Turn 36 -
There’s Justice In The Barrel Of A Loaded Gun
QM Note - Compositing the vote results
USS Enterprise has delivered the results of her survey work, and while it is still being analyzed fully several things stand out strongly.
One, there may be a massive amount of water on the planet, but it is all bound up in a half dozen extraordinarily deep seas. The water itself is incredibly caustic and alkaline, utterly unfit for drinking and almost impossible to process economically due to the sheer havoc it would wreak on any piping and desalinization gear. There is no life whatsoever in the seas of Griffin IV, not even microbial.
Two, the few life forms that are clinging to survival on the planet cluster around the tiny number of springs and seeps that are fed from seepage from the seas, filtered by the planet's crust itself. All of them are very fragile and any attempt to colonize the planet would very likely see their extinction. None of them have any economic value and it is estimated that within a century or two even these last survivors will be extinct anyways even if you completely left the planet alone. In terms of preservation the best that could be hoped for would be artificial habitats to mimic the conditions of those seeps and hope for the best. Even the large segmented lizards are nearly extinct, the few specimens found all show enormous genetic damage consistent with tiny, incredibly inbred, populations.
Three, the planet has incredibly rich mineral deposits, with multiple different motherlodes of nearly every conceivable industrial metal and ore of such immense value that the planet could easily become an industrial monster. There are signs of a large number of impact craters, supporting the hypothesis that the incredibly deep oceans are the result of dense impactors creating deep holes in the crust.
And finally, the atmospheric composition is marginal for supporting human life as it stands, but if the carbon and water cycles can somehow be restarted that would be solved very quickly.
Therefore it seems quite fortuitous that there is a source of water in the form of this ice comet. USS Enterprise and USS Endeavor work together to adjust the comet's orbit through the simple expedient of landing upon it carefully, securing themselves to the comet itself, then using carefully timed and planned burns of their main thrusters to adjust the comet's trajectory. They’ll have to return in 3 years or so to finish the process, with the intention being to leave the comet in orbit of Griffin IV while it is determined what to do with it in the long term.
Close analysis of the comet shows that it probably originated in the Griffin VII moon system countless millennia ago and is very nearly pure water ice, with a ‘crust’ of carbon and silica dust that it had picked up over the millions of years of its journeys around the solar system.
Sarah has completed a sky survey of Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt objects, there are no other large impactors on any collision orbits for at least the next century.
There is a population boom on Nowy Gdansk, leading to a land-sale business in baby goods and services.
In other news from Nowy Gdansk, Jeremy has been on a training deployment on the planet with his unit, working with the Aerie Annex and the local garrison forces. And evidently he’s also been putting his engineering degree to good use in conjunction with a few of the local military types.
Several new vehicles have been developed by a start-up that your son is financially backing out of his personal funds. The construction of the factories and the hiring of locals with engineering backgrounds has seen a sharp improvement in the local job market, but more importantly to the Empire, perhaps, is that the designs are quite interesting.
Two of them eschew turrets and fusion engines completely, being relatively simple, tough, and hard-hitting weapons that do not use any strategic materials whatsoever. They actually share a completely common hull and chassis, one armed with a gauss rifle, a 3cm and 5cm laser, and had already demonstrated that it has excellent stability when traversing and aiming the main weapon. The other has a pair of 15 racks of LRMs tied to an Artemis targeting system combined with an adapted Nollak targeting module and an anti-missile system built around a 20mm gatling.
Another is a new APC optimized for power armor troops, with the ability to provide full support for a squad of these specialized infantry on each vehicle for extended combat and non-combat operations. It is heavily armored and possesses superior firepower thanks to its Enhanced ER PPC. It even carries improved medical facilities on each track to increase the survivability of the troops it carries.
Finally there is a new dedicated scout tank. Although significantly slower than the hovercraft and VTOL platforms normally used, this one is equipped with a full suite of advanced electronics combined with an extended range 8cm laser.
Name | Cost | HP | A/D | Special |
Lynx Scout Tank | 500 | 24 | 7 | Tracked, Scout, ECM, TAG |
STuG G Hetzer | 603.12 | 92 | 14 | Tracked, Armored 1 |
Arbalest II | 869.20 | 88 | 12 | Tracked, Anti-Air, Armored 1, Missile 4, AMS 1 |
Bear IFV | 1314.56 | 92 | 14 | Tracked, APC (PA) 1, Armored 1, AMS 1, MASH |
The
Arbalest II had replaced the current Arbalest in service as a sort of ‘proof of concept’, with funding provided by the Nowy Gdansk planetary government and, again, your son’s pockets.
