Ever since Ves debuted the Blackbeak BP-A-01, no one showed any interest in licensing the design. The MTA valued its licensing cost at a whopping 3 billion credits. For the sa amount of money, a ch manufacturer would be able to afford another ch production line.
Therefore, no company casually licensed soone else’s design.
"Who licensed my design?"
"A dium ch manufacturer called Arkadis ch Design and Production. It’s founded by Gillian Arkadis, a twenty-year old veteran in the business."
"A woman?"
"Yeah, and she’s an Apprentice ch Designer as well, just like you. So of the analysts in the business are really perplexed at her decision. She’s a proven ch designer who graduated from the Ansel University of ch Design, is more than capable of coming up with her own designs that are substantially more polished than your own work."
A graduate of the AUMD ant she was a true insider in the Bentheim ch industry. She wouldn’t lack for connections to obtain a favorable licensing agreent from her fellow ntors and alumni.
Ves had been in the business long enough to know that the ch designers connected to the AUMD considered themselves to be the most foremost ch designers of the Republic.
They often treated anyone who graduated from inferior institutions as second-class ch designers.
They also regarded ch designers who beca fortunate enough to study at a more prestigious foreign institution with a lot of wariness and apprehension. Many ch designers who originally ca from the Bright Republic had forsaken their old ho in favor of trying to make it big in the prosperous Friday Coalition.
Ves happened to enjoy the rare distinction of falling into both of the fore-ntioned categories. Soone like him was sothing of a pariah in their circles.
So it ca as a huge surprise that an AUMD graduate like Mrs. Arkadis decided to license his latest comrcial design.
"Send what you’ve gathered so far of Arkadis and her company."
Gavin transferred a bunch of files to Ves, who quickly skimd them over. He did not find anything unusual, but neither did he see any compelling reason why Arkadis would want to work with his Blackbeak.
"All of her products so far are light chs." Ves noted with emphasis. "She designs a large variety of landbound and aerial light chs, but none of them have anything to do with the Blackbeak, which falls into the dium weight class. Has her company shown any indications of gearing its production lines into producing the base model?"
"As far as we know, Arkadis chs is still in the process of delivering a major order to a large client. Even if they wanted to begin production imdiately, they still have to work on their current backlog."
"So we won’t know what she’s doing with my design until at least a couple of months have passed."
All in all, both Ves and Gavin could only scratch their heads. Ves figured that Mrs. Arkadis might have noticed the charm inherent in the Blackbeak design and wanted to figure out its secrets by working with the license.
"Do you think she’s trying to reverse engineer your secret sauce?"
All Ves could respond to that was wish her luck. Without any insight into the X-Factor, she had no chance of replicating his work.
"If it’s so easy to copy my work, Elental ch Engineering would have already released a Striker variant of the Blackbeak."
Ves did not forget about E, which entered into a special licensing agreent with the LMC to produce the bronze label Blackbeaks. Ves always had the sense that Andar Neverland, the founder and chief designer of E, wanted to do the sa.
So far, the E hasn’t released anything of the sort even after many months of producing the bronze label chs. This indicated that Mr. Neverland achieved nothing that was good enough to go public.
"Keep an eye on Mrs. Arkadis and her company. It might be that she only licensed my design on behalf of soone else. Try to find out if anyone else is connected with this event."
"Will do, boss!"
Ves hung up after that and leaned back on his chair. No matter what, the fact that soone licensed his design under normal conditions ant that his prestige enhanced once again.
Many ch designers constantly pumped out new designs every couple of months in the hopes that others picked them up. Entire design studios lived off this kind of business model.
The better the designs, the more they earned. The beauty about running a ch design studio was that it cost almost nothing to design a ch. Sure, the studios had to invest in a lot of infrastructure, but the cost of setting a design studio paled in comparison to setting up a ch production plant.
"That 3 billion credits will co in handy."
Currently, Ves published the Blackbeak under his own na, so all off that money went into his personal accounts. Added on with the money that he already earned from other sources, Ves actually owned a lot more cash than his own company.
Ves had plans for his money, but that could wait until he finished his current project. He hadn’t forgotten his main vocation. "I shouldn’t get too distracted by all the money flying around. It’s great that soone licensed one of my designs, but I can earn a lot more if I sell the chs myself."
He dove back into his work on optimizing his design. He had beco very proficient at this work, so he constantly improved on his design with each subsequent iteration.
At a certain point, every improvent only increased the performance of his rifleman ch by a fraction of a percentage point. The extra work put into further optimization wasn’t worth his ti anymore, although many other ch designers disagreed.
