The Mech Touch novel Chapter 576

Ves chose to take his shore leave in the final two weeks of their stopover in the Harkensen System. He wanted to spend the first two weeks into making sure the repair work stayed on track.

Dealing with slime balls like Lester Tubrok or keeping the Vandal mech designers and mech technicians alert was a lot of work. Without his intervention, the massive repair effort would have suffered massive delays. Forget about repairing six-hundred mechs on time. Fixing up just three-hundred mechs would have been a miracle.

His cognition of the repair industry grew by leaps and bounds as he shuttled through the various companies the Vandals had contracted. Once he became more familiar with their circumstances, he grew a little more understanding of their difficulties.

"Do you think it’s easy for us to work with thousands of different mech models on an annual basis? We get every shape and size of machines in our hands, all of them using a billion different parts!" Tobruk snapped at Ves one day. "The only person in the galaxy who can master so many different mechs is the Polymath! Don’t expect mortals like us to match that kind of versatility!"

Ves wasn’t fooled. The fat bastard simply put up an act in order to weasel his way out of another problem of their own making. "Your stance is fine if you’re running a maintenance department for a mech regiment or a private outfit, but you’re not. You are operating a repair business. I didn’t see you whine when you signed the contract. If our mech models are baffling your men so much, then you should have thought twice before accepting our demands."

Mr. Tubrok wiped the sweat off his brow. "Hehe, Mr. Larkinson, can’t you be more merciful to us? The troubles I’ve mentioned are truly affecting our work. Out of all the mech regiments that I’ve worked for, yours is one of the worst! Not only are all your mechs completely battered down to their internal frames, you also make use of too many different mech models! There’s no way for my men to learn the ins and outs of a mech model and apply a set routine on other copies!"

"We’re not asking you to perform the most difficult repair jobs. That’s reserved for our own mech technicians. If you can’t even do the simplest repairs, then It’s a wonder you’re still in business!"

"We can do better! If you would just transfer some extra funds to us, I know a few friends who can lend us some senior mech technicians!"

"We are not paying a single mark more than what the contract stipulates."

Conversations like this happened every day. Half of the time Ves met with the owners, he had to reject their efforts to squeeze more money out of the Vandals. Perhaps this was a deliberate Reinaldan custom of eliciting bribes, but Ves had enough confidence in the contracts to stick to his guns.

After two weeks of close supervision, the repair businesses learned that Ves was not an affable sucker. Whenever owners such as Mr. Tubrok did business with a military mech regiment, they were used to dealing with careerists with zero business acumen or military officers with access to a virtually unlimited budget.

If he Flagrant Vandals maintained a cordial relationship with the Mech Corps, then they would have accepted an inflated price quote without blinking a single eyelid. After all, they could push all of their expenses on to headquarters back on Rittersberg and have them pay the bills.

No wonder the repair businesses attempted to levy ridiculously high surcharges at the start. For example, they attempted to bill the Vandals five-hundred-thousand marks for a single cockpit seat replacement!

What a luxurious chair! And the repair business claimed the cost was justified because it used authentic leather from an alien creature!

Ves only needed to run his finger on the seat to know that the chair was covered with synthesized leather made out of cheap waste materials.

It took a week to stomp on such attempts, and another weak to teach the Vandals to watch out for these kinds of scams. The Reinaldans were truly imaginative in this area.

The worst incident by far left Ves angry for the entire day. This was because he caught the repairmen deliberately botching up a working mech! They even did so under the nose of an inattentive Vandal mech technician!

The culprits would have gotten away with it if Ves failed to recognize the deliberate marks of sabotage. The business owner had to let the repairmen involved in the incident go, and promised to be more diligent next time.

Days like this, Ves regretted getting into bed with the medium-sized repair businesses. He vastly preferred working with the larger businesses even if they charged a significant premium. At least they could be relied upon to deliver a satisfactory job.

"Is the repair industry truly so scummy or is the local business culture at fault?"

He believed that both played a part. Each reinforced the other, turning slightly scummy businesses into a scam factories.

It didn’t help that many of the outfits that did business with the repair businesses on Harkensen III came from elsewhere. The foreigners that stopped over in the Harkensen System for business rather than pleasure tended to operate in the grey area at best. They mainly arrived at Harkensen to dispose of their ill-gotten goods in one of their many shady markets.

Outfits like these weren’t use to high-quality service. Scummy business practices was a daily fact of life for them. This was the price they needed to pay for profiting from the shadow or the dark.

It all highlighted the fact that despite its legal veneer, the Harkensen System was actually a hive of scum and villainy.

"What a dangerously two-faced star system."

While he disliked dealing with these kinds of incidents, he couldn’t help but admire Harkensen’s overarching design. There was no doubt that the small and weak Reinald Republic derived a lot of revenue from both tourism and commerce involving mechs. This was probably one of the many ways in which the Harkensen System narrowed its disparity to genuine port systems such as Bentheim.

Fortunately for his sanity, besides rotating among the repair businesses, Ves also undertook other matters. The Vandals stopped over this star system for many other reasons than to repair their ships and mechs. They also appeared to be preparing for the next leg of their journey.

Inklings of a follow-up mission became clearer and clearer as Ves received assignments to help the logistics department procure more supplies. In particular, his help was needed whenever the planners wished to procure a batch of mech-specific goods.

"The set of criteria you’ve provided are hard to fulfill, but not impossible. The only problem is that it’s going to cost us a lot." _{ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com}