*thus ends your weekly edification post: Back to work with you!*
Yessah Massah, ah be doin’ jus’ dat, Massah.
Chapter 29
Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
April 11th, 3016
The conventional forces we’d been waiting for hadn’t spared the horses.
I know I certainly hadn’t been expecting them for at least another couple weeks at the earliest, but apparently Katrina’s reputation was extremely favorable among the less prestigious branches of the armed forces. It was the only reason I could come up with for why the 47th Arcturan Heavy Armor Regiment and the 132nd Arcturan Panzergrenadiers had put on such a hustle getting to an extremely out of the way duty station.
Or, at least, that had been my assumption as someone who knew nothing about the history of the units in question. Fortunately, I had a Julia to fill me in.
“-rom the time when Arcturus was still the capital of the Commonwealth,” she continued, giving me the Cliff Notes version of the 47th’s history. “It’s something they’re justifiably proud of. Despite frequently deploying alongside the Arcturan Guard, they have an unbroken service record. It’s been a near thing a couple times, but the unit has always been rebuilt rather than retired in the face of losses. Their current commander is Colonel Walter Maier who is known for his defense of Nuevo Madrid on Fatima.
“He repelled an assault by the 6th Benjamin Regulars and inflicted ruinous losses on them. The entire unit had to be pulled back to Benjamin for rebuilding in the aftermath and inflicted only light losses on his Heavy and Assault-weight tanks. His SRM carriers took the worst of it, as I recall.”
I nodded along. Neither of those was an unexpected result. When a regiment of Light ‘Mechs accidentally found themselves assaulting well dug in combat vehicles that outweighed them by around three times, they were going to get hammered. And when a Quikscam product found itself in serious combat, they were going to take more losses than their better-built compatriots.
“And the Panzergrenadiers?”
Julia frowned.
“I know less about them. I believe their transports are hover APCs, but don’t quote me on that,” she said as she started hungrily flipping through some of the dispatches that had been transmitted from the JumpShips. It made sense, since Julia was much less accustomed than the rest of us to being out of the Commonwealth’s communications loop for weeks at a time.
Since the fleet had popped in at the Zenith instead of using our usual Pirate Point, we were still limited to what they were transmitting. Still, for someone who was used to having a much more direct pipeline for information, late news, it seemed, was better than no news.
“Uh, Your Grace?” one of the spaceport controllers asked and I let my head track around to glare a little at the unfortunate young man, one eyebrow raised and an old-fashioned look on my face. I was already sick of that title.
Seeing that the kid was clueless, I reached up and jangled my rank tabs at him. He flushed up to his eyebrows and down his throat.
“I’m, uh, sorry Colonel?”
“Much better. What can I do for you?” I was going to train people out of treating me like my dignity was as fragile as an egg shell even if it was the last thing I did.
“Um, in the last data package, the LCAF included some extra information on their attachments. They’ve got a bunch of auditors from the Ministry of Finance with them,” the young man relayed, clearly nervous.
Since the MoF was regarded more or less the same way the IRS had been back in the 21st Century, I took some pity on him.
“They’re earlier than expected,” I said with a shrug, “But it isn’t a big deal.” After all, we’d known the change was coming even if I’d been hoping to argue the Archon into favorable rates for the first ten or fifteen years. The deal we’d gotten was actually better for us in the long term, and my accountants had been calculating what we’d owe for this quarter as well as making sure that an easily understood flier had been circulated among the citizenry.
If MoF wanted to pour money into a hole auditing us, I’m sure they could dig up
something, but I was equally certain it would be something minor.
But that was still a lot of bureaucrats, and it wasn’t even counting the members of the Quartermaster Corps, Transport Corps, and the LCAF IG that were inbound to make sure our ‘Mechs went where they were supposed to go. Besides, whatever spies LIC must have, inevitably, already snuck onto Catachan could now file their reports.
“It’s a good thing we were already working to get the government offices into working order,” I said out loud.
I turned to one of my yeomen.
“Make sure the work crews doing the refurbishing are notified. Have them expedite the process as best they can.”
“Yes, Colonel!”
That was much better than another ‘Your Grace.’
Looking around the spaceport control tower, it appeared that I’d finally run out of details in need of a personal touch for the moment. Everything else could wait until the Dropships actually arrived in four-ish days.
“So, anything interesting in the news, Julia?” I inquired as I turned back to my LCAF liaison to find her holding the printouts like they’d personally insulted her.
No, that was an understatement. Julia was trying to set the printouts on
fire with nothing but her glare.
“Das kannste laut sagen1,” she spat the words out in a voice trembling on the edge of control.
It took my brain a second to hop languages. German wasn’t one I’d known before I got poured into the Alistair-suit, but the coldy cutting tone of her response was enough to send me to DEFCON 3.
I stepped closer and lowered my voice.
“What’s wrong?”
Julia’s blazing eyes narrowed and it was like she’d barely noticed me.
“Bei Nutten kriegt man wenigstens was für sein Geld ….2” Her white-knuckled fist crumpled the papers before tossing them to the ground. She cut herself off and took a deep breath while she visibly locked away whatever was eating her.
