Turn 52 - The World I See Is So Much Bigger
Turn 52 - The World I See Is So Much Bigger
You do get some… interesting news. The Unicorn has returned with detailed system survey data. The Calliope system has seven planets and a single dense asteroid belt. The initial transmission of the data, however, sets off some mental warning bells, especially the bit about wanting to give the full report in person.
But you approve it in the end.
Calliope I is little more than a massively irradiated, alternately baked and broiled, rock in space. It’s barely spherical, at the absolute lower limit for a ‘planet’ body. It’s so close to the star that it is effectively useless, even staying in the shadow of Calliope I isn’t sufficient to deal with the intense radiation environment.
Calliope II is a bit more useful, although not colonizable anytime soon. The atmosphere is incredibly toxic, temperatures are ridiculously high, and the surface has ‘seas’ of molten sulfur. Mining operations may be feasible, as preliminary surveys show concentrations of light and heavy metals easily accessible on the surface, although the work would need to be done via remote controlled robotic systems.
Then Admiral Kirk skips Calliope III, saying he’ll get back to it. You bestow your best quelling Ba look upon him, which rolls off of him like water off a duck’s back.
Calliope IV is a ‘super Earth’, and fully inhabitable with minimal to no terraforming required, beyond the need for prospective colonists to acclimate to a gravity well about one and a half times stronger than ‘normal’. The climate is described as ‘Continental’, with moderate seasons. There are inhabitants already there, survivors of a failed colony that have regressed to steam age levels of technology. There is one massive moon and two smaller ones, the large one actually supports an atmosphere and is habitable, although only barely as there is little water present.
The locals on Calliope IV appear to have embraced steam, from orbit they spotted railroads, steam cars, steam boats, steam tractors, steam everything and everywhere. No electricity, for some reason, they appear to use coal gas for lighting. Admiral Kirk held back from landing, wanting to wait for an official decision on how to proceed.
Calliope V is just outside of the habitable zone and is not quite large enough to support an atmosphere. There are signs that it once had one, long ago, and there may have been liquid water, but that was millions of years ago at best. The planet has little in the way of heavy metals, but initial surveys show it has very large deposits of the base materials for advanced strategic materials, making it a valuable mining resource.
The lone asteroid belt is rather dense, but the initial survey showed that it was nearly completely composed of carboniferous asteroids of nearly no commercial or strategic value.
Calliope VI is rather further out than expected, but that is due to it being a Super Jupiter, albeit one of shockingly low density. The rings are spectacular visually, however, and one of the many moons possesses enormous methane ‘seas’.
Calliope VII is a Saturn-sized gas giant, with a ring system even more spectacular than Calliope VI, but oddly enough only a half dozen or so very small moons.
Then Admiral Kirk smirks. “I promised you I’d get back to Calliope III” he says, his smirk becoming positively devilish.
He plays orbital surveillance video… showing a herd of honest to god dinosaurs, looking like Apatosaurus to your admittedly inexpert eye, moving across a plain, with massive predators that look like T Rexes stalking about. Flights of pterosaurs have been caught by the cameras, and in the oceans there are signs of plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.
There are multiple continents, each with their own distinctive species.
“We can’t prove it, but one of our scientists on board is a bit of a dinosaur geek and tells me that while there is great visual similarity, there are also differences from what paleontologists think Terra’s dinosaurs looked, and he strongly suspects that this is purely a case of convergent evolution in action. But… dinosaurs.” he grins boyishly. “We didn’t land, out of an abundance of caution. After all, I’ve read Jurassic Park, and it’s frightening in the dark.”
You can’t help but laugh at that.
You decide to organize a secret expedition to Calliope III, having Sarah find a number of academics who have studied paleontology on a theoretical basis as well as a mix of xeno-zoologists and xeno-biologists, many from the various zoos. You get them to sign NDAs, assign a number of guards who are due for relatively light duty after the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost, make a point to not tell any of them where they are going or what they’ll find, and convince Admiral Kirk and his exploration people to keep their lips sealed while recording the reactions once the secret is out.
