Ask ISC Agenda: Presentation Of The Military

While the crystal planet of Christophsis often served as the site for ISC meetings, Naboo also proved to be a rotational diplomatic location. It was certainly one of the more ornate places as the Queen had opened up a section of her palace grounds to allow for ISC congregations.

Emryc, as usual, arrived early. While normally this came from nothing but habit, this time he arrived just for breakfast with the Queen prior to the meeting. His relationship with the Queen was one he had nurtured for a while now. Though it was laced with a curious tension, the Queen was one of the very few people Emryc would go as far as calling a friend. It remained to be seen whether the feeling was mutual.

The half Sephi was adorned in a navy suit, light purple dress shirt and a paisley tie. A chrono glinted at his wrist and his hair was styled and gelled. The room trailed with his earth and spice cologne as he walked to the main desk to face out towards the others.

As usual, he would wait till everyone else gathered, appearing to be diligently focused on his datapad. This time he was scrolling through his fantasy Huttball brackets. He would keep his gaze down until everyone had filed into the room.

Breakfast with her President was one thing but breakfast with Emyrc was another thing altogether - he liked to play around on his fantasy Huttball game first thing in the morning to see if there had been any major changes overnight. Not that she had anything to say about it since she enjoyed doing crossword puzzles from the local news holos. A companionable silence broken by light conversation that held little meaning but felt so much more genuine because it was so light, so unforced and unrehearsed in anyway.

It had been nice to be so casual, so relaxed, around the man who was so seldom anything but supremely well-put together and prepared for everything. Part of her wanted to go back to her own wing of the palace with Emryc and just relax for the rest of the day, to not have to share him with the Governors and the other political figures.

She knew that was selfish but she liked to think of the idea at least.

Strange that she had never thought of such ideas around anyone before Emryc? Perhaps but she wasn't going to dwell on what that could potentially mean beyond her enjoyment of his, usually, silent company.

But duty called.

"Assure the studio that JJ will be granted first question during the press conference that is certain to follow the discussions." she told her PR team as she sat in one of the chairs around the table, listening intently for a moment, "Yes, I'm sure he does want to see the discussion as it unfolds but as the specifics pertain to matters he is not cleared to know, he will have to content himself with priority during the press conference."

She listened for a long moment before blowing a breath out of her nose and rolling her eyes slightly.

"I'm sure I don't know the Secretary of Defense's timetables when it comes to exclusives but I'll pass it along to his people. Uhuh. Thank you Josephine, you're a delight as always."

A delight, yes, but a terribly irritating woman who always managed to avoid the blocks she placed on her com unit to avoid taking direct calls from the woman.

He had prepared for the meeting rather extensively but Carrick was still more than slightly nervous. Despite his experience in political circles, he was still nervous when it came to politics of a certain level. This meeting promised to be politics of just such a level, which meant he wasn't able to fall back on his experience - being the senator of a planet didn't exactly translate one-to-one to being elevated to the position of Secretary of Defense for a growing collection of planets and systems.

Didn't hurt of course.

Entering the room, he found that he was actually a little bit early by the looks of things. The President was there and the Queen of Naboo as well, both of whom were rather busy with important things. Queen Parnelli with something relating to his own press conference, actually, which he would probably need to find out about. President Thorne seemed to be looking at something on his datapad with the utmost seriousness so he it was bound to be important.

He had surrendered his lightsaber without it's power cell to the Royal Guard and had elected to just straight up not bring any of his other weapons, including his usually hidden functional lightsaber. As an openly Force Sensitive member of the ISC's governing body, he could not afford any misunderstandings. Before taking a seat, he passed out a number of datapads, one for each of the people going to be in attendance for the presentation.

Moving to his own seat, he elected not to sit down and instead poured himself a small glass of water and mentally reviewed some of his notes as he physically checked the presentation documents and images on his own datapad.

He wasn't about to let his first meeting as Secretary get overshadowed by a damned slideshow failure.

Governor Archer arrived on a more ordinary if nice enough craft, a Kazellis freighter that'd been passed down through her family. It landed in a designated port hangar and the ISC Governor took a moment or two properly look around at her surroundings. Naboo was another beautiful planet, historically self sufficient with its extraction and refinement of plasma from deep beneath the planet's crust. She sighed softly to herself, straightened her spine, and headed in a speeder toward the palace itself.

