GblaRCS Chpt 44

==Guided by the light of a (Red) Cameron Star - Chapter 44 -==
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"The ace in the hole of the BJ-1n Blackjack was its AC/5's disguised to look like the AC/2's of the original model BJ-1. The mechwarriors that operated the BJ-1n called it the 'Five Card Trick', and in conjunction with the machine being far more mechanically reliable in reality than in was in legend they revelled in the tactical advantage that being badly underestimated provided them.When the secret got out, as it had to eventually, they just swapped out the autocannons on the Blackjack for ER Large Lasers and the heat-sinks needed to keep them firing and the various militias of the Niops Hegemony continued to happily match their machines against all comers."Weekend Warriors: Militia against Professionals during the Lostech War - Niops Press, 2920
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===Touring the ever changing world of Alphard===
Hydrae Battlemech Manufactory (HBM) – Alphard – 2840
Shielded from the blazing sun by a large awning, Giles Olson looked out at the crowd who had assembled outside the newly completed factory complex to hear his speech before he officially declared the manufacturing facility open. They all looked a great deal less uncomfortable in the sunshine than he would have, most of them being either Alphard born or having been living and working here now long enough to have acclimatized by now.
Stood behind a podium on a raised dais, one set up in front of some truly gigantic hanger doors, the High Associator looked out at his audience and smiled. Leaning in closer to the microphone connected to a loudspeaker so everyone could hear. "I'll try not to use up too much of your time" he began. "I'm sure you've all got better things to do than listen to a politician a couple of weeks away from retirement ramble on" he continued, looking around. "Could be worse I suppose. At least it's not raining" he deadpanned.
The ripple of laughter that passed through the crowd confirmed to Olson that he had hit the right note. Situated by a natural harbor on the west coast of the Hydrae continent the annual rainfall in this area measured less than ten centimeters per year, although the river that flowed into the harbor not far from the factory meant that the area was still generally greener that most of Hydrae was.
In order to house the factory workforce, and to cater to their needs, a town had been built beside the river, one that was expected to double in size within five years and then double again in population within five more as more industry sprang up nearby and more people arrived looking for work. The Corps of Engineers had already laid out a grid system for future roads, making certain it wouldn't develop into some kind of haphazard shanty town, and was now breaking ground for a future commercial district. Plans for a large public park were also being considered, though the amount of irrigation needed to keep grass and trees properly watered in this climate was a stumbling block to the more grandiose schemes.
Alphard was one of those places where it was well worth using solar panels even if you had fusion power generation. There was even a scheme to build a production facility to produce umpteen square kilometers of the things, cover a huge area of otherwise useless arid land in them and use the shade underneath for farming. The electricity the panels generated would power pumps bringing seawater inland and then convert it to fresh water using industrial J-U purifiers.
It wouldn't really be a sensible, economically viable proposal until all the land suitable for farming elsewhere on the planet was under the plough, but in the long term it would allow Alphard's population to grow somewhat beyond normal limits if someone in the future hankered for the days when the Star League Department of Mega-Engineering saw the obstacles Mother Nature threw in the way of humanity as a challenge not a block.
The dropship which had transported Olson here had set down at the partially completed spaceport situated a few kilometers away, after which a hover-car ferried him onto the factory for the official opening ceremony. The day before he had visited what was effectively the planetary capital city, a large and growing town surrounded by farmland on the Typhon continent, one of the two large landmasses that lay near Alphard's north pole, and to say he had been somewhat surprised by the warmth of the welcome he had received from the locals was a massive understatement.
Back home on Niops the people still treated the High Associator in much the same way that people on most planets in the Inner Sphere would treat the mayor of a big city, he was someone you might run into at the supermarket or at a coffee shop during lunchbreak, not some high-and-mighty figure of authority that needed to be bowed and scraped towards, or regarded with something remotely akin to deference and awe.
