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Chapter 89[]
Can you tell me where can we start over?[]
Boojum Shipyard
Kowloon, Lyran Commonwealth
3067
Competition with Alarion and Gibbs Shipyards was no longer something they could avoid. Not now.
Ioto choosing to go with Krupp of Terra made sense, honestly. The Duchess of Kowloon was married to a Clanner, and the Word of Blake hates Clanners, as do a fairly large majority of the Lyran aristocracy and government.
Building warships with tools from Kowloon was argued to be a serious breach of security. So Lockheed, Ioto, and other manufacturers had heeded that, dropping decades-old contracts overnight, even paying termination fees to expedite.
Competing with customers was no longer a concern.
Economic survival has replaced that now.
Clan Jade Falcon were all too happy to provide specifications and orders in place of the revoked contracts. Specifically for heavy transport jumpships, the Clan Monolith and Star Lord Classes of JumpShip upgrades for their Merchant Caste. Orders for Invader and Merchant craft, bulk transport vessels like the Behemoth dropship, which are needed for mass movement of personnel, Clan variant Mammoths for moving bulk goods.
For, say, the bulk goods and mass movement tasks of getting their civilian caste and critical infrastructure out of the Clan Homeworlds while the Grand Council remains deadlocked.
Believing that state of affairs isn't going to last.
"This is their future, Nathan." Elizabeth's suit was a "pregnancy bag' model, an extra large torso old-style pressure suit. It wasn't recommended for her by medical professionals, her insistence on visiting the Yards wasn't something her staff would have preferred.
"This?" he asked
Elizabeth gestured at the ships under construction, "This. The Estates General is trying to find a legal means to oust Peter and repudiate the Falcon treaty. The Star League itself is bound up in debates over the nomination, the Intel you showed me says the Grand Council doesn't like it either. Sooner or later, there's going to be another war, probably sooner."
"So this is our children's future?"
"Interstellar nations are more like island chains than contiguous polities, without ships or no nation. With ships, then the person with a navy is in charge over the person without, and the person with the strongest navy is in charge compared to the lesser navies. That's because if you can't move troops or supply them or support them...they're useless for power projection. Without power projection, you don't have a standing army. You can't defend your territory to consolidate gains or protect what you have. Battlemechs have to make it to the ground to contest it."
"I accept that premise as a theory, yes." he said, "but why is this their future?"
"Because I'm running out of reasons to support the Commonwealth." Elizabeth told him. "If we have to go independent, we're going to need to be able to protect ourselves. As many ground troops as can be raised, and I proved that-not having to use them is better than having to use them."
He peered at the yards again from their vantage and realized what he was looking at.
"Elizabeth, they're not going to forgive you for that." he said quietly.
"Maybe not." she said quietly, "but I'm rapidly reaching the point where I'm okay with that. The fools want to cling to their hatreds and prejudices...they want to cling to obsolete ambitions and old conflicts? Okay. They want to start another three centuries of insanity? Fine...but we're not going to give them the right to do that to us, here. They can all burn for all I care. My children will not grow up in ignorance and poverty."