A minor (at least) in cinematography as well. I enjoyed making that B-movie and want to make MOAR!
They'll add it to your list of studies, you know after the important classes that first help you swing a company, then a battalion, then a regiment (your PhD), then a Corps, and then the whole damn TDF.
More seriously however Eve's smart enough to pick up that a) you need a hobby b) making Tri Vid movies is actually pretty good since it doesn't involve any major or minor security risks c) The Ministry of Propaganda is always happy to have the Protector take an interest.
It mostly starts with Fred T. Meyers (head of Propoganda) popping over to watch classic Taurian films with you occasionally
Alright. I do give her a big hug and tell her that I'm happy I was able to help facilitate it.
She blushes happily and is general the beautiful bride on her wedding day.
Giving her any gifts? You've got a plethoria of high end town homes sitting empty as your staff slowly clean up and prep each home for rental (they don't want to flood the market and drive prices down too much) as a suggestion.
Yet.
So what is her subject?
Post Terran Alliance Jewish Diaspora History. Coming to the TC has added a whole web of references and papers for her to learn!
Works. I was probably raised semi-jewish though.
Culturally pretty much since the Deist's aren't exactly bound to many festivals and such.
"Consider it revenge for all the blind dates with the 'Nice Jewish Girls who would be perfect for me'."
Still, I am trying to match her interests.
"Oh on that note" your Aunt continues on with a grin "I've found a very nice Jewish girl who would be perfect for you. Sarah Goldstein, of the Flaum Goldsteins, is the granddaughter of the current ruler. Once I heard you were interested in cinematography I poked my head into the arts department and ran into Sarah. Should I set up an introduction?"
"That or I would have done my best Blues Brothers imitation."
"Garage bands never turn out well when the only one capable of actually playing their instruments is the triangle player." Ayala shudders in remembered horror of the band you put together at 14.
"I never played THAT companies minis. Seriously, if you go by weight, their little plastic models are more expensive than Germanium."
She just snickers.
You misunderstand. I'm willing to have long term lovers with intense and deeply emotional connections. I'm just not what you'd call... well... committed to monogamy.
Which is kind of Mayumi's problem, when she's ready to settle down in oh ten years or so she's pretty much wanting monogamy. Of course that's at least a decade away and things might change her mind.
Although she and Kara are very close friends
(Mayumi's route is pretty her or her and Kara long term. Kara' still pretty much 'ten years from now? I only care about what I'm doing on my next leave from the Academy')
Let me put it this way.
1) The Dragon can agree, his realm is enriched with a reasonable licensing fee that will encourage his merchants to expand their enterprises enriching his realm even more and will strengthen the bond of respect between our two states.
or
2) He says no and I do it anyways.
I'm going to have the Spad. What I'm doing is giving him an opportunity to profit and ensure that he doesn't lose face.
What gets floated among your staff is making a genuine offer to let the DC purchase a copy of Sabre Tooling. Its well known they'd like to get back in production purely as a matter of pride.
That it comes with an agreement to license the Spad from New Age for a reasonable figure, well that's purely a matter of merchants coming to an agreement.
At the same time Pinard can duplicate their Sabre line
One of the reasons I'd like to have the Vengence Class under production.
Also a reason I'll have a request put in for our Leopard Line to produce Leopard CVs.
Having a strong carrier force will help make them more practical.
Various Leopard mods aka Leopard CVs, Leopard (Combat Vees), Leopard (cargo), Leopard (personal yacht), Leopard (Assault) are either after production, or during production mods that aren't that difficult to accomplish.
Same thing with Unions, once you've got the engines and the core frame you can modify the rest fairly easily while its still being built.
The TCN is very much in favor of dropping Leopard CVs for Vengeances. Purely because it means they can concentrate collars on more assault droppers!
Roll 2d3 for Vengeance Reverse Engineering
I want two made. One will be a better made film with better actors though the stunts will still be done by real pilots.
The other... I want to take our last film and run with it. It was done seriously but between the cheesy plot, poor writing, and generally hammy acting it was ridiculous. So this time, lets take those three element and turn them up to 11. And lets make it a musical. I want something so fucking rediclious that people will be remembering it for decades. I want Top Gun (in SPACE) meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show
While a slick, polished piece with good acting, and even better flying sequences its not so much a flop as caught between Disney's latest princess movie and "Zoom 6: Need for Speed" the car chase film that reunited the Zoom original cast while shattering box office records for the year.