Finding himself at a huge parade being held in his honor and treated as if he was the Director-General of the Terran Hegemony, or even First Lord of the Star League, by cheering locals rather than some bureaucrat was the sort of thing that might well have gone to his head if not for the fact that he knew he would be merely a private citizen again soon.
His wife who was accompanying him on this trip must have caught on to his mood because she had leaned in close and whispered 'Remember thou art mortal' in his ear while some local dignitary waxed lyrical about his supposedly great achievements while in office, giggling at the expression that appeared on Olson's face when she did so.
She was actually the one that had nudged him into politics in the first place, though of course that was back when being elected as High Associator might get you a nice table at a restaurant on Niops VII not something akin to a Roman Triumph in another star system entirely like Alphard, and she liked to take some credit for how things had turned out for him as a result. There was an old saying she was fond of that claimed: 'behind every great man there was a great woman propelling him forward' and, although Olson didn't really consider himself 'great' as such, he didn't generally disagree with the sentiment.
ComStar might not accept the premise, but if they did agree they would probably attribute the quote to a putative 'Mrs Blake'.
Fortunately for the crowd who had come out to see him on Typhon Giles Olson was actually pretty good at giving a rousing address when the occasion called for one, and recycling some material from a few of those he had given in the past whilst electioneering he had delivered an impromptu but stonking speech to the masses, one that featured references to cooperation and a shared vision of a brighter future for all as the Hegemony both expanded and deepened the ties between its member worlds. If each planet, and each person living upon those planets, contributed what they could for the common good then they could build something far, far greater than the sum of its parts. While the Great Houses continued to bathe each other in blood and nuclear fire, razing civilization itself to the ground as they did so, out here Niops, Alphard and the other member worlds were building each other up, creating a vibrant, dynamic new nation that they could all be proud to bequeath to their children and grandchildren.
Fortunately it didn't seem like he had laid it on too thick yesterday and the locals reacted enthusiastically enough to his words that Olson not only didn't feel he had overreached with the 'manifest destiny' schtick but he was also pretty sure that if his successor, whoever it was going to be, visited Alphard and gave a speech of their own it would probably seem lacklustre by comparison. As a rule politicians on Niops tended to be somewhat boring, not particularly inspiring, technocrats that weren't exactly all that thrilling to listen to, Olson being unusual on that score because he could carry a crowd. The underlying scientific meritocracy did at least weed out those unable to actually do the job however, which was more than could be said of people running things in a lot of places, and until the last few years an inability to stir up the mob hadn't really been a deal-breaker for a Council Member or even the High Associator themselves.
That was yesterday though. Given the rather different audience present at the new Battlemech factory being opened Olson had opted not to go with stirring oratory in favor of relaxed, earthy good humor and after running a few jokes past his wife earlier just to make sure they were actually funny he delivered an entertaining enough speech that seemed to deliver the goods, at least judging by the laughter and occasional applause.
Olson laughed along with crowd for a while before becoming a little more serious. "Before I forget, can I offer my heartfelt thanks for all the hard work you men and women have put into this project over the last few years" he addressed the crowd. "If it wasn't for the sterling efforts of people that hail from Comstock, Francas, Niops plus of course Alphard itself, all coming together for a common goal we wouldn't have been able to get this factory completed both ahead of time and, even more amazingly for a government project, actually on-budget!"
The High Associator sighed. "You have no idea of how much trouble it caused when the Project Manager tried sending the unspent money back to the treasury, dozens of bean-counters staring blankly into space trying to figure out what they were supposed to do because nobody had ever done that before" he said, trying to sound sincere but not so sincere that they wouldn't know he was joking.
Olson paused, sighed again and then shook his head sadly. "Given that the paperwork is too hard to figure out I guess we'll just have to pay everyone a bonus instead" he said. "Just make sure to spend it before the new guy or gal takes over from me or they might want it back" he very obviously joked now as some very enthusiastic cheering broke out.
It wasn't actual largesse on his part of course. The assembled engineers, technicians and construction workers who had just completed building the factory complex would be moving onto other work, indeed some already had being released from working on the new Water-Purifier plant for this occasion, and if word got out that there was an actual benefit to going above and beyond then more people would do so.
