Turn 65 - Can You Hear My Voice
Operation Governor Combat Report
Insertion was nominal with no opposition at the chosen jump location. SIGINT indicates that Drac defenses detected insertion and reaction forces were gathered. The execute order was given and Task Force INTRUDER boosted in system at 2.5 gravities acceleration. Additional low-emissions recon platforms were released at the same time and sent on a slow orbital path through the inner system for future data collection.
Enemy forces detected included 26
Achilles assault dropships in the initial reaction force, trailed by 92
Leopard CV carrier dropships. Approximately 300 additional dropships were detected taking up blocking positions around the two inhabited worlds in the system. Long range high resolution imagery from HMS Sentinel indicates the presence of large ‘clouds’ of apparent mines of the same large laser platform types once used by Griffon prior to the development of more capable defenses. Said fields were present near, but not within, the pirate points of the inhabited planets. Additionally, multiple small defense stations were detected. Said stations appear to consist of massive numbers of small missile tubes of the LRM variety.
Enemy reaction forces declined to engage Task Force INTRUDER directly, shadowing the formation from well outside rated capital missile range. The decision was made not to show the full extreme range capabilities of the
Barracuda missile system. Several shuttles and ASFs were used to probe the edges of the engagement enveloped, provocations which the Task Force ignored in order to avoid giving anything away about capabilities.
Orbital shipyards were detected in orbit of both inhabited worlds, both quite small at this time and not capable of jumpship production. Multiple
Monolith jumpships were detected in parking orbits around a gas giant in the system. Small space stations that appear to be maintenance facilities were detected among the idle jumpships. At the Zenith point several
Monoliths arrived and departed during the time the Task Force was in the system, sending what have been identified as personnel variant
Mule dropships to the planets. Analysis is that these are shipments from Kilburrough.
Long range scans detected a new type of dropship in the defense fleets, larger than any other current Drac design. The vessels did not move, nor did they light off any active sensors, so vessel capabilities are purely speculative at this time. Initial analysis of the imagery appears to show a quartet of fighter launch bays on the nose flanked by quad-mounted light subcapital cannons. Preliminary analysis is that this is a heavy carrier intended to bring large numbers of ASFs into battle.
SARAH is unsure, as there are no corresponding
landing bays for the nose doors, implying either the use of kamikaze ASFs or something else, as the doors on the nose are far too large for any capital missile.
Ten of these new vessels are detected, all around the innermost of the two inhabited worlds. It is unknown if more are under construction.
The Okasawa system has a highly irradiated dwarf terrestrial planet close to the sun, followed by a pair of large terrestrial bodies which are heavily industrialized. Much of the industrialization appears to be relatively recent. There is then an asteroid belt, followed by a completely barren and dead terrestrial planet. The asteroid belt has numerous mining stations present, and there are installations on the surface of the terrestrial planet that appear to be military in nature. Next is a very thin asteroid belt followed by a pair of singularly unimpressive gas giants that have barely anything notable about them at all apart from their existence and finally a trace asteroid field at the edge of the system.
The entire task force was able to complete their mission on profile and have returned to Griffon space. There was one minor incident, a spacer suffered minor burns from a defective heating element while cooking a meal. Said poor soul has already picked up the nickname ‘Lobster’.
The tenured faculty of the Department of Periphery Studies are causing a bit of a stir as they’ve apparently taken up the ancient art of ‘streaking’ with great enthusiasm. Teaching assistants and staff of the Department have so far managed to keep this relatively out of the public eye by persuading the faculty that their ‘streaking research’ should only occur at night and in remote places, to avoid contaminating their vital research studies with ‘observational biases’.
You are rather surprised that the word salad
worked.
A somewhat more spectacular than usual meteor shower occurs on Nowa Warszawa, although sufficient warning occurred to allow all orbital facilities to shift orbits out of the path of the shower. All of the observed meteors burned up in the upper atmosphere, with the largest being estimated to be about the size of a volleyball.
