Chapter 33

“Thanks for the telling me about the beach and look out for that reporter gunning for you”

As Jeff read the note, he was grateful that he noticed it in time. Noticing messages late seemed something of a problem he had, but he had noticed Sam in the crowd and saw her leave the note. He would have liked to have called out to her, but he couldn’t have, since he and Diana were swarmed from the moment people noticed what they were selling. While his parts were famous locally, very few people had successfully replicated the next generation parts. Most mechanists that came up to them recognised that the parts were knockoffs, but most didn’t care since the official parts hadn’t even been announced. That was the basis of his plan; the initial profits.

The bulk of the money made by the Kaya Company and its corporate partners when they release a new generation of parts were in the first half year, when everyone would be willing to pay anything to get the advantage of the new parts out of fear that others would already have them. After that initial period, other companies are generally able to reverse engineer the designs and make their own versions, but by then it doesn’t matter. So long as the first monopoly exists, they are able to make their investment back and build their profits. However, that wouldn’t happen this time. Jeff was already on the market before they made their reveal, and all of their new parts were already copied. Furthermore, since Jeff had only ever needed to hire mercenary hackers, and not buildings full of engineers and scientists, his production cost was far less than what Kaya’s was. That meant he could sell for far less and still make the same profit. Not that he was after the same profit. He was selling licences to the designs far below market price just to make sure there would be as big a hit against their profits as possible.

The best part was, so long as no one pinned the actual hacking and sabotage attempts on him, he was legally in the clear over the parts. Each design he sold had its fundamental equation, the basis of its code, which in turn is the basis of its shape, altered just enough to be a legally distinct part. He then made sure that everyone who sold him a part from the bounty list, or their representative, was registered as a designer, and the listed version of their design was his modified version or one they modified themselves. Both he and the hackers paid their tax on the transaction so there was nothing untoward about it on paper. Even if the appearance and function of the parts were the same, those parts of a design couldn't be registered, only the equation could, and since the equations hadn’t been registered yet, it was legally fine for similar equations to exist. If they wanted to blame anyone, they should blame their security department.

While the mechanist there could guess where his designs came from, the kinds of people who would show up to the first day of the trade show weren’t the kinds of people who cared. One by one they would examine the parts data and one by one they would ask about the details.

“Does the multi-form function reduce the performance of the individual components?”

“How does the direction shift of this thruster affect the drag profile?”

“How do you prevent the counter-sonic from causing defence degradation?”

He answered from memory what he had read from the designer’s notes and the leaked reports to the best of his ability and where he didn’t know, he openly admitted that he didn’t. If anyone hadn’t realised what he had done, they would have thought that the parts weren’t sufficiently tested, but at the start of a new generation few parts were.

The problem came when the few people in the crowd that weren’t interested in the tech started to notice him; for example, a particularly aggressive member of a media company. Dark brown hair, a stern face, sun-bronzed skin and hard eyes; he looked like a man who had reported from a warzone, back when such things were more of an issue and less of an annoyance. He was from a news company that had been attacked by a malfunctioning drone, an attack that had cost a large sum of money beyond the insurance payout and had layoffs to balance the budget, and he had an aversion to technology as a result of that, and other similar malfunctions.

When Jeff finally had a small break between curious mechanists, the reporter strolled up to him with cameraman in tow and a glint in his eye, and started to interrogate him.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. It concerns the source of the parts you are selling,” He said that with a conversational tone, but one that seemed to demand response. It was the kind of tone that could be mustered only by experienced speakers, one that subtly got under the skin. “There have been allegations that your parts have been illegally acquired, how do you respond to that?”

The reporter had started questioning him immediately after approaching him, making it clear that asking if he was willing to answer was essentially rhetorical, a mere formality he was observing. At the time Jeff had started his lunch, and had bitten into a sandwich as the question came. He calmly lifted a finger to indicate that the reporter should wait, finishing the bite before he would speak. It was a very intentional action, one he did when he saw the reporter approach. The slow chewing gave him time to think, and the repetitive motion of each bite calmed him down, like meditation or a mantra. By the time he was ready to speak, he had fully thought through how he would respond.

“Listen, this is my only lunch break today, and I really don’t have much time so I’d really appreciate it if you asked those kinds of questions to someone in the company in a management position. As far as I know, all of our parts have been sourced from private designers who followed the normal process.”

Before Jeff had started to speak, before he had taken a bite from the sandwich, he had turned on his phone to start recording the conversation. If the reporter edited the footage to make him seem guilty, then he could send it to a rival news company, who would love to report on their rival harassing hapless employees. For that defence to work, Jeff needed to be tired, relatable, and not say anything to incriminate himself. Tired he had in spades, relatable was why he made a point of himself being just another employee being bothered during a lunch break, and he was trying his best not to incriminate himself.