“I apologize. I need to clear my head,” she informed me through clenched teeth and turned on her heel, marching out of the room with flawless, almost robotic, military precision. I reached down and picked up the half-crumpled papers. The headline for the news report screamed:
Lockheed CBM implicated in sabotage of rivals. Government sources suggest plot ‘goes back nearly a century.’
I thought about what Julia had said about her House and the pride she took in their history of service and bit back a wince. Talk about rubbing salt in a wound …
XXXXX
Perhaps twenty-five minutes later, I got a call from Sarah, Julia’s right-hand woman, asking that I drop by the townhouse on the sixth terrace she had purchased to serve as her residence on Catachan.
I’d spent the time after Julia left getting caught up with the latest on the Lockheed scandal as I rode back home, and it was
bad. So bad, the company might be broken up over what they’d been caught doing with the death penalty being preferred for many of the high-level people arrested.
Since I’d already canceled my meetings for the next few hours, I had no reason not to do as I was asked. Besides, I was curious about what subtle detail Julia had noticed in the report that I’d apparently missed.
My new personal chauffeur was more than pleased to have something to do, since I usually grabbed a ride in a truck or a staff car when I was going somewhere. It only took a few minutes to pop down to visit.
Sarah met me at the door.
“Welcome, Your Grace. Mistress Julia is in the gym and she wanted you to be sent right in when you arrived.”
That seemed a bit out of character. Why would Julia have gone to the gym if she was expecting me to stop by for a meeting? Sarah must have noticed my confusion, because she began to explain as she led me down the hall.
“My Lady left standing orders for me,” she explained. “Since she had seen under the mask you wear in public, she felt that it was only fair that you be afforded the same opportunity.”
Okay, that sounded more like Julia. Of course it was still concerning to me, because it implied that the news had affected her a lot more seriously than I’d suspected.
While I was considering what she’d said, Sarah arrived outside a wooden door and pulled it open, stepping aside so I could enter. I could hear something that sounded like impacts as I entered the room, but I wasn’t prepared for the scene. Julia was coated in sweat and dressed in a sports bra, boxing shorts, and padded wraps covering her hands and shins. And she was
beating the hell out of a sand-filled heavy punching bag with her lips drawn back in a snarl fit for a pissed off lioness.
I was left staring in shock at the sight of the usually composed blonde before my memory dredged up the rumor that General Nondi Steiner had been known to go full Patton on her subordinates when given sufficient cause. Seemed the temper ran in the family, not that I was one to talk. I’d been angry when Julia told me that I needed to give the Jaspers their new ‘Mech publicly for political reasons; she hadn’t yet seen me when I was enraged to the point I couldn’t speak.
She, on the other hand, took in a lungful of air and...
“
Dreckige Judasse!
3” she yelled in German, spitting the last word out like a curse and landing a vicious-looking uppercut on the bag, before taking another deep breath and continuing.
“
Meine Leute ermorden! Für Geld!
4” A roundhouse kick I recognized as
Muay Thai blasted into the center of the bag’s mass, causing it to swing wildly and punctuating the assault.
I turned back to Sarah as she stepped inside the room, closing the door quietly behind her, waiting for an explanation. Julia didn’t appear to have noticed us and was in no shape to have a reasonable conversation in any event.
“If you are to have a relationship,” the Asian woman said quietly, “then it is only fair that you see her at her worst. She’s been bottling this up ever since she got the news about Lockheed-CBM’s bribery of LCAF Aerospace Corps officers.”
Sarah sighed, and I could feel her frustration. Clearly, Julia had taken that hard and there was nothing Sarah could do to help.
“She keeps a lid on her temper until she can vent in private so that she doesn’t harm those who rely on her to provide leadership and set an example.”
Because, even if she didn’t lash out at them personally like her aunt sometimes did, it would still harm their confidence in her and her judgement. I watched as Julia landed another combo on the bag that would have left an opponent trying to decide whether to clutch their ribs or, given that knee strike, cover their privates, but she was panting for air now, wind completely blown.
“How long?”
Sarah glanced at a clock. “Eight minutes. This is a bad one for her, among the worst I have seen in my twenty years of service.”
Considering that this was under rather more gravity than she was used to, I was surprised even a trained Mechwarrion had managed to keep up that level of effort for so long.
“Do you have some water for her, or-” I cut myself off as Sarah reached over beside the door and picked up a bottle of cherry sports drink from a nook. Given the electrolytes she’d just sweated out, that was definitely a better choice.
“Thanks,” I told the assistant and probably-bodyguard. “I’ll take it from here.” On the way out onto the mats, I picked up a sweat rag off of a workout bench.
“Heads up,” I called when I was maybe five feet away. Julia’s eyes shot to me, momentarily surprised, before she reached up to snatch the towel out of the air. For perhaps the first time since I’d met her, Julia actually looked flustered as she wiped the worst of the sweat off her face.
And elsewhere. I was trying not to react, but Julia was one of those girls who looked really pretty when she was angry, all flashing eyes and passion, and the minimal clothing she was wearing just accented that. My brain tried to suggest other activities that could make her sweaty, but I kicked than thought in the shin and pushed it over a cliff while it was distracted.
