Turn 49 - There She Stood In The Doorway
It takes a few weeks. But one evening you are watching the news when there is a breaking story… the headquarters of the single largest labor union in the entire Empire is on fire. Or at the very least has billows of smoke coming out of every window, door, ventilation grate, HVAC exhaust… only the smoke is very white and, when fire crews first arrive, they find streams of union employees staggering out of it sobbing their eyes out and looking truly miserable as it turns out to be clouds of mild tear gas.
Then come reports from the second largest union headquarters, and the third… in the course of a half hour, every single major labor union headquarters in the entire Empire is flooded with tear gas.
Every. Single. One.
The next day there is mass consternation as every single union reports that all of their internal files and servers are missing. Two days later, just under 5% of the senior union officials in the Empire are under arrest on charges of fraud, bribery, racketeering, criminal conspiracy, and a host of other charges, with a dozen particular standouts actually being charged with full up misprision of treason and treason as it is discovered that they had been actively plotting on ways to sell out the Empire to the highest bidder and had attempted to communicate with the Dracs every single time they’d attacked the system.
90% of the charges are actually relatively minor felonies, many of which are quickly reduced in plea bargains to misdemeanors by prosecutors, but about 20 former officials, aside from the dozen traitors, are facing hard time. Using testimony from many of those who turned state's evidence, about a hundred corporate executives are also arrested for similar charges, hundreds more are facing investigations for lesser charges thanks to the evidence discovered.
In the end, unleashing the Special Squad results in a mix of excellent results (specifically the would be traitors) and somewhat embarrassing optics, as Jane somehow managed to give an interview on the entire affair live on the largest system news channel. And was
very Jane about it.
Griffin’s Roost University is tasked with investigating Griffon VI for potential ignition, giving their astrophysics and astronomy departments something to do. You hope to hear back from them Soon™.
Your attempt to present Jeremy with a special Regency Uniform to wear next year is thwarted when his Command Sergeant Major accompanies him to the presentation carrying oversized vibro scissors to ‘trim’ the great big giant pointy bits. Your beloved son with whom you are well pleased knows you FAR too well and had realized just what you were going to attempt to saddle him with. You do manage to get him to agree to wear the Regency Crown you’d had prepared, mostly because you’d bribed his daughters to give him Big Cry Eyes when he tried to refuse.
What, a crown featuring giant pink amethyst hearts, unicorns, and all the glitter your youngest grandchildren were able to stick on it isn’t manly enough for him?
And then it is your most favoritest time of year, and more so because NEXT year it’ll be your son who’ll have to do this… BUDGET TIME.
General Stewart leads things off. “Your Majesty, off the top thanks to the refit schedule we will likely be spending somewhat less than usual, however Admiral Benjamin has several proposals for bolstering our defenses that I think would be an excellent use of our funds. That being said, General Griffith?”
Jeremy decided to wear the regency crown, owning the joke, to the meeting. “OK, mom.” he smirks, abandoning normal protocol. “Ground forces are in solid shape. 3rd Armored needs 2 more Mechanized Assault Regiments, we can stand up one this year, and the final one next year. We also need to continue expanding our Mech production capacity. The new facility that will be finished in 8 years on Nowy Gdansk will be incredibly useful, but we need to continue to spread our production out somewhat. To that end, we recommend building 3 level 1 Battlemech factories on Griffon IV as the start of military production on that colony. Long range plans are to build these factories out to level 3, to support the production of light/medium regiments on Griffon IV.. The Colonial population is not large enough yet to fully merit a garrison deployment, but we are constantly evaluating the situation.”
He shuffles his notes. “On that note, we are recommending procuring a second Imperial Guard regiment to be based on Nowy Gdansk, in light of the increasing industrial importance of the planet.”
He then yields the floor to General Powerpoint herself, who immediately brings up… a Powerpoint.
“Your Majesty, Your Aerospace forces are in solid shape this year. We have a
Langley commissioning this year, which will require a Standard Carrier Wing, we have a
Tarawa for which we are recommending a newly designed unit optimized for a mix of Aerospace Supremacy and Ground Support that we are provisionally designating as a Regimental Support Squadron, 3 of which would form a Regimental Support Wing.” she says, moving through her presentation. “The squadron will consist of one flight each of
Eagle,
Griffon and
Goshawk ASFs.”
