Olivia Randolph looked at her Clan mates.
They in turn were looking at the vehicle design in front of her.
"Kill the man and be done with it. We cannot draw the attention of the Star League Communications Network's agents." Said one of them.
"Unfortunately doing so would only draw more attention of the unwanted kind to us." Another sighed, "it's all over the planetary news, it's even spreading out into the rest of the Commonwealth. I just received inquiries about the Ute from Tharkad. Over Comstar's own network I might add."
"We can just say that there was an accident at the factory, unfortunate and not at all a problem."
"ROM already knows. If that happens and they did not do it, what do you think that they are going to do next?"
"I can tell you that the Archon Alessandro is already interested in the idea."
Ah.
That brought things to a head didn't it?
"Well then, we can't exactly do anything without inviting Lohengrin or the Molehunters from the Lyran Intelligence Corps can we? ROM is not as much of a problem compared to those two." Olivia said, sighing.
She, Duchess of Tetersen looked at her nephew, Carlos Anderson, Prime Minister of Tetersen.
The control of Tetersen had been within their Clan ever since their flight from the Failure coreward.
"I'll make sure that he's kept safe." He said to her.
The other clan leaders and caste representatives quietened down as they all looked at her.
"Our focus outward prevented us from seeing just how capable this Huu Vu is. We thought that his efforts to build a factory would fail like so many other attempts at industrialising in the Inner Sphere. Our complacency has cost us, there will be more scrutiny on Tetersen from this moment forth. Prepare yourselves, every agency worth their name will be attempting to access Tetersen. Mushroom them, do not draw more attention than is needed. We must remain hidden." Olivia told the assembled members of Clan Wolverine.
They were silent to show her respect as speaker.
"Things are escalating but are still manageable. Cousin Andrews, your daughter will be needed to manage Huu Vu's corporation. The man may be called a genius, but he is severely lacking in interpersonal skills. He is, in fact, floundering in the matter of dealing with those that want to purchase his Utes." Olivia said with a shake of her head.
There was silence from the others in the room. This one had more of an appalled taste to it.
"Seriously?"
"Yes. He is, as you might say, on the spectrum. The man struggles greatly with understanding other people."
The room exploded.
To be outmanoeuvred by someone that did not understand other people galled them something fierce.
+Break+
I look at the woman in front of me. Introduced by the Duchess (what was her name again?),
"Hi, I'm Christine Andrews."
She was going to be my CEO or CFO or whatever the position was that did the talking with people.
Which, thank god was a thing.
I was not looking forward to trying to explain things to people, or trying to make other humans make sense to me.
Seriously.
Why was everyone so weird?
Why can't they just say things and mean it? Like me?
Instead it was all saying things and meaning something else with their body language or facial expressions or whatever.
Ugh.
Humans.
So illogical and weird.
Being told that I was actually being threatened by Duchess O or whatever her name was, well, that was a surprise. Why hadn't she just said it? I was not pleased with the fact that I still couldn't understand people in this second life. Nor was I pleased that I hadn't realised sooner.
In any case, two months was up tonight, which meant that I was now going to need to do something other than 'continue building factory'.
In fact, now that I had a factory, Tetersen was going to have more than 2 Resource Points right?
Hmmmm, how many now I wonder.
In fact, what was I going to do now?
Options and options.
Mmmm, I needed to talk to that person, the one that was in front of me… what was her name again?
Ah, that's annoying, I was going to need to work my way around the problem and get her to say her name herself. Otherwise it was very rude indeed wasn't it? To forget someone's name after they had been introduced to you.
"I'm currently thinking about what to do next." I said to them, looking up, her, and paused.
Pausing would let her open her mouth and say what was on the tip of her tongue, an answer to the question I had just put to her.
"What do you mean do next?" She asked.
I sighed.
"What to do produce next. I'm going to get started tonight but I'm currently struggling to think about what people would want to purchase." I explained myself, feeling that it would be so much better if she could just read my mind or something.
"I need to think about this. Um. Why do we need to produce something new? Can't you just expand the factory instead?" She asked, looking at me.
I assumed that her expression was one that had a questioning tinge to it.
I thought about it.
Sure.
Why not.
Expand it, double the production and then let it sort itself out.
Hmmmmmm.
I could, by thinking about it very hard, pull up the current resource point score in my brain. The RP that a factory or planet produced that I could then turn into physical commodities like factories.
I currently had… 8 per turn.
No, 8 was the raw score.
8 RP for a 'small factory'.
I would be getting 12 RP for a proper factory when I built them.
I had to, now, that I was over 2 RP per turn, factor in the Abilities and my final RP score was very different.
The Lyran Commonwealth had:
Booming Economy: This Faction's economy is humming like a well-oiled BattleMaster. The Faction generates an additional 10 percent of its base RP per Game Turn.
Merchant Kings: This Faction excels at wheeling and dealing. This ability bolsters its economy, adding a 20 percent bonus to its base Resource Points generated per Game Turn.
