Turn 79 - See What I Mean
Your eldest granddaughter is now in the Aerie and, interestingly, is taking a dual track of Command and Logistics training rather than an actual combat path. She’s taking a few mech classes, but not the sort that would lead to a Mechwarrior commission. When you ask her about it she points out that someday, hopefully not soon, she’ll be taking over from you and that therefore it would behoove her to focus on those skills that would be broadly applicable to running the Empire rather than pursuing personal glory as a mechwarrior.
You’re totally unashamed to say that you are very proud of her.
You do, however, wind up tossing her, your wife, your daughter in law, and your sister through the Tyler Lee Memorial Defenestration Window when they organize an ambush interview with an NRI news program run by ‘your’ cult. The young journalist they’d sent had been painfully earnest and honest, and none of the questions were in and of themselves embarrassing or problematic. Indeed, it was a very thoughtful interview on a variety of relevant topics related to future expansion plans, the state of the economy, trade relations with the NRI, and such. You have had far more annoying interviews with local media than this. But still, the principle remains, the guilty must be punished by defenestration. You have been informed that the budget line item for trick glass for the window was growing rather large.
You have one serious headache, briefly you thought it was the Egg Redux, but it turns out to be a proper hybrid electric/pedal powered trike. You were all set to get angry when one showed up at the Palace, but the footprint of the vehicle is within the regular range for most recumbent trikes, thus not hogging the bike lanes if ridden there but it is also completely road legal in nearly every jurisdiction meeting the exact same crash and safety standards as any other motor vehicle, it is actually even lighter than the Egg, thanks to the materials and engineering. It costs about three times as much as the Egg did, which you discover with some research puts it directly in line with other vehicles in its class.
The headache comes from the manufacturer sending enough of the kid-sized ones for all of your younger grandkids and great nieces/nephews to have one of their own, and all of them are constantly pestering you to go out riding with them. You have work to do, an Empire to run, and… you can’t resist the big pleading eyes and quivering lips, damnit. You are tempted to summon the CEO of that company to the Palace in order to toss them out of the Window!
Granted, they are very fun to ride. But you’ve got work to do!
You check and this particular vehicle is made by a small start up on New Pollux, evidently they’d hoped that by sending the Imperial Family samples that they’d get some marketing advantage as you are seen riding around in them. Typical, and indeed they’d been quite up front about it in the letter accompanying the gift, so you don’t mind at all. From what you can tell sales have picked up for the vehicles, with them shipping multiple crates of the things to the Griffon system on the regular trade runs to New Pollux.
There is an emergency in the NRR, terrorists associated with the old Opposition have detonated a massive fuel-air bomb in an apparent assassination attempt against the President. She survived the attack, albeit with severe injuries. Several thousand supporters who’d been listening to her speak at the anniversary of her being sworn in were less fortunate. Luckily small bombs that had been placed in order to delay emergency services from responding failed to detonate, indications are that the terrorists who were supposed to set them off had been killed in the larger than expected initial detonation.
The NRR has implemented martial law in the capital and have locked the place down, the NRR military is conducting search and destroy sweeps targeting the terrorists, rather indiscriminately rounding up everybody who’d ever supported those parties in the past, searching their residences and places of business, while imprisoning them in overcrowded jails. Several pitched battles have broken out. Your ambassador reports that the general public mood at this point is ‘rope, opposition, lamp post, some assembly required’ with very high levels of support for the government crackdown.
To be fair to the government, they are showing at least some sense of due process, those former opposition supporters who are cleared of involvement are released almost as fast as they were rounded up, but that is a mixed mercy as their neighbors seem to be far less interested in such legal minutiae as guilt or innocence. And again to be fair to the NRR government, they are providing police protection to those people and a number of arrests for vigilantism and lynching have been made and are being vigorously prosecuted.
One thing that the NRR has introduced that has your own police forces, and especially the Special Branch and Imperial Griffon Mounted Police, drooling is a clever new riot control device. Take a paintball gun, and load the paintballs with a mix of paint and pepper irritants. Shoot the troublemakers. They are really hating life and are very easy to identify later on. General Messerschmidt has already ordered some for intelligence work as well, which rather worries you because you are almost certain that he will introduce them to you when he thinks it will be funny.
