Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

Turn 62 - Well She Got Her Daddy’s Car

There is another serious pirate attack at Griff’s Leap that is fought off with minor damage. It appears that the pirates are attacking in penny packets, each attack is by a different ‘band’ of pirates, judging by paint schemes and communications chatter, and the pirates are attacking with a level of desperation that doesn’t make all that much sense. Thanks to the ramshackle and shoddy construction of the pirate dropships they are pretty much useless against any sort of proper military dropship, let alone the Bainbridge class pickets. Unfortunately that same fragility makes it impossible to take prisoners for interrogation, as the dropships seem to explode if you look at them sufficiently angrily, let alone fire a subcap weapon at them.

What has been determined is that these are peripheral bands, desperate to make a ‘big score’ to prove themselves in what passes for their society. Ever since you started assisting the NRI the ‘easy times’ for loot and glory for the smaller bands have been over and many of them are on the ropes, as the larger bands prey on them. A few fragments of data indicates that this entire ‘culture’, if you can call it that, is based purely on strength. Corsairs raid, pillage, and bully everybody around them that they can get away with, and only slaves do ‘peasant work’ like farming or mining or manufacturing. And if a given pirate band isn’t confident of their ability to control any given asset they are far more likely to simply destroy it rather than risk it falling into another band’s hands, as anything that strengthens another band is anathema to them.

Cooperation doesn’t appear to be a virtue for these people.

That it also reminds you of the behavior of certain of your politicians and would-be elites is an irony that doesn’t escape you.

The deployment of the new Colonial Division on Nowa Warszawa was fortuitous, as friction between factions there is ramping up rapidly once more. The primary driver of the violence this time around are Home Army extremists. It is frustrating that they are doing it with equipment you’d given the Home Army. Thankfully the Home Army leadership cadres have been extremely helpful in assisting with tracking down the radicals and helping the authorities deal with them, which is just about the only thing keeping the situation from exploding into even greater violence.

But tit-for-tat attacks are driving up the death toll and making it difficult to get anything constructive done. Home Army extremists shoot up a former Drac neighborhood, ex-Drac radicals then toss firebombs at Polish neighborhoods. Then the Home Army radicals use the firebombs as an excuse to shoot up another former Drac area. The new Colonial Division is doing yeoman work keeping the factions separated.

There has been a proposal that has gotten kicked up to your desk for dealing with this. Namely expanding the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police and deploying the new units to Nowa Warszawa. The memo was written by a young private in the Colonial Division assigned to Nowa Warszawa who apparently grew up with a grifftiger companion, and who points out that the big cats could well have a salubrious effect on keeping things under control. After all, who’s going to argue with 20 tons of claws and fangs?

Bastet is all for this, as is Sekhmet. The Eldest, when consulted, sees nothing wrong and only laments that he is far too large to go visit himself and express his displeasure with the radicals in person.

Meanwhile the Pan Griffon Games have begun, for the first time featuring athletes from outside the Griffon system itself, notably teams from Nowa Warszawa and the TTP. With the far broader athlete pool, the Griffon Olympic Committee is looking forward to addressing weaknesses and finding more talent for the upcoming games in two years.

The initial events, both men’s and women’s athletics, both show the Griffon and TTP teams dominating, with the Griffon team coming out on top of each. The Nowa Warszawa athletes struggle in these events, although most of their issues appear to be a combination of bad luck and simply not being up to the same standard as the others.

In Men’s Gymnastics the Griffon Team manages a bare victory of the TTP team, with a standard of competition well above that seen in the past from Griffon gymnastics. However in the women’s event a young gymnast from Sukaishi who made the age cut off by two days is a standout sensation, performing so far above her older peers that there is serious talk about her being a superstar in the sport before she’s even had her sweet sixteen.

The Nowa Warszawan women’s gymnasts manage to score their teams first silver of the competition, edging out the Griffon women. In the team event, however, the team synergy between the Nowa Warszawans manages a convincing victory, since the TTP phenom wasn’t on the team roster.

