Turn 39 - Left Right Left
The still thoroughly humiliated and often mocked Automation Team takes their humiliation in stride and uses it for motivation, managing to finish up their work and getting it ready and in use before budget time comes, saving you a pretty chunk of change. It also results in some massive improvements to production capabilities, especially in regards to Dropships, as this final generation of automation improvements involves macro-scale methods of production that translate well to the dropship yards.
In more personal news, your grandkids are having an enormous amount of fun racing around in their little karts. You are still making a point to attend every race, not only of your grandkids, but also the twins as they are again in the championship hunt in the top Hovercraft Racing League.
This year the annual open day at the Palace for the races is even more popular than ever, with over a hundred kids actually racing in the kart and pee wee races requiring multiple heats. In the end it turns into an open weekend rather than an open day.
There is also another soapbox race, both a straight one for the little kids and an obstacle strewn ‘creative’ one for adults. Both you and Willis again compete in the creative race, this time racing a soapbox made to look like a model of the palace itself, and you manage to not crash, even if most of the racer winds up left in pieces on the track as it fell apart on the way down leaving you on the bare chassis.
Parliament is being unusually, in your experience, helpful again this year. One of the bills being advanced would establish a semi-military Star Guard modeled on the Coast Guard, to take over various tasks related to navigation and SAR in space. It would be a significant up front cost as well as fairly high maintenance, but it would allow the military to focus on actual military operations without having to worry about the tasks that historically fell to Coast Guards in the oceans.
| [] | Approve | Cost - 1,000,000, Upkeep of 250,000. Prevents certain events |
| [] | Disapprove | -10 support Senate, Chamber of Delegates |
Parliament is also debating a bill creating a Customs and Excise Service with future multi-system trade in mind. For now it would do little but plan and prepare, while collecting small fees from intra-system trade to fund its own operations. In the future it would be a valuable gateway through which foreign trade could be regulated.
| [] | Create | Up front cost of 100,000. Upkeep of 1,000.
Domestic Trade
Increases Base Interest Rate by 1%
Foreign Trade - Permits the formal establishment of Foreign Trade Routes
For each Foreign Trade Route
Increases Base Tax Rate by 1% |
| [] | Veto | -10 support Senate, Chamber of Delegates |
Once the Free Folks jumpship is fully repaired, which should be sometime next year according to the engineers, they would be willing to facilitate a trade route with the closest non-Drac advanced planet.
According to the Free Folk, about 4 jumps away from you is a small two-system polity that calls itself the Optimate. According to the Free Folk they appear to specialize in massive and extremely well trained and disciplined infantry and conventional armor formations, and possess a few ancient jumpships and dropshps which they primarily use for internal trade. They are very highly militarized, but not all that aggressive so long as you don’t try and poke them. They supposedly have a relatively solid ASF force, but evidently of old fashioned designs that aren’t even up to non-Royal Star League levels.
On the downside they openly practice a very Roman form of slavery, insofar as ‘slaves’ are convicts who are enslaved for the terms of their sentences then released. According to the Free Folk, however, this system is massively abused in that the very poor are regularly convicted of process crimes that are, quite honestly, incredibly petty and almost ridiculous (ten years slavery for allowing your shadow to touch the threshold of a Patricians mansion without permission, for example). On the plus side, ‘slaves’ in the Optimate are guaranteed medical care, food, and shelter plus it is quite against social mores for a Patrician to abuse a slave in any way.
From what the Free Folk can tell, about 10% of the population are Patricians, a further 15% are wealthy Plebeians, a quarter of the population are active or retired military, with many of the retired soldiers raising families on farmland nominally owned by the Patricians but which is granted to the retired soldier as part of their pension, and the rest are slaves. Only Patricians are allowed to own slaves, however they commonly lease them out to the Plebeians and retired military as cheap labor.
You aren’t sure. On the one hand, it could be just a way to handle the problem of poverty and crime, on the other… you really would like to introduce these Patricians to 1st Armored and the concept of ‘liberty and justice for all’.
On the gripping hand, they aren’t a threat to you, and could be a valuable trading partner and possible ally against the Dracs.
You hate it when things are complicated. But that’s life in the big chair.
Sekhmet quite smugly informs you that Bastet and Anubis are, by Grifftiger standards, now officially mated. You hadn’t realized that them roaring in chorus at the moon was some sort of wedding ceremony.
Of course, you then decide that that simply would not do. Bastet deserves a proper wedding, since she’s part of the family. Sekhmet figures out what you are up to and gets even more smug.
Several days later a very confused Anubis is all freshly groomed to the nines, while Bastet is still pouting at you at the ridiculous ‘cat outfit you gleefully presented to her. The Eldest is looking very bemused at the whole thing, while the other Great Hunters are finding it quite hilarious.
You had to improvise a bit on the venue, but the main dining hall of the Palace has been hastily converted into a ‘cat wedding chapel.
An hour later the whole thing is finished, with Bastet and Anubis chivvied off to go practice giving Sekhmet grandbabies. Followed by you and Sekhmet high-fiving much to the younger cats dismay. The Eldest is laughing hard, and has decided that this is a truly wonderful custom to import for Cats.
