NIH Chpt 8

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==Not Invented HereChapter 8 - Diplomacy and Duct Tape==
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"Clerk Cho, the Celestial Wisdom is infallible. Thus, under the new Chancellor, it is assumed that all controversial decisions made by the old Chancellor are null and void and quite possibly a killing insult should mention of them reach their ears. Assume that all decisions are controversial, my pupil. Or else."*swallows hard* "Master Lin, how then do we avoid the attentions of the new Chancellor?" "The same way The Ministry of Resources always has: flatter them shamelessly and hope we don't stand out in the line of the other toadies. Then once their backs are turned, keep on with business as usual.""What! Surely there is some hand-off, some evaluation of the old paperwork by the senior Ministerial...""Heavens, no! If they did, we'd never get the work done!"- This Department, I Swear Ep. 1 "The New Hire", New Avalon Independent Broadcasting 2955
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===Part 1===
The Aerodome, Militia Base - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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In the end, it was the one-eyed man (twentyish, named Andy, hoping to work in his own garage) and the senior tech (Martine, near retirement, staying on because she had to train up replacements) who came with them. He was surprised but pleased when the tank crew, whose names he should really have caught, commandeered another ATV.
 
Up close, it began to show where the bulk of funding went in the base. The streets were swept, buildings better maintained; effort had been made to rebuild new buildings in the same style.
 
The aerodrome was in the vague shape of a swooping wing, only a few brown stains of acid rain marring the durable outer surface. The traffic control tower looked similarly slick and windswept. Yet both were still intact after centuries of raids. This might be genuine Star League era construction.
 
The radar tower looked to be more recent: a turning radar dish atop a spindly construction of grey-painted girders. Massive spherical hydrogen tanks were situated as far as possible away while still being in the compound. Hydrogen was not your friend, especially in a sulphur-rich atmosphere.
 
Reinforcing this point, the ammo bunkers were also far away from those. Really, a lot of the base - any base - was just empty space to keep the accidentally dangerous away from the deliberately dangerous.
 
Off to the side was the pilot's mess hall, and it was there that they diverted towards.
 
The guard at the door was rather severe, but mercifully, he recognized Martine, and swung in behind.
 
This time, he did not hold back, striding in as if the door was a curtain pulling back for the next act.
 
"Greetings gentlemen!"
 
The few pilots there were left staring. Fortunately, Devolo picked up the thread. If there was a hint of disbelief at the words coming out of his mouth, well, no-one could blame him.
 
"Presenting, all th' way from New Avalon, a real, live aerospace tech! Coming to you courtesy of Innovations Inc., here for a limited time only, Mister James Ferguson!"
 
Completely unprompted, the techs standing behind broke into applause, heroically keeping a straight face. The guard was aghast.
 
Ferguson bowed. "Thank you, thank you, you're too kind." Then, having learned a little about how to come back from this, he addressed them normally. "At ease, gentlemen, I'm just having a little fun. I have indeed come a very long way to be here..."
 
He quickly laid out the situation, asked them which of the machines could use the help after the recent raid and invited them along. The pilots, still not sure what was going on, but aware the ASF techs had been treating them like learner drivers in charge of a supercar fleet, were curious enough to accept.
 
Of course, the pilots wouldn't dream of leaving their machines in the hands of someone they didn't know, so they came along as well.
 
It was a scene out of every superspy, disaster or alien invasion holo: the VIP being tailed by a gaggle of subordinates as he or she issued instructions. If it looked like he was commanding the respect of a representative slice of the whole base, well... He was fortunate they hadn't seen the thriller he'd ripped the technique from.
 
Their little parade reached the hangar, and the door was thankfully left open enough they could walk in.
 
Ferguson's first sight of the machines almost caused physical pain. The scorched and patched ASFs clustered nearest the door, grimy skylights leaking light in patches, were nearly matched by the many empty cubicles, as well as the ones underneath the funeral shrouds of dusty tarpaulin. The Lightning and Hellcats laid to rest alongside Seydlitz and Stingrays made it seem like a wake for Federated Suns tech.
He was aware he was being overly dramatic, but still. Just thinking of the possible hacks, tweaks and tape-and-wire repairs he was going to be confronted with was giving him a headache.
 