There was certainly no shortage of work that still needed to be done, but there was a severe shortage the skilled labor needed to do it which meant getting the most out of everyone was paramount. As an increasing number of workers who had signed up for five-year contracts arrived from the Illyrian Palatinate it looked like they would be able to get the new mines running to capacity at least but hopes to drastically increase the amount of land under the plough on the northern continents of Alphard were still stymied by a serious lack of manpower.
In some ways the system was a victim of its own success, the new factories being opened paid better than signing up as a farmhand did, and with manufacturing starting up again on Comstock as well now people there were starting to reconsider plans to take jobs on other planets, even ones that might pay a little more than the ones back home.
It certainly didn't help that Comstock had a more pleasant, temperate climate than Alphard. Toiling in the fields on Typhon or Echidna was bad enough, but working construction on Hydrae was hellish. There was a good reason why the native population didn't live near the equator despite the vast mineral wealth to be found both on Hydrae and the island continent Crux.
At least food imported from the Stafford system could help feed the expanding urban population on Alphard for now, although it was considered risky to see that as a long-term solution. Planets being capable of feeding themselves was safer, just look at what happened to Comstock when interstellar trade collapsed, so while it wasn't like anyone was actually going to go hungry on Alphard the Department of Trade and Industry was starting to push for large scale recruitment from poorer worlds in the Free Worlds League nonetheless. There were several worlds under Marik rule within a few jumps of Niops that had been rendered poor and destitute by the wars, it was hoped their inhabitants might well jump at the chance to obtain a new home and steady well-paid work, especially in a place that wasn't in the line-of-fire.
That would have to be handled very carefully though, for both diplomatic and security reasons. The government on Atreus might be too preoccupied at present to make a fuss about some small periphery power poaching its people, in fact they might even be quietly happy about it because they were having trouble supporting the populations of some of their smaller colonies, but eventually they might make a fuss about it and that required prior forethought and planning to deal with.
Waiting for the latest round of applause to settle Giles Olson looked around. Not far away in the distance another large manufacturing facility for mechs was already beginning construction, this one however not intended to eventually produce war machines but rather agromechs and loggermechs that would hopefully increase productivity, and therefore output, while demographics caught up with soaring demand. Back home in Niops another Project Workshop had just been brought on line, PW III-C on Niops V, which should ease production bottlenecks in high-tech manufacturing equipment a little, and eventually they would be in a position to build a factory making robotics advanced enough to need a lot less human supervision, but for now they still had to priorities on what really needed to have been done yesterday and allocate labor accordingly.
Doing everything in a rush certainly showed in the design of the buildings here, Olson thought to himself. Plain, boring concrete boxes put together in a hurry that actually looked much like the majority of new construction back home, only cheaper because weather-proofing and insulation to keep out the cold wasn't really much of a design requirement here. The buildings were blindingly bright here though, painting everything white helped keep them cool inside, and they dazzled you almost as much as the G3IV type star high above. On Niops VII the boxy concrete blocks many people lived and worked in were made darker to try and catch as much sunlight as possible.
The other thing that caught the eye that differentiated the buildings here from buildings back home was all the air-conditioning vents and Olson was now very much looking forward to getting inside before his suit jacket was completely drenched in sweat. Supposedly down in the deep germanium mines on Crux some of the workers wore modified versions of the cooling suits worn by mechwarriors and it was easy to understand why. A few hours of having to swing a pickaxe down there where it wasn't just hot, it was also humid, sounded horrific.
The 'workers' on Crux were actually convict labor of course, so a little suffering was par for the course, but if they collapsed from the heat then they couldn't work and so making sure conditions for them weren't too terrible paid dividends.