Trying not to blush, I cracked the seal on the bottle and handed it over when she was finished with the cloth. She guzzled about half the bottle, not meeting my eyes.
“Much less destructive than what I used to do,” I said casually. “When I was younger, and I got really seriously pissed off, I’d go out in the woods and turn big sticks into little ones.”
Julia’s eyes shot back to me, eyes squinted as she worked to catch her breath after the bout of frenzied exercise. After a moment, she seemed to decide that I wasn’t bullshitting her because she went back to drinking and occasionally wiping up the sweat that was still popping up on her brow.
And I wasn’t, I just wasn’t talking about my youth on Icar. I’d had forty acres of woods to run around back in the 21st Century, and there were always fallen branches I could smash against tree trunks instead of breaking anything or anyone I cared about.
“So,” I said, before stalling out on a way to ask about her temper without being offensive. After a heartbeat, I switched gears.
“... do you think Katrina is going to break Lockheed up?” I asked instead.
Julia scowled and finished draining the bottle before she answered.
“Maybe she will, but even with what has already leaked to the media it would cost a very large amount of political capital to actually break up such a massive company. It would set a precedent, and none of the Commonwealth’s other Interstellar Corporations would favor such a move,” she explained with a sigh. “Unfortunately, as Steiners, what we have to do is not always the same as what we’d like to do. If it was up to me, personally, I’d order a firing squad and sow the graves with salt. But Aunt Katrina will do what’s best for the Commonwealth.”
“More likely, she’ll do something similar to what happened with Coventry Metal Works and Trellshire Heavy Industries following the Trellshire Scandal. At least the corrupt LCAF officers can be held accountable more easily with capital court-martials.”
I nodded along, following the logic. Arrest, try, and harshly punish the guilty management, and appoint new leadership to clean out the rot from the boardroom down, plus heavy fines and increased oversight.
“You really believe that they deserve worse than that?” I asked, trying to only approach the issue obliquely.
Julia shot me a look that told me I hadn’t succeeded, but answered anyway.
“Not intellectually. I got so angry because … well, there are several reasons. One is very personal. Besides that one, we’ve had a serious shortage of Aerospace Fighters in the Commonwealth, largely because we’ve had an atrocious loss rate throughout the Succession Wars. And now we’re finding out that Lockheed, not content with being the largest manufacturer of ASFs in the Commonwealth, sabotaged
at least one of its rivals.”
I’d read the article, and the author claimed that TharHes had discovered sabotaged code in the machinery they’d purchased from Bauer. And that information seized on Donegal had lined up to indicate that it had been ordered by Lockheed CBM’s board to ruin Bauer’s good name and encourage them to quit the field of military manufacture.
Julia took a deep breath, then blew it out, visibly bracing herself.
“Personally… You may remember my mentioning Great-Uncle Helmar when you read his copy of Katherine Steiner’s diary?” Her voice grew very controlled as she forced the words out. “He flew a
Lucifer which had a defective ejection system. It was the best ASF that Great-grandfather -
the sitting Archon’s brother!- could arrange as a personal purchase. Loss rates among our
Chippewa and
Seydlitz pilots are
worse! New production of
Eagles, Thunderbirds, Lightnings, and
Hellcats is spoken for more than a decade in advance, and what salvage and capture of better birds that we get from the League or Combine are desperately needed to fill the holes in our Aerospace Wings. So….”
I waited a moment for her to continue, only to see her shoulders shake. As she turned away, I caught a glimpse of moisture on her cheek. It still took me a couple seconds to realize that she was crying.
I wasn’t good at handling crying women. Never had been. Especially not
barely clothed crying women! I-
Damn it, pull it together, dumbass! I ordered myself. So I did what I’d have done for any of my Mechwarriors in the same situation, and reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. Sometimes just reminding somebody that there was a helping hand available if it was needed was enough.
She didn’t flinch away from it, so at the very least I hadn’t made the problem worse. I steered her over to one of the workout benches and got both of us to sit down.
It took her a couple of minutes to compose herself, but eventually she raised her head.
“He was killed,” she said, voice thick with emotion and physically with the inevitable gunk from crying. She cleared her throat and continued more normally. “Over Skondia. When his Lucifer was shot down, the ejection seat misfired and clipped something inside the cockpit. It took both his legs off above the knees.
“I can’t-” she began, only for another sob to leak out past her self-control.
I reached up to again try to offer some comfort, but the bench wasn’t the largest, and we were sitting too close together for me to reach her near shoulder, so instead I laid my hand on her opposite shoulder. After a long moment, she relaxed and leaned up against me, shoulder to shoulder.
We sat that way for long minutes while I awkwardly tried not to think about the situation for fear of messing something up.
After long minutes of sitting in silence, Julia once again spoke.
“I want to make a future where situations like that are the exception, not the rule.”
XXXXX
Julia had excused herself after that to go get cleaned up, and Sarah had relocated me to a sitting room on the second floor of the expansive townhouse as well as provided snacks and a refreshing glass of cider.
