Turn 70 - Song About The Knife
You’ve been overworking again. Alita has the patience of an angel and manages to prevent you from going too far, but there is just so much that needs to be done. You sometimes wonder how your mom managed it, but you realize that she simply was willing to delegate far more to her subordinates. You know how to delegate, but evidently the amount of delegation acceptable to a Monarch is far higher than that acceptable to a mere general.
It tickles at the back of your head, not having input in everything. As a General you had been personally responsible for damn near everything that had to do with your unit. Sure, you had subordinates, but every piece of paper came across your desk in the end and required you to read and review, approving or disapproving of the decisions of your people. You had tried that, but there aren’t enough hours in the day. You are managing to let go, but it’s difficult.
You know what your therapist would say about things, words your wife uses regularly. To be honest, the only thing keeping you sane at all has been your family and your therapist, and it was touch and go even so for a while after the battle of Castor.
Then there are areas where you need to make decisions you feel you are unqualified to make. What do you know about exploration dropships? You are a soldier, a mechwarrior. The only thing you really know about dropships is how to load and unload from them and how to navigate to the mess, the head, and your cabin.
So you delegate, and turn over the mass of paperwork related to this new exploration dropship that is somehow needed to Thanh. She’s the flygirl of the family.
And then she still wants you to make the final decision.
“Look, I’ll tell you what I think, but you have to decide big bro.” she grins at you, not bothering with honorifics in the privacy of your office. “What we’re looking for is a faster, more survivable, exploration platform to pair with the new explorer warships we’re building, the
Miranda class. Therefore, we want a base acceleration of 3.5g, an aerodyne platform, facilities to support exploration teams, and advanced survey sensors.”
She passes over the first datapad. “We have four proposals that, more or less, fulfill these requirements. The first two are from the aerospace division of Calliope Motors. Both meet the baseline requirements, but they do show the inexperience of the company in this field. We’re including them for completeness but cannot honestly recommend them. They both have some innovative design ideas, for example the mounts on the subcapital lasers on the
Curious Cat are somewhat more flexible than the norm for such masses, giving a slightly wider arc of fire for the lasers. However they are the least capable of the designs that made it to this phase.”
Most of that is greek to you, but you nod anyways.
“Next we have the
Saqqara from Pyramid Power, and it is as much of a pyramid as any aerodyne platform can be and still be able to fly. It is a reasonable design, with a very symmetrical layout. This does preclude the use of any sort of subcap weapons on the designs, which is a minor flaw, but otherwise this is a good value design.”
Thanh then grins. “And, big bro, the Majeure Electrique design. I’m told that the chief designer only threw two tantrums over cost ceilings set by their accountants, and managed not to break anything in the process, which is leading to some bet payouts over in Procurement. For a wonder, the
Magellan is
not the most expensive design, but it is the most capable. Majeure Electrique has a great deal of experience in dropship design and it shows in how refined this one is.”
“So, you’ll have to make a decision.” she tosses the last datapad over to you. “And if you make the wrong one I’ll tease you all month.”
You love your sister, so you don’t order her defenestrated through the Lee Memorial Window Of Defenestration.
[] | Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
[] | Curious Cat | 1,111,715.28 | DHS/FA | 499 | 369 |
- Armored 8
- Missile 24
- AMS 36
- Capital AMS 3
- Capital 3/14
- Swift
- Command 1
|
[] | Curious Tiger | 1,172,828.22 | DHS/FA | 843 | 713 |
- Armored 8
- Missile 50
- AMS 40
- Capital AMS 4
- Swift
- Command 1
|
[] | Saqqara | 1,257,073.20 | DHS/FA | 922 | 802 |
- Armored 7
- Missile 80
- AMS 80
- Capital AMS 8
- Swift
- Command 1
|
[] | Magellan | 1,251,990 | FA | 1193 | 1093 |
- Armored 5
- Missile 96
- AMS 80
- Capital AMS 8
- Capital 3/26
- Swift
- Command 1
|
A few days later you get a bit of a surprise. The same armaments firm from Calliope IV that had marketed the
Lancer, Neue Rheinmetall Borsig, is back in the news, at least the classified reports to the Emperor sort of news. They have developed a new variant of the classic autocannon that fires even more rapidly than the Ultra version. The maniacs have actually revived the ancient gatling concept to develop a true rotary autocannon.