Hey, you need some entertainment too!
And just in time too, because it’s now BUDGET TIME.
General Stewart looks unhappy. She’d tried to resign right after the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost, which you’d rather forcefully declined. “Your Majesty, we are in a hole, but hopefully our enemies are in deeper holes. We will need to improve our production capacity, especially for Battlemechs and strategic materials.” she then turns the podium over to Jeremy in his medical chair.
“Forgive me for not standing.” he says, somehow managing to make light of his wounds, although the smile doesn’t reach his eyes and he looks truly grim and terrible, a wounded war god. “I’m afraid that I’m going to steal a little bit of General Reyes thunder, but following our preliminary analysis of the battle we let out a contract for the first conventional fighter in Griffin’s Roost service in over 50 years. The Thunderbolt Anti-Mech Attack Aircraft masses 50 tons and is equipped with an ultra-type class 20 185mm autocannon with 9 tons of ammunition in addition to an anti-missile system in the tail. It has V/STOVL capability and is as well armored as we can make a conventional air-breathing fighter. Lee Aerospace is prepared to begin construction on an emergency basis at no additional costs to the Crown.”
QM NOTE - the new CAS tag denotes a conventional fighter armed with an AC/20 (either Ultra, LB, or regular). Units tagged as CAS can only deploy if the Air Superiority flag is TRUE, and grants units with the tag +10 Attack/Defense
“Now, I’m sure it hasn’t been missed by anybody here, but we are in a devil of a hole in terms of our ground forces. We can either panic and start buying anything available, or be judicious and ensure that we are purchasing the right things. We are planning a complete restructuring of the Standard Armored Regiment, although the current ones will remain as they are for cost and training reasons. There will, in the future, be an Armored Regiment, a Mechanized Regiment, and a Cavalry Scout Regiment rather than trying to combine all roles in a single regiment. We believe that our current equipment will suffice for the Armored Regiment, but the precise organizational chart has not yet been settled. New vehicles will be required for the other two units, however.”
He brings up a graphic on the display. “For now, we recommend the following. The immediate replacement of all three regiments of 1st RRF. There aren’t enough survivors to form a useful cadre, so the formation will effectively be fresh, but will inherit the battle honors and history, and I am certain that they will rise to meet those expectations. This will require the purchase of three Rapid Reaction Regiments to reform the Brigade. I will have candidates for the new CO of the unit on your desk before it stands up, although it will be very difficult to replace General Dunn. I also recommend the immediate purchase of the Thunderbolts. Unlike conventional ASFs they can be carried in regular vehicle bays, according to the engineers, and our plans are to organize them in a Flight/Squadron/Wing/Regiment arrangement. We recommend the immediate purchase of a single regiment for testing purposes.”
“Turning to Mech production. We can immediately produce one Standard Mech Regiment and one Assault Regiment, which we strongly recommend we do. We further recommend upgrading the existing factories, especially Factory 13, 49, 50, and 51. We also strongly urge building additional mech factories on Griffon IV. In the future I’d like to be able to stand here and say ‘We need an additional Brigade’ and have the production capacity to do it.” he manages a thin, almost savage, smile. A smile which then becomes positively… evil.
“And finally, we propose the creation of a dedicated Special Forces Command, dedicated to special operations behind enemy lines. We have no indications that the Dracs have the sort of dedicated sensor suites required to defeat our vehicular stealth armor or our special operations battle armor suits. When we do strike back at them, such an advantage would be devastating.”
For a brief moment your son looks like some of the portraits of your grandfather, and you double your determination to do anything you can to drag him out of that dark place once he’s healed up.