Jade entered the meeting area with little fanfare, dressed in a well-tailored maroon suit with her hair tied up neatly in a bun behind her head. The full unveiling and presentation of a united military was an important matter and Llanic hadn't been present, except by holo, for prior meetings. She had much to catch up on.

She politely greeted the others and took a seat, a datapad placed in front of her on the table. The Governor of Llanic took copious and highly detailed notes and this would be no exception. Jade was eager to find out the crux of Secretary Carrick's work on the armed forces.

Emryc glanced up at the others as they all gathered, setting his datapad on silent and stashing it away. He was formal in his demeanor during these sessions, not giving anyone any special glances but regarding them all equally. After the Secretary of Intergalactic Relations filed into the room, the ISC had enough of a quorum to begin.

“Thank you for coming out here today, everyone,” Emryc began after a moment, “Since his appointment, the Secretary of Defense has been hard at work in formally structuring our armed forces. Today I’m opening the floor to him to brief us all on it and to have follow on discussions or amendments as needed.”

With that he turned to look at Carrick, nodding his head to pass it over to him.

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Well.

Everyone who was going to arrive was here and the President had given him permission to start so there was no longer anything between him and the presentation he had worked so hard to craft. Well, if he was being rather truthful...

"I've honestly not put as much time into this presentation as you might have expected." he admitted as he looked at the ISC members before him, tapping the table slightly with his fingertips as he did so, "Could have spent time preparing a proper presentation; had some staffers do it even. Hell, even the interns, but no. I set to work, to bring you concrete answers and not just ideas instead. So apologies if the display is less than cinematic."

He opened his datapad, the others that were slaved to it around the table lighting up as they began to show the same thing that his did. The first image was of the Galaxy map, with the areas held by the ISC highlighted and the rest of the Galaxy greyed out slightly. With his other hand, he gestured at the map.

"We are hopelessly outnumbered, out-resourced and outgunned by every major political power currently active in our Galaxy. This is a fact we have to accept and take onboard going forward." he acknowledged a rather uncomfortable truth, "Another inconvenient fact is that we need a Navy to defend ourselves from threats organized by these rivals and the chaotic ones that just come as part of the price of being a civilization."

Organized crime for example.

"Having a large naval presence on every planet is a position we cannot afford, financially speaking, as a whole. And tactically speaking? Local defense fleets have shown little in the way of success in recent years. So, instead, we share the load." he declared, pressing his datapad and showing ISC territory broken up into smaller areas, "ISC Cores. Each planet and sector within a Core contributes in whatever shape it can. Material, Crowns, ships, sentients - whatever it can give, according to it's ability to give. These Cores each support a rapid deployment fleet that will police and defend these Cores in conjunction with any local defenses that remain around worlds wealthy enough to support them without further assistance from the higher government."

His plan would not stop planets such as Naboo fielding their own local militia navies, but it would ensure that other planets and sectors that could not, would still have something. He tapped another series of buttons and the order of battle for the Core Defense Fleets that he had already gotten cobbled together began to play out on the datapads before the other dignitaries. Carrick pointed out a few of the ship types.

"Each of these Core Defense Fleets is designed to be fast, arriving at any of it's local planets within a matter of hours at most. Preferably within the space of a single hour, barring any maintenance issues. Right now I have it on good authority that we can field one of the small fleets outlined in each of the Cores I have divided within the next few weeks." he shrugged once, "This is designed to scale upward depending on what we can afford to do. I defer to those with experience in finance to determine to what extent we can afford to scale up. But the Core Defense Fleets are for smaller threats and, importantly, for stalling efforts, in time for the big guns to arrive."

Another click and the order of battle and description of the Three-Fold Fleets appeared.

"The Three-Fold Fleets. Designed for Reinforcement, Interdiction and Pacification. To reinforce Core forces out of their depth, to pin down the enemy so they can be better controlled and to pacify any enemy, or Infection based, chaos on our planets." he explained at last, "Currently, I am in the process of pulling together three such fleets, to berth primarily around Christophsis, Mimban and Thyferra, should all their Governors be willing. Again, their numbers are designed to be scaled up. Before I move onto my proposals for the Army, I am aware and grateful for your patience but I will keep you waiting no longer; any questions, comments, condemnations or accusations about the Navy outlined so far?"