And now it is time for the budget meetings, the part of your work that you’d sometimes rather miss.
General Stewart is up first. “Your Majesty, our production capacity could still use more improvements, especially for heavy and assault mechs, regular mechs, and ASFs. On top of the understandable push to increase our warship production. Paradoxically, we are recommending that we not increase our dropship production this year for reasons that Admiral Griffith will get into later.”
She sits down and your old friend General Jenkins takes her place. “OK, boss, we want all the things and we want them yesterday, and can I have a pony?” he pauses as snickers break out and you glare at him. “No pony? Awww, c’mon boss!” he is grinning far too much and you are almost certain that if you went back to your rooms you’ll find that the little shit had smuggled a pony into your bedroom or something equally ‘amusing’. “Fine, be that way. We want little mechs, we want big mechs, and we want to build two more Corps HQ units so we can handle more simultaneous operations or even engage in that terrifying military ritual known as…” he drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “realistic military exercises against OPFORs.”
“More specifically, we’ve got a few Pathfinder units that need filling out. We want another Brigade Combat Team, we want Training Regiments because the schools are getting whiny at us again and then they threaten us with erasers and homework. We want some more Garrison mechs to keep what is ours ours in the most stompy way possible, and two more Assault Regiments to head up the two new Corps HQs. We’ll need 3 Armored Regiments, 4 Mechanized Regiments, 6 Air Cavalry Regiments, 6 Artillery Regiments to bring the boom, and just to keep the Academies off of my back please buy them some Mechanized Training Regiments.” He tosses up a graphic for you to look at.
- IGA Procurement
- New production facilities
- 4 Battlemech Factory Complexes
- 1 Megafactory Complex on Calliope IV
- Expand Military Industrial Infrastructure
- Procurement
- Regular Mech (11 factories)
- 4 Pathfinder Regiments
- Complete 2 Pathfinder Brigades and thus 1 Pathfinder Division
- 3 Armored Cavalry Regiments
- For the new Brigade Combat Team
- 4 Training Regiments
- Heavy/Assault Mech (8 factories)
- 3 Standard Mech Regiments
- For the new Brigade Combat Team
- 3 Garrison Mech Regiments
- 2 Assault Regiments
- Conventional Vehicles
- 3 Armored Regiments
- For the new Brigade Combat Team
- 4 Mechanized Regiments
- 6 Air Cavalry Regiments
- 6 Artillery Regiments
- 5 Mechanized Training Regiments
General Romanov is up next. “Your Majesty, we have neither carriers nor stations completing this year that we need aerospace units for. That being said, however, we have been working with the Navy and they inform me that they intend to request a large number of carriers, enough that if we were to wait until next year to procure birds to fill their bays we’d be unable to do the same for the stations completing next year.”
She brings up a display showing a new unit. “For the new
Saipan class ships, we have developed a new Wing type, balancing offensive and defensive capabilities. Each Heavy Carrier Wing would consist of one Fighter Squadron of
Eagle IVs, one Attack Squadron of
Griffon IIIs, and one Missile Squadron of
Raptor II and
Merlins.”
- IGAF Procurement
- New Production Facilities
- Expand Ferro Aluminum and Double Heat Sink production
- 1 new ASF factory
- Procurement
Your sister is up next. “OK, Your Majesty. As General Romanov indicated, we plan to produce a large number of the new
Saipans this year. Our current dropship production levels are actually exceeding our needs, until we expand much more at least some of our dropship production is going to be dedicated simply to keeping the existing slips in operation and adding defenses to various systems rather than fulfilling actual needs. It’s a good problem to have, I grant, but it’s still a problem. So we are requesting a pause on orbital shipyard expansion. Light Warship and Escort yards? We still need as many of those as we can afford. We would also like to build a new Refit & Repair Yard in the New Pollux system to support further survey and colonization work in that direction.”