General Reyes is up next with her powerpoints. “Your Majesty, we lost the entire aerospace garrison of Griffin’s Roost in the fighting, a situation which needs to be rectified as soon as possible.” she says, referring to the slides as she speaks. “Two Planetary Defense Wings and a single Patrol Wing, 180 Aerospace Fighters in total. Gone. We will need to replace them, however doing so in one lump will require 62.5% of our total production of Ferro-Aluminium Armor and just over 38% of our double-heat sink production. Combined with the python lump of dropships that will be required this year, this will be unsustainable. Our recommendation is to procure a single Planetary Defense Wing this year, a Patrol Wing next year, and the final Planetary Defense Wing in two years, meanwhile focusing on increasing production of vital strategic resources. Fortunately with only a Newport and a Newport-C commissioning this year we will not need to procure any fighters to fill those flight decks. We recommend upgrading orbital foundry 18, 23, 30 and 31 this year in addition to foundries 26 through 29.”
Admiral Benjamin is in the room, but so is Thanh… and your daughter is the one who comes up next.
She does shoot her older brother a quick glance, but then focuses on you. “Your Majesty, we have a large number of slips available for production this year, so to make this simple I’ve prepared a recommended chart. The recommendations are based on our preliminary combat review.”
And she does, although blessedly she hasn’t been infected with Powerpointitis.
“The Coyote-class Fast Attack Transport lacks the ability to support embarked forces for any length of time. Project Roadrunner is intended to address this situation. The current design is in final detail work, however I do have the current specifications available.”
You frown a little as you look at the image of the aerodyne, there is something… “Are all of the Vehicle Bays on the top?” you ask quizzically.
“Indeed, they are designed to act as VTOL landing pads while the Roadrunner hovers, allowing for the rapid deployment of the embarked SpecOps Battalion without the transport needing to land, and likewise facilitating in-flight recovery of the same.” Thanh explains.
You nod, pursing your lips. These are pretty specialized transports, but considering the mission profile they need to be. “Very well.”
Thanh smiles slightly, then continues with the presentation.
You nod, smiling slightly, nice to see that Thanh is thinking of how best to strike back.
Thanh nods back. “We will also be reorganizing our fleet assets. The intention behind the current setup is sound, but lacks agility. Units are trained in large fairly homogeneous fleet formations, making it difficult to shuffle them around on the fly. Therefore, we will be reorganizing into Task Forces and Task Groups, with the individual sub formations forming into Fleets as needed. The exact composition of these units is currently being determined.”
She then takes a deep breath. “And finally we have several new designs for consideration which are preliminary lessons learned. Two different missile ships, one from the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Werks and one from Majeur Electrique. They are complementary designs, and we hope to put them both into production. They would both occupy regular slips, thankfully.”
With that Thanh sits back down, giving her brother another look as she does so.
General Stewart stands back up. “Your Majesty, I know that all of the recommendations for foundry and factory expansion will be difficult to manage, but we wouldn’t recommend it if it weren’t important.”
Next up is a subdued Bridget, who looks like somebody took away her coffee and replaced it with quaaludes. In other words, she’s talking at a normal pace rather than sounding like an excited chipmunk.
That is very worrisome.
“Your Majesty. To be blunt, Castor is an absolute mess. Rebuilding there is going to take a long time, and we don’t yet even have a firm enough grasp on everything that is lost to make any grand plans for reconstruction. Interior is ready to support any building project needed, my people tell me it won’t be until 1Q of next year that we’ll have enough data to make a reasonable plan otherwise.” she sighs, something she never does. “So I’d recommend putting all of my people who aren’t engaged in the assessment work or DoME projects to work on the factory and foundry upgrades mentioned by the military.”
Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, our salvage teams have managed to repair 3 Drac Achilles enough for it to be viable to dock them to the Unicorn for transport to the New Rasalhaguians, with your permission I would like to accompany them in order to discuss our future relations. Beyond that, I really have nothing for you, the Pan Griffon Games are supposed to take place this year, but due to the attack they have been cancelled, unfortunately all of my cultural affairs people are currently working on untangling that mess.”
And then comes Jake. “Your Majesty, the arrests and the attack have unsettled Parliament something fierce, but in a manner that I believe will ultimately be to our benefit, if I could be permitted to be so crass. In the short term it might be a good time to push for an expansion of Bridget’s department, so as to give us a bit more flexibility in regards to rebuilding projects.” Then he smiles slightly. “And, Your Majesty, could you please stop humming the theme from Jurassic Park? I know you’re hiding something, but I doubt Mary has cloned you some dinosaurs.”