Sadly the Bad Movie isn't bad enough, while it had potential it feel into the 'Spoof' movie trap of being just too derivative.
Still increasing awareness of the ASF wing is getting out there.
"A copy of the design specs for anything shiny found inside and you might just have a deal."
What factory and where? Also your aids eventually suggest the Behemoth as the Fortress while good wouldn't bring the boost to your economy a heavy hauler would.
And I bet Hanse is having dreams of one giant happy FedCom...
He will, and in several months he'll be dreaming of Max Liao dying in rubble.
On that note do you want to talk to Force Commander Liz Sherman(heir to Magna), Marquess Makherjee (FedSuns noble), Madeline Centralla (MoC) or Callina Malvena (heir to New Vandenberg and you hope her mothers skills) at the Ball?
The response is an equally formal letter saying that I will honor and protect her and that no sane man could ever reject such a generous offer.
I'm more into Late 20th Century Heavy Metal myself but I do enjoy me some Rock and Roll. I also enjoy cooking (and eating) myself, though mine tends to go more towards baking (DON'T JUDGE ME!) and Man Cook Meat With Fire (and in MANY exotic forms). I like history, writing and have a strange love of junk shopping. I'm a cat person (I have several... who really REALLY hate space travel). I am an expert at shooting things in my Mech.
As Akeno's dropship slowly winds its way towards Taurus she exchanges more letters including recipes for cakes, cookies and deserts.
Oh and a few more interesting
photos taken by her handmaiden.
True. I must be coming off as insanely levelheaded and forgiving.
I took the Hot Kurita Concubine over the feud.
The nickname Oni-dono has grown to include facets of you being a monster of unquenchable lust. Under ground mangas get passed around the DC by reports forwarded to you by Aaron Sandoval (along with joking comments that he's glad Jessica is now in a serious relationship) are featuring you with a rather impressive third leg.
Worse names to have. I might have to have my mercantile exchange with the Combine called the Jigoku Trading Company as a bit of ham
The Japanese Buddhist population of the Concordat cheerfully (they rather despise the 'Imperial Japan' pretensions of the Combine) assist in making it so.
I was intending to have a comfortable traditionally Japanese residence constructed on the grounds of my main property. She enjoys tending to shrines. I might dedicate it as a family shrine to the memories of my fallen kin and give her the esteemed duty of tending to it. Something more personal than the giant memorial in the heart of the city.
Should give her something to do, something that will honor her personally, and something that will placate her kin .
I'm also intending to send her to college. Maybe she might want to make her fondness for sensha-dō into a career.
And done. As for college she'll have to sit exams, but then again Akeno has very little to do but study on her way to the TC.
Good. To reiterate and detail my attitude towards Mercs is generally... well... as long as unit fights hard and has good men, I'll cut you a break and give you an honest chance. Even if you've been unlucky, even if you've made a couple bad calls or honest mistakes that anyone could have made. It's a fickle world and I'm willing to cut people some slack in exchange for loyalty.
I'm even willing to consider an offer amnesty to pirate and outlaw units as long as they're more the hard luck "I gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat" kind rather than the "Yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me!" type.
Though that type tend to have part of their pay docked to pay for damages and anyone who performed anything that could count as an outright war crime has to be turned over.
That said, anyone who violates said parole would be hunted down and murdered.
Both the Badlands and Tortuga tend to be rather unforgiving to Spheroid units who go pirate in their areas. Sure they may promise a lot but Mechwarriors are very vulnerable outside their mechs.
So you've gotten practically no pirate / outlaw units as most of those are on the other sides of the Sphere by the Lyrans, FWL, Dracs and that sinkhole Antallos
Shit
Ah.
Crap
Double Crap.
Geez its almost as if Hanse wants to gather forces for massive deployments
Forward them an open offer.
Its under consideration
Some other units I'd like to look into... Redfield Renegades and Khorsakhov's Cossacks
Redfield is still tied down with the FedSuns, but given recent events they will seriously consider any offer when their current contract expires.
Cossacks are still very loyal to Colonel Pavel Ridzick and not Mercenaries at the moment.
Fucking hell...
And on the subject of pirates, what info do we have on Tortuga?
Details on the worlds in question not too much, names with attached criminal charges and known associates a fair bit more.