The dismay only lasted a second: momentum needed to be preserved, the superstar tech facade had to be kept up. He made a beeline for a cluster of aerotechs around a Hellcat.
 
"Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Are you need of a spot of manpower?"
 
"Uhh, who are you?", said one of the older techs.
 
"James Ferguson, fusion and aerospace tech, formerly of Lycomb-Davion Introtech, here on behalf of Innovations Inc. There's a good chance the company I worked for built that very fighter. My boss, Devolo, can fill you in."
 
Introducing himself was beginning to become tiring.
 
He offered handshakes as they climbed down from their stepladders where they had been arm-deep behind its cavernous air intake. Their and now his hands were covered with coolant, and he desperately wanted to wipe it off (even if he was going to get dirty anyway).
The symbolism of coming down from their lofty perch might or might not be picked up, but it would subtly influence their attitude and that of the subordinates. Or so his business books said. At this point he was steering off the map of what he had frantically read up on company relations during his trip. He really hoped that they could engage technically, and be on more familiar footing. In time, perhaps they could be friends?
 
"Is this the patient?"
 
He climbed up without waiting for confirmation. The aerotechs, nonplussed, were divided between outrage, amusement and a core of two or three that were coolly assessing him. Those, those were his real opposition, and he could not ask for help. It was like his training all over again.
 
Devolo was reassuring them, and not so subtly enjoying their consternation, as were the tankers.
 
Inside the close-packed guts beneath the opened inspection hatch, there were clear signs of a coolant leak, green splashed everywhere. Unfortunate, not least as he recognised this as being particularly troublesome to repair. Leaks in a Hellcat had a habit of subtly snowballing, only breaking through months or years afterwards. Given it had reliably sunk kilowatts of heat for probably a century or more, he silently praised it for being a good boy and promised it some nice new parts.
 
Let's see, the manual for a HCT-213 recommended aramid-clad silicone, though solid could be substituted...
 
"Hey smart boy, what's the verdict?" catcalled one of the techs, a short tubby man.
 
"It's not fucked yet, I can tell you that." he fired back.
There was some general laughter, mostly of the relieved kind.
 
"Ya think? I replaced every fucking centimeter of conduit in that last year and it still started spewing like Saturday night."
 
"You see, there's something in these older HellBricks that LDI finally managed to fix round about this century. Replace the conduit once every twenty years, keep the coolant inside the pipes where it belongs, and it will keep ticking till the Star League rises again. If it's shot up and the valves let too much out before it redirects the flow, the internal mountings corrode just enough that it shakes loose at serious G-forces. Not immediately; it can take years. Decades. Eventually it simply won't stay seated, and the problem accelerates."
 
The aerotech stared blankly before his brain caught up with a fresh delivery of 'oh fuck, I knew it'. The realization had enough for everybody, and it spread as the rest looked at him.
 
"Abs, why'd you not check?" said one of the other aerotechs.
 
"It looked fine! I cleaned everything! Poor thing's redlined every chance it gets, anyway!"
 
Ferguson had some sympathy, but it was thin. He and they had a lot of work ahead of them. Fabricating custom parts, virtual disassembly of both Hellcats... Though seeing one of the pilots giving him a hateful look, he threw the hapless tech a bone.
 
"He's right. They only discovered this when some beancounter in the company decided to correlate coolant failure in combat... with tainted atmospheres at low altitudes." He saw that tidbit settle in, relief on "Abs'" face. Shame it was a lie.
 
"It took decades for it to work up the chain, but they finally sorted out the corrosion issue." It was a happy accident the new molybdenum alloy mountings were resistant to sulphur and sulphide corrosion. Should they test it, they'd find nothing but confirmation. A result of the intelligence he'd handed over to ComStar, may their eyes rot in their sockets.
 
"We'll need to check against the known-good parts in the other Hellcat..." Some of the techs on the ground glanced at the other Hellcat-shaped tarp. Then the pilot who'd followed them from the mess spoke up.
 