If they met production quotas they even got aircon in their cells and ice-cream as dessert which reputedly did more to keep them complaint than armed guards ever did. Olson had considered visiting the penal colony while he was here but had eventually decided against in favor of getting back to Niops a little sooner. Ensuring that the handover of power after the election was a smooth as possible was important, he had been running things for fifteen years now, the only High Associator to ever make it the full three terms of office permitted by the constitution, and leaving on a high note with no hitches was important to his legacy.
More importantly he needed to make sure that the big wooden desk that he had paid for himself was moved out of the High Associator's office well before his successor took over and claimed it. Olson loved that desk, it had been made from an unusual hardwood imported from Buffalo Meadows, and the study in his private home was just big enough for it to fit inside.
The carpenter who made it had originally been an 'Astech' in the 295th, as the military called Assistant Technicians who worked on mechs and aerospace fighters, who had found a talent at woodworking during their years marooned on Buffalo Meadows. They operated very successful business now back on Niops VII making bespoke furniture, though the timber was mostly imported from Stafford these days that being rather closer. The forests that had been planted on Niops VII using imported species of trees grew very slowly given the temperature and limited sunlight so while they would eventually produce useful lumber, for now they weren't much use for anything but a habitat for recreated Aurochs and Giant Moas, both transplanted from McEvedy's Folly.
Once he was out of office and back to being an ordinary citizen Olson planned to invest some of his savings in that fast food chain that was starting to get off the ground, he had tried a Moa burger and he was pretty sure it was going to be a hit throughout the Hegemony. The same however could not be said of Kentucky Fried Dodo unfortunately, those things going extinct had clearly been no great loss to gastronomy assuming Alpheus McEvedy's recreated Dodo tasted as much like the original species as it looked.
Nobody would ever be raising herds of Moa here on Alphard though, regardless of how tasty they were. The recreated Moa had been engineered to live in considerably cooler climates than could be found on this arid rock, Olson thought to himself. Fortunately there were regions of Francas that were expected to be extremely suitable for rearing the Moa in commercially viable quantity, and the people there were certainly well experienced in livestock farming and ranching, albeit with imported Terran species.
They already farmed ostriches on Francas, the Giant Moa shouldn't be too different.
Some people on Stafford meanwhile had expressed an interest in perhaps importing both the Crested Mammoth and the Aurochs, not as meat animals but as beasts of burden. The aurochs would probably be easier to domesticate, but on the other hand an eight-ton mammoth could pull one hell of a plough and unlike a tractor used plants as fuel and was also a good source of manure.
The diversity of worlds within the Hegemony made Olson regret not visiting any of them before now, although he certainly couldn't have found time for the the long trek all the way down to Frobisher and McEvedy's Folly. He would have probably gotten a decent reception on Frobisher though, they seemed very pleased with the Iron Wombs that would mean Homo Sapiens Amphibia not going the way of the Dodo (sans the epic comeback) and all the advanced genetic engineering equipment salvaged from the Folly added to their own meant that Frobisher had a very bright future ahead of itself as the likely bioscience hub of the Hegemony.
The fact that there were children who had been born on Niops while Olson was in office that might potentially still be alive at the dawn of the next millennium was mostly down to the genetic engineers on Frobisher. As soon as the first clinic providing anti-agathic gene-therapy treatments had opened back home it had been running full-tilt to try and meet demand and although priority was being given to the genetically-enhanced infants coming out of the Iron Wombs, given the financial investment in creating the new sibling companies the military wanted to get as many years of service out of them as they possibly could, the treatments were available to all.
True, if you were wealthy you could jump to the front of the queue, but the income from that was being used to fund additional clinics with an expansion of the service to the rest of the Hegemony worlds planned soon. Given the far greater populations of the other member planets however production of the treatments would have to be ramped up drastically in order to cope with potential demand, and with increased immigration another factor it might be a generation before every child born in the Hegemony could be guaranteed such an extended lifespan.