You are invited to a firing demonstration of the new weapon, currently only available in the long barreled ‘Type 2’ and ‘Type 5’ configurations. The RAC/5 is lined up alongside an Ultra AC/5 and both are fired at maximum rate. The new weapon fires about three times faster than the Ultra, and seems well able to sustain that rate of fire. There are a few misfires, but they are cleared very quickly by simply advancing the barrel and ejecting the faulty round. The heat buildup from sustained fire is troublesome, but manageable.
One capability that the new weapon shows is ‘walking fire’, being able to spread fire across two adjacent targets. A capability that would have been incredibly useful for you back in the day.
And now it is budget time. Your first time in the big chair as the actual Emperor, and not sitting in for your Mom.
“Your Majesty.” General Stewart is as professional as ever, not even a flicker of acknowledgement that until a few years ago you were her subordinate, not her monarch. “Even with the latest losses to the Navy we are still in substantially solid shape. While increasing our production levels would always be a net positive, outside of Capital slips that is of relatively low priority.”
“Just as a note, RFPs have been issued for a number of designs making use of the new Rotary Autocannons. We hope to have at least one platform using these weapons ready for service by Q4 of next year.”
She then nods to a Colonel. You remember that face, she was a Captain and Mech Company Commander in your last major command. “Sir, Ground Forces has prepared a number of requests for your consideration, Your Majesty.” She brings up the display behind her and continues to talk. “A third Brigade Combat Group is our primary request, followed by incremental growth with a new Armored Brigade and a Cavalry Brigade. We are also recommending increasing militia and garrison numbers on several worlds.”
The chart display reads the following.
- Unit Procurement
- Unit Organization
- 3rd Brigade Combat Team
- 3 Standard Mech Regiments
- 3 Armored Cavalry Regiments
- 3 Armored Regiments
- 10th Armored Brigade
- 2 Standard Mech Regiments
- 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment
- 10th Cavalry
- 2 Light Horse Regiments
- 1 Armored Cavalry Regiment
- Garrison Deployment
- 2 Garrison Regiments - Nowa Warszawa
- 2 Garrison Regiments - Calliope IV
- 1 Garrison Regiment - New Capricorn
- 1 Garrison Regiment - Nowy Śląsk
- 1 Garrison Regiment - Edelsteine (notional, will deploy once full colonization is achieved, until then will be based on Griffon)
- 1 Garrison Regiment - Nowy Wroclaw
- 1 Garrison Regiment - Catachan (notional, will deploy once full colonization is achieved, until then will be based on Griffon)
- 1 Garrison Regiment - Nya Kopenhamn (notional, will deploy once system is under our control, until then will be based on Griffon)
- Militia Expansion
- Expand the militia on all fully colonized worlds
- Total Procurement
- 5 Standard Mech Regiments
- 5 Armored Cavalry Regiments
- 2 Light Horse Regiments
- 3 Armored Regiments
- 10 Garrison Regiments
- 7 System Militia Expansion
The next officer up is Colonel Romanov. “Your Majesty, we have a number of
Oasis II and
Silver Tower stations coming online this year, in addition to the 6
Independence class carriers. Therefore we are requesting the following.” She brings up a graphic, much like her Army counterpart. “Eight Light Fighter Wings for the
Oasis IIs, 2 Fighter Wings for the
Silver Towers, and 6 Carrier Wings for the carriers.”
- Total Procurement
- 8 Light Fighter Wings
- 2 Fighter Wings
- 6 Carrier Wings
The fireplug of a Captain is back. “Sir, the Navy would like to replace the lost parasite battleships, at least for now, while new designs are worked on to replace the
Majestics in the brawler role. We are also wanting to continue to expand our Warship line, boost our carrier force, and cover our transport obligations.”