A new fad has started on Calliope IV and you are not sure how you feel about it. College students on the planet have taken up beach volleyball, only you strongly suspect that some master prankster edited the rules for it because as far as you can recall beach volleyball usually involved uniforms, generally variations of swimwear. Whoever wrote the rules changed ‘beachwear’ to specify ‘beachwear suitable for a nude beach’... You are just grateful that they also specified that the sport was to only be played by those of legal age with rather strict ID checks built into the entry procedures. You are rather hopeful that this doesn’t catch on generally.
It catches on. Leagues are forming on Griffin’s Roost, Griffon IV, and within the TTP where it seems to have caught on with even more fervor than on Calliope IV. You at least manage to keep any suggestion of including it in the Olympics or Pan-Griffon Games firmly in the ‘no way, no how, not happening’ bin. For now at least.
You announce that you will be stepping down from the throne in 5 years in favor of Jeremy. In private, he’s histrionically protesting, tearing at his hair, and generally acting like a younger version of Willis with his over the top protestations of the very idea. In public he’s the very model of a future monarch, accepting your decision with appropriate gravitas and grace. He has turned over his military duties to his Second-in-Command and resigned his commission in preparation for assuming the throne.
And then it is budget time. Only 5 more of these, then you are FREE!
General Stewart is up first. “Your Majesty, Ferro-Fibrous and Ferro-Aluminium production are still bottlenecks for production, however a greater concern is the need to continue to expand our basic production capacity. To that end, we would like to focus this year on expanding our Mech production as well as strategic materials. We are also revamping how we brief military procurement. Colonel Saigo?”
A young-looking Colonel steps up to the podium, his uniform looking quite crisp and with multiple combat rewards showing in his fruit salad. “Your Majesty, from now on we will be consolidating all procurement requests into a single presentation. Staff from Ground Forces, Aerospace Forces, and the Navy have collaborated on developing this briefing.”
“To start with, for Ground Forces.” he brings up a well designed Powerpoint slide, but doesn’t simply read from it but rather continues the briefing with it as a purely visual aid. “Our procurement plans primarily consist of filling out existing formations as well as providing a suitable garrison force for Nowy Śląsk and the new prison at Griff’s Leap. To that end we shall be requesting the following: 1 Imperial Guard Regiment, 4 Standard Mech Regiments, 6 Pathfinder Regiments, 3 Colonial Infantry Regiments, 3 Colonial Cavalry Regiments, and 3 Colonial Mechanized Regiments. Please note that 2 of the Standard Mech Regiments are being used to start a core for a 2nd Assault Division, to permit both current standing Corps to deploy with such an asset.”
He brings up the next slide, which features aerospace production information. “The new prison facility at Griff’s Leap is capable of supporting a single wing of aerospace fighters. In addition, our new colony at Nowy Śląsk requires additional orbital ASF support. As such, we are recommending the purchase of a pair of Fighter Wings. We have no carriers commissioning this year, nor any defense stations. As such our aerospace procurement is light this year, which I am told comes as a bit of a relief to the Aerie as they have a less promising crop of ASF trainees this year.”
“For the Navy we have determined that our primary goal is to construct escort forces for HMS Morristown as well as bulk out our general commerce escort force. As such we will be requesting a total of between 11 and 20 dropships to be laid down this year. Six shall be of the revamped
Colchester design, replacing our losses in those vessels. 4
Independence-class carriers, and between 1 and 10 of the new
Lancer class design for operational evaluation.” he pauses and changes slides. “The
Lancer is seen as rather experimental. It is believed that it may prove to be an incredibly potent anti-fighter escort, however the design is nearly completely lacking in effective offensive armament.”
The slide is showing a video of a simulation of the
Lancer in action. Against aerospace fighters the dropship is wickedly lethal, the massed autocannons combined with ultra-rapid turrets and precise fire-control systems making space within the reach of its guns a ‘no fly zone’. However against heavier targets the
Lancer suffers horribly, as it has nothing capable of truly threatening a peer mass design until it gets to suicidally close range, and even then is outgunned by nearly every other dropship in its weight class.
“We can lay down a pair of
Caravel jumpships this year as well. Unfortunately as we lack a suitable Warship design still we cannot make use of our open Warship slip.”