“Anyway, it’s not like we’re the first company to release similar products at the same time. Just last year, Rossi International and Patterson’s Designs released almost identical rifles in the same week, but everyone knows that was just coincidence.”

The example Jeff chose was a very deliberate one. At the time it had been a piece of major news, with most channels reporting on it as Rossi was sued by Patterson. In the end, the case was dismissed as coincidentally similar. That was how it was reported on; with media attention dying off almost immediately after the judgment was made. The details weren’t so simple, however, with one of the lead designers changing companies mid design. Any mechanist could have told you that it was definitely the same weapon, but it was legally different and the media wasn’t going to give a seminar on rig based legal issues after the public had already lost interest. Thus, by connecting his case to that case, he was setting the situation to sound far more boring than it was. After he gave his answer he hurried to take another bite, reinforcing that he didn’t have much time, and buying him more time when a question was asked.

“Then you deny any wrong doing? That all of the parts you are selling are your own?”

At that point it became clear that the reporter was someone angry, with a vendetta he was chasing, but not the knowledge needed to navigate the field. He was clearly the outdoors type, not the kind of person who would get under a rig block and understand its workings. He was approaching Jeff like an arms dealer on the street, and that just wouldn’t work. Finishing the bite, Jeff started to talk again. It was clear that the long break between answers was getting to the reporter, and he was losing his temper.

“I don’t know what you want to hear, but I already said that private designers sold their designs to us. They’re registered, authenticated and uploaded to the rig society database. If any of them sold us stolen designs, then those designs weren’t in the system when we did the background checks.”

If he wasn’t on camera, Jeff would have smirked at that one. The automated check that the IBRS’s website ran only checked to see if the design was a duplicate of something already uploaded; it didn’t have the processing power to verify the function and form of every design uploaded. That check, however, was how the IBRS ensured that they weren’t liable as witnesses to tricks like his, and as such spent a lot of time reassuring the public that their system worked.

As the interview continued, the reporter just got more and more frustrated, and Jeff seemed to be more and more intimidated. By the time the reporter got dragged away by the cameraman, it looked like he was going to punch Jeff. While that wouldn’t have been fun, it would have kept negative media off his back for a while.

After that he and Diana continued to man the stall for the rest of the afternoon, or what amounted to the afternoon in the near-perpetual night. By the time the first day was over they were tired beyond their limit, but still had work to do. The first rounds of the competition would begin and Savannah was competing as a wild-card entry against a low seeded pilot immediately after the opening ceremony. They would be working throughout the night to make sure her rig had been upgraded before she arrived, so she could spend the day getting used to the changes. They would be banking on her natural adaptability to get used to the changes in time; half a day’s practice was really insufficient. Thankfully the parts would give her an advantage there. They had already submitted the parts they were using during the day, with Jeff having to manage the stall while Diana did that, so they just had to assemble the plans.

Jeff wasn't employed by Sav, but was still able to access the workshop to assist Diana as he was registered in the trade show. On paper, he was a sponsor supervising the correct installation of the parts being advertised. Him assisting with Diana's work was why she had any time to help him with the trade show.

There was one part that was particularly dangerous to their plan; a firmware update. The firmware of a rig core was usually one part that no mechanist would be stupid enough to touch, instead taking the core to a Kaya licenced lab whenever an update was required. That wouldn’t be possible in that instance, since the update was one of the things that were transmitted for Sachiko’s rig. The core’s anti-tampering trigger was entirely linked to the firmware, so if there was anything even slightly out of place, it would detonate. If there was any signs what so ever of signal break or data corruption, they would scrap their plan and not do the update, but as far as they could tell, the data should have been clean.

Several hours of work later, and a workshop not being reduced to glass, they were finally finished. Too exhausted to do anything else, they collapsed together on a nearby couch and slept there until Sav arrived. Sav had spent the previous two days in a simulation program to help her get used to the changes faster. Simulations were rarely any help when compared to actually piloting, but they were better than nothing.

When she walked into the workshop and saw the two of them sleeping there, she waited for them to wake up, knowing that they would be more use to her if they were even a little more rested. While she waited, she looked through the design’s estimated data and compared it to the data that was applied to the simulator. In most regards it was about 10% higher than what she had practiced with, higher by leagues when compared with a previous generation model.

Before long Jeff and Diana woke up and stumbled to their feet, too stiff and uncomfortable to find sleeping together awkward. Noticing the time, they completely woke up; deadlines being a jolt of energy stronger than any coffee. Despite the clear difference in fitness between the pair and Sav, they were pulling ahead of her while pushing the cube on a trolley. They were desperate and running short of time. When they got to the testing arena and the new rig unfolded, it seemed far more impressive than what the designs had indicated, as if it had some unmentionable quality to it that was only discernible by being in its presence. Somehow, Jeff actually felt a sense of pride from getting it complete in time, even if the parts weren’t his own creation. He took a photo with his phone and set it to Sam with a caption.

“The Rig that Brought Down an Empire”