It was expected however that when the Magistracy of Canopus in particular caught word of the treatments, they would be throwing money at Niops to try and get access themselves and if they were willing to pay as much as some analysts thought they would that might actually bring in enough income to subsidize the whole thing. Certainly the year before when news that Niops could not only likely repair their ever-dwindling number of precious Terran-Hegemony-tech Stasis Tubes, but even potentially make new ones reached Canopus this had resulted in a handwritten letter sent by the Magestrix herself arriving on Olson's beloved desk via the Duchess of Thraxa, the note asking how much it would cost to get this expedited.
It wasn't quite a heap of blank cheques being thrust into the hands of the Niops Association, but the Department of Trade and Industry were pretty happy about it and started pushing for another delay in working on the new shipyard while a Project Workshop was assigned to reverse-engineering and then manufacturing the Stasis Tube technology.
Fortunately for both Admiral Bremman's blood pressure and his mental health the High Associator had immediately nixed the suggestion. The Magistracy would just have to wait until at least 2845 by which time another workshop, PW-II-B should be completed on Niops VI.
After cracking a few more jokes and waxing lyrical on the sterling job being done by everyone in the Hegemony to build a brighter future, Giles Olson told the crowd that he had wasted more than enough of their time already and that they should all head inside where cold drinks, sandwiches and ice-cream waited for all in the factory canteen. While they got to enjoy themselves he would be shown around the plant and would ceremonially push a large button to start the whole production line running for the first time.
It would be a pleasure to get inside for him too, with or without ice-cream, and while his wife played court in the canteen, herself having no interest in looking at machinery, Olson looked around outside one more time before entering the building with the factory foreman acting as guide and a couple of men from his protection detail hanging back.
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===Future-proofing for the times ahead===
Virtually every machine in the factory had already been tested of course, indeed several pre-production Blackjack battlemechs had already been produced there, they had just never run the entire factory all at the same time from raw materials to finished product in one smooth run rather than in fits and starts.
As Olson was escorted inside by the factory foreman, Niops born of Capellan Refugee stock, he passed by one of the Blackjack mechs the factory would soon be turning out by the lance-load and noted it was painted up in unusual livery. "What's with the bright yellow Cameron Star?" he queried, pointing up at the insignia.
"The Alphard Militia adopted it as their insignia, they're getting the first dozen machines" the foreman explained. "If the idea catches on then I guess the ones we'll make for the Frobisher militia eventually will have an orange Cameron Star on them instead" he said, grinning.
Olson smiled. "Alphard will probably want to add their name to that insignia because otherwise people will confuse them with all the other systems in the Hegemony with G type stars" he suggested. "For that matter McEvedy's Folly is also an orange dwarf like Frobisher."
"Good point, though I hadn't heard that the genetic abominations on the Folly were forming a planetary guard" the foreman joked.
"They are, but they won't need 'mechs, just a flak jacket big enough for a Thunderbird to wear." Olson replied, playing along. "The factory workforce are all considered reliable I assume? No security risks?"
The foreman nodded. "Nobody whose parents and grandparents weren't born on Niops, Alphard, Comstock or Francas has been allowed to get a job here." he replied. "We're going to expand that to people from Stafford and the other Hegemony systems that joined more recently but we're keeping the rule regarding ancestry. Makes foreign infiltration a little tricky."
"Same rule for militia membership I suppose?" Olson checked.
"Yes Sir, only people whose families have lived in the Niops Hegemony worlds for generations, the one that don't really identify with anywhere else as a homeland" the foreman confirmed. "There's certainly plenty of other work for non-Hegemony immigrant labor here on Alphard anyway; mining, farming up on Typhon or Echidna, or a job at one of the other factories cropping up making civilian goods. I nearly lost a good machinist last week to a firm that's about to start turning out ATVs for local use and export, quad-cycles you know, lots of demand for those as we start developing planets out here in the wilds."
"I guess they imported the plant and machinery for that from the Magistracy?" Olson supposed.
"Yeah, but the same firm is looking to start making tractors and construction machinery next using a line imported from the Free Worlds League I've heard, fire-sale prices there at the moment." the foreman told him.