"Uh, Mr. Ferguson, if that is true, I think we're gonna have the same problem. Couple of years back, Joanna's "Sun Bear" over there just died on the runway; overheated instantly. We didn't find a coolant leak, but could it be something similar?"
 
The other pilot looked hopeful.
 
Ferguson tried heroically to keep from groaning, and succeeded. That one. That flaw. If its pumps couldn't be salvaged...
 
He climbed down, wiping his hands on a rag atop a toolbox. "Mr. Devolo, sir, I'll need to make a phone call to Mrs. McMicheal. No, first we need to see the parts stockpile, then the other ASFs, then place an order."
 
"Everyone, I want you to co-ordinate with the pilots and the aerotechs to gather up a list of issues across the whole fleet. I'll be checking it twice, I want to find out which plane's naughty or nice." Quirk a smile after joke. Scattered if hesitant laughter. Internally, relief.
 
"Then, we'd better get to work. We have a lot of planes to repair."
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===Part 2===
The Aerodome warehouse- Militia Base - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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"This is it?"
 
He'd expected it.
 
"Aye, looks like. I didn't think it was this bad." said Devolo, grimacing.
 
It was still a dismayingly small stack.
 
Most of the spares in the climate-controlled warehouse were shaped aerospace armour plates, both protection and heatshield for each ASF. The actual replacement parts, some of which had been carried on the trader's Dropship that had brought Ferguson, were barely up to his head.
 
While Hegemony durability had been standard for centuries (partly as a way to keep the difficulty of duplication up, partly to reduce the strain of interstellar logistics that might have a normal part wear out before an order arrived), to keep availability up to three nines it was recommended to have a three-to-one stockpile for each part in each machine. As in, given a bare frame, it could be fully assembled from the parts. With some of the more rugged designs, you could get by with two-to-one, but this...
 
No fusion engines. No myomers or avionics. No aerospace-grade heatsinks. One small stack of medium lasers, four small lasers and no other spare weapons. Only parts that visibly wore out or were shot up, like the armour plates, tyres, hydrogen tanks, ailerons & flaps, cockpit canopies and the like. He just bet there was a T-crossing, I-dotting, no-compromise bureaucrat somewhere along the procurement trail. Begrudgingly, he admitted that any expenses made out to 'independent traders' for "Other" would trip all the alarm bells. The base commander might not have been replaced due to being killed.
 
Still, though, what was going on? This would be the pride of Wynn's Roost, the first line of defense against pirates and raiders. To have their main DropShip-fighting force disabled by paperwork beggared belief.
 
In light of this impossible situation, Commander Jawara's request gained new dimensions.
 
The disgruntlement and resignation on the aerotech's faces could be summed up as, 'You see what we have to work with?' The tanktechs looked like they were reevaluating long-held beliefs. Ferguson was happy at that rift healing, but not at the cost of his free time and sanity.
 
In short, he was probably looking at a solid 6 months of work - if he did all the work himself. That would be the right thing, the superstar thing, would be the sane, sensible option that would preserve his cover. But this planet needed its aerospace arm. He needed not to be killed or kidnapped by interstellar bandit farmers and made to repair AgroMechs. All he'd do is drop some subtle hints to the aerotechs, nudge them on the correct path, drop some legally-acquired service manuals. Yes, that would do it.
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===Part 3===
The Aerodome, Militia Base - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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It turned out to be more of a lesson for him. As he leafed through all the documentation of the working machines, and how they had kept them together with little more than a welder, solder and hope, a surprising amount of local knowledge was being displayed. He was discovering new ways aerospace fighters could fail when over a century out of spec.
 
A greater person than himself would have felt humbled by the accumulated knowledge, the history of struggle in the logbooks that they'd handed over. He was holding in the same kind of horror as a classic car enthusiast seeing a rare find modified for a destruction derby.
It wasn't just the hardware hacks, it was the myriad ways their ancestors had found to fuck up the software, too. They had a genuine Star League Defense Force Sparrowhawk; its polymorphic firmware, that could recognize and adapt power levels to any current laser, large or small, had panicked when the capacitors had been replaced with new, lower-tech models. For 40 years afterward it had had to have its error logs flushed yearly, because the firmware kept filing "out of spec, please replace" error messages... until someone disabled error logs entirely. With assembly language. (They didn't even do a good job.) Sheer luck, then, that they had deleted two small lasers and thus reduced power draw a year previously; only that had kept the replaced capacitors from burning out.
 
