Chapter 1.4
Chapter 1.4Alexandria Cunningham was bordering on infuriated. Anger was a weakness, being publicly angry was something people would use against you. You needed to be cool and collected. Cold even, better to be an icy bitch... than...
Alfonso Juan Diaz had deliberately ignored her instructions and his lance had followed him in pressing an attack in close order. Watching the digital displays of having his heavy mech be kicked while it was down by a trio of fifty tonners had been only mildly cathartic. Not when the other three fifty tonners in the opposing force had begun to turn their large lasers on her now exposed flank.
Not that Justin Xiang Allard had done much better, after his own lance leader had been knocked out of the simulation he had tried to rally his lance mates but not in a way that would have allowed her to salvage the situation. She was embarressed by that, but she was embarressed that they'd been thrown into this situation by Allard and Diaz being caught after getting a fist fight of all things. Their indiscretion of being caught in a public heated altercation was made all the worse by the involvement of third parties.
Third parties who just didnt' get it.
The instructor who was nominally her superior, the noble who should have been roughly her equal, and the student who should have been her junior the twisting lack of a natural hiearchy made a mess of things.
"What are you doing?" She demanded.
He blinked and looked up at her, hearing her question, and idly scratched behind his ear. The holographic images of battlemechs dancing in front of him.
Archer Thunderbolt, Warhammer Pillager... So many other Mechs too for that matter.
He looked up at the sudden question ... musing that he needed to find the time to visit Robinson.... but FtL made even short hops annoying. And it was three jumps... but it was a lot easier to petition the Duke of House Sandoval, who was also the Field Marshal of the Draconis March to talk about things than go to New Avalon and have to fight to get an appointment with Ian Davion who as first prince was very busy. "Ah, well I had a conversation with the techs, and the Field Marshal, and Robinson has a BattleMech facility that seems to do with some overhaul."
Alexandria blinked at him like ... well they were from different planets, but the idea held. He wasn't just going to tell her about hte JumpShip yard, but hadn't New Avalon gotten a centurion line recently if that was the case surely the DMM could do with one of its own sooner rather than later.
"And you can just invest money like that?"
"Well yes." He replied, "Money is best invested rather just sitting idle in a treasury." And of course logistics won wars, and with how slow BT jump drives were, well he had a lot of work to do. He coughed slightly, "That isn't to say i encourage prolifagte spending, and defense spending should be reasonably considered, but," He trailed off. He knew that House Sandoval, he knew how House Sandoval felt about the Combine,and well he decided to avoid the discussion of moral justifications for war against the combine, and their role in at least starting the shooting phase of the succession wars. "Anyway, that isn't why you're here. We need to discuss what went wrong." Her face twitched for a moment, but she sat down across from him, with resignation.
That they'd been given a handicap, had never occured to Alexandria. It only made her more annoyed at everything that had gone wrong over the last few days... and the month wasn't even over yet, never mind the end of the semester. Hazel eyes narrowed and met his blue gray ones.
"We're going to have to organize lessons in more effective and larger based unit activities and roles." He replied, If I could I'd go and integrate combined arms, but I think at this stage we'd better stick to working with integrating lances operating at the company level." He continued, "The Field Marshal wants the class ready for run against the unit next month... before the end of November."
--
He had spent the better part of the afternoon of the 24thdoing things like that. Conversations with cadets, often those who were in their late teens, or early twenties... Sakhara like most prestigious academies allowed early entry as he himself was a technical example of... though that was in part a direct command / request of the head of state.
By the time he was done, by the time the sun had set on the campus he was ready to get out of the school room he had occupied for the last several hours and go deal with other things. He wasn't expecting another run in with Field Marshal Davion. "I'm told you were planning to visit Robinson, and that you've requested a meeting with Corean Enterprises."
Was that their official name, he briefly wondered if he had accidentally called them Corean Industries earlier... but it was true. The truth was they made both the Trebuchet and Centurion within the Federated Suns and well since they had just built a Centurion line on New Avalon it seemed like a good idea to get on them about partnering to build other new Mech Lines. It made sense to approach an experienced industrial partner ... but he had floated the idea but hadn't yet actually gone forward to speak to Lord Aaron, the duke of Robinson on the matter.
"Yes, perhaps over the New Year." He hedged.
"Lord Aaron, I have been told will be visiting Sakhara." She remarked. He got the feeling that the field Marshal was telling him this not so much because she wanted to but because she was moving to beat someone else to the punch. "Which brings us to the matter of the recent excerises."
He restrained the groan that threatened to escape him. He'd thrown the excercise together as a way to distract Coleridge and now people were acting as if he'd ... well the scuttlebut had started bringing up Halstead, and Mallory again as if he'd put the excercise together expecting Sakhara to deliver the goods and when they hadn't ... well the other teachers in the MechWarrior contingent were under Coleridge's scrutiny, and that was never a good thing. Of course the Vice Chancellor had over the last day and a half been under the field marshal's scrutiny so the colonel was just pushing it down the chain. A pending visit from the Duke of Robinson likely didn't do anything for the pressure on Coleridge to achieve results.
