Turn 63 - Legionus ab Comae
You are minding your own business in your office when your daughter Sarah bursts in without so much as knocking. Still dressed in mourning clothes, she is looking incredibly determined.
What follows is an hour of being yelled at by your historian daughter, without being able to get a word in edgewise. She is insisting that absolutely no surveys or studies of TAS Plumbata take place without her and her department being in charge, lest any historical details be lost to ‘the fumbling and flailing about of mere scientists’.
Considering that you’d already written out orders to that effect, they are sitting in plain sight on your desk, and you’d been about to call her to see if she wanted to handle it personally or delegate it to her deputy chair over at the History Department of Griffin’s Roost University, you find this rather amusing. You’d seen this level of passion from all of your kids at various times, usually over some pet issue or concern, but Sarah had always been far more controlled about it all.
You wait until she’s run out of steam, then simply pick up the already signed orders, hand them over, and ask your now quite embarrassed daughter if there’s anything else.
Trolling your kids is so much fun.
There’s a fairly strong earthquake in the vicinity of the capital of Nowy Gdansk. Minimal damage is suffered, thankfully. The faultline in question was known about, and measures had been taken to ensure buildings would be able to survive up to a magnitude 9 earthquake, and this was only a 7.5. The largest aftershock is a 5.2 about a day later. The avalanches triggered by the seismic activity are rather more exciting, as they occur in an area loaded with ski resorts which at this time of year are very crowded. Thankfully again the safety planning paid off with the resorts taking the warnings of the seismologists very seriously. There were less than a dozen serious injuries among the skiers as the slopes were closed, with only a few rebels sneaking out to their ultimate detriment.
And then it’s your favorite event of the year, the budget meetings.
General Stewart leads things off. “Your Majesty, I doubt that there will ever come a briefing where we don’t ask for more production capacity, and this one is no different. Strategic materials, mech production, and ASF production are all priorities. We understand that there is a free DoME team available, and we would like to strongly urge that a new megafactory complex devoted to mechs be built on Nowy Gdansk.”
Jeremy next takes the podium. “Your Majesty, the majority of our production requests this year will be to fill out the new TO&E. Going forward we will be requesting production to field full brigades. We will also be setting up the garrison for New Capricorn as well as slightly expanding the Aerie training force. Aside from filling out 2 Cavalry Brigades and 3 Infantry Brigades along with our first Imperial Guard brigade, we will be procuring 2 new Armored Brigades. We will also be filling out 2 Corps integrated units by purchasing 6 regiments of Corps artillery”
He brings up a chart of procurement requests.
- 4 Armored Cavalry Regiment
- 1 Light Horse Regiment
- 1 Light Training Regiment
- 4 Standard Mech Regiment
- 1 Armored Regiment
- 8 Mechanized Regiment
- 6 Corps Artillery Regiment
- 1 Imperial Guard Regiment
- 10 Garrison Regiments
- 6 CAS Regiments
- 2 Mech Hunter Regiments
He then looks at his notes. “One reason that we are hoping to boost our mech production capacity is that we are currently testing a new Brigade organization over at the Aerie, based on SLDF records. We’ve long relied on combined arms, the setup we are testing at the moment takes that up a notch, and if the exercises work out, will be our setup going forward. In order to take maximum advantage of it, however, we need to be able to produce more heavy mechs, and if we want to combine it with line breaking assault units, we’ll need even more production.”
General Dora “Powerpoint” Reyes is up next, with a powerpoint. “Your Majesty, the only new procurement request from the aerospace forces is for a planetary defense wing to be deployed to New Capricorn once the colony is established there. If there is sufficient ferro-aluminium available after dropship construction we would like to also request a pair of Interceptor Wings to be based on Nowa Warszawa and Calliope IV.”
Thanh is up next, and she doesn’t bother with a powerpoint at all. Instead she rolls out the old flipchart that Admiral Benjamin had loved.
- Regular Dropships - 54 total slips available
- Large Dropships - 40 total slips available
- Production Proposal
- Make use of half of available slipways to re-establish a yearly cadence of dropship construction.
