KnightofTempest
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Chapter 49
🕑 Added 2024-10-30 19:43:34 +0000 UTCAs I sat in my cabin aboard the Star Lord-class JumpShip Narva, I decided to crack open the dossiers that Minister Kowalski had given to me that detailed bios and descriptions of the members of the Regentskapsråd I would need to convince, bribe, or otherwise deal with to completely cinch the election. There were four dossiers, each with a bio, personality profile, and a blurb on their main landholdings, along with a general strategy that Minister Kowalski and Minister Simowitz thought might work or at least would provide a jumping-off point for further deal-cutting and improvisation. I had to admit, the Ministers of my Council were thorough if nothing else. Fair dues to them, they hadn't yet steered me wrong. I cracked open the most important dossiers first.
Vévoda Marek Kolowrat of Satalice was the current Speaker of the Regentskapsråd. He was the key to a bloc of Nobles that controlled twenty-three out of one-hundred-twenty votes on the Regentskapsråd, which when combined with my current number of thirty-seven from my prior efforts would give me sixty votes. To truly cinch the nomination, I would require a three-fourths majority in the Regentskapsråd, so Marek Kolowrat was an essential get. His family was also Old Terran Nobility, the same as my own family, though from Bohemia rather than Poland, a shared commonality between us.
Another shared commonality between us was that the man himself was known for his martial prowess, having been a Colonel of one of the Rasalhague Exile Regiments that the LCAF had raised during the war. He had personally engaged the forces of the Combine's Duke of Satalice, Johann Morgenstern during the battle for Kandis, trapping them and one other regiment in an encirclement and obliterating them. It was even claimed that he felled Morgenstern in one-on-one Mech Combat via a shot from his Refit Marauder's Autocannon, taking an Autocannon Round to the Ferro-Fibrous Refit plates in the process. Apparently, Vévoda Kolowrat had refused to use one of the Rifleman Twos that the LCAF Had Purchased from us, instead choosing to go for the Refit Package we had sold for existing Mechs, a sentimentality that belied his fierce combat record.
Satalice itself was a highly geologically-active world, with many lava fields and tectonic fissures. While this made it an incredibly lucrative source of all sorts of minerals, it also meant that permanent settlements on the planet were limited to a few dozen sites around the most habitable areas. To be fair to the locals, the scenery in those habitable areas was quite something, but it limited the number of people who could live on Satalice. Ash Storms over the Lava Fields or Toxic Minerals seeping into groundwater from sudden fissures effectively placed a limit on the number of people who could live on Satalice and at close to three-hundred-million, it was already jutting up against that limit and had been for some time. Vévoda Kolowrat was distinctly aware of the demographic crisis his people faced and tried to do his best to alleviate it whenever possible, another sign of sentimentality, though one I could get behind.
Minister Kowalski recommended establishing a baseline via our common backgrounds before playing to his sentimentality. Donations of Storm Protectors and Water Purifiers for Satalice in exchange for votes would go a long way toward alleviating the Satalice Demographic Crisis. It would open up more marginal land for permanent habitation and that, in turn, would make life better for all on Satalice. It was a calculated move that I would definitely be willing to take in order to secure the Satalice Bloc's votes.
Next was Jarl Andrews of Radsdadt. He was a rarity in that his family were descendants of a Scottish Clan from Caithness, one who had formed a large pool of men and officers of some of the initial battalions that had formed the Northwind Highlanders. They had served with distinction during the Reunification War and been given Radsdadt as their landholding as a reward by no less a person than Ian Cameron himself. Jarl Cory Andrews, the current Jarl, was the heir to a proud and honorable martial tradition, with an emphasis on the proud part.
You see, Jarl Cory had been a late convert to the Rasalhaguian Independence Cause and his conversion to the cause had come about because of a slight offered to him by the local head of the Combine's Internal Security Force on Radsdadt. Apparently, a raid on a suspected Separatist Cell had gone sideways and wound up with the deaths of several innocent bystanders, one of which was the nephew of one of Jarl Cory's closest friends on the board of Gorton, Kingsley, and Thorpe Enterprises. What's more, the fact that the head of the local branch of the Combine's ISF had not bothered to even run the plans for the raid past Jarl Cory had incensed him.