When you got right down to it though, he wanted an established industrial partner to emphasize the BattleMech front. He'd partner with Corean, or Robinson's local businesses if that would get things up and running and provide security and investments so he could focus on bringing a Shipyard online.
The conversation promised to be resumed later, and retired for the evening to look at the massive numbers that would facilitate all of this.
One Star Lord class JumpShip Model of 2841 had a BV 615 or 2.391 Billion C Bills, that was rounded down. There was another half million as well. He almost coughed blood, having nearly bit his tongue, and nearly knocking over his coffee when he noticed the sixty ton 'Morningstar City Command Vehicle' was a mere 458 BV but had a positively insane 5.2 Billion price tag.
He looked at the display, reached for a towel wiped his lip, and then looked out hte window to the desert. This was useful A sixty ton vehicle would be far far less likely to be seen by anyone who would later ask questions about... he'd deploy it from his landhold...
The SFU, small factory unit, were 627 BV and a price tag of call it 33 Million C-Bills. That was to say a very expensive mech. The MFU sat at 1.2 Billion C-Bills for a BV of almost 1700. It would have been very inefficent to use C-Bills to purchase them in comparison.
The F 77 Deathstalker cost 4.8M C Bills a plan, roughly, and had a BV of 1714. Meaning that each Deathstalker he spawned and then sold was roughly equivalent, generated a net surplus to purchasing an MFU. He needed 30 MFUs or a trinary of fighters to use clan lingo.
4.8M C Bills or more correctly 30 F 77s had a price tag of 145227600 C Bills. Pocket change from selling a Star Lord never mind one of these ridiculous Morningstar things. 145 million C Bills would be deducted from the original Star Lord recycle value of 2391551083 C Bills leaving him a comfortable capital reserve of 2.246 Billion C Bills.
From which he'd have to pay for 50 SFU which out of the price tag of the original value of 1648350000 C Bills. It was enough to make his head swim.
Double checking his math again, he prepared to completely change the succession wars again. He had already decided to sacrifice one Star Lord. To recycle a jumpship people in this time viewed as priceless. That money would build fifty 2500 ton small factory units. From the remaining excess He'd gladly spend the c bill expense for thirty fighters turn around recycle them for BV necessary for the medium factory units.
He hand hovered the confirm key on things...did he go ahead and order it or should he wait and talke to the duke of Robinson first. Shouldn't they spend some of that excess C Bills to secure the support of Corean Enterprises to shore up the ground forces of the Draconis March.
He decided to wait on the actual deployment of the factory units... and instead fell back on the couch to sleep to the digital display of C bills measured in billions. It was lucky for ComStar he couldn't cash the C Bills out into some successor states currency and fuck with the Capellan's currency at the same time... this was true economic warfare.
--
"You look like you're in a good mood." Justin groused wiping the sweat from his forehead.
"I am." He paused, and looked at the Black Jack pilot. "Its something else, has nothing to do with your class." Another pause, "Don't take that the wrong way. I just have a lot going on." Justin still sporting a taped nose crossed his arms over his chest.
"We got our asses kicked." Justin opined bluntly putting one foot up on the bleacher in front of him., "The whole class is at loggerheads."
"Well it gets worse, the Duke of Robinson is apparently visiting, and Field Marshal Davion wants the machines refit to their intended configuration with plans to run a second test in a couple of weeks."
"So what we can get our asses kicked harder?" He demanded. "Yeah, thanks for that." Came the sullen continuance as Justin leaned forward onto the bleachers as they continued to wait for the rest of the runners to finish their set. "So what are we doing?"
"Stress test."
There was a pause "... excuse me?"
"Give it a moment, I don't want to have this interrogation twice." Another group of runners finished and one Countess of Kestrel her hair pulled back in a pony tail to keep it out of her way as she ran turned searching the bleachers... probably to make sure they hadn't moved. "Lex, I assume you want an explanation, so this is intended to put the pilots under stress. This isn't an indulgence in masochism its to put you under pressure before an excercise."
... and it wasn't actually his idea. It had been the Star Leagues. Sakhara had been founded by SLDF officers and some of their traditions had survived the fall of the league, and in the face of issues they wanted cadets to be able to excel. He didn't tell them though it hadn't been idea, because frankly he wished he'd kind of thought of it.
The class was after the last set of runners finished were then hustled off to their mechs, and ordered through a series of courses under supervision, within the comfortable embrace of his heavy battlemech's cockpit he watched as the lances gathered themselves up... but this wasn't his excercise to run. The Vice Chancellor had made sure that another mechwarrior instructor, a veteran of the Davion Guards, who was probably old enough to have served under Field Marshal Davion's mother during the later's tenure commanding the brigade was presently extolling the virtues of the autocannon, and of accurate riflery.
It was a wonder the mustaioched senior mechwarrior didn't call it musketry he was so painfully a caricature of the Victorian British officers of the pith helmet. He carried on his exhortations to the cadets for the better part of ten minutes, before he even started to explain what they were supposed to be doing.
--
"Don Juan bank right."
"Why do you keep calling me that, I'm not actually a knight yet."