YEAH!
Taurians Love Colleges.
Along those lines I'd like to have
a) A dedicated Artillary School founded
and
b) several new Tube arty factories set up at some point over the next couple years
I want arty to become an important part of our way of war.
A) A single college dedicated to Arty or expansions to the various big Military Academies?
B) work start progressing
Second expedition is launched after they slip a one time padded coded message to you which is embedded in banal business report.
A new regiment is slowly being worked up over 3026, does the Protector care to suggest a name?
Basically you have an pre-built cover of finding a decent sized Star League Cache of mechs and other gear among which the Maultier has already been reverse engineered.
That it took several years to restore a Regiment of mechs to fighting condition isn't that unreasonable.
I thought they were all in there including Droppers, Jumpers, and Warships both primitive and advanced.
Would it be possible those records are elsewhere on planet?
Sadly not given there was nothing beyond making Primitives wildly available along with pumping out older tank and asf designs. The RoS inability to repair their factories capable of making WarShip Transit drives makes it a fairly solid no on the Jumper and Warship front.
You've got the Colossus, Fortress, Overlord and Lee as new Dropship designs thought! All of which are designs the ground forces of the SLDF used alongside the Hegemony.
Also, I'd like to see if I can find the specs for the old Manate class Mechcarrier/Cargo ship. With modification (converting the mechbays back to Cargo Space) it might make a good light duty dropship for deep periphery duty.
The
Trojan is manufactured locally in the TC and is the workhorse of the local cargo fleets.
Along those lines as well... I want the Toro and Talos projects to be "completed".
I'd also like work to start on a cover story. Say we found a Reunification War Era Depot or something.
Given everybody suspects you found a Star League cache when the TC began manufacturing Maltiers a few years ago, and the TC has been keeping all the other agencies guessing as to where it actually is.....
TMI is perfectly happy to bedazzle and confuse other poor suckers.
We need to come up with an excuse to put this back into mass production. With this tech we can recolonize the worlds abandoned during the fall of the Star League
Given the sheer misery lack of clean potable water has caused across all of human space Aramis Dunn makes the following suggestion.
"Give it away Samuel," Aramis urges you with passion roaring in his eyes. "Copy that designs and spread the damn thing like leaves on the wind. Spread it so far and wide nothing that nothing and nobody can deny humanity one of the single most important advances of the Star League. Don't let water be a card of politics any more. "
"Be better than the Cameron's and the petty Successor Lords. I urge you Samuel from the depths of my heart be better."
We also need an excuse to put this into some form of production
Can we build a version with standard armor that sacrifices stealth for firepower?
Building turnkey Nighthawks as per specs is going to be an expensive for you venture with a solid decade of work just to build up the required supporting industries. Its ECM and Stealth Suit systems are stupidly complex.
Fortunately the Mk XXII strips the stealth features for a Grenade launcher, producing a much easier to manufacture Power Armor (Light)
As well as a space adapted boarding oriented version?
Given the TC is already using Space Adaptation Gear for industrial Exoskeletons its mostly a matter of making sure software is compatible and users are trained.
Along those lines I'd like to look into new machine gun systems... a light and heavy.
Interesting ideas that get passed onto Hat in the Ring and TC Armorers to fiddle with.
I want our frontline infantry forces to be upgraded power armor.
So do your Marshalls. From a military perspective the goodies grabbed from the New Dallas Core are
1) Mobile HPGs (Owning your own interstellar communications is a massive advantage)
2) Power Armor: Its a massive force multiplier for Infantry
3) ECM: Sure it may take a while, but Star League ECM is worth double its mass in armor
4) Freezers: Make Mechs and ASF just that much more potent.
5) Arrow IV: A versatile system of big missiles capable of carrying a wide range of loads! What's not to love
On that note one of the Subalterns who went on the New Dallas trip recovered a good bit of after action reports for the Hegemony Militia ~ Large numbers of heavy and medium mechs that used XL engines were rendered inoperative due to side torso hits. Its a pretty glaring weakness in sustained combat.
I'd like their techs involved in this of course since they know the dropship the best. This way they can babysit AND they can use this as a chance to get a free overhaul.
Said techs are happy to join in.
Thankfully not everything runs on fusion and there is such a thing as system hardening, sircuit breakers, and fariday cages.
