Gettting ready for the coming storm of politics to wash your department in crap that was outside your baliwick, you started tabbing through your notebooks to assemble a crack team of problem solvers. Then you remebered you were only a Hauptmann and you had one half-full rolodex, a stained pocketbook that had more than a few doubious numbers and pubs in it, and your Dad's latest business card from three years ago.
The first call you made was to the Reichsmarine Staff Building in Bremmen, which got you in a neat little runaround until you finally connected with your desired person: Richtofer, an old hand in naval gun testing. While he didn't have experience in handling Bavarian shenanigans, he did have a grudge against Thryssen a kilometer deep and promised to lay some heat on from his end. Aside from some extra bureaucratic knives to stick in, Richtofer also promised to throw in a note to the Seebatalions to make noises too to throw some pressure on the High Command. After thanks and a promise to get him a good bottle of cognac, you hung up the call, pleasantly surprised nobody had taken the hopes and dreams of the Reichsmarine and buried them out behind the capitol building yet.
Next up was the all-important step of lawyering up and figuring out what levers to pull when. Fortunatly, you had an actual proffessional on call for this, Amos Lewinsky. While the Irmionic Empire wasn't as Jew-ridden as the Wersers were, there were still plenty of them in the cities, and more than a few became lawyers. Good for them- you'd never touch that job with a ten foot stick. Either way, you needed a professional arguer, and this was something you could shell out from the project budget on. Once the case was all set up, Lewinsky was wired the money and got to work promptly to dig through old military law so you could pass the solution up the chain.
To your eternal suprise, the next person on your list called you. Rittemiester II Classe Conrad Fenrus was a friend from back in your Academy days, and while your paths had diverged when you joined the Pioneers, you'd had a semi-regular comunique going for most of the year until the Schlangenesseren got deployed to the boarder in some literal saber-rattling. The reason he called you? His regiment was set to absorb the armor companies, and with the Bavarians holding the show up he was getting pulled off the line. Looking over the casualty reports for his regiment, you believed him- they'd been chewed up, and badly. The addition of armored cars had helped them out, but it wasn't enough. They needed an edge, and the W-2 companies would be enough of one. If Conrad could get his commanding officers onboard, whatever was left of his regiment would be a powerful political tool to batter the mostly-fresh Bavarian regiments into keeling over to demands.
Your call to Adder was much less fruitful. Skoda had a fairly weak influence that far from the boarder, but there were ways and means to get around Thryssen's meddling. While you might not be able to get the W-2 out of political hell with Adder's help, he could work with Wanderer to get him a sweetheart deal until the end of the war and slice into Thryssen's bottom line even tighter. You'd have to cover some of Wanderer's breech of contract cost, but there was enough left in the budget to cover that as long as nothing came up.
Finally, you decided to bite the bullet and dial the third to last number in your book- Anne-Marie. Saying you'd known her when you were younger wasn't an exageration, but dragging up your communal past when she was both six years your senior and enjoying the prime of Luneberg's wartime social life was a bit of a risky call. Thankfully, it didn't backfire on you, although her teasing did make you blush horribly. Luckily, she had some serious dirt on the Duke of Bavaria, or more importantly the shenanigans his father had been up to since he abdicated. Exotic dancers from the colonies, strange drugs from the Kubachan Free State, strong liquors in heinous quantity, and the rumors of a sordid affair with a young theologist behind his wife's back all went into your new Black Book of Blackmail, along with the fact the Duke's son was spending quite a lot of time with his grandfather.
Now all you had to do was put this all together into a convient package that couldn't get officially traced back to you, buck it up the chain, and let it stew. While that was happening, you needed to put out a white paper to make it look like this wasn't you handiwork. Oh joy. You just loved you some white paper nonsense…
...not. Oh well, that's life.
((Vote is BY PLAN. Write out an outline on what you see the next tank of the Empire having. This will be publicly distributed and will affect next competition.))
