Turn 39 - Heart to Heart
You have Janet engage in some extensive investigations on Pollux into the goings on with that business group and the results actually irritates you far more than it would have if the businessmen had actually been corrupt bastards.
Well, they were, but to such a minimal degree as to be irrelevant, the ‘takes two of the restaurant mints from the ‘take one’ bowl because they stuck together’ degree of corruption. It’s the people
reporting the so-called corruption who are engaged in far more corrupt practices, as the businessmen in question had declined to bribe them to leave them alone.
The ‘kickbacks’? When the businessmen and the contractors went to lunch to hammer out contracts the contractors covered the tip. Not the tab, mind you, the tip. The ‘1% off the top’? They had set the executive compensation structure to be, combined, 1% of the gross revenue, which is actually lower than most ventures of this nature and sees the executives actually taking home less pay currently than their highest paid employees.
And the anti-corruption watchdog groups that were now quite endemic to Pollux had demanded ‘donations’ and ‘contributions’ from this group, with the unspoken quid-pro-quo that if they made those donations the anti-corruption groups would declare them non-corrupt… even if they were. And on the flip side, if they failed to make those donations the same groups would use their status as ‘anti-corruption watchdogs’ to declare the businessmen corrupt and bring the full force of the law down on them.
If you had simply lowered the boom, as you’d been prepared to do, you’d have once again been played by corrupt elements who were counting on your zeal for anti-corruption to goad you into intemperate action.
As it is, the heads of five separate non-governmental ‘watchdog’ groups are currently residing at Your Majesty's Pleasure in maximum security, while the local heads of the government regulatory bodies which should have been monitoring for this very scenario are cooling their heels counting dire penguin droppings down at the titanium mine in the Antarctic while you decide if they were simply incompetent or corrupt in their own right.
(QM Note - A combination of ‘crack down’ and ‘investigate first’ was tied when I started writing this post. +1 GDP Griffin’s Roost, +1 Approval, +1 Approval Change, +5 Politics)
Maybe, just maybe, people on Pollux might finally start getting it through their heads that trying to emulate the Florida Man of myth and legend is NOT actually a good idea?
You receive a solicitation from Majeure Electronique concerning Imperial assistance in constructing a dual-use factory for the
Tyrannosaurus,
Utahraptor, and
Megaraptor dropships. It would only be able to accommodate one hull at a time, as the rest of the facility would be used for civilian production, but it would be effectively rating 2 from the start. It would be somewhat expensive to set up, but it would be available rather quickly as they are prepared for rapid construction.
[] | Back Them | Cost - 500,000, gains 1 Rank 2 factory that can be used for the three large aerodyne designs. +1% GDP Nowy Gdansk |
[] | Refuse For Now | |
The Nowy Gdansk Planetary Government and Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks meanwhile approaches you with finalized construction plans for the
Devastation plant. Like the Majeure Electronique proposal this would only be capable of a single ship at a time, in this case primarily because of the sheer size of the dropship in question.
[] | Build It | Cost - 500,000, gains 1 Rank 4 Factory for the Devastation |
[] | Don’t Build It | |
The Navy does forward a proposal to your desk which seems to be quite optimistic and hopeful, pointing out that in the future you will have a force mixture of Dropships, Jumpships, and Warships, and that it is time to start planning for this. Specifically, as the starting point they would like to redesignate all dropships with the prefix HMDS (Her Majesty’s DropShip), have all future Jumpships designated as HMJS (Her Majesty’s JumpShip) and all future Warships as HMWS (Her Majesty’s WarShip).
The new Griffon ASF is now approved, and is a quite nasty little design. A rather graceful flying wing with the main direct fire armament clustered in the nose and large missile racks in the wing leading edges, it looks quite dangerous to your untrained eye. Thanh considers it far too slow and clunky, even if it’s only 1g lower in acceleration at maximum thrust than her beloved
Eagle.
The Aerospace Force HQ at the Ministry of Defense has released tentative plans for a number of integrated squadrons on similar models to the Army. The main takeaway from them is the need to boost production, especially of the Goshawk IIG, as both the proposed
Star Fort wing and the Planetary Defense Wing make extensive use of them thanks to their avoidance of strategic materials.