Superior Black Ops: This Faction benefits from a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-trained special operatives program that supports its dirtiest deeds. Apply a –1 target number modifier for any actions this Faction's forces make when operating under Counter-Insurgency, Guerrilla Warfare, and Go to Ground orders (see Military Phase, p. 288). Apply a –1 TN modifier for any Special Operations rolls the Faction makes (see Resolving Intelligence Operations, p. 302).
Superior Counterintelligence: The Faction excels at finding and rooting out spies and foreign agents. Apply a +1 TN modifier to any Foreign Intelligence rolls made against this Faction (see Resolving Intelligence Operations, p. 298).
Which meant that overall I had an additional 30% addition to my RP per turn.
10.4 rounded down was 10.
I could, therefore, double the production of my Utes in a single turn then since it cost me 8 RP to build the thing.
Production not capacity, because only working factories produced RP.
Hmmmm.
Double that and I would get a base 16 RP per turn, which would translate into 21 overall every turn.
16 was the base number for a world with a factory on it.
In other words, in under a year I had brought Tetersen up to the standard of a factory planet.
Hmmmm.
That was pretty excellent actually.
Sure, we can do that, let's increase production.
"All good then, let's do that. I'll get started on that tomorrow." I said to her, nodding my head. "All good."
I then stood up.
"You were a great help, seriously. Okay, I'm off, let me know if there's anything you need okay?" I told her, off to relax for the rest of the day.
Then we could get started on the cursed process of building the damned factory. Setting down each layer of concrete, the lines, the machines, the worker stations, the everything.
It was basically like building a simulator game but with all the extra minutia added in just to fuck with you.
Ugh, frustrating as all hell.
+Break+
Christine Andrews looked at the young man who had just walked out of his own office took a moment.
When she was sure he was out of earshot she sighed through her nose and mouth at the same time. A great expelling of air and frustration.
He had forgotten her name again.
This was, in fact, the fourth time that they had met and she had introduced herself every time.
If she hadn't been warned by her great cousin beforehand, she would have been offended.
To know that his brain worked in different ways than everyone else did, that explained a great deal actually.
Really, it would take someone with a different sort of brain to do something as revolutionary as build a factory from literal scratch for an entirely new vehicle with a new military-grade fusion engine at 1.5 tons in mass… and to do it all in 8 months.
One of those on their own would be enough to write your name in your planet's history.
All of them at once beggared belief.
So yes, the fact that his brain worked slightly different to everyone else's was just normal in her mind. How else would you explain it she had thought.
Meeting him in person however had been very different from what she had been expecting.
Some kind of idiot savant?
An eccentric genius?
He would have to be in order to wrangle everyone together into some kind of unified whole wouldn't he?
Contacting people from adjacent star systems, getting the notice of the Archon through the Norns due to the unusual communications traffic, welding all these people together into one unified whole, dedicated to a singular goal.
The production of a new military/civilian vehicle for the Lyran Commonwealth.
A singularly driven individual of great renown and capability.
Well, perhaps not that if her great cousin had to say that he was different in mind. But something close maybe?
Someone with singular focus on a specific thing?
Not… someone that forgot her name every time she said it and then vanished off to do his own thing with as little people around as possible whenever possible.
She sighed.
Definitely not what she had been expecting.
Her thoughts on him hadn't exactly been helped when he had approached her the day after she had been inducted into the corporation.
Not that she needed it, everyone in it was from the Clan anyway. If they couldn't get him to withdraw, they would simply co-opt the entire enterprise… at least that had been the thought.
She knew everyone and everything on the site as a result, her dual jobs being in charge of everything people related, and Huu's handler.
"I need you to get onto the horn to the Prime Minister, he's your cousin right? I need to get approval for an expansion of the current factory site." Huu said to Christine the next day, his face filled with manic purpose.
"Okay, how much exactly?" She asked back, he had been paying attention when she had been speaking!
"Just get the entire mountain. If we have that then we don't have to worry about future expansions." He said with a shrug of his shoulders before he walked off.
Christine sighed as she held back her glare at his back.
"Oh, and thanks for the help. I don't know what I would do without you." He called back to her.
Christine sighed.
And then he did something like that, she couldn't hate him could she?
One always did appreciate being thanks for their efforts.
Still, she was being put to work. Lots and lots of work when she had thought it would be easier.
The farmers were buying every Ute that came off the factory floor.
If this kept up, she didn't know where it would end, especially with a second factory coming online.
+Break+
Ute Pamphlet aimed at enticing farmers on Tetersen to purchase the Ute.
Title: Yours today! 28,000 Kroner! Fusion powered! 1.5 Ton engine!
Image: A white truck with smooth flowing lines from the front. The pattern on the front seemingly disjointed to form the word 'Ute' on the frontal grill, the lines coming out of the word spreading to the back of the truck. It is sitting on a farm paddock, smaller than some of the beasts that make up the protein supply of Tetersen as they crowd around it looking curious.
Subtext: All yours! 1.5 Ton Fusion Engine! It moves on its own! Modification rights included!
+Break+
Total RP Turn 1 = 2991 + 8 Months
8RP 8×1 Ute Factory
Lyran Bonus = 1 + 0.3
Total RP = 8×1.3 = 10.4