Were it up to him he'd stick the whole lot in a museum and buy a whole new air wing. It wasn't. In the grim darkness of a third war of succession for the dead throne of a star empire, there was only back-and-forth war, and war machines handed down as if they were ancestral land.
 
The Centurions' logbooks, thankfully, were less horrific, despite (or because of, perhaps) dating from just before the Trader's Domain Secession. Being an older design, durability hadn't advanced to ridiculous make-once-use-for-decades levels, but that made it slightly easier to repair; he was surprised to find a mention of "FarOut Aerospace" actually fabricating some sensors in the log of "Cu Chulainn", and he filed that tidbit in memory. (No noteputer, sadly. In all the excitement today, he'd simply forgotten it.) It was over thirty years ago, but he lived in hope that it wasn't just one man with a steady soldering gun.
 
Without parts and ammo, the list of what needed repair and what he - they - could restore to service was grossly imbalanced towards the light fighters. The Stingray might be coaxed into firing straight again, but he had no idea where he would source a new PPC on-planet. A long, painful and fiddly refit would bring the leaky Hellcat back to life. The other Hellcat, he had a lurking suspicion, one he hoped was wrong; he wanted to run a mag-inspector over it before anything. Same went for the crashed Seydlizes. The sickly fusion reactor on the other non-working Lightning could be coaxed back to life and maybe run for a decade or more, though without the specific ammunition for the AC/20, they would be little more effective than a light fighter.
 
The parade of grotesqueries culminated in their crashed F-90S.
 
The last tech - the others had gone back to work, some trying his suggestions, others doing what they were originally - gestured at the space-fighter. "So here's "Gallowglass". Poor thing ate dirt from 50 meters after takeoff. Turned the cannon into a coathook, killed the trainee when the canopy fouled the eject." She flipped though the log, grimacing at the pictures. "...eugh. It's one thing to hear it... Anyway."
 
She pulled the cover off, dislodging a lot of dust. "Bet you haven't seen anything like this! If you c'n get this malparido flying, I'll be amazed. If you c'n use that big head of yours to straighten out the autocannon, you'll get to name the new pilot's grandchildren."
 
It had been cleaned up in the past, but the area around the underside of the nose was still dirty, looking like they hadn't been able to remove the retaining bolts for the weapon, which was indeed horribly bent. It didn't look hopeless to Ferguson's eye, though. Armstrongs - looked like Armstrong - had a separate barrel welded to the breech, not cast. If he could remove it, if Brenda could fabricate a replacement with the same durability, if he could re-weld it without compromising breech strength... more ifs. The mounts and airframe would still need inspection before anything.
 
Hold it; idea. The new barrel would need to be test-fired, wouldn't it? He'd need ammunition for that. What better way to appropriate their limited stocks and come up with a plausible excuse to expend it? Yes, he'd pretend that was what he intended all along, instead of wondering how to charm it away with his misfiring people skills.
 
That settled it.
 
"Very well, um..."
 
"Genoveva."
 
"...Genoveva. I shall accept this challenge. Would you like to put some money on it?"
 
She hesitated. Superstar techs in expensive suits didn't bet, they had money. But she was pretty sure she knew why, and savior or no, bedammned if she'd let him score even more points in front of their audience at their expense. She'd caught the well-hidden sneer as they toured. If the smug shit wanted to make 'the tip of Turner's spear', with hundreds of years of institutional experience, out as backward, inflexible...
 
"No money. You'll fix it, or you won't. But I'll want to know how you did it, down to the last weld, bolt and screw. That's what we'll bet."
 
...they could learn too.
 
Ferguson, having caught none of this resentment, was relieved that this appeal to professional pride had borne fruit.
 
"Done! In three months, I shall repair this autocannon. Shake on it?" They shook. "Of course, we'll need a sample of the autocannon's ammo for testing. My boss and I are also fully-qualified explosives techs, so no worries there."
 
