[h1]Albert Hartwig[/h1]

[color=lightblue]"What in the flying circus is this mess of Cores...[/color]

The magnitude of the colossal trainwreck that Albert had volunteered for was, at this point, painfully clear to him. He had just finished inventorying the various Armored Cores that the Lancers had either brought with them, requisitioned, or otherwise gotten their hands on and was not terribly impressed. It was a cluster of dated designs, poorly maintained Cores, the kind of stuff you bring into a ghost operation and not frontline activities, patchworks of customization and worse. There had been some part of him that had, in no small part, hoped that having royalty, even as far down the totem as Prince Cassian, would have had a bit more in the resource and repair department than he had seen during his initial inspections. He was scrolling down his personal data pad, annotating the worst of the problem children as he went. This list included, in no particular order:

[list]
[*] Hippo 7 - An example of the Cataphract line of Cores, and a reminder that the lack of standardization in power plants continued to make Albert even more exhausted than he already was. A turbine provided the power the thing needed, but guzzled fuel twice as fast as sailors given an open bar on shore leave, meaning he had already added a constant fuel supply to his To Do list for logistics. This particular Lancer had his own maintenance crew, but the nightmare mess of hydraulics, articulation, and bulk pretty much ensured that there was not a chance any of them would ever get ahead on maintenance. Albert was not entirely convinced they were even going to keep up, meaning he was going to have to get involved at some point. Hell, the thing had arrived barely functional, last time he walked by they had stalled the turbine trying to reverse it into place. It currently sat at the top of his shit list at the moment, impressive given the other stand out Cores on his list.

[*] Phantom - Some bleeding edge electronic warfare Core straight out of an spy thriller's wet dream, meaning that parts would be hard to come by, likely confidential, and the thing just looked temperamental at first glance. Along side every other glance he had been able to get at the thing, given each time he had tried the red tape seemed to manifest like the wrath of an angry, bureaucratic god. He would have to talk to the Lancer themselves at some point if he was going to make Logistical support even feasible for the thing. It looked like a stiff breeze would blow the thing over, though he had a feeling that the breeze would be hard pressed to find it in the first place. Looked like a nightmare to deal with, but it was fairly low on his problem list right now, it was at least in good working order if the maintenance crew's efforts were anything to go by.

[*] Ironside - The closest thing anyone was running to a stock Core, near as Albert had been able to gather so far, and it was being piloted by quite possibly the oldest, crustiest, long in the tooth war hero to still be alive and kicking. Closer investigation during his rounds had basically confirmed that it was not so much a stock command mech, but what the stock command mech had been based on. Basically the most well known quality among the Lance, for better or worse, and parts would be in mercifully massive supply. Hell, he was fairly sure there was a contact of his that would be begging to offload parts for Ironside, just to move stock finally, so that should be a non issue. Replacing the smoke canisters with what looked like frag bombs was....a choice. He had seen some urban combat pilots favor that kind of thing to prevent getting swarmed by infantry, but on a command mech that should not be in the first line of combat? A concerning giveaway that Core might get a lot more repairs than he would suspect.

[*] Armatus - Someone had taken a perfectly good Leonard and monkeyed with it is what they did, any relief at seeing, at first glance, a stock Core had been quickly dashed. Stripped armor to make up for trying to overwork that otherwise acceptable stock engine being woefully overworked, still relatively stock meaning it would not have the shock factor of one of the bleeding edge frames, and barely capable of mounting....ANY weapons last he checked, and this was going to be a headache and a half to get to a proper state of being. The only munitions that stood out to him during his review of the Cores in the Lance was excessive amount of smart missiles. The pilot was probably making up for a taxed engine by using low power, high yield ordinance. Smart, but the sheer volume made him suspect they would chew through their missile allotment faster than they could replenish it. He had added munitions to his To Do list of logistics, mostly because of this Core in particular.
[/list]

Albert muttered under his breath, putting the data pad down and leaning back in his chair, a flimsy thing he had swiped from an empty store room and moved to the main hanger for Armored Cores aboard the ship. He had a thermos of coffee with him, not even good coffee but that would be wasted on him, and a refill was currently being fetched by some unassigned junior mechanic who had thought following him around would get him experience. True to form, he was getting experience as a coffee monkey instead, Albert taking his glasses off long enough to clean them. His to-do list already included a truly involved list of parts, organized by contacts most to least willing to help, and the negotiations and concessions that would need to be made to get those deals to happen. The coffee monkey was approaching, freshly filled thermos in hand (he had two, just to keep the coffee monkey hard at work), when all hell broke loose. An alert, General Quarters, bringing all personnel to combat footing.

[color=lightblue]"Oh for fuck's sake."[/color]

Albert grumbled, pushing himself upright, downing the last of the thermos in his hand and snatching the fresh one from the coffee monkey. Who had, whether he knew it or not, been promoted. He was now messenger monkey, may his ascent in the ranks continue to be meteoric, Albert thought with a complete amount of sarcasm needed to go with it. As Albert gathered his things, thermos tucked into his tool box, he gave the messenger monkey marching orders. Albert did not have enough hands to run around gathering information or getting it organized properly, and he needed to basically be working with each maintenance team, or overworked tech, as appropriate.

[color=lightblue]"Start checking in with each Lancer's maintenance crew, get them to document NEW problems in a different list from the other pre-existing conditions. I don't care what the protocol is, I already have a running list of critical issues, but if something new happens, I need to add it to my To Do list. Off you fuck, kid."[/color]

Albert would take off towards the nearest bay, tools already in hand, because he knew damn well that, over the course of the next hour, he would be basically jumping from crisis to crisis. Whether it was assisting loading munitions, repairing issues that were not expected to become a problem this soon into their arrival in the system, patching problems that no one had even noticed, or worse besides, Albert's place in this sort of too little time to prepare scenario was basically damage control. Over the course of the hour, he was able to get the worst of the situations at least launch worthy, though as soon as he was done with that, he was starting to organize the next part of what may be necessary given how badly some of these frames were functioning right now. The comms chatter intensified as the launch time approached, and he began grabbing anyone not tasked to a specific crew and began forming his field repair and recovery team.

Something that no one ever wanted to consider was needing to go into the field, or in this case, into the void to reclaim and field repair damaged or inoperative Armored Cores, ideally after the fighting was over. Meaning that, in the midst of the chaos of Armored Cores and their support infantry launching, Albert was forming the grimly necessary salvage teams that would go in after the battle was over and begin patching Armored Cores that were disabled but, with a field patch, could make it back on their own, marking Frames that could not move even with repair for more intensive work, or in the worst cases, stripping them of anything valuable and rendering the rest inoperable. While the Lancers organized their plan of attack, Albert organized the inevitable cleanup operations that would follow, and if whatever god was listening was feeling merciful, it would not require improvising a tow system to bring them back to their respective bays. Again. At least it kept him busy, until he got roped into something ridiculous which, knowing his luck, would be inevitable.