Three tactical formations have been proposed, both of which make use of the new designs. An
Armored Fist Company consists of a single platoon of
STuG G Hetzer tanks, a platoon of
Bear IFVs with attached
Power Armor (Light) - Basic platoon, and a platoon of
Arbalest IIs. An
Standard Armored Battalion consists of two full companies of
Jaguar MBTs, a platoon of
Lynx Scout Tanks, a platoon of
Arbalest IIs, and a platoon of the new
Excalibre SPGs. Finally a
Standard Mechanized Battalion consists of two full companies of
Bear IFVs with attached PA infantry, and a platoon each of
Lynx,
Arbalest II and
Excalibre vehicles.
You do get a good chuckle out of Jeremy complaining about the military bureaucrats ‘changing the perfectly good names we came up with for our designs!’. Granted, you kind of liked the names your son had come up with, but they didn’t ‘fit’ the established naming schemes, evidently, and you aren’t all that inclined to go to the mat over it.
In racing news, both the twins and your grandson are having fun in their respective racing series.
The twins are in championship contention
again, although not in the lead. The racing has been particularly furious this year in part to prove to the League that the older ruleset is perfectly capable of producing exciting races. The League, meanwhile, still wants to make things more ‘pure’ by limiting or eliminating aerodynamic aids as much as possible.
In the youth karting series John is racing in, he’s having a grand old time. He’s not winning all that much, although he is finishing every race he enters, but he’s having so much fun that it feels like he’s winning anyways considering the huge smile he has after every race, practice session, or qualifying session.
He’s had his first big crash as well, and that truly frightened you. He came in too hot into a turn, clipped another kid when he wasn’t able to keep it tight enough, and wound up cartwheeling and flipping over. You were terrified until you noticed that none of the other mom’s and grandma’s seemed all that worried, likewise the race officials didn’t seem to consider it a big deal. Two of them with a medic checked on your grandson, got a thumbs up, they rolled the kart back onto its wheels, and he merrily got back to racing.
You ask Alita and she tells you that she’d been shown a safety video and demonstration before she’d allowed her son to race, in which a borrowed
Lion had driven over a pair of the little karts with no actual damage to either of them. The roll cages were as strong as the ones fitted to a
Chasseur hovertank, the chassis was rated to support far more weight than would ever be placed on it, and no kart was permitted to race until it had passed an extremely detailed safety certification process.
You check later on and find that the Pee Wee Hovercraft Racing League has nearly identical safety standards nowadays, evidently all of the youth racing associations had gotten together and cross-fertilized best practices for maximum safety for the kids.
If you were a grifftiger, this would definitely earn a Lick Of Approval.
Speaking of grifftigers, you asked Sekhmet about why no tigers had ever expressed any interest in sports.
Turns out they had, just not sports you really were aware of.
Apparently there’s this sport called ‘Tiger Soccer’ played between teams of tigers, with the only rule you are able to figure out is that they’re only allowed to touch the ball with their noses and front paws, no biting, no back paws, no tail. Other than that, it apparently has no rules, with the objective to get a large, extremely tough ball through a goal post that only appears at random intervals, being otherwise retracted underneath the field. As far as you can tell, the point goes to whichever tiger touches it last before it goes into said goal.
It seems rather popular with the tigers at least. You can’t figure it out, to be honest, since much of it seems to involve tigers tapping the ball around in a circle while they wait for the goal to appear then a mad dash to get the ball into the goal when it finally appears.
Sekhmet is able to explain a few more of the ‘rules’, evidently there’s a rule that no tiger may ‘hold’ the ball for more than a second, and any pass must be at least two tiger lengths away. Evidently this is considered ‘extremely good hunting training’.
This apparently is an evolution of what goes on in the wild where young tigers will bat around a particular species of large, heavily shelled, turtle that, weirdly, doesn’t seem to mind all that much being used as a living ball. It’s posited by animal behaviorists that the concussion of the impacts and the movement of the water through the shell dislodges small parasites on the turtle's skin, but the tiger’s certainly don’t attempt to eat the turtles.
The tiger’s claim that the turtles ‘love it’ and will come up to them to get batted, so there’s that since it’s kind of difficult to ask the turtles their opinion on the matter.
Sarah is heavily pregnant now, but is still writing. Tony is being run ragged fetching all sorts of exotic foodstuffs for his wife, which you honestly approve of. And you get plenty of time with the grandkids, so you approve of that even more.
Thanh is enjoying her assignment on the exploration missions, especially since she gets to spend most of her off-duty time with her wife. The comet redirect mission was challenging, according to her, mostly for the extremely finicky and precise piloting that was required. She’d actually piloted the shuttle that was used for the initial preparation phase of the mission, stabilizing the tumbling of the comet so that the big dropships could land and attach themselves.