Well it took a little bit of time to get a bit of a response to his proposals but he was hardly surprised by who decided to be the first to speak. Julia was a woman who had tried to make a case to take the job for herself and there was always going to be that thought in the back of his mind. Thankfully, she seemed to be willing to give him a fair shake rather than trying to torpedo his own proposal just because she was not the one in charge of the department that would actually implement it.

Spoke well of her professionalism, actually, and Carrick rather appreciated that.

The questions that she brought up highlighted some good points that he did, indeed, need to address and would do so now that she had brought them up. He was hardly about to immediately preface his own announcement with ways to patch up less than ideal holes within his own announcement after all. She gave him a chance to answer but first? He would not be rude.

"Thank you, Governor Hipori, for your comments and for your questions." he declared with a brighter smile than he had been wearing while waiting for a response, "You are correct that our immediate security concerns are just that; immediate. The first stage has been to assemble the Core Defense Forces from mercenaries with trustworthy reputations alongside planetary defense forces."

He tapped his datapad.

"Work on this has already begun and most Core Defense Forces are hovering at around 50% operational capacity as we currently stand. This, naturally, needs to be increased quickly and sustainably. In the short term?" he highlighted some documents he had on his datapad, "Purchasing from the New Republic and the FWA is appealing, currently, due to the weight of the Crown against the Credit. But our own infrastructure will be key to keeping us a nation rather than a client."

Another few taps and points of ISC territory lit up.

"Plans for a shipyard on Christophsis, using metals from Rodia, Tattooine and other, local, sources are being drawn up as we speak. I have used some old contacts of my own to approach an engineering and architectural veteran currently working as a freelancer. Naturally, work orders and production are not my strong suit and I would be more than happy to allow other departments to work with me to oversee these kinds of projects."

One thing that Carrick thought was one of the absolute best feelings in the entire Galaxy? The feeling you got when someone got behind one of your ideas, one of your plans, and ran with it. Knowing that you had inspired some kind of fire, some kind of creativity, within someone else with your own works was a feeling unlike many others and watching as Flauki started keying up armor and uniform for the Army and Navy of the ISC? Well watching that, Carrick was feeling that and he loved every second of it.

He didn't really actually say anything as the Governor began pulling up uniforms for their forces because he didn't feel like he had to. There was no need to keep banging the drum when Flauki had taken it up on his own. If the others were half as enthused, half as taken by his plans then he knew that they could go ahead, that they would be able to forge a new path. That these forces would be the sword and shield of their lands, of their people and their interests.

Uniforms were an important part of making a group of sentients defending their homes into an official fighting force, a professional one at that. There was, of course, a lot more to it than that but it was enough to begin with.

"Governor Ubbeson - I will be very much looking forward to all of the finished products." he assured the Governor with a nod toward Emryc, "Should my proposals be granted official approval by the assembled here today, I shall be in contact to commission said uniforms. But that does bring us to the main point of my presentation today."

He gestured to the datapads.

"What is outlined here is my plans, my vision, for a military but without the approval of yourselves it cannot be implemented on a wider scale." he didn't take his eyes off of President Thorne, "What's say you, Mr President? Shall we vote?"

Emryc usually saved his opinions for last in these sessions. The half Sephi quietly listened to the briefing and the subsequent questions that followed. He was equally impressed by the homework Governor Ubbeson had done to lay out a plan for the look and feel of the military assets. He was already showing his dedication to ISC’s cause and proving to be a valuable addition to the leadership team.

The half Sephi’s gaze flicked away only briefly to regard Governor Thanewolf as he arrived late, but it was only a cursory glance. Emryc looked back at Carrick, taking note of the general consensus around the room.

“I am thoroughly impressed,” Emryc said after a moment, his tone genuine, “This is a sound approach towards our military forces. I support the construction of shipyards and the focus on our internal economy over heavily relying on the Core,” It was going to be a ground up battle for them, but it was an important one to have. They couldn’t rely so desperately on the Core to allow them the power to hamstring ISC whenever they pleased.

“You have my approval to execute on this plan.”

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