Plus even if it doesn't become big in the military field, they should be very useful in the civilian market.
Some PhDs start playing around with it after dusting off very old journals. While funded by you its not picking up any real interest.
The biggest issue ironically is that BTs computer tech hit very big, very cheap storage fast, no bodies at all impressed by "So you can store 1 meg of data?" of the silicon semi conductors
I make a couple suggestions and offer some ideas.
Additive manufacturing on big scale is currently being processed as something more than one off toys.
Samantha Calderon
Both of them will put it under review. Duncan is for it, but sadly doubts Janos will put out the cash.
Morgan will be talking to his uncle and is sure there will be heavy orders.
Even if there isn't any now Samantha is more than happy to flog them to FWL merc commands.
Assuming she acts the way I think she will, by the end of the night he's standing awkwardly and is beet red.
Is Samantha breaking him in? If so she instructs him thoroughly on how to make the ladies howl in happiness before attempting to ruin him for other ladies.
Either way Samantha says warmly "Tonight you're the hotshot Mechwarrior fresh from battle, and I'm the Dropship pilot who slipped in you and rushed you out. Now obviously you're over heating so lets get that shirt off"
Protection of course is mandatory
Oh well
Chop Shop Industries is registered the next day.
And they have a concept for an unguided "Medium Range Missile" System.
Samantha lets them at it
Her unit all but vanishes into the periphery popping back in from time to time to cash out bounties and sell excess mechs.
This seems to be relatively standard behavior.
Like a rather vicious cat bringing in dead rodents. Samantha ensures they get paid well.
"And what Philosophy would you like?" she asks calmly.
"Oh I'll work up something. " Samantha replies before making a determined effort to make Mai's cold face blossom in pleasure
She privately gets some inspired Buddhist philosophers to work up something along the lines of Zen Buddhism and Shaolin traditions. Something suitably martial but honorable to get pyschopaths and sociopaths useable for state purposes.
Six months. You have six months. Time is of the essence and she needs to ensure that numerous assets are fresh and in place for her plan to work.
In that case Samantha gives the go order and gets the cash in place. Given wobbly timelines I'm calling it a go for March 15 3026
She manages to dig up a true local classic... a beat up
Rockbell Victoria. Dating back to the Age of War, this model of car was considered the gold standard of Taurian muscle for generations. Sadly the main Rockbell Motors plant on Ridgebrook was one of many factories given to Federated Suns interests after the War of Spheroid Aggression and was Converted to build low cost economy cars...
After driving very, very fast Samantha makes an offer to Rally "If you ever want out of the Merc trade and into the business of producing cars with heart come see me Rally"
Samantha will invest the cash needed for an Awesome line and the land for Technitron to build a new factory on inside the TC. Along with ensuring a Mech Battalion is on planet for garrison duties.
Samantha gets a cut of the eventual pie, and Technitron gets most of the costs for expanding borne by her.
TTI gets the Stalker line
It's a personal message that's more him grumping at you and less an official complaint.
You struck up something of a friendship. Your friend is now bitching at you for cutting down his treehouse even though he knows you did it so it wouldn't fall on his roof
Heh, in any case Samantha has the best cheesecake art of her in the TDF tracked down and made into a poster which she sends on to Morgan, and if no ones made a good one she has Gabrielle quietly arrange a photo shoot so some really good ones can be made
[dice]2054[/dice]
Back to Samuel
Good news, your forces finally located the Haven. In a brilliant bit of plotting the TCN Marshall in charge, Adrianne Santos slipped in her gunships from out beyond the jump limit to secure the closest pirate point to Haven. Then when her forces arrived at both the Zenith and Naidar capturing 10 Jumpships (4 Merchants, 6 Invaders) it sent the pirates into a panic.
The Gunships successfully arrived at the pirate point after a ten day transit and fended off the only probe before the TDF's jumpships arrived to off load their cargo.
Bloody James Kaiten put up a hell of fight, but in the end all pirates were successfully crushed.
Losses were acceptable with the Mech Regiment (can't remember which one was to be used) have taken 20% material losses with roughly a company dead and another needing serious medical care for at least six months.
Pirates Haven is yours, and with it a lovely world that should be possible to turn into a real bread basket world. Oh and the worlds of Badlands and Lorkdal which are much poorer in terms of biological resources, but are rich in mineral wealth.