When Julia entered, it was clear she’d had a shower, and she was thankfully back in something more than workout clothes. That helped my equilibrium quite a bit. She’d also applied just a touch of makeup to help conceal the fact that she’d been crying. Not that she really needed it.
“While you’re here, I wanted to discuss a couple of things,” she said, clearly intent on moving past any awkwardness.
“Since you didn’t address the final classical reason that divorce lawyers are a growth industry the last time we had a frank discussion, I suppose your resident ‘rich-bitch money-grubbing Steiner’ should bring up the Kroner angle.”
That wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all, either in subject or content.
“I have had business training, in large part to prepare me for running Furillo.” Julia explained. “So I can guess that you’ve been spending money like a shrapnel-studded heat sink bleeds coolant to get to this point.” She shot me a questioning look and I nodded in confirmation.
“Pretty much. Even with ongoing sales to Olivetti and a few private citizens for non-Lostech, we had basically burned through everything we got out of our Contract Arbitration before the Archon awarded us the Phoenix contract,” I explained. She already knew that I’d been forced to borrow the Kroner I’d paid Dobless for the information database I’d ordered.
“Then what is your position like now?” she asked.
“I can’t discuss it in great detail at the moment,” I temporized, thinking over how much to say. For that matter, I didn’t have firm data yet about just how many Phoenixes we’d be able to
make in a year, given the setbacks. Still …
“Barring any fresh disasters, we’ll be in the black with the sales contract, even setting aside a portion of our income for a rainy day,” I finally decided.
Julia accepted that with a nod.
“And if you needed to ship hardware farther than Sudeten or Tamar?” she inquired. Considering the distances involved …
“That would get pretty uneconomical, pretty quickly,” I admitted.
“That doesn’t mean it might not be militarily vital at some point,” Julia pointed out. I couldn’t deny that she was correct, but I also wasn’t sure what she was aiming at.
“Now, Asgard can cover some of that,” she continued, leaning in, “but if the LCAF starts paying overtly, it would be a very large clue to anyone paying attention that there was something afoot and where to strike to disrupt Asgard’s plans.”
That also made sense; as the old saying went: ‘follow the money.’
“You sound like you’ve got a solution to this problem,” I commented, playing along.
Julia nodded once.
“
Ja, but it would need a bit of work to build the cover,” she warned before starting to get into the details. “The Steiner family fortune is a little bit harder to keep an eye on than official government accounts that have to have reams of paperwork to explain each transaction.
“Before I left Tharkad, Aunt Katrina gave me access to one of the family’s Black accounts. If something comes up and we need you to ship a cargo Priority to, oh, Star Corp’s factory on Loburg, I can pay for it out of that account and camouflage the purchase as, say, a Phoenix special-ordered for Cousin Ryan’s birthday with a bit of extra for the rush.”
Julai looked pleased with herself until she saw my expression.
“You
know what that would look like,” I accused. “I hate that sort of corruption, and so do the vast majority of my people. It would undermine not just my position here on Catachan, but with Olivetti as well to be seen engaging in that sort of under-the-table transaction!”
Julia seemed taken aback for a moment, then shook her head.
“There’s a difference between real corruption and counterintelligence operations,” she asserted. “When we have to use a contingency like this, we use LIC personnel, or if they aren’t available, then people cleared for the whole story and then ‘leak’ it to the Combine or the Mariks,” she explained. “Believe me, the last thing we want to do is encourage more behavior like THI or
Lockheed.
“If Duke Olivetti gets wind of something somehow and confronts you about it, you’ll be fully cleared to let him know that it was an authorized operation and his own contacts in LIC will back that up.”
Put that way, was it really any different than telling my people they could keep any bribes they were paid as long as they reported the bribe and did the requisite paperwork? I didn’t like it, but I liked the idea of the Dracs getting accurate intelligence on us even less.
“Okay, that’s fair,” I admitted, before going back to a point she’d raised earlier. “Now what do you need to help establish this cover?” I asked.
“We need to establish that I’m both interested and invested in the Catachan Arms Company,” she explained. “To that end, I’ll be asking you to sell me some CAC stock. That will give me a justifiable reason to ask to sit in on your business to help out. So when we need to take actions which make little business sense but lots of military sense, such as shipping advanced guns at a loss to Hesperus II for a Battlemech’s redesign, Brewer will pay for them under the table by shuffling money internally to the Furillo branch of DefHes, which Mother owns eleven percent of. Then Mother pulls that back channel payment from the corporate accounts there and deposits it in my numbered ‘black’ account so I can shift it to CAC’s coffers. Lather, rinse, and repeat for CMW or any of the other major defense contractors; we have our thumbs in their pies via the same method I will be employing for CAC. That way, when the ISF and SAFE see that kind of payment going into the Steiners’ pockets, it looks like another instance of Lyran graft and corruption making us ‘money grubbers’ even richer.