Out of spite, he began funneling equipment and training to Pro-Independence Guerilla Movements while also directing his son, Thomas Andrews, the current leader of the Caithness Highlanders, the successor Mercenary Company to the Old Caithness Fusiliers that had been given Radsdadt for service in the Reunification War, to hire on with the LCAF at reduced rates. All because some Combine ISF Section Chief who should have known better pricked at his pride and honor in a way that led to a massacre.
In terms of Radsdadt, it was a major hub of manufacturing, being one of the main worlds where the Rasalhaguian Corporation of Gorton, Kingsley, and Thorpe Enterprises had a large presence. Roughly forty percent of the Planet's Private Sector Workforce worked for GKT Enterprises or some subsidiary of theirs in one form or another. It was absolutely crucial to have them on side for more than just the sixteen votes their bloc controlled in the Regentskapsråd. GKT Enterprises would be crucial to getting Rasalhague's Forces geared up and ready to fight the Clans.
To that end, Minister Kowalski suggested a night of drinking with Jarl Andrews, swapping war stories to establish a sense of camaraderie before switching to offering licenses to GKT at a reduced price and the single lance of SLDF Vintage Royal Highlanders currently sitting in the hold of one of our dropships for sale at half-price in exchange for the votes. Jarl Andrew's personality profile suggested that an out-and-out bribe would offend his sense of honor and pride, but by couching it in terms of discounts it should allow him to save enough face to accept, so that was what I would try, though I would likely need some hefty hangover meds the next morning. Nobody drank quite like Highlanders, after all.
Moving on to the dossier of Hertig Knut Fraga of Kirchbach I saw that while he too was a military man, it wasn't in the same arena as the others. Knut Fraga had been a Commando Leader of Tarnhelm, a Pro-Independence Guerilla Organization that had been operating in the wilderness and rural areas of Kirchbach for decades. A fierce opponent of the Combine Duke of Kirchbach, Voren Ricol, Knut Fraga had masterminded the Guerilla Campaign that had forced Voren Ricol and his men to evacuate from New Samos, the Planetary Capital of Kirchbach. That had thrown the defense of Kirchbach into complete disarray when the LCAF pushed on the sectors still in DCMS hands, allowing the LCAF to take full control of the planet.
Likewise, the primary employer on Kirchbach, Swedenborg Heavy Industries, a major producer of Industrial and Agrimechs, had been in debt during almost the entire period of Combine Rule over Kirchbach. It was, however, all a ruse, as Swedenborg and Hertig Fraga had been revealed to have been hiding an increase in production lines in out-of-the-way areas that the debt had financed. Swedenborg was now on track to triple its previous production record by the end of the year, in preparation for making the switchover from Industrial and Agrimechs to proper Battlemechs.
According to the Psych Profile that Minister Simowitz's people had put together, this meant that while Knut Fraga valued bravery as much as the others, he valued discretion and intelligence more. Furthermore, he valued investment in not only Kirchbach's prosperity but also the security of the Principality as a whole. Accordingly, the suggested method of approach was to lay out a cogent plan to invest in Kirchbach's manufacturing capabilities and how doing so would benefit the prosperity of Kirchbach and the security of the Principality. Also, it was highly recommended that I don't try and bullshit him because he will sniff it out effortlessly, and then I would have lost my chance to sway the fourteen votes his Bloc Controlled. I had no reason to doubt that assessment, so I wouldn't even try.
Lastly, there was Jarl Stefan Shor of Trondheim, who was a man completely unlike the rest of the men on the list of targets for swaying that I'd been given. While the others were military men, he was a businessman. Where the others had taken direct actions against the Combine, Jarl Shor was more circumspect. The rest had been vocal about their grievances with the Combine, while Stefan Shor had partnered with several Combine Electronics Zaibatsu via his company, Amau Electronics, even having engaged in merger talks with Tanadi Computers of Irece.