- 27 Regular Dropships
- 20 Large Dropships
- Regular Dropships (27)
- 27 Bainbridge-class Parasite Destroyers
- Large Dropships (20)
- 5 Majestic-class Parasite Battleships
- 5 Independence-class Parasite Carriers
- 5 Newport-class Landing Ship - Regiment (Mech)
- 5 Tarawa-class Landing Ship - Regiment (Vehicle)
- Jumpship (2)
- 2 Caravel-class Jumpships
“The
Bainbridges will be deployed as system defense pickets in conjunction with
White Towers, the
Majestics will be deployed to Griff’s Leap to strengthen the defenses there, and we strongly recommend constructing a
White Tower in that system to further lock down our control of the lines of communication to the NRI against the pirates. And finally the
Independence-class vessels are intended to operate in conjunction with our future Warships as their primary parasites.” she explains, pacing a little behind the lectern. “The
Newport and
Tarawa class vessels, respectively, are our primary offensive transports. We will be procuring more
Newport-C logistics vessels next year, and thereafter alternate standard and logistics variants. I have my staff working on a Request for Proposals for a combined arms transport to replace the
Tarawa, but that is at least a year away.”
General Stewart reclaims the podium. “Your Majesty, I must stress once more the importance of continuously boosting our production capabilities across the board.”
At that, the ever-chipper Bridget can’t restrain herself, and starts talking even before General Stewart manages to sit down. “Your Majesty! We got a DoME team all ready to get started on building that megafactory, just give us the word! And we can build mech and ASF factories too, and more strategic materials, and new yards, and everything else you might want us to build! We also have reorganized and restructured somewhat to account for growth, which will allow us to do things like subsidize transportation costs for workers moving between our various systems and planets thus allowing us to spread out our growth more, making us less vulnerable to black swan events.”
Isoroku is a sea of calm besides the hyper Bridget. “Your Majesty, the Diplomatic Service has also been reorganizing for the future. To that end, we have several new options for you to fund if you so desire. We are now in a position to promote external trade, as well as attempt to attract new immigration from polities that we have friendly relations with.”
The big greying bear of a Pole sitting next to the skinny little asian Foreign Minister laughs. “Well, Your Majesty, your political teams apparently aren’t the trend setters on reorgs like we thought we were. But yes, we reorganized a bit as well. In addition to the usual schmoozing with those schmucks in Parliament, we can also engage in direct political outreach to the citizens, promoting things like health, education, and encouraging more hiring.”
You’d met Dr Bryant a few times, when Mary had been ill or unable to make a meeting. She looks rather more uncomfortable than usual, but then again this is her first time in the Big Chair for her Ministry, rather than second fiddle.
“Your Majesty, we have a number of new projects available, and two free research teams. From the Crimson Storm we have a small project to improve our cryostasis capacity, along with projects to study TAS Plumbata and fully parse and analyze the plans for the
Dart-class Light Cruiser with an eye towards bringing it into production as our first Warship class.”
She checks her notes. “Your Majesty, we recommend the two projects related to the
Dart, studying TAS Plumbata will give us very useful insights into Compact K-F Cores, alongside the enormous historical benefits that I am certain you’ve been made more than aware of. Analyzing and parsing the plans for the vessel will actually kill multiple birds with but a single stone, as a preliminary reading of them shows production data suitable for a new, heavy capital missile, the NL/55, and the class 30 Naval Autocannon.”
Harry is up next, looking rather more cheerful than usual despite a heavy cast on one arm. He catches you looking at that, and grins. “A reminder to be careful when helping with home renovations, Your Majesty. Got just a bit overconfident when tearing down a chimney and had to be rescued from under a load of bricks.” he says. “Regardless, professionally I have one project for your consideration, implementing full COINTEL screening of every HPG message transmitted in the Empire.”
Janet rolls her eyes from where she is sitting next to Harry. “I’ve got a few projects here, but for this year I recommend initiating a new round of reviews and rationalizations of regulations and laws passed in the last ten years so we can maintain a nice compact legal code.”