- Large Dropships
- 3 Puller
- 6 Vandergrift
- 5 Majestic
- 10 Independence
- 3 Shannon
- Regular Dropships
- Jumpship
- Warship
He pauses for a moment. “Sir, the more warship lines we have, the better. The Navy strongly urges building as many new Capital Shipyards as possible.”
Bridget is up next, practically vibrating in her chair. “Your Majesty! We have stuff we can build! In fact our DoME teams are free to build stuff too! We have two of them ready, so we really recommend starting the projects to fully colonize Edelsteine so we can take full advantage of all of those wonderful resources there, and also building a cluster of O’Neill Cylinders in Griff’s Leap to enable us to really double down there and treat the place as a full colony rather than a mere resource extraction operation. We also recommend improving the overall infrastructure on a few of our peripheral worlds, the faster we do that the faster they’ll be Core worlds and really contributing to our economy. And we should not neglect the Core worlds either, we recommend investing in the Nowa Warszawa economy and the New Capricorn economy this year, both could really use the help, and doing some focused development on both will really show our commitment to them. And we can build shipyards for you! And strategic materials factories! And eight more commercial space stations! Which would be awesome for our economy!”
She is positively exhausting, in the best possible way. She reminds you of your grandkids, actually, for all that she’s older than you are, which is a frightening thought.
Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, the Pan Griffon Games are going extremely well, none of our allies are having any crisis at this time, and our new embassy to Kilburrough is settling in. We have nothing to report or request at this time.”
Short and simple, fewer decisions for you to make. You approve.
Jake is up next, looking unhappy. “Your Majesty, the District Offices did their best, but are too new to be fully effective. We’ve only seen a slight improvement in the Chamber’s attitude towards us even if they’re all professing love and respect publicly. We have indications from the few friendly Delegates that starting next year they have no intention whatsoever of respecting the sort of ‘honeymoon’ period that your mother enjoyed. The Senate remains a solid rock of support, however, so any shenanigans the Delegates get up to is already contained. We do recommend continuing to expand the Colonial Office. Our staff there is still somewhat overworked, although not to a level that is worrisome yet, and I would prefer to be somewhat overstaffed than understaffed in the event of any crisis in the Peripheral worlds.”
You hate politics, you really do, but you know how to sing the song and dance the dance, and smile at complete sons-of-bitches that you’d rather step on with your mech.
Dr Bryant is up next. “Your Majesty, we only have a single uncommitted research team at the moment, and a number of new projects that may well be critical. However, we are thinking it may be wiser to send that team to Calliope IV to expand our labs there, giving us a bit more research horsepower, as it were.” She does bring up a display of new projects, however. “We have analyzed the reports of the new Drac super-missile. In
SARAH's database we found references to something called the Kraken-T which the DCA had under development prior to the departure of Kerensky. It appears that the local Dracs have deployed this weapon. We are not sure about the full parameters, but our researchers can work with what we do have to potentially develop our own version of the weapon. In addition, as you requested we had some of our more creative thinkers consider the threat posed by these weapons. They have two potential solutions, neither of which are mutually exclusive. First, our sub-capital laser mounts are already fast-tracking enough to handle the observed performance parameters of the Kraken-T, a software and targeting system upgrade would allow them to act as long-range capital AMS supplements. In addition, the Stingray missile can be modified to be optimized for anti-missile work. It would lose its anti-ship capability in the process, but would be very capable of handling the threat posed by the Kraken-T.”
Harry is, well, Harry. You’ve worked with him in operational planning, so you are well used to his quirks. “Your Majesty, we have a fresh crop of Drac prisoners, and it’s been years since we’ve had any to interrogate. We’re ready to start making them sing.” He almost instinctively looks over towards where Janet is usually sitting as he says that.
Martina is sitting there instead, and actually manages a nearly perfect approximation of her former boss’s famous glare. “Within legal parameters, Harry.” she says severely, drawing a few well-disguised grins at the dichotomy of a young woman filling Janet’s old role. “Your Majesty, the Ministry of Justice is in good shape and has no major reports or projects for you this year.”