“It can also serve as a financial backstop for CAC if and when you need a sudden infusion of cold hard cash to exploit R&D breakthroughs, get a new lostech factory up and running at a sprint, or fend off a corporate takeover. I can just buy a dozen or so shares of CAC stock from you at a ridiculously marked up purchase price to move the money over, and then privately sell them back later for pfennigs on the megakroner.”
Again, it made sense, and having someone with more formal training on the board wouldn’t hurt. Neither would her connections.
“Alright, but we’ll need to handle this carefully. And keep solid records, even if those remain confidential notes just between the two of us,” I shot back.
“Agreed.” She extended her hand for a shake.
Well that was simple enough.
“As for a seat on the board, you’d need to have enough shares to at least match some of the people we’ve hired on …” I trailed off thinking for a moment. “Call it five percent,” I decided, then did some mental math and quoted her the price, which made her eyes bulge. She was lucky she hadn’t been drinking any of the coffee Sarah had brought her, or it would have necessitated a serious cleaning of the room.
XXXXX
Weber’s Holdfast, Catachan, Catachan System
Trellshire, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
April 12th, 3016
There were a few eyebrows raised when Julia, who was
rocking a nice charcoal-gray business skirt-suit, walked into the conference room beside me and calmly took a seat, but before anyone could make a big deal out of it, I called the meeting to order.
“So, old business first. How’s production for the Phoenix doing?” I asked.
“Worse than I had anticipated. Better than I had feared,” Baron Jones pronounced through his moustache, then continued to give a more detailed explanation.
“We ran quite slow for the two weeks after you departed, then I had to halt production entirely for a week to install replacements and alter the configuration of the overhead lifts. We are, however, on schedule for sixty-five units this year.”
That was eight short of our initial estimates for full production rate. I did some rough math. With the price per unit, that came out to a revenue decrease of somewhere near 79,000,000 C-bills from the best-case projections.
“How badly is that going to hurt the bottom line?” I asked Dave Myers, my accountant.
“Even being pessimistic on our expenses, we’re still going to be in the black, just not very far,” he responded. “Once the expenditures for the Sarissa line are no longer coming out, we’ll be on much more solid ground. Incidentally, I’m grateful you were able to cut our expenses down with Dobless.” Then he aimed a question at Baron Jones.
“Should we anticipate similar production shortfalls for the Sarissa?”
I was reassured by the way the Baron immediately began shaking his head.
“I’ve already taken steps to correct the problems we’re seeing when it comes to the Sarissa line. By building the fixes in from the start, I’m confident of hitting a seventy unit minimum in the first year of full production.”
“What about installing those fixes for the Phoenix line?” I inquired.
“It would require stopping production to reorder the line. Take at least a month, more probably two,” Baron Jones replied, shaking his head and I grimaced. Taking the line out of production for two months would mean losing somewhere in the neighborhood of ten units of production.
“Let’s shelve that until after the Sarissa line is completed,” I decided. “I’ll want a cost-benefit analysis ready for the board by then,” I decided, and the appropriate notes were made.
“Other old business?” I inquired.
“Uh, got the math done on shipping 380XL engines to Hesperus for Banshee production,” one of our more recent hires, accountant Dan Sprowl, said. “It’s not economically viable long term.”
There were some disappointed murmurs, but I hadn’t really expected it to work out.
“Understood. Any final bits of old business?” I asked to general silence. I nodded and moved the meeting along.
“Now, new business. Have we heard anything from Olivetti yet?” I inquired.
“Unfortunately, they’re still in the ‘study’ phase of their Warhammer design study, and probably will be for at least another year.” Paul Rice, my best Project Manager answered.
“Really?” I asked, “What’s the hold up?”
“As I understand it? They’ve run the math based on the data we sent them of the Galahad versus the Phoenix and the Sarissa. They’re trying to decide between using Ferro Fibrous Armor and EndoSteel limbs, like on the Thunderbolt, or going for a full EndoSteel chassis.”
“Projections are that the EndoSteel would save them about the same weight with less space used, right?” I asked and he nodded. “Why not just go with that?”
He raised his right hand and tilted it back and forth.
“The redesign of the torso structural members and the need to change the position of some of the components located there. Creating workarounds for the increased bulk of EndoSteel in the torso is a non-trivial process. Yes, theoretically it gives them the most extra payload for the least loss of cubage, but, in practice, it might be more trouble than it’s worth.
“Of course, they’ve got concerns with the other option, too. Between the attachment points for the armor and the increased bulk of the EndoSteel structure limiting usable space in the limbs, they aren’t at all sure that they’ll be able to fit the number of freezers they want to use into the torso. If that ends up being the case, then they’d have to go back to a standard structure, which would cost them around one and a half, two tons of payload.”
I paused for a moment to think over that dilemma.
“Any idea what way they’ll jump?” I inquired.
“If they can make the EndoSteel limbs work, I think they’ll go with that option. If not, I think they’ll bite the bullet and go for the torso redesign and full EndoSteel construction. And with how bulky all the extra freezers they want to include are, I don’t think they’ll be able to make the hybrid structure work.”