She then fires up the display. “Our engineers and the design teams at the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Werk have developed a palletized automated cargo handling system that is highly suitable for our logistics needs. The new
Saipans are built with this in mind, although unfortunately refitting the system into the
Independence class is prohibitively expensive. One consequence of our increased tempo of warship operations in patrols and such has been discovering that our estimates of logistics requirements were actually rather low, and as we expand and range further and further they will only increase exponentially. Therefore Lee Aerospace and the IGAW have collaborated with Majeure Electrique on a highly specialized logistics ship optimized for fleet support. The
Supply class, in combination with the
Saipan for ‘last mile’ deliveries, should be a rather neat solution to the logistics problems. As part of the
Supply class we’ve contracted with a commercial yard to build a specialized cargo transport dropship for the
Supply class vessels. Five of these vessels, which are effectively nothing but detachable cargo pods with over 80% of their mass devoted to cargo, will be included with each
Supply purchased. This means that each
Supply will be carrying almost half a million tons of supplies when fully loaded.”
- IGN Procurement
- New Production Facilities
- 3 Small Warship Yards
- Griffon, Nowa Warszawa, Calliope
- Refit & Repair Yard
- Expand Lamellar Ferro-Carbide production
- Procurement
- Regular Dropships (71 slips)
- 40 Bainbridge class
- 15 Queen class
- 16 Trenton class
- Large Dropships (30 slips)
- Escort/Jumpship Yards (27 slips
- 10 Supply
- 7 Galleon
- 10 Samuel B Roberts
- Small Warship (2 yards)
- 1 Wichita CA
- 1 Erebus CLG
Bridget comes up next and she looks… reduced. Tired, drained, and a bit pale. “Your Majesty, this will be my last budget meeting.” she says a bit grimly. “I’ve just gotten a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and will be entering treatment next week. The doctor’s are highly optimistic, so I’m not concerned about that, but I think it’s time for me to step aside and let somebody else take the reins over at the Interior Ministry. That being said, we’re ready to support any building programs you might desire, and recommend doing some economic investment and focus on various Peripheral and Core worlds. Edelsteine and New Pollux would benefit the most in the periphery, while Nowa Warszawa would benefit nicely in the core.”
There’s silence for a bit, Bridget has been a fixture of the budget meetings ever since Tyler retired, her stepping down is a major change. Plus she’s been a friend to the family for a long time.
Isoroku is also looking a bit grim. “I will also be stepping down, Your Majesty. Griffin's Roost University has asked me to take over as President and my wife has convinced me to take the post.” His lips twitch a bit. “Evidently she is tired of me running off to the Olympics whenever they’re held in another nation, amusing that. I will have a list of candidates to replace me on your desk by the end of the year. The Foreign Ministry doesn’t have any specific budgetary requests this year.”
Lien smiles a bit. “I’m not going anywhere yet, Your Majesty.” she says, causing a brief chuckle to go around the table. “The expansion of the Civil Service was quite successful and useful last year, continued expansion within reason would be equally useful, although the expenses will increase rapidly. Increasing the Parks & Recreation budget has also given some lovely dividends, but again costs will increase the more we expand so it is a balancing act. We have no completely new initiatives for you this year, Your Majesty.”
Dr Bryant is up next. “Your Majesty, we have five R&D teams available for work. We would urge that three of them continue work on improving Standard Core KF drive vessels to their peak potential, while the remaining two should focus on improving our terraforming and large scale project capacities, in order to give DoME more things to do, and improving industrial mechs in order to make it easier for us to do those sorts of large scale projects.”
General Messerschmidt has an expression on his face that you’ve come to dread. “Your Majesty, I think we should let Martina go next, skip me to the end.”
Martina smoothly takes over. “Your Majesty, thank you for the increased funding last year for the Imperial level law enforcement departments. We are already seeing benefits in terms of quicker response times to system requests for imperial assets in these areas. We have no pressing needs at this time. General?”
General Messershmidt smoothly takes over once more. “Well, Your Majesty, I bring good news from the NRI!” his smile is almost blinding. You make a mental note to drag him over to the Window yourself. “An NRI wide festival to Your Sacred Name has been announced to great acclaim, with pageants, festivals, parades, and processions being organized across the NRI in Your Divine Honor. Our agents are reporting that Your great temple on Nova Jupitereum is now complete and has been suitably sanctified. And, your loyal worshippers have sent this via the intelligence attache at the embassy.” He opens a case, revealing a remarkably detailed small marble statue of you, obviously based on one of the ‘grumpy’ photos taken by your dear sister.