Another slide. “We are also recommending the procurement of an Interceptor Wing to be based on Griffon IV to supplement the current defenses in place there. Finally a 2nd Training Wing also to be based on Griffon IV. Furthermore, in terms of future industrial expansion, we recommend building a trio of level 1 ASF factories on Griffon IV.”
Finally the Torture By Powerpoint is over and Admiral Benjamin steps up.
“Well, Your Majesty, we’re not going to be laying down any new droppers this year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do things to continue to boost our defenses. My procurement teams inform me that we’ll be able to use their incomparable talents to consolidate sufficient contracts to build sets of Mark 1 Naval Defense Stations around all of our existing Star Forts. So, since we have 4 Star Forts in service, with 1 more coming online soon, we would need 5 sets of four Mk 1 NDS’s each. Otherwise, we’re in good shape, although we are working on a Request for Proposals for a standardized training dropship that would be suitable for also training up command crews for future Jumpships and Warships. We’ll get back to you on that soon.”
General Stewart retakes the podium. “Until Griffon IV expands enough to support a full garrison, the current ground forces should be sufficient there. We should also make sure to continue to expand production of Double Heat Sinks, Endo Steel, Ferro Fibrous, and Ferro Aluminium strategic materials.”
Jeremy stays in the room for the rest of the briefing, idly toying with the Regency Scepter you’d given him, with even more glitter all over it, while managing to keep a suitably grave expression on his face. He’s being a real good sport about all of this, since you’d managed to get your youngest grandkids, his nieces and nephews, to agree that since he’ll be temporarily taking over for an Empress, this obviously made him an Honorary Princess, and he needs Proper Equipment for it all.
He drew the line at cross dressing.
Bridget was her very Bridget-ty best. “Your Majesty we’ve got a whole bunch of stuff we can build this year. DoME has two free teams, and while I know that one is committed to building a habit in the Griffon II Orbitals, I’d like to unleash the other to build an Arcology Cluster on Griffon IV so we can get some rapid growth there and make it useful as soon as possible! Looking at the requests from the army and ASF force we’d need to build 6 factories on the planet, we can expand the shipyards as normal, and maybe even start building a dedicated Refit and Repair Yard for the future.”
Well, she was briefer than usual at least.
Isoroku will be accompanying you to the NRI, so he’s off getting prepared for that, although he left a note recommending holding an art show for the big cultural affairs event this year.
Jake is looking quite annoyed, what with having to deal with annoying Delegates all the time, who are currently yapping at him about the crackdowns on Union corruption. “Your Majesty, the only recommendation I have is to continue expanding DoME, those mad boys have proven very useful so far, so keeping them properly fed, watered, and out of the madhouse is probably a good thing.”
Mary has her normal presentation, although she does give a short preamble. “Your Majesty, we currently don’t have any new R&D projects, so here are our recommendations.”
- Non-Military
- Life-Extension Therapy Lvl 3
- Our experts consider this to be the basis for a number of fascinating projects related to gerontology.
- Military
- Sub-capital Missile - Stingray
- Shorter ranged than the Piranha, but with enhanced armor penetration.
- Sub-capital Laser/2
- Shorter ranged but heavier punch than the existing SCL/1
Harry is looking annoyed. “Your Majesty, I’ve gone over everything and we have confirmed that those traitors were indeed in communication with the Dracs, specifically.” he looks downright furious. “They were the crew of a cargo dropship that was near the attack before the last strike at the Nadir. At that time they managed to transmit on a tight-band radio a message to the Dracs and also evidently managed to hand over the full design specifications for the anti-missile system, making use of a message buoy that they released while ‘fleeing’. During the strike at the Nadir they were running a cargo ship that had just resupplied the Star Fort. Considering that they were carrying spare parts for our most advanced weaponry, we have reason to believe that they may have managed to turn over samples in the confusion of that attack.”
Janet takes over. “Under interrogation they have admitted their guilt, almost boasting about it all. We have determined that they were unindicted co-conspirators to the Gem Conspiracy who managed to hide from us at the time and have been nursing traitorous plans ever since. As they kept their plans incredibly tight to their chest, using their position in the Merchant Sailor’s Guild to ensure that their tiny clique would be in positions where they could cause this harm. We are currently investigating their relatives and colleagues to attempt to ensure that we’ve rooted out the entire traitorous crew.”
