhein territory. Fighting against unfair working conditions, the slavery of capitalism, et cetera - Diego sympathized with their cause more than others. Plus, he needed a good, cheap place to get high-performance alloy, and Belfast was the closest place he could find. A few credits and a few jumps later, he was mooring at Valetta shipyard with a hold full of the best alloy in Sirius, and it was a good thing, too - the Syracuse was gonna need a lot more than hope and dreams to keep it flying.

High Performance Alloy was a high-grade version of Super Alloy, a local product of the Bretonian smelteries. A beryllium-aluminum alloy, combining the stiffness of aluminum with the strength and weight of beryllium. In less than a week the alloy had been applied to the once-failing superstructure of the Syracuse, and it no longer needed structural supports to keep it from collapsing in on itself. Of course, that was only one of many issues with the vessel, but at least it was a start.

Engine core and primary powerplant of the MNS Syracuse

Work proceeded apace on the reconstruction of the Syracuse. The project, now in its sixth week, was beginning to finally show physical progress. With a repaired superstructure, the next matter at hand was the repair and restoration of the primary powerplant and engine systems of the Syracuse. Engine components were produced locally at Valetta, and what couldn't be made there was constructed using the various odds and ends the Junkers had sold us over the last few months. The engine block itself was nearly completely replaced, as it was nearly destroyed in the last Corsair Crusade, nearly 100 years ago. Outdated circuitry and failing subsystems were replaced or rerouted, and before long, the engine was functional once again. The primary powerplant was mostly functional but had shut down to prevent meltdown. Boron control rods were re-inserted into the fusion core and it was restarted. However, before tests could continue, a massive amount of Deuterium was required to power the reactor - but thankfully, that was "donated" by the lovely Libertonians. In addition, H-fuel "imported" from Kusari and MOX "liberated" from Rheinland was added to the auxiliary fission cores, and by the end of the month, engine testing had begun. So far it seemed the re-constructed engine would hold out under stress, and the modifications and repairs to the superstructure were capable of taking the strain of a gargantuan vessel such as this moving at full impulse.

A couple faults down, that left Diego with but a few more nuts to crack. The primary weapons battery was, at this point, a few scorch marks on the front end of the craft - the port hangar bay was, well, at this point, more of a port hull breach - speaking of which, the hull and armor plating was in dire need of reinforcing and replacement, as there were still many hull breaches being held back by energy fields placed strategically throughout the hull.

Diego breathed a sigh of relief, however. It was a big list of things to do, sure, but they were all do-able. Besides, it took his mind off...the incident.

The tenth week of construction neared, and work proceeded apace for the repair of the Syracuse. The port hangar bay had been repaired and sealed, and used to house fuel for the new cloaking module that had just been installed. The weapons systems, including the main battery of C3RB-RN turrets (pictured right), were nearly functional after a long week of repairs. Diego had made the decision of scrapping half the turrets to repair the other half, and simply ordering the construction of the rest from Ibiza Base, the local weapons research facility in Omicron Alpha.

As for the rest of the hull breaches, it was very lucky that a majority of the scrap that the Junkers had delivered was easily smelted and turned into hull plating, and that was installed over the course of the last week. All that remained was the installation of ablative armor plating, which had already been "liberated" from a convoy in the Taus - once the armor plating was installed around the hull, the Syracuse would look no different from any modern Ranseur. A job well done, Diego thought to himself, right before his communicator buzzed.

"Great. More work."

Crimson Cross

Wildkins

Wildkins

Wildkins