Turn 86 - Policeman Taps His Shades
The Bourbon emissaries agree to turn over navigational data on their holdings, if only to avoid ‘regrettable incidents’.
They appear to have four worlds under their control. The navigation information they’ve given you is little more than jump coordinates for the zenith and nadir points, so you have very little to go on in terms of what the worlds themselves are like beyond word of mouth.
The four worlds in question are cataloged in your charts as GX-J30, J31, I31 and H30.
The Bourbon presence in your space is now down to a pair of warships, the rest have all returned home. Signal intercepts combined with analysis of certain comments that have been made seem to indicate that beyond the Black Steel threat, the Bourbons are dealing with something else, but they’ve been annoyingly vague about what that could be.
You are dragged to the Pan-Griffon Games by your wife, this year being held in the Griffon system. Team Griffon itself does the best, winning 10 gold medals, which is well down from previous years as the talent has spread out rather widely throughout the Empire. The smallest system to take a gold medal was Nowy Wroclaw, who took the gold in Softball after a well played series against the New Capricorn team. You have the most fun at the various races, as Team Griffon takes gold in motorcycles and stock cars and silver in formula racing. Your grandsons were both driving for the Team Griffon stock car team, so you get added enjoyment over that.
Unfortunately, just when you started thinking that they’d been quiet for too long, the Department of Periphery Studies is at it again, this time holding a massive protest march that, in a move harkening back to the early days of the Empire, promptly gets lost and winds up aimlessly wandering the streets of the financial district as they distinguished tenured faculty of the Department protest the existence of the color ‘blue’ as a crime against nature and that the Empire should declare the color ‘blue’ to be illegal and mandate that all things which purport to be blue must declare themselves to be a ‘suitable shade of turquoise aquamarine, perhaps a lovely pastel’. They are also demanding that the Eldest dye his fur ‘a tasteful shade of neon pink’.
The Eldest, predictably, finds this incredibly amusing and has decided to capitalize on the hilarity by declaring a contest for schoolkids to find the most appropriate ‘tasteful shade’ of neon pink possible, by coloring pictures of the Eldest looking smug.
Of course, you are completely unaware of the existence of a
tasteful shade of neon pink, but perhaps it exists somewhere in the universe. You do inform the Eldest that if he goes through with this you will start calling him the Pink Panther, which causes the oversized cat to start purring the Pink Panther theme music, much to your amusement.
And then it is time for your favorite time of the year, budget time.
General Jenkins worries you… he shows up in proper uniform, looking serious, with no apparent attempt at a practical joke in sight. Then your lips twitch as you realize that this IS the joke he’s trying to play on you, so you promptly put your feet up on the conference table and have one of your aides fetch you a cold beer.
“Well played, boss.” He realizes you’d caught on, so he drops the serious act. “While the Black Steel is a major threat, so far we’ve mostly been able to handle them, and with the breathing space purchased at Stahlfurt and by the Crimson Dawn we should, repeat should, be able to handle it. Most of the ground forces expansion we are recommending this year is in the category of ‘keep the factories busy and the workers employed’, although in the event of a major war it will come in incredibly useful. We know the Black Steel is an exclusively space based threat, but the Bourbons, for example, appear to have substantial ground forces, and there are indications of others. That being said, General Bradley?”
General Bradley takes the podium. “Your Majesty, preliminary information from the R&D labs are that our existing Ferro-Fibrous forges can be updated for the new materials under research at this time, therefore we would strongly advise significantly investing in new forges for them, as well as upgrading existing ones, in order to ensure that we aren’t caught short. Other than that, our strategic materials situation is solid for ground forces.”
She brings up a chart of procurement and production requests.
- Imperial Griffon Army
- Production
- New Ferro Fibrous Factory
- New Double Heat Sink Factory
- Expand all Ferro Fibrous Factories
- Expand all DHS Factories
- Procurement
- Heavy/Assault Mechs
- 9 Heavy Combat Team Regiments
- Light/Medium Mechs
- 12 Medium Mech Regiments
- 12 Medium Scout Regiments
- LAM
- Conventional
- 12 Air Cavalry Regiments
- 9 Heavy Armored Regiments
- 9 Mechanized Regiments
- Garrison Forces
- 18 Garrison Regiments
- 18 Militia Rating
General Romanov is up next. “Your Aerospace forces are in solid shape, Your Majesty, but expansion of production capabilities will allow us to increase deployment density across the frontier in addition to keeping up with new construction. We need both more DHS and more Ferro Aluminum production, as well as additional ASF lines to make use of that production. In addition, we will soon be opening up bids for a new very high speed interceptor design to supplement our current forces, simulations show that such forces would take very heavy casualties but would be invaluable in the event of a major Black Steel attack by attriting their forces prior to the main engagement.”
- Imperial Griffon Aerospace Force
- Production
- New ASF Lines
- Nowy Wrocław
- Nowy Slask
- New Phoenix
- New Pollux
- Okusawa
- Edelsteine
- Chuma
- New Castor
- New Capricorn
- Griffon
- New Ferro Aluminum Factories
- Expand all Ferro Aluminum Factories
- Procurement
- 30 Heavy Carrier Wings
- 25 Heavy Fighter Wings
Thanh is up next. “OK, Your Majesty.” she smirks at you. “You know what I’m going to say, because I know you had your vile and sneaky minions, also known as my grandkids, read my notes and report back to you.” This leads to laughter around the room as you declare yourself to have been foiled again. “In a few years we’re going to be bumping back up against our production limits on KF cores, plus armor. So, we’re requesting the following, ``Oh Snooping One.”