That actually causes you to laugh and releases some of the tension in the room. Good ole Jake.
Mary is up next. “Your Majesty, I’m not going to waste your time with a presentation. There are two obvious projects for us to pursue, in light of what just happened. First, Medium Battle Armor, which will be helped a bit by the salvaged suits from the pirates, and second Heavy Quad Battlemechs or Advanced Communications, the first because of how effective our medium and light quad mechs were in the battle, and the second because I suspect it will help our researchers efforts with the HPG.”
Harry looks exhausted. “Your Majesty, we have been exhaustively canvassing the battlefield, the route taken by the Dracs, and the area around the landing zone. So far we have found no evidence of Drac DEST infiltrators. The local populace has been very helpful in our work and I would like your permission to publicly thank them for their vigilance. As it stands, I am 80% confident that there are no infiltrators left behind from the Dracs.”
Janet is busy overseeing the trials, so she’s not present, but she did send you a small compilation video of numerous nervous public defenders trying to make plea deals for the oligarchs and their hangers-on, and getting absolutely nowhere. It’s glorious.
You do get some… interesting news. The Unicorn has returned with detailed system survey data. The Calliope system has seven planets and a single dense asteroid belt. The initial transmission of the data, however, sets off some mental warning bells, especially the bit about wanting to give the full report in person.
But you approve it in the end.
Calliope I is little more than a massively irradiated, alternately baked and broiled, rock in space. It’s barely spherical, at the absolute lower limit for a ‘planet’ body. It’s so close to the star that it is effectively useless, even staying in the shadow of Calliope I isn’t sufficient to deal with the intense radiation environment.
Calliope II is a bit more useful, although not colonizable anytime soon. The atmosphere is incredibly toxic, temperatures are ridiculously high, and the surface has ‘seas’ of molten sulfur. Mining operations may be feasible, as preliminary surveys show concentrations of light and heavy metals easily accessible on the surface, although the work would need to be done via remote controlled robotic systems.
Then Admiral Kirk skips Calliope III, saying he’ll get back to it. You bestow your best quelling Ba look upon him, which rolls off of him like water off a duck’s back.
Calliope IV is a ‘super Earth’, and fully inhabitable with minimal to no terraforming required, beyond the need for prospective colonists to acclimate to a gravity well about one and a half times stronger than ‘normal’. The climate is described as ‘Continental’, with moderate seasons. There are inhabitants already there, survivors of a failed colony that have regressed to steam age levels of technology. There is one massive moon and two smaller ones, the large one actually supports an atmosphere and is habitable, although only barely as there is little water present.
The locals on Calliope IV appear to have embraced steam, from orbit they spotted railroads, steam cars, steam boats, steam tractors, steam everything and everywhere. No electricity, for some reason, they appear to use coal gas for lighting. Admiral Kirk held back from landing, wanting to wait for an official decision on how to proceed.
| [] | Prime Directive! | Calliope IV will not be colonized or contacted |
| [] | Conquistador! | Oh how nice, a ready made population! Now conquer their steam loving backsides |
| [] | Diplomacy! | Contact the locals, talk to them, find out what happened, what they want, etc, then make a decision on how to proceed. |
Calliope V is just outside of the habitable zone and is not quite large enough to support an atmosphere. There are signs that it once had one, long ago, and there may have been liquid water, but that was millions of years ago at best. The planet has little in the way of heavy metals, but initial surveys show it has very large deposits of the base materials for advanced strategic materials, making it a valuable mining resource.
The lone asteroid belt is rather dense, but the initial survey showed that it was nearly completely composed of carboniferous asteroids of nearly no commercial or strategic value.
Calliope VI is rather further out than expected, but that is due to it being a Super Jupiter, albeit one of shockingly low density. The rings are spectacular visually, however, and one of the many moons possesses enormous methane ‘seas’.
