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New Dawn in the Sun's - Chapter 7[]
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Father Like Son[]
Maharaja Palace
Basantapur, Federated Suns
August 14th, 3015
"My son is an idiot… and my wife is going to be telling me I told you so for the next three decades." Andrew Brockton's exasperation was obvious to his listeners. He had been an unexpected but welcome visitor, bringing with him enough machine tooling to build an engine line for Trevlu's front line offerings. Between the tooling they had acquired from Jalastar, and the new engine line when it was completed, Basantapur-Trevlu was finally in a position to produce front line quality Battlemechs. It was an investment that Roger Garg had been lobbying for most of the last two decades to achieve. His success had only come after he had convinced the Messengers of Shiva to station a Battalion of mechs and their support troops on Basantapur to supplement Trevlu security and the local militia.
"Harry? An idiot?" Roger Garg asked mildly. His elegantly sculpted eyebrow barely rising as he flicked his tailored silk cuff out of the way of his coffee. He had been in danger of getting the embroidery ruined, a constant concern dressing the way he did. He would have been much happier in the overalls he had worn throughout his service as an AFFS tech, but the demands of his position no longer allowed him to be unconcerned with his image.
"New Avalon?" Prakash Azad grunted out his question from where he was hunched over his breakfast. His dark face still turned down while he focused on his meal with mechanical precision. "Who did he kill?"
"My family doesn't feel the need to be violent to establish our position," Andrew responded while turning his nose up and shifting his voice into a parody of a New Avalon noble. "Having been leading members of the upper crust in the suns for centuries we are above such plebian things. We would never be so crass as to do something like that personally."
"No," Prakash snorted as he looked at the two nobles he was seated with. When he had been younger, he would never have pictured himself here. As the son of a casual laborer, and a Dalit, he should have ended up working the same job as his father and living a life of quiet desperation. Fortunately for him he had met Roger Garg while serving in the AFFS, and his solid dependability had gotten him pulled up the social ladder. "You nobles would hire out the kill and make sure that you had the chance to loot the poor fool's residence down to bedrock yourselves. Because obviously a hireling would screw up the more important part."
"Exactly!" Roger agreed cheerfully with his long-time friend and subordinate. "It's good to see you have adjusted into being a proper noble after all this time. Why it feels like it was just the other day you were so crass as to beat a man to death with your own two hands, and you hired out the ransacking of his residence! Such a Nouveau riche thing to do…"
All three men laughed at the continuing joke. It did hold an edge of uncomfortable truth to it, but they had known each other long enough that it could be ignored in the name of levity. They hadn't always gotten along, Andrew having been almost apologetically angry when Roger had put Prakash into the CEOs chair without so much as a by your leave to Trevlu's largest shareholder, but they had worked together for years. There was an easy familiarity and a level of trust built up. Especially given that Roger had been proven right about Prakash within a fortnight.
"So, what did Harry do, and how much backlash should I expect to be coming out of New Avalon?" Prakash asked, levity leaving his face.
"He thought that a ball in Mount Davion was a good time to relax and drink too much, and then he mouthed off to the First Prince." Andrew sighed as he admitted that. "I thought he had enough time to decompress while he was home, but it seems my wife was right again. It shouldn't do us any real damage, especially since he was correct in his mouthing off. Mostly about New Avalon's seeming obsession with Corean at the expense of our native companies."
"So, I should batten down the hatches and check that our cash reserves are good?" Prakash's face settled into his characteristic frown. "Got it."
"No really it isn't that bad. He actually got the First Prince to assign him a raid to test what he was saying."
"How fast can we get Brenda from Brockton over to the commonwealth?" Roger asked seriously. He was by now well aware of the Brockton family dynamics, Andrew handled the business end of things with a ruthless determination that a Lyran magnate would admire while Brenda handled soothing ruffled feathers of the bruised noble egos Andrew left in his wake. For a girl who had grown up on a skid row world she had a real sense for politics which Andrew lacked, something they would need if Harry took after his father as much as this incident indicated he did.
"No need, she was on Robinson." Andrew shook his head at the over reaction of his business partners and friends. "I already sent a message to her."
"What was she doing on Robinson?" Prakash asked suspiciously. "She wasn't trying to get the Sandovals to back upgrading the Tsamma plant again, was she?"
"Nothing like that," Andrew said hastily waving his hands as if to ward away the very idea. "The DMM captured a pair of Liberties from some pirates out by the alliance. They're mostly wrecked but the cores are reported to still be intact."
"Andrew… you have factors for that kind of work. You don't send your biggest political gun out on a routine buying trip." Roger's disbelief over Andrew's protestations of innocence wasn't hidden.
"There might have been a bit of a meeting with the Sandoval's. They've been trying to get a license to produce spares for the Whitworth out of Corean for the last decade…"
"Oh, bloody hell." Roger reached up with his free hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know your family has something of a vendetta with Corean but seriously?"
"They reached out to us," Andrew's protest was weak and he knew it. "Its more about giving them leverage then anything else, favor trading for a later date. It's not like they're going to accept that we have the authority to grant the license they want after all. Even if it is legally ours."
"Probably a good idea…" Prakash paused clearly thinking before continuing. "Does this… incident… change any of our plans?"
"It might make things a little tighter than I would like…" Roger responded staring off into space blankly and ignoring the spectacular view of the mountains that dominated his dining room windows.