“Alright, we’ll keep that as our current assumption, then. That does, however, leave us at a bit of loose ends,” I said and then paused. “We do have a request from the Archon to get the 240XL line up and going as our next project. After the way our Aerospace wing kicked the shit out of the Dracs above Sevren, she wants Centurions refitted yesterday. And Lockheed or whatever successor comes out the far end of their current troubles will presumably be switching over to making new upteched models. That’ll mean we need to expand production of cockpit electronics, targeting systems, et cetera. What’s the prognosis on that?” I inquired, not a little trepidatiously.
“Not going to lie, recreating the tooling for some of those chips is going to be an ironclad bitch. That’s some of the fiddliest stuff we have outside of the XLFE precision equipment. It’ll probably be at least a year and a half, more like two years before it’s ready if we start right now,” Paul Rice admitted.
“Then get it started soonest. Between the improved sensors and the SLDF Neurohelmets, the electronics we can produce are one of our more subtle X-factors. And that’s without counting what they do when combined with advanced autocannon.”
There were nods around the room; everyone had been briefed in on that ASAP. Except from one corner.
“Your Grace, that’s going to be a complicated, and thus
expensive project,” Dave objected. “I know I said we’d still be in the black, but that was without any more large expenses!”
I’d been ready to field that question.
“You may have noticed
Landgrafin Steiner enter the room with me. She has recently arranged to purchase five percent of the company’s stock. We’ve got the expansion covered.”
Julia smiled and nodded at my words.
Again, the popularity of the Steiner dynasty struck. Everyone appeared to be pleased that CAC was now important enough to have attracted the interest of the ruling family, rather than being concerned that we’d had a large buy-in.
“Alright, expanding electronics production as well as continuing work on the Sarissa chassis and final assembly lines. That’s our near-term construction priorities dealt with.
“So. Mid-range construction priorities,” I began, then paused, looking for the best way to address what was probably going to be a serious pain in the ass.
“What are the odds of us being able to stand up Banshee production here on Catachan in the next decade?” I finally settled on asking.
There was silence in all corners for several seconds. Assault ’Mech production was a Big Deal, but …
“There would be … substantial difficulties with designing and building a sufficiently robust overhead track system for movement of the chassis between workstations,” Baron Jones spoke up. “And installing a ground-level track has all the usual issues. Unfortunately, I don’t see it as a serious possibility.”
I nodded. A ground track for moving the chassis meant supporting the weight from below, rather than letting it hang, which was a serious pain in the ass. It also meant that workstations couldn’t be placed as close to the under-construction ‘Mech, and that you had to start with the legs and work your way up rather than starting with the torso and working your way out.
It was, as Baron Jones had indicated, a massive pain in the ass, and I hadn’t expected any other answer. The builders of the Crab had tried it, and there were still jokes made about that factory’s appalling construction speed.
“In that case, we need to decide what to do about the 380 line. Duke Brewer wants to train up some of his people on our equipment, and he’s willing to pay us for about two years worth of output. Both so that he’s got a cushion in case building his own XLFE line takes longer than expected, and because he thinks he can have all the other bits and bobs up
first and he wants to be rolling out new Lostech Banshees as soon as possible.
“But after that run, we don’t have a buyer or any real prospects,” I said, and the conference table was suddenly awash in unhappy looks. What had looked like a potential major product for us was starting to appear to be a White Elephant. I did, however, have a notion.
“That ASF, the Orca or whatever. They really can’t recover the data for it?” one of my managers asked.
I shook my head.
“Think of it like a computer version of a regular paper shredder. Run something through a bit shredder once, and you get the equivalent of strips of paper. If you’re diligent and patient, you can piece those back together. Now imagine somebody ran those shredded strips through a shredder four more times. The computer geeks could work on it until the heat death of the universe and never get anywhere,” I explained.
There was silence around the table, and I nodded.
“I think we need to explore a retooling operation,” I said after a long moment.
“THI makes the Battlemaster on Twycross and Red Devil makes it on Pandora. If we can retool to produce a 340XLFE, instead of a 380, we can sell the initial output locally to THI, who are bouncing back well now that the corruption trials are over. Then, as we scale up to full production we can sell spares to the LCAF and bring in Red Devil as a client.”
And getting them cleared to
handle Lostech ought to be easier than getting them cleared to
produce it. Red Devil Industries was going to find themselves the big loser in the upcoming decade, but Katrina had apparently concluded that she’d need to have LIC shoot half of the corporation’s management to keep the data core from being sold, and even then they’d probably be a security nightmare.
“Can we handle retooling for a smaller engine size?” one of the accountant-types asked.
“Theoretically, it shouldn’t be too hard. Not just moving from a 380 to a 340, anyway. Adjusting the precision equipment will be tedious, but they do have an operational range that allows for the required changes. It’ll cost, but not nearly as much as building a line from scratch,” Ortiz answered, the Line Engineer being very conversant with the machinery since he was in charge of 300XL production.
That was what I thought I knew, but it was always good to get confirmation.
“If we can get a deal made with THI quickly, we could allow them to have improved Battlemasters walking off their lines in five years instead of ten while saving them the development costs for building their own facilities for the production of several advanced components. It would certainly help their image and prestige, and after the Trellshire Scandal, they could use the boost. Think we could get them to go for it?”