"I'm not sure I can authorize that, Mr. Devolo. The DTF's tribunal against Base Commander Oliver-Castille is ongoing. Our new one-"
 
"Ach, it's fine. We're registered contractors for the militia, 'observing' on the orders of Commander Jawara. Plus Holo - I mean, Captain Honan-Gaffey an' I go back years."
 
"Mr. Devolo, are you sure you should be saying that out loud?", hissed Genoveva. "The way things are, if we even sneeze wrong, they'll jump on us with both feet."
 
Devolo looked around at the mechanics and tank crew still watching the show. (The two pilots were co-ordinating with the techs on the other side of the hangar.) "Ah didn't say anything. Did ah say anything?"
"No."
"Uh-uh."
"Not a crime to know people."
 
He turned back the the aerotech. "Lass, ah know it's a big ask, but if you want this done we really need it. Have they audited the munitions stockpile yet?"
 
She took a deep breath, then let it out in a big sigh. "...no. No they haven't." Coolly, she looked Devolo and Ferguson in the eye. "You bring this up with the Commander before you do anything. If they ask me, I'm pointing in your direction. Clear?"
 
"Alright."
"Crystal."
 
"The phone's in the admin office. This way."
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===Part 4===
Administration Office, Militia Base - Wynn's Roost, Outworlds Wastes
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Show over, the rest of the audience had dispersed, citing the need to go back to their jobs. Ferguson and Devolo were in a faded office, towering file boxes around them threatening to bury the privates viewing them. It gave Ferguson flashbacks to the LDI legal department, who continually hacked through the thickets of interplanetary patent law.
"Sorry about the disorganization," said Genoveva. "It's not precisely business as usual, the audit is taking up a lot of our time."
 
"It sounds difficult."
 
"Commander Danson - that's the CIC of the airwing - said we couldn't be concerned with paperwork, just had to fight," she continued. “That came back to bite us in the arse once they started asking the last trader questions about where that ammo had been sourced from. Turns out they had connections to a pirate haven - in the Draconis Combine.” She looked back at them. "You can imagine the freak-out."
 
She sighed. "We didn't ask the trader and as far as we knew they were legit. Now I'm hearin' all sorts of shit being slung: 'think of potential sabotage!', 'what if they follow the paper trail to us?', 'we don't negotiate with pirates!', 'the Combine's coming for us!'... which leaves us, the first line of fucking defence, with our arses hanging in the wind..."
 
"...ready to be fucked by the next raid," finished Devolo. "Fuck me." He straightened a little bit to look her in the eye. "You'll have my company's assistance in this."
 
Ferguson noted he had completely sidestepped any culpability on his or his friend's part. This 'Holo' must have lied through his /teeth/.
 
"I already have your aerotech, but thank you. We need the hands."
 
"How is it you have to import?" asked Ferguson. "It's actually fairly simple to make the propellants and explosives once you know how."
 
This time, she didn't bother to hide her annoyance for the tech, and glared at him. "Simple, he says. Mr. Devolo, educate your employee on Wynn's Roost history."
 
"A month here, and you didn' think to ask, Ferguson." He glanced upwards, recalling. "Long story short, ev'ry time we tried to build a munitions factory to make more something more modern than RDX or TNT, sooner or later it exploded. The ones that didn't blow up turned out explosives that were liquid, or exploded as soon as they crystallized, or both. We lost a ton of chemists: Heiddeger, Davro-Hoylder, Clyde-Martinez, some of the most brilliant minds we had in the last century. We knew it had something to do with the atmosphere, but our best efforts didn't seem good enough, and we were running out of talent. Trade was still strong enough that we could get by on imports, so the Assembly focused on preserving what we had." He sighed. "Once ComStar took us off the maps and downgraded our credit - fuck them very much by the way - that dried up to a trickle. We've been running the planet on what tech we can scrape together, and the few diplomats we sent out haven't been able to entice anyone skilled for decades. Or... they haven't come back at all."
 
"And then I came along."
 