"Not really." Andrew held up his hands defensively as the other two men glared at him. "We weren't going to be getting all of our factories into the front line production business, just the ones with existing tooling. That's going to be the point where an incident like this could really trip us up. Harry's instructions are to get our MML system legal, and not labeled a pirated copy, using any means necessary. That's probably going to be through Defiance but who knows? The Lyran legal system might work to our advantage here, after all they aren't going to want Coventry to be their exclusive supplier, and to see if Mountain Wolf would be amenable to selling some of their catalog."
"I'll admit that's the part I don't get. Not having a regiment or two of mercs dropped on my head because I ignored legalities is something I understand well enough… but Mountain Wolf? Why not go straight for Coventry?" Prakash asked, he hadn't been included in the discussion over what was to be acquired. Mostly because neither of the nobles wanted him to see them engage in what was very close to an all-out brawl over their differing ideas of where Trevlu should focus their efforts in the coming years.
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Ymir Assault BattleMech
"Because Coventry is going to be pissed at us for stealing data from them." Roger admitted, privately he was still smarting about that point. He had thought that this was the perfect opportunity to add the Ymir to their lineup. An assault mech, even a militia grade one, was a statement of power one he badly wanted. Especially after he had spent almost a decade worth of the R and D budget getting the specifications for the Striker into something they could manufacture after Lycomb Davion Introtech had refused to even meet with his representative over the possibility of putting the Awesome into production. The Striker was hardly ideal, but it could be adapted to take a two forty rated engine, and they could make those at Ajeet Aerospace. Unfortunately, Andrew's point had won out in the end.
"Everyone knows Brandon O'Leary wants to get his company back into the BattleMech game in the worst way. He's not happy being confined to a MilitiaMech producer, and we can use that in the future. We trade some tech, and maybe a license, and a couple million Kroner to him for his connections and the MacEnroe catalog? That's going to be useful down the road when we want to make the full jump from militia mechs ourselves." Andrew said seriously. "I know you both think I'm reckless at times, but, I'm well aware that we can't make that jump openly yet. We have a bit of production at my Brockton site, some more being built here, but…"
"Crossbow isn't really worth it." Prakash frowned again as he thought through what he knew about MacEnroe Motors. Like a lot of the companies which had designed the Militia Mechs used today it was long out of business and therefore the contents of its design catalogue weren't well known. "What are we really getting? Because if its just the Crossbow and connections? We would be better off sticking in the Suns and working with Achernar for their Dervish militia mech. It has a better reputation, and they have political capital we could actually use."
"It's not just the mech we're after." Roger admitted easily. "It's the Marsden plans and the Buffel. Both of which we can put into production here on Basantapur…"
"And being a tank and a combat support vehicle, we can easily upgrade to modern standard…" Prakash smiled as he saw the shape of the plan he would be expected to execute. It seemed that Andrew hadn't taken leave of his senses and was trying to grow their cash reserves before making an open move. "Doable. We already make the Tiger here… That takes care of the engine. Marsden isn't really going to expand our share of the militia market, but it should be a solid earner especially if we slap some of the new weapons on it… Buffel though… That might just be the ticket into the AFFS supply chain. We put out a good enough version and it might just be accepted into front line units."
"I have every confidence in your engineering teams." Andrew agreed obliquely. "They should be finishing up the first of the Tiger updates we asked of them by the time we actually have plans in hand. Besides the AFFS has never been truly happy with their engineering vehicles, and none of the larger concerns are looking at the market. Our competition will be Quickscell."
"Who we can blow out of the water on our build quality alone, no matter how poor of an offering we put out." Roger tipped his coffee towards Andrew in acknowledgement of the point which had won him the argument last night. Well that and their critical lack of tooling, without the backing of an existing battlemech manufacturer getting ahold of the right grade of tooling was a challenge. Especially given how little was made in the Suns, the truth was they would need to import and that cost more then their cash reserves could realistically be stretched to cover.
"But not on price." Prakash pursed his lips. "Don't get too comfortable with this plan of yours, Quickscell has stayed in business despite their abysmal reputation because of their ability to drop below their cost if they feel the need in order to kill their competition. We're going to need to do some heavy lobbying to get the AFFS to accept the price bump."
"That's going to be Roger's job, I think my family has blown up that bridge for the moment…" Andrew admitted. "Rogers family has always had better contacts on New Avalon, and a better reputation, then my own."
"Yes, because bringing an intact and functional political unit into the suns without bloodshed is much more respectable then conspiring with a periphery barbarian to bring down the star league." Roger poked at his friend, indicating that the serious discussions were done for the moment.
"I never should have let you in on that bit of family history," Andrew groaned and face palmed in exasperation.
"Like father, like son, get a Brockton drunk and they'll do something stupid." Roger replied lightly.
"Yes, because I was the one who had to be bailed out of jail for pissing on a statue of Parvati and then arguing with the police officer that what you were doing was judging from how the priests acted a recognized form of worship for your caste." Andrew shot back.
"Hey! I had just spent a week trying to get the damn assembly to push through yet another anti caste discrimination law when that happened." Roger grinned as he said that. "A bit of harmless blasphemy is hardly the most extreme reaction to dealing with that sort of idiocy."
"You're both idiots in your own special way," Prakash said firmly, but with a mirk lurking at the corner of his lips. While the police and priests had been distracted by Roger's very public act of blasphemy someone had been busy setting the temple compounds office building on fire. Strange how a lot of political opposition to that bill had disappeared afterwards, it was almost like a load of blackmail files had been kept there. "Let's not have another incident like last time, yes? I had to spend all too much of our slush fund keeping both your antics out of the media last year."
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