“We won’t be able to sell them ERPPCs. Certainly not at first,” Sprowl said, “But we’ll still have production capacity for ER lasers and Heavy Multimode autocannon. If we can convince them to do a refit based around one or both of those, we’d be in a very good place.”
Several others spoke up in agreement with the idea, and I nodded.
“Let’s move forward with that, then, and we can talk about details as information comes in.”
Papers were shuffled and notes were made.
“Next, our Aerospace division.” Such as it was, and what there was of it. “Professor Ramírez, your paper appears to have blown the minds of the entirety of the LCAF Aerospace Corps.”
I had to pause for both a cry of victory from the man himself and laughter from the rest of the room.
“How are things coming with the Stingray refit?” I asked after the noise level dropped to a low roar.
“As you know,” Olaf Ramírez began, “Actually
solving the issue with the center of balance and the nose structural members rather than just slapping a patch job together and hoping has been somewhat problematic.”
That was something of an understatement. On the other hand, if a fix had been easy, it would have been implemented centuries ago.
“In the end, we had to replace the PPC in the nose with a lighter weapon, in this case an extended range 8cm laser, to fix the problem. The upside, though, is that thanks to the more robust construction of the wings, we were able to replace the wing-mounted lasers with PPCs, so we’ve actually increased the firepower of the main armament as well as improving the average weapon range.”
There was a susurrus of approving voices at that summation before the Professor continued.
“Note, however, that that was
both the 8cm and 5cm lasers. While that might appear to be a reduction in firepower, it is not a practical loss in this case; since the 5cm lasers were originally intended to provide additional firepower at short range while the fighter was cooling, they were not typically utilized as part of an Alpha Strike. With sixteen freezers, the Stingray’s heat problems are, essentially, solved. Thus, the consistent firepower is increased notably.
“However, the original design did have a particular vulnerability to Interceptors piloted with sufficient skill. If a skilled pilot was able to remain consistently on their tails, especially in atmosphere, the Stingray’s lack of any rear-facing guns and weak aft armor were easily exploited. Since the weapons are already present, we chose to install the 5cm lasers in the tail on either side of the main thrust assembly.”
That was a smart decision and a good use of resources. One less thing for the quartermasters to spend money on might make a big difference in how a refit was received.
“The remainder of the tonnage saved by swapping in an XL engine was used to nearly double the Stingray’s effective armor, moving from eleven and a half tons of BAR10 Standard to nineteen tons of Ferro-Aluminum. There is comparatively little impact on the nose: it was already well-armored, and we didn’t want to risk straining the structural members there when we’d just finished fixing that problem. As such, much of that mass goes to the wings and tail of the fighter. Effective nose armor is only improved by about fifty percent, while the tail’s protection was more than doubled. This also finally allowed us to eliminate the ASF’s balance problem.
“We’re still converting the work we did on the mock-up into an easily understandable, quickly deployed depot-level refit kit, but in a month or two we’ll be ready to supervise the conversion on Richthofen’s bird.”
That
was good news.
“Glad to hear you’re almost done,” I replied. “Frederick was feeling unloved with all those Centurion pilots in ASFs half his size and almost as much armor,” I claimed and let the brief chuckles conclude before I continued.
“And, as usual, the reward for a job well done is a harder job. As you no doubt know, we’ve got all kinds of data for two variants of the Vulcan: the old Rimjob Heavy ASF.” Olaf nodded and his assistant leaned forward in his seat. “I want you to take that data and turn it into a producible aerospace fighter, complete with the best technology we can make.”
“Intended role?” Ramírez inquired.
“With the Archon working through TharHes to get the Rapier back into production, the Commonwealth will have an alternative to the Lucifer, but there are a couple issues. First, the Rapier’s main anti-dropship weapon is the AC-20, so the doctrine for Dropper Chopping is the reverse of the Lucifer’s: closing and hammering through armor rather than staying out of range of most of the Dropship’s weapons and poking it with a stick. Second, one airframe might not be enough to overcome centuries of inertia. I want you to design a bird that will put the final nail in the Lucifer’s coffin: a long-range Dropper Chopper that fills the same niche, just better than that death trap ever could.”
The professor nodded.
“I think we can do that, but if you want it produced locally we’ll need to increase ERPPC production. Either that or fix the problems with the Gauss Rifle line,” he cautioned me, “maybe both.”
“The former is on my list,” I assured him, “Now, speaking of Gauss Rifles, I seem to recall signing checks for hiring a bunch of eggheads from Tharkad University. What are they looking at?” I already knew, of course, but it was important to keep everyone on the same page.
“Pretty diverse bunch,” Rice answered, “I’ve got a group that swears up and down that they can miniaturize the modifications made to the Extended Range 8cm laser and create an Extended Range 5cm laser. The other group will be working on taking the LB-10X and applying those lessons to Class Five autocannon. Oh, and there’s a physicist trying to figure out why the Gauss Rifle line
can not meet their quotas. He thinks it’s a gravity issue.”