At first glance, Jarl Stefan Shor was not the sort of person who most would imagine capable of maintaining his landholding after a Combine Withdrawal from Rasalhague, much less holding any sort of influence in the Regentskapsråd. Appearances were deceptive, however, and all was not as it seemed with Jarl Stefan Shor.
Those partnerships with Combine Zaibatsu he'd had his company undertake? Excuses to reverse-engineer the industry secrets of those Zaibatsu. His lack of open revolt against the Combine? A facade to hide the complicated shell game of funding via dozens of shell companies he sent to any number of Pro-Independence Guerilla Movements. It turned out that Stefan Shor had funded groups as disparate as the Tyr and Scandinavian People's Army of Haakon Magnusson, to the Sons of Knute, and even the Tarnhelm of Kirchbach.
The reasons for his covert loyalties lay in another of the differences that Stefan Shor had with the other Szlachta, Valdherren, Voivodes, Hertigs, and Jarls of the Principality. Namely, that he was Jewish and could trace his ancestry back to survivors of the Holocaust in the twentieth century of Old Terra. When viewed that way, with the parallels between Rasalhague under the Combine's Boot and Europe Under Nazi Occupation being a bit too close for comfort, his actions made much more sense.
Ironically, his differences also made him the easiest of the four to sway to my side, and with him the eleven votes of his Bloc. As a businessman, Stefan Shor was not above being flat-out bribed with C-bills, and as a patriot, a firm commitment to the defense of the Principality and a future liberation of worlds under the Combine's boot would go a long way, especially if, as Minister Kowalski's advice stated, I drew parallels to my liberation of various Periphery Worlds from their corrupt and oppressive Pirate Overlords.
With all four of those Nobles swayed, I would control one-hundred-one of one-hundred-twenty votes. Mind you, I know that the Combine would be attempting to counter my efforts with charm offensives of their own, but hopefully, my Lyran Allies would use their influence to help mitigate the danger of that taking significant votes away from me, and I did have a built-in margin of error of eleven votes I could lose from the final tally and still win the throne.
To that end, I focused the remainder of my efforts on the trip to Rasalhague refining my various sales pitches, rehearsing speeches, and coming up with multiple variations of each of the plans, just in case Minister Kowalski's advice was off-base and I had to switch things up. I didn't believe that would be the case. My Ministers were highly competent at their jobs, after all, but it was better to have contingencies and not need them than to need them and not have them.
Of course, I also couldn't simply stroll on into the Regentskapsråd and begin politicking. It wasn't how these things were done, and there was a protocol that needed to be followed. First, I had to formally be invested with the titles of Ksiaze of Krakow and Predlitz by the Speaker of the Regentskapsråd. Only once I was formally acknowledged as a Szlachta of the Principality would I be allowed to begin politicking.
Eventually, however, the trip was done, and I boarded the Pentagon Two-class Dropship Obertyn for the trip down to the Reykjavik Starport. As the Obertyn pulled away from the Narva and began its descent into the atmosphere of Rasalhague, I only had one thing on my mind. That it was showtime, and I would need to pull this first step off to get the throne of Rasalhague.
After all, I would need to be Prince of Rasalhague to be able to stall the Clans more easily when they finally arrived. . .
XXXX
AN: All right, so here we see the four key players whose votes Jozef will have to sway to him in order to cinch the appointment to the Throne of Rasalhague. We also get a bit of a peek at the strategies he'll have to use. Of course, even if the Lyrans manage to keep the Combine from countering his charm offensive, that doesn't mean he'll be safe here. After all, the Combine employs literal ninjas and has no qualms about using them to assassinate political rivals.
At any rate, the next chapter will be the first actual interaction with the Regentskapsråd as more than just a theoretical exercise in planning as Jozef attempts to get the investment of his ancestral titles and lands.
Stay tuned. . .
Comments
KnightofTempest
Shit, gimme a sec
Grey Heart
You need to re-upload your chapter
