The Mech Touch novel Chapter 997

As long as the right people were in on it, any kind of fraudulent scheme could take place at a mech production site. Security and monitoring systems ordinarily caught anything that took place on company property, but they possessed deliberate holes.

Ves half suspected that the monitoring and security systems had already been hacked or compromised in some way. If the humans in control of those systems had been bribed, coerced or deceived into shutting down the monitoring, anything could take place.

The Kadar-Neyvis Group already selectively compromised those very same systems in order to do their shady business with the Peace Association.

However, smuggling out parts of military mechs was a much more egregious offense. Anyone with a bit of common sense would know that anything involved with military mechs needed to be treated with the strictest care!

This was why Ves guessed that the BLM had definitely placed some men on the inside, particularly one of the controllers of the monitoring system. He figured that Chief Nyquist only needed eight to ten accomplices at minimum to be able to subvert enough security and prevention procedures to be able to maintain the scheme while keeping everyone else in the dark.

As he made his various inspections, he drew a lot of attention from the workers in the vicinity due to Jeff’s noisy company. The relations manager seemed to do his best to stop Ves from observing the work in peace and without alerting anyone close of the presence of a guest.

Nonetheless, even with the distraction Ves managed to note several questionable points. He witnessed parts with heavy damaged exteriors but functional internal components marked for scrap.

Ves knew his mechs, so even at a distance he could already observe that those handful of parts were anything but unrecoverable!

Certainly, while the Mech Corps deserved to receive the best, and it wouldn’t be getting that if they received mechs made out of refurbished parts. No matter how well a crew tried to repair a part, prior battle damage always left some marks.

Yet to fabricate new parts to replace lightly-damaged parts was a substantial waste of time, resources and production capacity. If a repair crew replaced every single scratched part with freshly-fabricated ones, then they would quickly incur a substantial amount of expenses!

Therefore, most repair operations found it much more efficient to restore salvageable parts whenever they could.

That the repair crews at the KNG’s Mosville Complex sometimes violated that rule practically aroused Ves’ suspicion. He hadn’t paid any attention to it before, but now that he looked out for it, he realized that for every hundred cases, perhaps two or three would be fraudulently marked unsalvageable without good cause!

As Ves spent more time flitting around the shop floors, he noted that only a single crew responsible for assessment and disassembly was responsible for the fraudulent evaluations.

It happened to be one that contained several of Chief Nyquist’s friends.

"That’s one link." Ves muttered to himself before he resumed his seemingly random inspection.

Jeff saw no rhyme or reason for Ves’ random inspections. They had walked throughout the entire complex more than once in the past few hours but never stuck around long enough.

"Is there anything you are looking for, Ves?"

"I am just doing my job." He said. "So far, I’m very impressed by the efficiency of your operations and the productivity of your workers."

Indeed, the KNG truly did its best when it came to working on their commercial mechs. Ves did not find that the workers pulled off any significant shenanigans when it came to the company’s core products.

It should have been the same case for the military mechs entrusted in the KNG’s care. Yet Ves found to his befuddlement that the suspect teams of mech technicians actually included some enlisted mech technicians who should have known better!

Either the mech technicians dispatched by the Mech Corps had been bought or influenced into participating in the scheme, or Ves misjudged the situation. This was because Ves determined that it didn’t involve around a dozen people or so, but at least double that amount!

For a moment, Ves doubted whether he saw correctly. The more people involved in a scheme, the higher the chance of getting caught. Could the BLM really be so daring to involve that many people?

Evidently, they did.

The more Ves looked, the more his doubts cleared away. He definitely detected signs of fudging and it didn’t concern a few bolts or plates here and there.

This wasn’t the kind of fraud to overcharge the Mech Corps for costs that the company hadn’t actually incurred. This was straight-up theft of military property!

As Ves left the first work crew and tried to observe the work being done by the third work crew, he saw more signs of fudging, though only once or twice among hundreds of legitimate procedures.

This was also how they kept their secret scheme so well hidden. The sophistication of their methods and the practiced way they blended sketchy moves among a ubiquitous amount of legitimate procedures made Ves suspect they had years of practice.

Ves turned to Jeff. "How often does Mr. Stoddard make the rounds like I am doing now?"

"Oh, I’m told he personally makes an inspection each and every day! Sometimes he completes a round in the morning and another one at the end of the day."

"That’s very diligent of a mech designer."

"Mr. Stoddard takes his responsibilities very seriously." Jeff spoke with utmost confidence. "Mrs. Kadar and Mr. Neyvis often has high expectations for their top subordinate mech designers. Carl Stoddard is one of our rising talents and we have high hopes that he will be able to advance to Journeyman in the next two decades. In order to facilitate his affinity with mechs, our bosses have sent him to supervise the Mosville Complex."

What an enormous misjudgement! Kadar and Neyvis should have assigned someone they trusted with a lot workshop and factory experience to supervise the dizzyingly complex amount of operations that took place here. To send a mech designer with great design ability but nonexisting workshop experience to supervise an entire complex completely missed the mark! _{fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com}