Harold checked his watch -- six minutes past four in the afternoon -- and looked up, scanning the entrances of the officers' club. He looked back down and struggled to read the salvage reports he had open on his tablet; the music, he felt, was loud enough to knock the words out of his optic nerves before they got to his brain.
== INITIAL FINDINGS ==
Two wrecks have been identified based on the criteria set forth in the salvage mission request. Both have been confirmed as London Interdictor-class long-range assault battlecruisers originally constructed as Interdictor-class assault battlecruisers for the Liberty Navy reserve fleet in 819 AS. Their original designations are not known, but they were renamed HMS Renown (henceforth, Proposal 01) and HMS Repulse (henceforth, Proposal 02) sometime prior to their loss at the Battle of New London.
Proposal 01 appears to have suffered several direct blows to the former location of its forward blade. Judging by the near-complete lack of super- and substructure forward of the location of the dorsal heavy weapons band, as well as the missing superstructure where the dorsal heavy weapons band should be, it is the opinion of the forensics engineer that the damage was caused by several antimatter warheads detonating simultaneously and igniting a chain reaction in the dorsal heavy munitions storage. There also appear to have been significant fires in the engineering section, one of which was likely abruptly ended by a blowout in the airlocks between the fore engineering section and the primary active cargo bay (which is missing its doors entirely).
"Hey. Traffic." Rodney Miller shuffled into the bench across the table from his friend and flashed a grin.
Harold looked up with a raised eyebrow. "In the two hundred metres between here and the office?"
Rodney laughed. "Fine, fine. Caught up in-- with Lyla. Dinner plans tomorrow night, I'm bringing dessert."
"I'm sure you are," Kane said with a smirk. He considered a few followup barbs before being interrupted by the business at hand. "I know you don't really like to look at work shit when you're off duty, especially in a bar of all places, but I thought you'd want to see this. Battle forensics report from the salvage teams in New London," he explained, sliding the tablet across the table to Rodney as a waitress two cold pints of Lonsdale's down in front of the pair.
Proposal 02 is missing most of its drive column and the upper rear protective covering for the engineering section. The lack of destruction forward of the expected location of the fusion plant indicates that the ship's captain ordered what has become known in Octavarium Fleet tactical circles as Captain 'Ronsen's Flashbang -- an extreme fuel dump with the output pushed through all thrust vanes with the intent of simulating a critical reactor failure, allowing for a slow but effective escape -- but managed to tear the reactor and drive assemblies free of the ship in the process (which is not any permitted outcome of Captain 'Ronsen's Flashbang). The majority of the vessel's substructures are intact, including the fore sections, though the midsection appears to have been gutted (intentionally, in a drydock), creating a cylindrical chasm that is approximately fifty-five metres long and twenty-five metres in diameter.
Quickly scanning through the report, Rodney mumbled a few of the key points to himself. "So our options are 'the rear blew up' and 'the front fell off'? Seems like maybe we should just go shopping for a new flagship instead of doing the usual routine."
"Who's going to sell us one, man?" Harold asked, half-rhetorically. "Bretonia's industry is completely fucked, Liberty doesn't even sell retired fighters to its own corporations half the time, the Rheinland government-in-exile has less industry than Bretonia, the Rheinland government-in-power think we're terrorists, Kusari... nah. Malta wouldn't likely go for it, and that would spook Crayter, whose battlecruiser is a brick from before they appeared out of the dark beyond at the edges of Sirius. That leaves grand theft warship, which is a terrible idea, or salvage. And hey, there's a big ol' pile of it to the south."
"Salvage. So, grand theft broken warship," Miller joked. "Which we then have to turn into a combat-capable flagship." He ran his hands over his closely-shaven scalp.
"Consider it community service. Keep reading," Kane ordered between sips of his beer.
Based on the relative completeness of the two wrecks, we believe the less expensive and time consuming option would be Proposal 02. Despite it missing most of its armour layers, in comparison to Proposal 01 having mostly intact armour between the midsection and the drive assembly, its hull's substructure is almost completely intact. Work to bring the ship back up to a condition in which the internals can be repaired and activated would not require any major rebuilds of the framework supporting the inner and outer hulls, saving significant engineering time and budget. Proposal 01's engineering section is intact, but Aquila Defense Systems' recent designs in multi-node fusion reactors based on the PILLAR-4 experiments should be able to fit in the cladding of the Interdictor family's reactor assembly, which would need to be rebuilt in either proposal.
Rodney set down the tablet, stared at it for several seconds, and then threw back nearly half his pint in one breathless go.
"Well?" Kane prodded.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, the bald Taskmaster released a few profanities under his breath. "We're going to piss off the Liberty government and probably at least a few people in Bretonia. That's a hell of a target on our back, brother. And we've got to find a place to build the damn thing -- anchoring a cruiser behind Canberra when it needs repairs is one thing, but a full-scale assault battlecruiser? Come on. We don't have a shipyard and I don't think we want any of the locals to get a proper sniff of this science project."
"Eh, those hyper-capitalist dicks were probably going to send up a half dozen spooks up to our neck of the woods to cause trouble again one of these days anyways. Besides, we put the Metropolis back together in an asteroid field in Kansas, and that old girl was four times the length and mass of this one. What could go wrong?"
Rodney threw a wadded-up napkin at Kane. "Don't say that shit! You know what happens when..." He paused a moment, and looked back down at the tablet.
Pending sign-off from the Ministry of Relations and the Taskmastership, initial exploratory salvage operations can proceed.
He pressed his thumb against the signature box on the document briefly, and the field was replaced with a confirmation of his identity. He slid the tablet back over to his friend and superior officer.
