Vasily's too well connected to dispose of easily. Also, he's a useful idiot: Ambitious and corrupt, but predictable and unsubtle.
But he is ambitious... After all, he helped start the Ronin War. And the good-cop/bad-cop routine of Takashi and Subhash was a warning.
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Imperial Institute of Technology, Pauchang, Xinyang
Benjamin Military District, Draconis Combine
18 May 3028
Chief Tech Kowalski sighed when he saw Ninyu Kerai sitting in his chair. The office wasn't technically his, yet, but it was the closest to the labs and all his stuff was there. Ninyu, the self-confessed ISF agent, had his feet on his desk and appeared to be sleeping.
"Oh, quit fooling around," Kowalski said, smacking the feet off his desk to place the readouts he was carrying in their appropriate spots.
Ninyu stirred then settled back to his meditative state, a smirk forming on his lips as Kowalski's annoyed sounds reverberated in the humble room. "So, what's up, doc?"
"My blood pressure, Ninyu-kun. And I am not a doctor, I'm a tech."
Ninyu opened an eye at him, taking in the white lab robes, the research cap, slightly askew, and a cup of hot tea. "You're one odd tech, then, doc." He held up a hand. "What progress have you made?"
Feeling harassed this early in the day, the chief tech slumped into a guest chair. "With the Helm Core? Plenty and not enough. I'm as much a scientist as anyone in the days of lostech. Now, that tech isn't so lost anymore and I find that I am." The hot tea burnt his tongue. "It's a good thing, Theodore-sama moved us here to Xinyang, to IIT. If I had to recreate the research myself, I'd go mad." His cap drooped at the last word, making Ninyu laugh.
"It's not funny," he said, blowing on his cup. "This institute is barely worthy of the name these days. The records they were able to recover from Halstead Station were enough to jumpstart a few projects, but Hanse Davion took the bulk of it to form the NAIS."
"Just half of it, actually." Ninyu corrected. "And the other half's been slowly making its way here over the last 14 years--"
"--Emphasis on the 14 years, Ninyu-kun. I still don't buy that, by the way."
"What?" Ninyu asked, stirring.
"The whole 'it was the plan all along to let Hanse Davion take the manuals and do the hard work of researching for us to steal' thing. Subhash Indrahar wasn't even the Director of the ISF then, was he?"
Ninyu nodded. "It's probably a convenient lie, but it has worked out to be true. We don't get as much as we want, chief tech, but we get enough."
"But we still spend months piecing their research together." His cap drifted down again and he re-set it on his head. "What we're doing now is happening much faster. Thanks to your 'data specialists' we were able to cross-index the whole thing into something resembling referenced works."
Kowalski stood up. "You want project updates, hmm?" He grabbed a reader. "Agro-Proj-11 is coming along nicely, according to the glorified farmers in the AgriSciences wing. They're working almost hand-in-hand with the Water Purification projects, which we may have practical results from soon. Anyway, with just the new planting patterns, we can increase yields by as much as 2.1% this year alone."
"That's a lot of rice."
"Hopefully." Kowalski thumbed a button on the reader. "The Material Engineering wing is dumbfounded by the research materials. They were the cutting edge of Star League science, so I'm re-allocating them to some more practical matters. Neo-steel alloys and ceramet weaves for civilian use. Endo-steel and ferro-fibrous materials for military use. Guess which gets the bulk of the research?" He shook his head. "The Brotherhood's medical experts are devouring everything they can. It's actually the most productive sector of our research, Brother Albrecht tells me that fifteen new medicines are ready for trials now which will cure a variety of common ailments. We can even sell them to the Free Worlds League, or even the Capellan Confederation... if they're still around next year."
Ninyu shrugged at his comment and pulled out a canteen to sip from.
"Hmm. And the surgical procedures look promising as well, once we've rebuilt the sonic-scalpels and grow some of the modified leeches and such." He took a long quaff from the cup, the tea now at a pleasant temperature. "The Helm Core contains more than just technical matters, well I mean, more than just the hard sciences."
"Economics, again, Kowalski-kun?" Ninyu fidgeted for a ration bar he hid away on his person. "The Coordinator isn't interested in such things."
"Isn't he?" Kowalski asked, leaning forward. "He's already ordered some minor reforms that are bearing fruit. By the buddha, the eta work less than 12 hours a day now on Luthien and are paid more!"
"It's a fatigue-relieving measure. The factories have been working non-stop," Ninyu said, gnawing on the bar. "Plus it means there are two shifts now instead of one-and-a-half."
"Fine. Explain why so many monopolies have been broken apart. With public funding for competitors--"
"That's the Order of Five Pillars. Monopolies, as you know, are not allowed within the Combine, cooperation is encouraged, however," Ninyu said repeating a rote line, "and it has always been the O5P's pleasure to invest in the foundational industries of our economy."
"That's not my point, Ninyu-kun. The mutant-mathematicians, those economists, are saying that the Combine's economy will actually grow this year. Despite the chaos of all the command circuits. Despite the coming war. There's more than just specs here. There are economic theories written by Hegemony experts that could shed some light on so many things."
Ninyu relented. "What are you asking for?"
"Schools! Business schools!" Kowalski jolted upright. "Our traders are the joke of the Sphere. Our dukes of industry focus on maintaining power. Accounting, Economics, we don't teach these in our schools at all. Not to boys at least, they're womanly things. And then we don't allow the women to lead businesses or use these skills."
"You should speak with Tomoe-san."
Kowalski nodded, it was the most he had gotten from Ninyu on the matter over several weeks of nagging.
"BattleTechnology," he said, changing the subject. "That's trickier, they're built on nearly all the other advances, thankfully since we're putting the bulk of our research behind new and deadlier guns, we're indirectly helping other research. In fact, it's more efficient to focus on the underlying stuff first before making sharper knives."
The chief tech's eyes drifted to the sheathed katana laying on a side table. It was a mini-discovery regarding mining and medical technologies that allowed for the miniaturization of power-cells and efficient, curved vibro-blades. The vibro-katana was born a short time later, and Ninyu Kerai claimed the first prototype for himself and ordered the specs sent to New Samarkand immediately. The hilt had a powercell that could power a blazer rifle through several battles and the sheathe was an excellent insulator. It had a convenient side-effect of being far quieter than normal, cord-limited, vibro-blades.
"So, no possibility of refitting the Swords of Light to the SLDF's Royals' specs yet?" Ninyu asked, half-jokingly referring to the now-legendary Royals who fielded equipment that exceeded the capabilities of even the rest of the well-equipped Star League Defense Force.
"Mmm, no. We don't even know how we can build the tools we need to make the tools used to create some of these things. I fear that these double-strength heatsinks might never be in sufficient numbers in the Combine. Polymers, blah."
"I don't suppose you can build a WarShip or two?"
"Maybe in a decade or two, Ninyu-kun. Not to be rude, but when are you leaving? I thought you were only going to be here for a few days then--"
"--That's not your concern, tech." Ninyu's face darkened and his body tensed.
A far cry from the Smiling One, Kowalski thought privately.
"Can I at least sit in my own chair?"
"No."