In the swimming events the Griffon and TTP teams trade off victories, with the Nowa Warszawans managing a silver medal in the women’s event barely edging out the Griffon women.

One evening during the games you, purely by accident, happen across your granddaughter and Siriwan celebrating a TTP win with a very lewd display of hand holding and absolutely lascivious cuddling. With you catching them red handed, the two finally admit to you that they’re dating and trying to think of a way to ask your blessing for their relationship.

You manage to keep them guessing (and sweating) for approximately a half second before your grin spoils it. After all, you didn’t have that much time until midnight, and if you waited too long then you’d lose your wager in the betting pool.

That’s your story and you are sticking to it.

Not that you think they make a wonderfully cute couple, and with the iron wombs you can even get great-grandbabies out of this. Isn’t that a thought!

You are also presented with plans for future colonization efforts.

Colonizing New Capricorn would help secure your jumpship route to the NRI and the system itself offers multiple potential colonization sites. Colonizing GX-C9 would help secure your northern flank against potential attacks while preventing the NRR from potentially outflanking you there if they decide to expand now that they are no longer in a death grapple with the Dracs.

Therefore you have several options.

Initial colonization of New Capricorn would take 3 years, focusing on the terrestrial planet first with the inhabitable moons coming afterwards. The initial phase would tie down one of your Enterprise-A class vessels in detailed scouting. A White Tower system defense fortress would be built in orbit of New Capricorn IV along with a full complement of ASFs and several flights of PPG-01’s.

Initial colonization of GX-C9 would take 5 years. The initial phase would be the same as with New Capricorn, but DoME teams would be required for the initial construction of colony domes.

Actual costs to colonize the two are actually comparable, at least in the initial phases. GX-C9 would require more overall work down the road, mostly from DoME, but would potentially be the wealthier system overall due to the presence of large Germanium asteroid deposits.

The kicker comes in the jumpship requirements to support colonization efforts. It is possible to colonize one or the other without jeopardizing the space lift required for operations against Nova Roma, but trying to do both would preclude such operations until at least two additional Caravel class jumpships are in service.

Turn 62 - The Girls Can’t Stand Her

Initial recruitment and training of the additions to the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police are going quite well, by next year they should be deploying to Nowa Warszawa.

That’s some good news, making up for the shitstorm that has blown up in the Imperial Parliament.

This year the new delegates and senators from Nowa Warszawa, the TTP and Calliope IV are going to be seated, or at least that was the intention. Nowa Warszawa and Calliope are guaranteed seats due to being fully part of the Empire, while the TTP has a single courtesy seat in each body to give them some representation, albeit not at the same level as a full member of the Empire.

It might be more accurate to say ‘were going to be seated’, because quite suddenly both the Chamber of Delegates and the Senate have gone into full obstruction mode, objecting to allowing any of the new delegates and senators to take their seats and refusing to accept their credentials. It’s not a majority in either chamber, but an extremely vocal minority is completely stalling everything, especially as several of the objections and slow rolling are coming from Committees gumming up the works.

The politicians are demanding sweeping concessions, that the new Senators and Delegates not be allowed to vote on ‘matters of substance’ for a decade, that the Crown grant additional powers and authority to the Senate and Chamber, pork barreling at an epic scale in demanding Imperial funding for various projects that solely benefit said politicians, etc.

The Eldest is furious, but has his own difficulties in that the dissident Senators are using various parliamentary tricks to keep him from effectively interfering in their various obstructive schemes. And the media is not helping, with only your in-house media organs reporting things in a way that doesn’t make it look like ‘heroic David’s facing Goliath.’

You can probably ride this out, your popular support is much higher than Parliament’s, but it will cost you political capital to do so. And you can pretty much kiss goodbye anything helpful or useful out of Parliament for a while.

The demands they are making are completely unreasonable, and the fact that their grandstanding and opportunism is in direct defiance of the Imperial Charter gives you a number of excellent tools for dealing with this.

Meanwhile you approve plans for the colonization of New Capricorn. The current planning is as follows.

