New toys

[Ortog]

Kreuzberg Depot, New Berlin.

Ortog shuffled trough all the tech charts and documentation spread on the desk in his quarters. Much of it did make sense, a lot wasn’t even readable.

He looked at the chief engineer scratched his chin and asked:

“And this is the lot? This is all the tech data we have?”

Hopfner retorted uncomfortably: “Yes, sir…that is the lot”

The focus of this discussion was the so called Black Market fighters and bombers sold at Kreuzberg. Used to belong to a now extinct rheinlander group and the remains of the stock were bought in bulk by the Congress. So far nobody tried to take them for a test drive, until Ortog found them.

Junkers concerned themselves with more utilitarian vessels. Not sleek fighters and bombers of dubious origins, Ortog wasn’t a normal junker though. He was an enthusiast, a skilled pilot with a compulsion to collect ships, the more exotic the best. A considerable part of his fortune was devoted to the acquisition and maintenance of his collection.

The Sichel and Sense were a challenge, a new and frustrating challenge. He did tried to fly them both, several times, and did not managed to get them to fly properly. The dials that weren’t labelled in german were labelled in Cyrillic, some odd ones did not even had any label. It was a mess, like a secret kept among a closed group, which was probably what it was. These were vessels made for a very small group and meant to be used by that group only, until it disbanded.

Not very common ships to start with, they were actually rare, they were, in theory, quite decent and could give the Congress a decent addition.

“What I noticed immediately, Joachin, was a lack of power to the reactor” Ortog looked almost apologetic “the electronics are, without a doubt also faulty, or not properly maintained.”

“We don’t have any maintenance manuals, sir” Joachin Hopfner retorted “and no flight manual either.”

“So, how the hell you selling these things, then?”

“We sold very few, so far...to people that didn’t asked any questions and seemed to know how to fly them.”

Ortog beamed: “do we have contact information on those costumers?”

Joachin looked offended “of course not! We wouldn’t dare...that is not how we sell...sensible merchandise.”

“These are not bootleg spirits man, these are ships, and potentially very good ships, what were you thinking?”

Joachin looked at his feet and said nothing.

“Aright, look...these are basically improvements and adaptations of two very common ships, the Eagle and the Roc. The problem is that they replaced materials and components with others that were easier to get for them. A lot of it come from the Coalition, I think.”

“Here is what we going to do: I will fly to the Coalition shipyards with the documentation we have and the schematics we managed to make so far. Get one of each into the Divinity's Reach docking bays so that we can have a proper go at them there.”

“Lets see if we can obtain proper manuals and translations.”

Joachin raised from his chair and tried to walk to the door.

“Joachin?”
“Yes ?”
“Pack a bag, you coming with me.”