And now for the main event, in this corner, an Empress who would rather be with her grandkids. And in the other corner… the budget.
Round one… FIGHT.
General Jackson is the first contestant… errrr briefer. “Your Majesty, we in ground forces have several requests. First of all, to get 2nd Armored started on Nowy Gdansk. The initial force organization for 1st Regiment should be on your pad now. We are ultimately planning on 2
Standard Armored Battalions and a single
Standard Mechanized Battalion as the initial composition of each of the armored regiments of the Division. We are requesting the purchase of one complete regiment set to the exclusion of all but
Cadet and
Orb Weaver mech procurement. We have just sufficient Ferro-Fibrous production for all of the required
Jaguar tanks, and enough general AFV production to build out the entire unit. In the future we intend to fully reorganize 1st Armored along the same lines, but starting this off with 2nd Armored will allow us to properly field test the organizational structure first.”
Next up to present you with dreaded paperwork is General Reyes. “The ASF forces are in a good place, the recent pirate raid was handled smoothly enough. We would recommend continuing to expand the stations in the Inner Asteroid Belt so we can base even heavier forces of
Goshawk 2Gs for those situations where we might not get enough warning to shift other forces in. In addition, we would like an air wing of 3
Eagles for HMS Argus. Considering her mission profile, we would recommend procuring
Rocs for HMS Warrior, although we can only build 2 squadrons this year and would need to procure the third next year unless you expand the factory”
Admiral Benjamin doesn’t bother standing up. “Your Majesty, the
Defiants performed splendidly, we are looking forward to HMS Argus, HMS Hendry and HMS Warrior beginning their shakedown cruises next year. Other than that.” he grinned, showing blindingly white teeth, “We good.”
General Potter shakes his head slightly. “Your Majesty, I strongly recommend procuring the first regiment for 2nd Armored this year. Just because we keep on being able to stop threats in orbit doesn’t guarantee that trend will continue, no matter what the flyboys and girls say. The Aerospace Forces are a bit behind Ground Forces in preparing amalgamated wings, so far there is a great deal of institutional inertia behind homologous unit organizations. But we’re working on it.”
Bridget is bouncy as ever, although she evidently finally learned to bring you a big mug of Janet’s coffee before briefing you. She can be taught! “Your Majesty we’ve got a bunch of things but the main thing is build build build factories and orbital facilities and stations and foundries and all the rest the rest will take care of itself we’d like to start surveying Griffin I and VI as well if that’s no trouble because who knows what goodies we’ll find.” She pauses for a second “Or do more surveys of the moon, I don’t know why but I’ve got a feeling there’s something up there, there always is in all the stories at least and a thousand writers can’t all be wrong right?”
Isoroku is out on Nowy Gdansk for meetings with several people concerning cultural affairs there. He left a memo recommending either holding another Polish Cultural Festival to promote Nowy Gdansk or building more monumental architecture, this year there’s a proposal that he’d forwarded to you to build a large horticultural park on Castor.
Jake is looking a bit tired from having to deal with Parliament lately. “Your Majesty, we’ve got a few ideas still being worked on, but honestly I can’t recommend moving forward with any serious projects in my department this year. Parliamentary relations are good, our public image is solid, we’re in a good place so maintaining what we have shouldn’t require any excess spending.”
Mary is looking a bit grim. “Your Majesty, the only new area of research that we can handle is into nuclear anti-shipping missiles, effectively recreating the old
Alamo system. We can foresee several non-nuclear based applications for the basic missile body, but we’d first have to validate the system.”
She then puts up the dreaded charts with recommendations.
- Military Research
- Heavy Battlemechs
- Heavy mechs in the 60 to 75 ton range should be the basic building block of our mech forces. The sooner we get started the sooner we’ll have a solid overmatching counter to potential enemy formations
- ER Medium and Small Lasers
- Extended Range 3cm and 5cm lasers look like they would be highly efficient and capable weapon systems.
- Targeting Computer
- An extremely interesting system that could yield superb results in terms of boosting precision and accuracy.
- Non-Military Research
- Improved Education
- Boosting the capabilities of our educational system is always important for boosting our research capabilities
- Improved Automation
- Expensive but the economic boost and reduction in maintenance costs is worthwhile even if it puts us temporarily into a deficit situation.
- Terraforming Equipment
- The survey of Griffin IV shows that we will require more capabilities in terms of high impact terraforming if we wish to successfully colonize the planet.
Both Harry and Janet are absent from the meetings, Harry due to further meetings with Home Army specialists and personally overseeing the redesign of the Black Site station, and Janet is personally overseeing the final stages of the in depth investigation of any Bratva adjacent groups that hadn’t yet been rounded up.