Turn 18 - Advisors
The entire affair with Griffin’s Run Shipping is starting to give you a serious headache. It had already looked convoluted and intricate enough from the initial barebones briefing, as you read more details it just becomes worse.
From the documents reviewed by your investigators, corporate was planning on converting their two smallest docks into full size automated facilities sized so as to require the same total number of workers, rather than justifying any downsizing. In addition it appears that the long-term plan was for aggressive growth in capacity, again rather than downsizing, in an attempt to drive down costs enough via sheer volume that they’d be able to return to profitability. There are even long-term plans to convert most of the docks into Dropship handling facilities for cargo dropships which land in the water and taxi to the dock.
Moreover, according to the message logs, a notification and request for a meeting to discuss these plans had in fact been sent to the senior union rep… who never responded and who insists that he never received it, in between strident demands that the executives be punished for trying to pull a fast one.
You initially decide to send enforcement teams from Justice to… escort… the principles to a neutral arbitration meeting as they should have done in the first place once the dispute began.
Said meetings prove to be utterly useless, or even worse than useless. The arbitrator, a highly experienced veteran of previous labor disputes is not able to even get a word in edgewise as the two sides simply yell at each other without seeming to be giving a single solitary good goddamn about what the other is saying in response.
So you decide to get involved more directly. You bring your favorite office chair (well, your kids favorite office chair, when you let them play with it in your study) which is so large that it quite effectively hides you from view when you turn it to face away from the table.
Underneath the massive conference table lurks Bastet, assigned the duty simply because Sekhmet is far too large.
So when the executives and the union reps enter, and immediately pause as they notice the absence of the usual arbitrator, you keep silent. Perhaps something will come out if they think they’re alone that your investigators hadn’t caught on to.
And boy does it ever… both sides immediately start ripping into each other, as expected… but not about anything to do with the company or the labor dispute. Instead, both sides seem to be in extremely high dudgeon about what sounds to you to be a family dispute.
As far as you can figure out, it looks like the CEO’s daughter is actually married to the son of the head Union rep. Moreover, as far as you can tell most of the combatants are actually related to each other. And something happened at a family get together that has set all of them at each other's throats.
You haven’t the foggiest idea what it was… and you are seeing red.
You lightly tap your foot on the floor, signalling Bastet, who promptly growls.
A spine-tingling, stomach-churning, throat-curdling growl that cuts through the argument like a hot knife through butter.
You wait a beat, before Bastet chuffs, still sounding incredibly menacing, before you slowly turn around and simply glare at everybody.
“You were warned to settle this matter before I got involved.” you say flatly, eyes flashing.
“I am now involved.”
Bastet practically flows out from underneath the table and sits up next to you, before pointedly beginning to lick her paws, each claw extending and being inspected minutely.
You slap the arm of the chair, but keep your voice level and icy.
“And now to find out that it appears this entire useless waste of time has been caused because you immature children got into a spat and are now all pouting in your corners waiting for Mommy to tell you to behave.”
You lean back in your chair, bringing your fingers together into a steeple in front of your face, glaring angrily.
“Behave. And tell me what in God’s name is serious enough to cause you imbeciles to nearly bring down the entire economy because you are in a snit.”
They at least have the good grace to look rather sheepish at this.
“Well, I’m waiting.” you snap, tapping your toe on the floor, still glaring through your fingers at them while Bastet growls again in counterpoint.
It turns out that it was an utterly ridiculous dispute over, of all things, who ate all the brownies at the last family picnic that somehow metastasized into them not talking to each other, deleting emails from each other, and a light bulb goes off in your head as you realize that the business email about the dock upgrades had been mistaken for a personal email and probably deletes.
In the end it takes you several hours of yelling, in terms that have Sergeant-Major Ngo nodding along with a bit of pride in her expression as you make full use of the rather colorful vocabulary you’d learned from her and the other NCOs.
By the time you are done, you have them sheepishly apologizing and promising to behave themselves, so you count that as a win. On your way out the door, you pass one final judgement.
“And no brownies for any of you until you finish fixing this mess!”
On your way to the armored hovercraft you had taken to the offices, the good sergeant-major makes a comment that utterly freezes your blood.
“You sounded just like bà, you know.” she says.
