The Mech Touch novel Chapter 996

"I’m not a detective." Ves began to explain to Leland how he came to his conclusion. "But I’m a mech designer. More than that, I’m a business owner during my civilian career and spent a long time holding the position of head designer. I’m quite familiar with production and repair operations, both of which happen on a very large scale at the KNG’s Mosville Complex."

Leland grew increasingly intrigued. "Have you managed to come across any hard evidence to back up your statements?"

"Not yet, but I’ve inferred it by combining the clues we’ve found with my own observations of the site. You have to be aware that the Mosville Complex stands out among the KNG’s properties because it is their main service and repair center. Both the company’s commercial and military clients send their damaged mechs to Mosville for servicing. Do you know how many parts get restored instead of replaced?"

"What’s the difference?" The intelligence officer asked.

"Damaged and faulty mechs can be fixed up in two ways. Either you hammer its broken parts back together, or you take it out and replace it with a functional spare part fabricated on the spot or taken out of an inventory. The mech technicians at the Mosville Complex does both. In fact, most of the time they have a crew that is dedicated to identifying and ripping out broken and malfunctioning parts, another crew that is responsible for taking parts from the site’s abundant inventory and assembling them onto the frame of the damaged mech, and finally a third crew which is solely tasked with processing the damaged parts."

Leland began to see which aspect about the operations at the Mosville Complex drew the most suspicion. "If I wanted to siphon away mechs from that site, I’d take control of the third crew." _{freewёbnoνel.com}

"Exactly." Ves grinned. "In fact, it works best if the first crew is in collusion with the third crew. The first crew would pick out damaged but mostly functional parts for replacement and pull them out of the damaged mech. The third crew receives those valuable parts and assigns some of them for recycling or disposal despite the fact that they can still be used after some refurbishment."

"Even so, it sounds as if the third crew needs to be in on the entire scheme for it to work."

This also threw Ves for a loop for a while. "That’s true. It’s not easy to fudge the numbers of what can be recovered from ’recycling’ or ’scrapping’ the supposedly damaged parts. However, if the activity is small enough, it’s possible to get away with it under everyone’s noses. Chief Nyquist happens to be working for the third crew. Not only that, he’s assigned to an important position in supervising the repairs for the military mechs that are sent back by the Bentheim mech regiments!"

This immediately alarmed Leland. "Do you mean that if Chief Nyquist is in a position to supply military mechs to the BLM?!"

Such an occurrence would be a huge scandal! Whether or not Kadar or Neyvis truly collaborated with the BLM in person didn’t matter at that stage! Just the fact that the BLM got their hands on exclusive military hardware and in substantial numbers would be enough to tarnish the KNG’s reputation and damage their relations with their backers!

If the separatists only got their hands on crappy bargain bin mech models, then the threat they posed could easily be dealt with by the authorities.

If they got their hands on more expensive budget and midrange mech models, then it would be a major crime for any company to supply them with these kinds of mechs. However, the damage wouldn’t be too big of a deal if only a single mid-level manager or chief technician was responsible for smuggling commercial mechs to the BLM.

Once it became known that the KNG actually smuggled out mechs that belonged to the military, the crime was much more severe!

From his experiences with the internally developed mech models of the Flagrant Vandals, he knew that while they may not be the most expensive mechs in use. The true value of military mechs lay in how thoroughly they were designed. Almost always involving a Senior Mech Designer, they not only incorporated their specialties, but also made use of several exclusive military component licenses based on more advanced tech.

Mech regiments also wanted to avoid their military mechs falling into the hands of their enemies. If the Vesians scavenged an intact or functional mech, they could study its performance, quantify their parameters and identify their weak points.

This would be an absolute disaster for the mech regiment in question! The next time they fought against the Vesians, their military mechs might suddenly become ten or even twenty percent less effective!

Therefore, the KNG absolutely violated the trust extended by the Volari Starhawks and the other mech regiments that decided to entrust the production and servicing of their military mechs to the company!

"Just think about it." Ves said grimly. "Since the current war broke out, the five partnering military mech regiments sent back thousands of their mechs for repairs or replacements. If Chief Nyquist smuggled out enough functional parts to the BLM to reconstruct, say, a hundred military mechs, then the discrepancy won’t grow large enough to alert the people around him. This is a scheme that slowly took place over the past several years!"

"It shouldn’t be so easy." Leland retorted with some skepticism. "The KNG and the military mech technicians that are sent to assist in the work should have prevented such a major scheme."

Ves already interviewed people like Darryl Roland, a disabled mech technician sent back from the frontlines by the Mech Corps. The man’s hero worship for a veteran like Nyquist was very evident!

"The way the repair crews are put together makes it easy to obscure the details. Chief Nyquist is a very popular chief technician among his colleagues and his former military service makes him very trustworthy among the workers sent by the Mech Corps. He won’t be able to pull of this scheme alone, but remember that the KNG recently hired more personnel as well pressured them to work harder. The existing workers are either too new and inexperienced to know any better, too eager to suck up to a popular and powerful chief technician or too exhausted by their current workload to figure out if anything is wrong!"

"If I recall, Chief Nyquist holds a high position on the work floor, right?" Leland remembered.

Ves nodded. "Yes. That’s an important point. He enjoys considerable authority within the Mosville Complex. Officially, he should also be in a position to pull some strings to allocate the right mech technicians to his work crew. Unofficially, he appears to be influential enough among his fellow chiefs to be able to influence the site’s specific policies and procedures."