"An' then you came along, with all the qualifications you could ask for and more besides. Ye told us what happened when you went to the city hall; now you know some o' why."
 
Blake's Blood, talk about dropping a gold nugget in the beggar's bowl.
 
The back of the back office had a small sub-office, barely more than a cubicle with a chipboard door. It proclaimed 'Cmdr. Danson' in dusty plastic letters.
 
She had sounded annoyed; he'd really lost points in that last exchange. Quick, cast about for something that won't seem odd.
 
"Two commanders? How does that work?"
 
Genoveva gestured them inside. "Short answer: better than you think. Long answer: aerospace wing answers to the government, but the Irregulars' commander can override the board in cases of planetary defence. O' course, that's up in the air since we swapped ground commanders with the militia of Pollack up in Wynnland, and Commander Danson's currently suspended, in preparation fer providing evidence to the tribunal." She dialed out and handed Devolo the blocky, wired handset.
 
"Hello, Commander Jawara?"
 
The base leader's rich, deep voice came out clearly over the crackly line. "Ah, Ferguson. What is the situation?" Ferguson thought he could detect a hint of hope.
 
Being put on the spot was never his forte. What could he say that would sound plausible enough they could walk out with a ton or so of volatile explosives? He wasn't used to these lightspeed decis-
 
Some facts popped into his forebrain from where the bureacracy briefing had been lurking, and Ferguson had it. (Why was his subconscious smarter than he was?)
 
It was sneaky, it was certainly not respectful of his employer, but it would provide protection. He'd have to lick some serious boot, but he could do that - he'd been a ComStar acolyte.
 
"Sir, I believe that, given three" Genoveva's eyes widened, and she hissed, 'five!', "five months, Innovations Inc. and the aerotechs can restore most of the grounded aerospace fighters to operational condition, except for the F-90S. Its autocannon can be repaired with the assistance of subcontractors known to Mr. Devolo... however, the subcontractor Lightspeed Limited has requested a sample of its ammunition to complete testing."
"I'm not familiar with that company."
 
"They're new, sir, but extremely talented in weapons development, explosives management and formulation, and metallurgy." All modesty aside, he was. Ferguson paused, but forged ahead. "The munitions haven't been audited yet."
 
A deep sigh was audible over the phone. "If I approve this, will it get back to the militia?"
"No, sir. Under the Mackenzie Act of 2960, Article 6: "The militia commander, where he or she does not have a vested interest, may contract domestic concerns at their discretion to expidite operational readiness in cases of national emergency." It's how Innovations Inc. was contracted in the first place. I would say restoring one of your key anti-dropship assets counts. It will also mean we can operate in the open, sir."
 
Another sigh. "Very well. Of course, I will need the details of this company before I sign the approval form." The commander paused significantly. "You *do* have them?"
 
Yes, he wasn't fooled. Ferguson attempted to moisten a suddenly dry mouth. "Of course, Sir. You'll have it by the end of the day."
 
"About the other matter..."
 
"That is in the process of being solved, sir. All parties are aware of the dire supply situation, which has lessened tensions. The target of both their ire is now the Board of Procurement."
 
Genoveva's face clearly asked, 'Why is this news to him?' but she held her tongue.
 
"I suppose I can accept that. I will see you later; I have a lot of letters to families and dependents to sign. Good day." *click*
Instantly, Devolo was in his face. "Ferguson, what the fuck are ye playing at? Who the hell is Lightspeed Limited?"
 
"Extra protection, boss, just in case any investigators ask around. Genoveva, could you corral a clerk to hunt down a contractor form?"
"Hey, I don't take orders-"
 
He turned back to his fuming boss. "We set up a Limited Liability Company. It acts a little like a person, which in this case becomes our fall guy. If they ever try to sue you, it's the business and its assets that are-"
"I know how a fuckin' LLC works, Ferguson. The question I'm asking before you go off on a tear again is: How the fuck ye are going to magic up a company in a day, when it took a whole month to register mine in the Records Center?"
 
"Shit." His lying, traitorous brain brought up the earlier conversation, and he grimaced. Karma was zero fun when you were a target. "I have to phone a friend."
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