“I’m not old enough to be bà!” you promptly protest.
She has the audacity to laugh at you for this.
The next day you and Willis take the kids to the next of Jeremy’s Junior League races. The racing is quite close, and Jeremy takes home the win. But that isn’t the highlight of the afternoon.
No, that honor goes to Thanh and Sarah, who had gone with a few of their little friends ‘exploring’ a wooded copse near the track that lent the location a beautiful ambience. When they don’t return in time for the start of Jeremy’s heat you contact their security detail, who inform you that the girls had fallen into a large pool of mud and were being taken to be cleaned up once they were retrieved.
The transmission abruptly ends, then returns with an urgent request for backup.
Your sphincters clench, only to relax when the requests specified a ‘technical retrieval team’ as backup, and the trooper on the security detail relays to you that Thanh had found ‘something metallic’ in the mud pit that they’d not been able to identify.
On your way home from the race you get a call from the retrieval team… the metallic object was a rifle. Specifically a Mauser 960 Assault System. Despite being caked with mud from having been buried for over 200 years, it appears to be in nearly perfect condition.
You immediately order it to be sent over to the university research labs for examination.
A few days later your favorite time of year comes about. Not Christmas, not Easter, not even First Landing, but… BUDGET TIME!
Please, contain your enthusiasm with appropriate decorum.
General Potter speaks first, his voice rumbling like crashing rocks from somewhere in the abyss. “Your Majesty, I have several recommendations that will be highly useful for the future growth and capability of the Armed Forces. First of all, there should be a high priority on completing the Battlemech Training Battalion. We’ll only ever be able to man as many units as we have in the training battalion in a single budget cycle, so filling it out will have long term benefits. Secondly, we need to complete the Mechwarrior Training Center in order to make best use of the training battalion.”
“Finally, we should consider completing other Training Center’s so that we can boost the capability of our entire force. Once we have done so, we’ll be able to further expand the Aerie, potentially making it a proper degree-granting institution in addition to Griffin’s Roost University.”
Bridget is lookin as perky and bouncy as ever, as evidently the reverses and challenges of the last year haven’t dented her confidence one bit.
“Your Majesty! We’ve got some important things that we could do to improve the economy and the overall well being of the planet so I think we should do them since we’ll be finishing up the harbors and getting access to all that titanium so our economy can take the expense so I recommend that we improve our environmental laws which I know the grifftigers would really appreciate and then we also should think about making additional factories for both the Ambush and for our ASFs so as to not be as vulnerable to single knockout attacks also we might want to expand our current ASF factories too.”
She manages all of that without breathing a single time.
You deliberately ask her to repeat herself… slower. She does so, having to take considerable effort in the process, but at least you were able to understand all of that this time.
Dr Young barely cracks a smile at that. She’s now the oldest member of your advisory team, after all. “Your Majesty, there are two things that the Foreign and Cultural Affairs Ministry can do for you that we recommend. First is that we are prepared to start the anti-drug campaign that has been discussed in the past, and second it might be a good idea to make a personal appeal from the Throne to calm any issues between labor and management.”
Professor Chapman nods in agreement “There are several priorities on our end, first extending governmental facilities and control over the new ports, assuming that they are completed this year, and I would strongly recommend holding several town halls to address labor issues with the public before we make any further decisions in that regard.”
Doctor Palmer is smiling almost as much as Bridget. “Your Majesty, can we hire your daughters to prospect for LosTech in the ruins? Because that 960 is in perfect condition and can be very easily stripped down and reverse engineered! Sure they’re a bit heavy, but they are the peak of Star League small arms!”
She takes a deep breath. “But all of this will have to wait for the labs to be cleared of current projects, which hopefully should be this year.” She grimaces a bit at that admission.
Harry and Janet look at each other, then at you, and Harry starts. “Your Majesty, we have more prisoners now to interrogate, so I strongly recommend we focus all of our efforts on the intel side into that project.”
Janet nods. “On this end, we’ve got… options. First, with apologies to Dr Palmer, we could shut the labs down for the year while my investigative teams go over everything with a fine-toothed comb to search for any shenanigans, or we could initiate meetings with stakeholders about revisions and updates to labor laws.” she shrugs. “Your choice, girlfriend.”