I shook my head.
“Good luck to him. He’ll need it,” I said. I didn’t have real high hopes for either the first or the final project. Miniaturization was always harder than it looked at first glance, and a 5cm laser was a hell of a lot more compact than an 8cm laser, and the physicist would be trying to solve a problem that had left Star League engineers scratching their heads.
The autocannon project, however, I had high hopes for. If we could manage to get the same sort of results there that the Star League had gotten out of improving the Class Ten, then we’d have yet another license to print money. There were a
lot of designs in the Commonwealth that mounted Class Five weapons.
“Just to clarify, we’re increasing staffing of the EndoSteel foundry in anticipation of Olivetti either going full EndoSteel or a hybrid structure?” Rice asked.
I frowned for a moment, then shrugged.
“That’d be the safe move, but go ahead and increase staffing across the board. We’ll have buyers for every Freezer we can produce for the foreseeable future, and we’ll eventually need more Ferro Aluminum for the Centurion refit kits even if Olivetti doesn’t go with Ferro Fibrous armor on their new Warhammer. Hell, there’s almost certainly going to be decent money in making FerroFib plate to replace the standard stuff on the -6Rs and their contemporaries.
“Ten tons of Eff-Eff goes a lot further than ten tons of standard. And just swapping the in-engine sinks for freezers basically solves the Warhammer’s heat management issues… It may be worth coming up with a refit kit,” I suggested.
“Since Archon Steiner’s personal ride is a Warhammer, a lot of nobles have shelled out money keeping up with the Steiners. Stands to reason that they’re going to want nothing but the best for their personal toys,” Dave Myers added.
“I can confirm that,” Julia agreed, speaking up for the first time, “There will certainly be a market.”
“I can mock up a Warhammer chassis easily enough, and CAC makes all the individual parts that go inside it. I’ll grab a few of your Techs that have worked on Warhammer’s in the past as well and see if we can hammer something out, though that will almost certainly mean bringing the ERPPC line to full production ahead of schedule as well.” Baron Jones warned.
“We’ve got lines of communication open with the LCAF now. We can see LIC assessments for loyalty and reliability, not just what civilian HR and background checks can dig up. Might as well take advantage. We’ll need the capability for full-up Warhammer production soon enough anyway. Why let the revenue stream go unexploited?”
Six months or so to design the changes and another six or so to work out the bugs. This time next year we could start seeing money coming in for that, which was a good thing, since everything I was doing was costing money like crazy. And that wasn’t even taking the engineering project into account. Speaking of which …
“Also, the next set of ships arriving from the LCAF should include a battalion of Combat Engineers, so Stage III of Operation Phoenix is a go.”
That got some excited cheers, so it was a good tone to end the meeting on.
After a few pleasantries, Julia pulled me aside as the rest of the participants broke up into groups and departed to start implementing the agenda we’d decided on.
“Engineering project?” she asked. “How very vague and mysterious.”
I blinked. That wasn’t what I’d expected to be the topic of conversation.
“Uh, sorry about that. I’m used to everyone being fully briefed in on the plan,” I said and shot a grin at her. “Don’t suppose you happened to ask what the eccentric orbital body up there is?” I asked and shot my eyes at the ceiling and the void beyond by proxy.
“No …” she said, drawing the word out.
“It’s a wrecked Pinto,” I explained, “and we’ve been doing salvage operations on it. Quite a few things aren’t recoverable, but we managed to pull both naval PPCs and two of the naval lasers off of it intact. In exchange for the naval autocannon and the single salvageable naval grade missile launcher, Katrina is going to help us emplace the guns as an anti-dropship defense.”
Julia let out a slow whistle.
“That’s going to be a nasty surprise for the first raid that tries to land in line of sight,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong. The NL-35s hit almost twice as hard as an AC-20, but at much, much greater range, and the naval PPCs hit twice as hard as that. They weren’t quite strong enough to blast in one end of a landing Dropship and out of the other, but a single hit was more likely than not to punch through armor and cause havoc in the dropship’s internals.
“I’d feel a lot better if we already had them emplaced instead of sitting in a warehouse waiting for your Aunt’s engineers.”
At the reminder, Julia joined me in a sour look. Having a Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads was even less fun than it sounded.
XXXXX
A/N: Thanks again to Seraviel, Lordsfire, and Yellowhammer for beta reading, idea bouncing, and canon compliance checking. This chapter is vastly improved by their efforts. German translations by Walkir, so you German-speakers have him to thank for the fact your eyes aren’t bleeding.
1: “You could say that (out loud).”
2: “With whores, at least you get something for your money.” If Julia were on Donegal, there is every chance she would be personally Lyran Scouting Lockheed CBM’s corporate headquarters. “I also kicked
an Orphanage the Executive Banquet Hall into a river. Do not feel bad for this; they are
Capellans Lockheed CBM Employees.”
3: “Dirty Judases!” A reference to Judas, who betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Implies treason with a profit motive.
4: “Murdering my people! For Money!”
Arc wrap up will be next chapter. This managed to bloat to over 8k words on me before I realized it.