1. Phase I (1 year)
   1. Detailed survey of New Capricorn IV
      1. For optimal colonization site
   2. Construction of White Tower defense station in New Capricorn IV orbit
      1. Including ASF forces and at least 20 PPG-01
2. Phase II (2 years)
   1. Construction of initial colony site and transport of initial colonists
      1. Initial population at end of phase will be ~100,000
   2. Deployment of Colonial Division and Planetary Defense Wing as initial defenses

You also receive a memo from Jeremy. He is requesting approval to begin direct operations against Nova Roma, deploying 2nd Armored and 2nd Infantry to secure control over the planet and take out the leadership of the rebellion. The provisional government of the NRI has already approved the operation and three loyalist legions will be accompanying the initial landing.

As you still have complete dominance over the orbitals the initial phase of the invasion, at least, should be smooth as butter. The rebels also appear to be short of ASF assets on the ground to contest the landings themselves. Jeremy is being cautious, however, and is treating the landing as a heavily contested situation against a fully intact air and ground defense network, using absolute worst case assumptions that he is having to land against the sort of defenses that he would set up using your technology.

As such he is requesting that both Independence class carriers be sent to boost his ASF numbers. He has also included a note that he would like the Navy to begin studying a dedicated fire support/command dropship design focused on the heaviest possible Long Tom battery to provide additional artillery support during landings.

The plan appears to be a low risk, conservative attack plan, with a major focus on force preservation and avoiding collateral damage to NRI civilians. There is an addendum that if enough transport is available he would like the 2nd RRF to be deployed to support the attack, however this is labeled as optional to give him a fast strike force to exploit opportunities.

Closer to home, a large forest fire is raging through the newly planted jungles on Griffon IV, but according to DoME this was expected behavior and in line with their long term plans for the ecosystem. Many of the trees that they planted actually require fires in order to enter fertility cycles and release seeds, so the fires are actually needed for the ecological health of the entire system. The flames themselves are pretty much confined to the jungle floor, the biggest trees are pretty much shrugging it all off while the brush is being burned away, leaving behind even richer soil.

You are a bit dubious, but these are the experts, and sure enough a few weeks after the fires finally die out many of the trees explode in a riot of color as glorious flowers bloom in vegetative ecstasy. The jungles have gone from being a melange of greens, browns, and blacks to a canvas of brilliant pinks, whites, blues, reds, and oranges.

Team Griffon continues to dominate in the men’s and women’s decathlon, although Nowa Warszawa does come in a close silver in both contests. The TTP’s women’s decathlon team is ravaged by injuries, sadly, with only a single athlete managing to complete the competition and even she was limping by the end of the final event.

The shooting competitions are extremely hard fought, with Team Griffon managing silver in each. The TTP and Nowa Warszawa split gold medals, but in all cases the scores were so close that every single event required a shoot off. The sporting press for marksmanship sports is incredibly impressed by the skill on display and it looks like you will have a very strong shooting team for the Olympics in two years.

Team Nowa Warszawa takes a dominant gold medal in men’s wrestling, for their third gold medal of the games. There are some impressive moments, especially considering that the heavyweight competitor from Nowa Warszawa is of Drac heritage and the welterweight of Polish heritage, and the two show absolutely no animosity and, indeed, appear to be very close friends indeed.

In women’s wrestling the contests are once more extremely close, all competitors showing a very high degree of skill. Team Griffon manages a gold, but the extremely high level of competition again speaks well of the overall Imperial teams prospects in 2 years.

Team Griffon and Team Nowa Warszawa split the gold in men’s and women’s fencing, however the competition is marred by an incident during one of the women’s sabre qualifying matches when an overhead camera fell during the match, striking one of the competitors on the shoulder and sending her to the hospital with minor injuries. The anchor bolt for the support wire of the camera had worked itself loose over the course of the competition and had finally failed at just the wrong time. It is discovered that the wood the bolt had been secured in had been damaged by termites, but the sheetrock and drywall had prevented the damage from being spotted. More termite damage was discovered in the beautiful wooden competition center, but analysis showed it was safe to continue. After the competition repairs will be carried out to guarantee the structural integrity of the history building.