- Imperial Griffon Navy
- Production
- Orbital Shipyards
- New Orbital Shipyard
- Expand all existing Orbital Shipyards
- Escort Yards
- Construct Escort Yards
- New Pollux
- Kainga
- New Castor
- Okusawa
- Nowy Wrocław
- Small Warship Yards
- Construct Small Warship Yards
- Nowa Warszawa
- New Port Royal
- Medium Warship Yards
- Construct Medium Warship Yards
- Naval Armor Factories
- New Naval Armor Factories
- Expand all Naval Armor Factories
- Germanium Cores
- New Germanium Processing Facility
- Procurement
- Regular Dropships
- 23 Trenton class Transports
- 50 Long Beach class Parasite Destroyers
- Large Dropships
- 30 Saipan class Parasite Carriers
- 11 Canopus class Parasite Battleships
- Jumpships
- 4 Galleon class Jumpships
- Escorts
- 5 Haida class Destroyer Escorts
- Small Warships
- 4 Wichita class Heavy Cruisers
- 4 Cleveland class Light Cruisers
- 4 Erebus class Missile Cruisers
- Medium Warships
- 1 Kongo class Battlecruiser OR 1 Furious class Large Light Cruiser
- Miscellaneous
- Defensive Stations
- Oasis II Recharge Stations
- Silver Tower Defense Stations
Elizabeth Lee is up next. “Your Majesty, I’ve been asked to start with the scouting requests and move on from there. We have four available
Miranda class vessels. While we now have a solid read on the territory of the Bourbons, we’d still recommend limiting our scouting to several jumps away, just to avoid potential issues. As such we recommend the following systems be explored.”
- Scouting Requests
- GX-I25
- GX-H24
- GX-I22
- GX-G27
“We have two DoME teams available for assignment.” She continues, reviewing her notes. “As such we are recommending that we assign to a long term, high return project and the other to a short term project that would be more immediately useful. We believe that it should be possible to build a radiation shield using foamed composites and mylar in a stable orbit between the inhabited planet in the Pieklo system and the gas supergiant which has been erupting massive radiation bursts. Doing so would have massive benefits to the colony itself, speeding up local development enormously once completed, but construction would take a decade and is fairly high risk. We believe, however, that the returns are worth it. On a short term basis, the Dragon’s Eye system, while completely unsuitable for colonization as even the asteroids and such are far lower quality ore deposits than elsewhere in the Empire, is ideal for a different purpose, building naval shipyards. It is out of the way, secure, with a distinct lack of pirate points further increasing security, and while exceptionally expensive in terms of both resources and time, we should be able to build full up naval yards there, albeit using DoME rather than conventional means.”
She checks her notes again, then brings up a chart. “Next, we have investment, focus, and infrastructure recommendations.”
- Development Focus
- Core World
- Peripheral World
- Investment
- Major Economic Investment
- Infrastructure & Industrial Zones
- New Capricorn
- Okusawa
- Nowy Wrocław
- Bari
- Nya Kopenhamn
- Military Infrastructure
“Finally, with us now having control over Nya Kopenhamn, it behooves us to ensure that the local infrastructure is brought in line with our own, both in terms of physical infrastructure like sewage and water treatment and power, but also educational infrastructure, medical infrastructure, and the rest. We can have teams on both planets at your say so.”
Leila is off doing diplomacy with the Bourbons, and with the Pan Griffon Games going on there really isn’t any Cultural Affairs programming to be done this year. Therefore Lien is up next. “Your Majesty, the only recommendations from the political office have to do with continued expansion of both the Colonial Office and the Civil Service as a whole.”
Grace is up next. “Your Majesty, one of the challenges facing warship design is that as ships become larger it becomes less efficient and practical to mount lighter weapons on them, including the sub-capital lasers which have become such a useful anti-fighter and anti-missile system. Larger laser mounts are too cumbersome for such, at the present time. However a solution to that may be possible, although it would likely be quite expensive in practice, by building a more robust and higher powered mount for the full up naval lasers. I can have teams start work on that at your say so.” She checks her notes. “We have three teams available, Your Majesty, so if we dedicate one to this project, for the other two we recommend more advanced research work, this time into power transfer and electronics.”
General Messershmidt is smirking. Uh oh. “Your Majesty, I bring important news to you from my agents in the NRI.” He pauses dramatically. “Your cult has done nothing interesting all year long that they’ve not done before, and neither of your sister’s cults are up to anything untoward either. Your granddaughter, on the other hand, evidently has a small shrine on Nova Roma itself, although our agents haven’t been able to get me more information yet.”
“The NRR is continuing slow expansion to the galactic south, we know that they’ve been sending out survey expeditions in that direction. They have also purchased a number of
Corvus corvettes from the NRI.”
Martina is up last. “Your Majesty, thank you for the expansion of the IGMP, it came just in time for Nya Kopenhamn to be handled. We have a proposal to establish legal commissions in that system to hopefully head off any feuds, retaliations, and such from occurring and thus smoothing the transition to Imperial rule. We have a golden opportunity to get in front of such, and I strongly recommend that we take advantage of it.”