Calliope VII is a Saturn-sized gas giant, with a ring system even more spectacular than Calliope VI, but oddly enough only a half dozen or so very small moons.
Then Admiral Kirk smirks. “I promised you I’d get back to Calliope III” he says, his smirk becoming positively devilish.
He plays orbital surveillance video… showing a herd of honest to god dinosaurs, looking like Apatosaurus to your admittedly inexpert eye, moving across a plain, with massive predators that look like T Rexes stalking about. Flights of pterosaurs have been caught by the cameras, and in the oceans there are signs of plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.
There are multiple continents, each with their own distinctive species.
“We can’t prove it, but one of our scientists on board is a bit of a dinosaur geek and tells me that while there is great visual similarity, there are also differences from what paleontologists think Terra’s dinosaurs looked, and he strongly suspects that this is purely a case of convergent evolution in action. But… dinosaurs.” he grins boyishly. “We didn’t land, out of an abundance of caution. After all, I’ve read Jurassic Park, and it’s frightening in the dark.”
You can’t help but laugh at that.
You decide to organize a secret expedition to Calliope III, having Sarah find a number of academics who have studied paleontology on a theoretical basis as well as a mix of xeno-zoologists and xeno-biologists, many from the various zoos. You get them to sign NDAs, assign a number of guards who are due for relatively light duty after the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost, make a point to not tell any of them where they are going or what they’ll find, and convince Admiral Kirk and his exploration people to keep their lips sealed while recording the reactions once the secret is out.
Hey, you need some entertainment too!
And just in time too, because it’s now BUDGET TIME.
General Stewart looks unhappy. She’d tried to resign right after the Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost, which you’d rather forcefully declined. “Your Majesty, we are in a hole, but hopefully our enemies are in deeper holes. We will need to improve our production capacity, especially for Battlemechs and strategic materials.” she then turns the podium over to Jeremy in his medical chair.
“Forgive me for not standing.” he says, somehow managing to make light of his wounds, although the smile doesn’t reach his eyes and he looks truly grim and terrible, a wounded war god. “I’m afraid that I’m going to steal a little bit of General Reyes thunder, but following our preliminary analysis of the battle we let out a contract for the first conventional fighter in Griffin’s Roost service in over 50 years. The Thunderbolt Anti-Mech Attack Aircraft masses 50 tons and is equipped with an ultra-type class 20 185mm autocannon with 9 tons of ammunition in addition to an anti-missile system in the tail. It has V/STOVL capability and is as well armored as we can make a conventional air-breathing fighter. Lee Aerospace is prepared to begin construction on an emergency basis at no additional costs to the Crown.”
| Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Special |
| Thunderbolt CAS | $284.87 | None | 10 | 20 |
|
QM NOTE - the new CAS tag denotes a conventional fighter armed with an AC/20 (either Ultra, LB, or regular). Units tagged as CAS can only deploy if the Air Superiority flag is TRUE, and grants units with the tag +10 Attack/Defense
“Now, I’m sure it hasn’t been missed by anybody here, but we are in a devil of a hole in terms of our ground forces. We can either panic and start buying anything available, or be judicious and ensure that we are purchasing the right things. We are planning a complete restructuring of the Standard Armored Regiment, although the current ones will remain as they are for cost and training reasons. There will, in the future, be an Armored Regiment, a Mechanized Regiment, and a Cavalry Scout Regiment rather than trying to combine all roles in a single regiment. We believe that our current equipment will suffice for the Armored Regiment, but the precise organizational chart has not yet been settled. New vehicles will be required for the other two units, however.”
He brings up a graphic on the display. “For now, we recommend the following. The immediate replacement of all three regiments of 1st RRF. There aren’t enough survivors to form a useful cadre, so the formation will effectively be fresh, but will inherit the battle honors and history, and I am certain that they will rise to meet those expectations. This will require the purchase of three Rapid Reaction Regiments to reform the Brigade. I will have candidates for the new CO of the unit on your desk before it stands up, although it will be very difficult to replace General Dunn. I also recommend the immediate purchase of the Thunderbolts. Unlike conventional ASFs they can be carried in regular vehicle bays, according to the engineers, and our plans are to organize them in a Flight/Squadron/Wing/Regiment arrangement. We recommend the immediate purchase of a single regiment for testing purposes.”