"A lot of that is really just the exchange rate between the Niops Dollar and the League Eagle at the moment." Olson told him. "The Eagle has fallen a lot against the C-Bill at the same time ComStar bucks have slipped in value compared to ours. It won't last though, the League's economy is mostly back on its feet and once people realize that confidence in their money will go back up."
The factory foreman smiled. "Sounds like you know what you're talking about." he replied.
Olson laughed. "Nah, just fifteen years of practicing pretending that I do" he confided, tongue-in-cheek. "I assume the local militia are happy with the Blackjack now they'll be getting the things?"
"Yes Sir. In concert with SLDF instructors we've started training a few locals up on the pre-production machines already. Fortunately the Blackjack doesn't handle much differently than most mechs in its weight class, other than being a little more sluggish than some, so the prior experience they've been getting before now on other machines in preparation for the BJ-1n being available is proving valuable I'm told" he said. "Just to be clear she's sluggish when walking or running, if you use her jump jets as well she's maneuverable enough to be effectively on a battlefield."
Olson smiled. "Yes, I do read the briefing papers that cross my desk" he responded. "If the Blackjack was really the third-rate war-machine most people think it is in the Inner Sphere we wouldn't have chosen to put it into production" he said. "The autocannon upgrade helps but, to quote my military liaison, 'If the Blackjack wasn't a fundamentally sound design, then swapping out the AC/2 for an Improved AC/5 would have just been putting lipstick on a pig'."
The foreman laughed. "Great analogy" he opined.
"I liked it, most of my staff aren't as entertaining in their phrasing as Colonel Ebon." Olson told him. "The Alphard Militia is getting the first twenty-four machines off the production line if I recall correctly?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir." the foreman confirmed, nodding. "After that we'll start shipping them out to Comstock, Francas, Stafford and the other member worlds to equip their planetary defense forces, but for obvious reasons it'll still be a while before we'll be able to meaningfully scale back the SLDF garrisons already there. As you can see by just looking around this isn't some slick, fully automated Star League factory that can churn out hundreds of mechs a year with half a bored dozen staff sitting around without much to do, I mean we're not low-tech by any means but if we can eventually ramp up to thirty-six mechs a year we'll be doing well, though we'll need considerably more inflow of raw materials than we have at present to achieve that goal, as well as another production line for fusion engines."
"I'm told that there are more mining operations being planned for up-river that will provide the raw materials at least." Olson remarked, looking with interest at a large piece of machinery he thought was some kind of press. Everything was at a huge scale of course, even a medium battlemech like a Blackjack was a hefty beast of a machine by human scale.
The rivers on Hydrae were very important, not just because they provided fresh water, Jamerson-Ulikov Water Purifiers could go a long way to meeting that need, but because they were also a trade highway to the various mining towns further inland. The number of barges full of ore making their way downriver to factories situated on the coast would increase exponentially over the next few years, the plan being that they would be eventually supplemented by roads and mag-lev lines that would allow more ready access to mineral wealth located further afield, but they already delivered enough to keep the factories running, if not to capacity.
"Yes, but we'll need to expand the river-port to handle it first" the foreman replied. "You can't just magic infrastructure out of thin air unfortunately."
Olson laughed. "Honestly it seems like we already have sometimes" he joked. "Ten years ago there was nothing here but rocks baking in the sun, now look at this place" he said, sweeping his hand around.
"You can get a lot done with some project workshops, money to import plant and machinery and a motivated workforce that's for sure" the foreman agreed. "As the town grows around the factories we're building here and we've got more indigenous manufacture going it'll make things easier certainly" he said confidently. "We can already produce our own ferro-fibrous armour and older-type double-heat sinks right here in the factory, I'll show you the armor forge and the DHS line later, but we're still having to import endo-steel frames from Niops and that won't change until we get some more orbital infrastructure right here in Alphard."
"It's on the to-do list believe me, it's just a very long list" Olson replied. "Not much point telling me about it anyway, I'll be looking for a new job soon" he said, before smiling. "Talking of which, are you hiring and what's the pay like?" he asked, jokingly.