Colonel Saigo sits down, and now it is the caffeine-addict energy ball of your Interior Minister.
“Your Majesty we have so many things to report that we can do including giving the military boys and girls all the new production they can use if you want or we can invest in the economy or build more germanium processing sites or new HPG stations did you know that having two of the things on both ends like doubles their throughput which is really cool because you can do cool things like live videocalls and such but we also can build more commercial space stations to boost our commerce which would be nice because I saw the budget numbers and they looked painful but we can make them better in the future plus commercial jumpships are now a thing and I’m working with Janet on solidifying the rules for us conscripting them for military use in case of an emergency but our own production is going really well and we have a DoME team on standby which I think would be best used building mining stations on Griff’s Leap or terraforming Nowa Warszawa III to make it more suited for human occupation both are really good ideas but at Griff’s Leap we can like build a commercial hub of space stations there to serve the NRi market and really boost our economy that way but on Nowa Warszawa we’d get more money at first but it’s a choice to make.”
Isoroku is his usual imperturbable zen self next to the bundle of raw energy that is Bridget. “Your Majesty, next year we’ll be holding the Pan Griffon Games, so this year I recommend that we attempt to promote trade with our international partners, while also hosting a charity concert for the victims of the Pugnis Deorum. Doing so will help burnish our image in the NRI.”
Next to the slender Isoroku, Jake is a giant Polish bear, and is grinning behind his greying beard. “Your Majesty, apart from helping you go off on a well-earned vacation spoiling grandbabies rotten, we do have a problem that we need to solve. The civil service is getting bloated with redundant bureaucrats and excessive duplication of effort, this is costing us a significant fraction of our revenues each year. The bureaucrats themselves love this situation, and I can’t blame them to be honest, but despite the howls of protest I think this is a good time to trim as much of the fat as we can.”
Dr Bryant has fired up the custom presentation software her predecessor invented. “Your Majesty, I’ve got two free teams. While we have some new possibilities due to our breakthroughs in genetic science, I would like to first focus on what projects we recommend we pursue. In making these recommendations we focused on controlling costs, so they may not be the most optimal for other purposes. As such we have an alternate proposal which disregards cost as a factor.”
- Primary Proposal
- Supercharger
- May not be all that useful, but is a cheap project that might see applications in the motorsports world
- Quad Battlearmor
- Why you would build a quad suit of battle armor is somewhat a mystery, however it is an inexpensive project and it could be useful in future developments of suits for our grifftiger friends.
- Secondary proposal
- Advanced Naval Combat Doctrine
- A long term expense, but has obvious utility in improving our military capability
- Advanced Ground Combat Doctrine
“As for the new genetic projects, there are three major ones, beyond the general improvement in Genetic Engineering.”
- Physical Genetic Enhancement
- With our knowledge of genetics it should now be possible to utilize Iron Wombs to grow ‘super soldiers’, individuals whose genetic traits are optimized for combat. The initial package is best suited for ground combat. The danger is that creating such super soldiers has obvious moral and ethical implications.
- Mental Genetic Enhancement
- We can use similar techniques as the above super-soldier project to custom build geniuses in the Iron Wombs suitable for becoming future scientists. However we cannot guarantee that our understanding of genetics and genius will not result in acts of mad science and unstable personalities. Again, there are substantial moral and ethical implications to this technology.
- Exotic Genetic Enhancement
- This doesn’t necessarily require the Iron Wombs, but would rather allow people to either add exotic traits like, say, pointed ears, or unusual statures, or things like tails or claws or webbed hands and feet to themselves or their offspring. This is not to mention the ability to customize one’s own appearance within certain limits. And, of course, there are moral and ethical implications here too.
Harry is looking rather old this year, and with a start you remember that he’s ten years older than you and got the anti-aging therapies later in life to boot. “Your Majesty, apart from continuing to search for dirt in parliament we really don’t have anything for you this year.”
Janet is your age, looks it, and has already privately told you that she’s going to retire when you do. “Your Majesty, in terms of planning for the transition to your son’s rule, we recommend getting an early start on vetting potential new advisors, ministers, and such, as well as making certain that the laws on abdication and such are iron-clad.”