“Turning to Mech production. We can immediately produce one Standard Mech Regiment and one Assault Regiment, which we strongly recommend we do. We further recommend upgrading the existing factories, especially Factory 13, 49, 50, and 51. We also strongly urge building additional mech factories on Griffon IV. In the future I’d like to be able to stand here and say ‘We need an additional Brigade’ and have the production capacity to do it.” he manages a thin, almost savage, smile. A smile which then becomes positively… evil.
“And finally, we propose the creation of a dedicated Special Forces Command, dedicated to special operations behind enemy lines. We have no indications that the Dracs have the sort of dedicated sensor suites required to defeat our vehicular stealth armor or our special operations battle armor suits. When we do strike back at them, such an advantage would be devastating.”
For a brief moment your son looks like some of the portraits of your grandfather, and you double your determination to do anything you can to drag him out of that dark place once he’s healed up.
General Reyes is up next with her powerpoints. “Your Majesty, we lost the entire aerospace garrison of Griffin’s Roost in the fighting, a situation which needs to be rectified as soon as possible.” she says, referring to the slides as she speaks. “Two Planetary Defense Wings and a single Patrol Wing, 180 Aerospace Fighters in total. Gone. We will need to replace them, however doing so in one lump will require 62.5% of our total production of Ferro-Aluminium Armor and just over 38% of our double-heat sink production. Combined with the python lump of dropships that will be required this year, this will be unsustainable. Our recommendation is to procure a single Planetary Defense Wing this year, a Patrol Wing next year, and the final Planetary Defense Wing in two years, meanwhile focusing on increasing production of vital strategic resources. Fortunately with only a Newport and a Newport-C commissioning this year we will not need to procure any fighters to fill those flight decks. We recommend upgrading orbital foundry 18, 23, 30 and 31 this year in addition to foundries 26 through 29.”
Admiral Benjamin is in the room, but so is Thanh… and your daughter is the one who comes up next.
She does shoot her older brother a quick glance, but then focuses on you. “Your Majesty, we have a large number of slips available for production this year, so to make this simple I’ve prepared a recommended chart. The recommendations are based on our preliminary combat review.”
And she does, although blessedly she hasn’t been infected with Powerpointitis.
- 40 standard dropship slips
- Light Units
- 15 Defiant
- 15 Troodon
- We will note that we are working on proposals for a Manta Ray armed replacement for the Troodon
- Fleet Units
- 7 Tyrannosaurus
- Transport Units
- Long lead items for 3 ‘Project Roadrunner’ Fast Attack Transports
- Light Units
“The Coyote-class Fast Attack Transport lacks the ability to support embarked forces for any length of time. Project Roadrunner is intended to address this situation. The current design is in final detail work, however I do have the current specifications available.”
| Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
| Roadrunner Fast Attack Transport | $106,142.40 | FAA, DHS | 401 | 251 |
|
You frown a little as you look at the image of the aerodyne, there is something… “Are all of the Vehicle Bays on the top?” you ask quizzically.
“Indeed, they are designed to act as VTOL landing pads while the Roadrunner hovers, allowing for the rapid deployment of the embarked SpecOps Battalion without the transport needing to land, and likewise facilitating in-flight recovery of the same.” Thanh explains.
You nod, pursing your lips. These are pretty specialized transports, but considering the mission profile they need to be. “Very well.”
Thanh smiles slightly, then continues with the presentation.
- 15 Large Dropship slips
- Fleet Units
- 7 Royal Sovereign
- Exploration Units
- 1 Enterprise-A
- 1 Sentinel Scout Cruiser
- Transport Units
- 5 Newport
- 1 Newport-C
- Fleet Units
You nod, smiling slightly, nice to see that Thanh is thinking of how best to strike back.