"Salary would probably be a little lower than you're used to, Sir." the foreman replied.
"Yeah, I'm just kicking myself now that I wasn't corrupt. Could have built up a nice retirement fund" Olson replied, feigning regret.
"That's unfortunate, I was going to suggest you get a job in the marketing department but if you're honest then it's really not the career for you" the foreman replied, shaking his head sadly.
"There's a marketing department?"
"Well not yet, but eventually every budding militia mechwarrior in the Niops Hegemony is going to have a Blackjack and then we'll have to either sell them to other people or shutter the factory" the foreman replied.
"Shutter the factory? We're the Star League, we'll just dig a big hole, fill it up with mechs, bury them and call it a 'cache' just like our forefathers did" Olson said wryly. "Seriously, the Great Houses keep turning them up all the time, even ones most of the SLDF didn't seem to know about are scattered around everywhere."
"Yeah, makes you wonder when they're all going to run out?" the foreman asked rhetorically. "Judging from the news reports they're already wrecking their ability to make new Battlemechs so eventually they'll only have the caches left to feed into the grinder."
"Maybe by the Fourth Succession War" Olson suggested. "Nah, more like the Fifth" he reassessed his answer. "That won't mean peace though, they'll fight the Sixth with sticks and stones if they had to" he said. "More seriously they're bound to see sense eventually and they'll stop flinging nuclear weapons at each other while there's still something worth actually fighting over."
"Just as long as they don't all decide we're worth fighting over" the foreman observed. "It might not exactly be the Valkyrie factory on New Avalon." he said, referring to the most productive battlemech manufacturing facility still operating in the Inner Sphere, "but this place is going to get more and more valuable as more and more factories elsewhere get destroyed."
"True, but whoever tries to take it away from us is in for a much harder fight than they're expecting, and not just because our Blackjack is punchier than it looks." Olson replied, reaching out to touch a piece of heavy machinery, the feel of the cold metal making it more real somehow. "We're building the future here."
"Well said, High Associator" the foreman replied, glad he had voted for the man three times and wishing he could have done it again.
"Yeah, if I say it again later in front of other people when we're in the canteen pretend it's the first time you've heard it okay?" Olson requested, grinning cheekily. "That goes for you guys too" he added loudly to his security detail who had maintained a polite distance while he talked to his guide.
"Will do" the foreman agreed before they moved onto the part of the production line where the ferro-fibrous armor was mounted to the endo-steel frame of the mech, pointing out where some design changes had been made to the original specs so that they could more readily switch out the autocannons on the Blackjack for Extended Range Large Lasers if required later.
It was best to future-proof when building the future after all.
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==Chapter Notes==
*;Notes from the Author : Just as a reminder Hydrae, Typhon, Echidna and Crux are the names used here for the continents on Alphard that were known as Italia, Alba, Gaul and Ostia in canon (where the Roman-themed Marian Hegemony exists not the Niops Hegemony). Hydrae isn't nearly as suitable for farming as Typhon and Echidna are nearer the poles but it has some rivers that can be usefully exploited for water and transportation.The BL-1n version of the Blackjack medium battlemech being put into production in the new factory on Hydrae will equip the various planetary militias of the Hegemony. As noted above it's not exactly the largest, most automated battlemech production facility n the Inner Sphere but it's by no means the most primitive either. As a comparison the Valkyrie plant on New Avalon was turning out well over a hundred mechs a year right throughout the Succession Wars (which made it the most productive known factory) but that was basically lostech automation.How people in Niops view their High Associator is likely to be rather different than how outsiders would, I was trying to give a little window on that here as Giles Olson nears retirement and visits Alphard for the first time while in office.It's been theorised that the reason why certain ancient megafauna, perhaps including the Giant Moa, went extinct after encountering mankind was that they were cursed with being tasty (there would be other reasons too of course, such as being easy to hunt). The Moa burger is going to be a big hit as the ranchers on Francas and their financial backers take the interstellar Fast Food business by storm!
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