Turn 19 Advisors
You grimace as you look over the papers. A recession, a damn recession. The shipping industry was still badly disrupted and this was having a severe effect on the economy. Sure, the immediate crisis had been dealt with, but you needed to consider acting to reduce future occurrences.
Unfortunately this is going to have a significant effect long term irregardless of whatever steps you take. Multiple bad years in a row and the economic upheaval resulting from the popping of several bubbles is causing the overall economic stability to fray a bit. Nothing too serious, but you will have to be more cautious at times when making decisions. If you manage a number of good years in a row this may well reverse itself, but you can’t be certain of that.
Janet, at least, has some good news for you. Alita appears to be exactly what your initial impression of the girl was, a good kid from a solid if not wealthy family. She’s actually in Jeremy’s school, although not in his class, and regularly competes with him for top honors academically. The mother, as you were already aware, owns a commercial construction firm, her father works for the post office.
Janet had snuck a peak at his employee file and she informs you that he’d turned down a number of promotion opportunities in order to keep his family in the same place so that his wife could continue to run and grow her business. You both agree that this speaks well of the man that he’s willing to stay in a fairly low status job just so his wife can shine.
So you decide to simply let things proceed as they will. If this relationship proves to have legs, then Alita would be a fine daughter-in-law, and if not she has the look of a fine young citizen of Griffin’s Roost.
Win-Win.
Obviously your little man gets his wonderful taste in such things from you. Although you were willing to concede that Willis also had excellent taste. OK, maybe it was a team thing, but you are quite proud of Jeremy.
Ultimately you decide that spending a bit extra on the new IFV in order to maximize offensive and defensive capability was worthwhile. You aren’t the keenest on how the turret looks, but overall the vehicle you select more than meets the requirements.
You finance the purchase and equipping of two mechanized infantry regiments out of the funds from the airship routes, with the excess coming from the reserve funds. Both units have stood up and are beginning training.
The Castor/Pollux Scouting Force has been folded into the Mine Security Force. The simplified logistics will have benefits long term, but for now it simply eases the officer shortages you’ve started experiencing which possibly led to the debacle with the RRF.
Speaking about that, the courts-martial had sat and found that ultimately the fault could be best laid down at the systemic level rather than on any one individual. You signed off on a long list of procedural improvements but ultimately you’ll probably need to organize a systematic review of all procurement and operational processes in order to find and disarm any more such ‘bombs’ waiting to go off. It would be extremely expensive, as it would require significant effort from a fairly large team, plus would require industry buy-in at points in order to change procurement methods.
Factions in Parliament, of course, had to stick their nose into things. A bill has passed with bare majorities in both houses which would impose an additional 5% surtax on ‘luxuries’ and a 10% surtax on ‘sinful services.’ with the money to be used for anti-drug, anti-prostitution and anti-alcohol campaigns, with the ultimate endgame being total bans on all three.
[] Agree - +10 support in Lords and Commons, -20 Stability, -50 Stability Change, Tax Rate changes to 15% with all associated growth penalties. Gives modifier ‘Pending Prohibition’, +5 Health
[] Disagree - -10 support in Lords and Commons, gives modifier ‘Prohibition Rejected’
Some geologists at the university publish a paper warning that it is possible that at some point the long thought extinct volcanic caldera at the center of the sub-continent that Griffsport is located on may reawaken, citing seismic studies showing a growing ‘hot spot’ in the mantle underneath the volcano and reanalysis of geologic data showing that this particular volcano has very long periods of inactivity between eruptions.
This paper is hotly disputed at this point, as there is very little evidence either way, however geological studies are now underway and in a few years may have more information. Estimates are that the soonest an eruption could happen would be in hundreds if not thousands of years pretty much push this to very low priority.
And thus begins your favorite time of year. Not tax time, you hate tax time, but budget wrangling time! The sport of Governments everywhere! Fighting over who gets what money, yay!
This year you make Jeremy sit in on the meetings with you, despite how boring you expect them to be. He needs to start learning.
General Potter is a crafty old officer, though, and takes shameless advantage over you being slightly distracted in order to ‘Pull Something’™. You find yourself braced to attention as the old coot pins new rank pins on your shoulders. You can’t tell what he promoted you to, but Sergeant-Major Ngo is snickering, so you know it’s bad. Jeremy is also stifling giggles, and by the way the old general gives him a high-five you realize that the two of them set you up.
Obviously this is because of your loving husband.
It takes you a bit, but you manage to figure out that the old man has pinned colonel’s insignias on your shoulders, damn him.
Of course, he then just has to get serious before you can adequately express your displeasure by having him given the Tyler treatment.
That sobers you for a moment, Tyler is still alive in retirement, but his health is visibly fading quickly.
“Your Majesty.” comes the rumbling voice. “We have several direct priorities within the military, and several things that will be covered in Ms Doyle’s presentation. Thanks to the purchase of those IFVs we are in solid shape at the moment in terms of ground forces. What we now need is to complete the Annex so we can maximize our training capabilities. In addition, with the results of that recent unpleasantness with the RRF we really should take the time to do a top down review of everything, clear out any deadwood and make sure that policies, procedures, and training are all working together smoothly. I do not recommend any serious expansion of our forces at this time, beyond a further lance of mechs for the Cadre.”
He takes a sip of his water. “Now that the Cadre has a full strength mechanized regiment available, I believe it would be appropriate to make them responsible for general garrison work on Capricorn, with the existing garrison shifted to Castor. 1st Armored would remain in Griffsport and the RRF would be available to shift to cover any of the continents.”
Bridget pipes up cheerfully “We can do two big things first we can expand the space station which will be really expensive but we’ll badly need it if we’re going to continue research and it will give us many more options for space activities we also should build some more factories like one for goshawks and another for the new dropships and maybe get the research crews to work on spheroid dropships so that we can have them to because they make for excellent cargo haulers both for civil and military use and that could become really important because troops and tanks are just really special cargo when you think about it we also could start really exploiting Castor and building cities at resource nodes plus starting to build infrastructure and if the fortification work that the General is working on finishes soon that will extend automatically to the new settlements and that would really help people feel safe which is very important for productivity.”
One… long… sentence. You are certain she never even paused to breath. It’s exhausting.
Luckily you have a cup of Janet’s coffee to help reduce the blood levels in your caffeine system.
Dr Young smiles at that, patting Bridget’s hand, then addresses you. “We stand ready to start advertising for colonists to Castor, your Majesty, beyond that, the anti-drug campaign is available as well.”
Professor Chapman is over on Castor at the moment overseeing final touches on the new government buildings. “We don’t have all that much on this end, Your Majesty, beyond being ready to start building out government structures over on Pollux when the port finally finishes.”
Dr Palmer is her usual ebullient self. “Your Majesty, we still have so many things to research! Spheroid Dropships is a big one, also reverse engineering that suitcase nuke, and don’t get me started on Ferro-Fibrous Armor and Endo-Steel! Oh, and the cannons too!”
Harry Owens just sends you a note from where he is overseeing the interrogations “Intelligence has nothing to recommend at this time.”
Janet, bless her, has plenty of coffee for you and hot chocolate for Jeremy. “Well, I got a few options for you” she says cheerfully. “Biggie is extending law and order to Castor and later Pollux, something we really need to do unless we want crime to blow up into a big problem.”