Thanh nods back. “We will also be reorganizing our fleet assets. The intention behind the current setup is sound, but lacks agility. Units are trained in large fairly homogeneous fleet formations, making it difficult to shuffle them around on the fly. Therefore, we will be reorganizing into Task Forces and Task Groups, with the individual sub formations forming into Fleets as needed. The exact composition of these units is currently being determined.”
She then takes a deep breath. “And finally we have several new designs for consideration which are preliminary lessons learned. Two different missile ships, one from the Imperial Griffon Aerospace Werks and one from Majeur Electrique. They are complementary designs, and we hope to put them both into production. They would both occupy regular slips, thankfully.”
| Name | Cost | Materials | HP | A/D | Specials |
| Atlanta Parasite Missile Cruiser | $116,026.40 | FAA, DHS | 701 | 351 |
|
| Oviraptor Parasite Missile Destroyer | $188,720 | FAA, DHS | 1073 | 723 |
|
With that Thanh sits back down, giving her brother another look as she does so.
General Stewart stands back up. “Your Majesty, I know that all of the recommendations for foundry and factory expansion will be difficult to manage, but we wouldn’t recommend it if it weren’t important.”
Next up is a subdued Bridget, who looks like somebody took away her coffee and replaced it with quaaludes. In other words, she’s talking at a normal pace rather than sounding like an excited chipmunk.
That is very worrisome.
“Your Majesty. To be blunt, Castor is an absolute mess. Rebuilding there is going to take a long time, and we don’t yet even have a firm enough grasp on everything that is lost to make any grand plans for reconstruction. Interior is ready to support any building project needed, my people tell me it won’t be until 1Q of next year that we’ll have enough data to make a reasonable plan otherwise.” she sighs, something she never does. “So I’d recommend putting all of my people who aren’t engaged in the assessment work or DoME projects to work on the factory and foundry upgrades mentioned by the military.”
Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, our salvage teams have managed to repair 3 Drac Achilles enough for it to be viable to dock them to the Unicorn for transport to the New Rasalhaguians, with your permission I would like to accompany them in order to discuss our future relations. Beyond that, I really have nothing for you, the Pan Griffon Games are supposed to take place this year, but due to the attack they have been cancelled, unfortunately all of my cultural affairs people are currently working on untangling that mess.”
And then comes Jake. “Your Majesty, the arrests and the attack have unsettled Parliament something fierce, but in a manner that I believe will ultimately be to our benefit, if I could be permitted to be so crass. In the short term it might be a good time to push for an expansion of Bridget’s department, so as to give us a bit more flexibility in regards to rebuilding projects.” Then he smiles slightly. “And, Your Majesty, could you please stop humming the theme from Jurassic Park? I know you’re hiding something, but I doubt Mary has cloned you some dinosaurs.”
That actually causes you to laugh and releases some of the tension in the room. Good ole Jake.
Mary is up next. “Your Majesty, I’m not going to waste your time with a presentation. There are two obvious projects for us to pursue, in light of what just happened. First, Medium Battle Armor, which will be helped a bit by the salvaged suits from the pirates, and second Heavy Quad Battlemechs or Advanced Communications, the first because of how effective our medium and light quad mechs were in the battle, and the second because I suspect it will help our researchers efforts with the HPG.”
Harry looks exhausted. “Your Majesty, we have been exhaustively canvassing the battlefield, the route taken by the Dracs, and the area around the landing zone. So far we have found no evidence of Drac DEST infiltrators. The local populace has been very helpful in our work and I would like your permission to publicly thank them for their vigilance. As it stands, I am 80% confident that there are no infiltrators left behind from the Dracs.”
| [] | Let Harry do it |
|
| [] | Do it yourself |
|
Janet is busy overseeing the trials, so she’s not present, but she did send you a small compilation video of numerous nervous public defenders trying to make plea deals for the oligarchs and their hangers-on, and getting absolutely nowhere. It’s glorious.
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