"I can only continue to perfect my design if I have a lot more manpower and processing capacity at my disposal."
The LMC expanded a lot in terms of production capacity, but its research and developnt capabilities hadn’t progressed beyond a one-man show. The limitations of this approach really started to grate on Ves.
Only the gimmick still showed so problems. While Ves succeeded in stabilizing the operation of the chest crystal, the one embedded into the laser rifle turned out to be a lot more finicky.
It took him an entire week to get the laser rifle to perform up to standard. Ves spent way more ti on fixing all of the bugs in his design, but it had all been worth the extra effort.
His rifleman ch looked fast and lethal, exactly the way he liked it. Ves caught all of the major flaws that he knew of. If he wanted to, he could publish his design right now.
He’d be a fool to do so, though.
"I still have to fabricate a prototype."
Even though he subjected his rifleman ch to millions of simulations, all of the modeling couldn’t compare to a single physical test.
After making sure his design required no further tweaks as of yet, he saved its latest state and left his private workshop floor.
He first returned to his private office above the ground to handle the paperwork that piled up in his absence. Much of it seed routine, so Ves quickly processed the docunts before calling over Jake to talk business.
"How is the LMC?"
"It’s still growing strong." The old man replied. "Our production is bottlenecked by our lack of production lines. I recently beca inford that a fellow colleague of yours licensed the Blackbeak design."
It was obvious what he wanted to say. Ves forestalled his words. "You want to spend my money on another production line, is that it?"
"The company will grow a lot faster with even one additional Benson production line. Lately, there’s a lot of demand for these machines. It takes a lot of manual labor to make so of the equipnt, so there’s a waiting line of several months for their products. If you can lay down an order now, it will save us a lot of ti down the road."
His argunt had a lot of rit, but Ves quickly declined the request. "I already have plans for my personal funds. For now, The LMC can fund its expansion by reinvesting its profits."
Jake looked disappointed, but he did not have any rights to any money earned by Ves in the first place. He knew it was sothing of a long shot to peel money away from his boss.
"There is another matter that needs to be discussed. The board of directors wants to convene soon to decide on a couple of important matters. Chief among them is the topic of issuing dividends."
Ves abruptly turned his full attention on Jake. "Dividends, you say?"
"Correct. The Larkinsons and much of the board believe that the Living ch Corporation is past its initial growth phase. Due to the bottleneck in production and sales, our profits have stabilized as well. Short of investing in more production lines, there isn’t any other compelling reason to reinvest all of the company’s profits back into itself."
Ves could argue the point. Just because the company’s growth had slowed didn’t an it stopped entirely. All of the profits it saved up would eventually be spent on things that would accelerate the company’s growth.
Still, Ves knew without Jake needing to say that the Larkinsons hungered for money. With the war going on, they needed as much as they could get in order to support the careers of the Larkinsons in active duty.
As a Larkinson himself, Ves was sympathetic to their demands. He did not oppose the act of issuing dividends in principle, but Ves did not wish for the other shareholders to be too greedy about the matter.
"Tell the board that I’ll be present when it next convenes." Ves nodded to Jake. "Tell them that I’m not against this suggestion, but they can forget about it if they want the LMC to hand out most of its profits to its shareholders."
If the LMC stopped investing in new production lines and instead gave away its profits to its shareholders, then the company would beco stagnant eventually reach a dead end.
As the majority shareholder, Ves stood to earn most of the dividends, but the last thing he needed was more cash.
After discussing these matters, Ves left his office and went back underground. This ti, he entered the fabrication floor and approached Chief Cyril.
"Chief, please schedule the Dortmund production line for my own use. I’m almost ready to fabricate the prototype of my next design."
The chief whistled in appreciation. "You’re truly ready to move on to this stage?"
"Do you think it’s too late? Or too soon?"
"There is no sense of late or soon in the ch business. You’re done when you’re done. No one else can make that decision for you. Certainly, in a perfect universe, ch designers have access to an unlimited amount of resources to polish their design until it shines like a sun. But we don’t live in that universe."
Ves agreed. "I hate to say it, but sotis we can only make do with ’good enough’. I don’t have the resources to go much further at this point."
They proceeded to prepare for the upcoming fabrication project. Each new design brought its own challenges. In order to minimize the chances of failure, Ves had to spend at least a couple of days of simulating the fabrication process to see whether he could nail all of the critical parts.
He didn’t spend these extra days in vain, because Ves also had to order a substantial amount of resources unique to his second original design.
Once the new shipnt of raw materials arrived at the ch Nursery, Ves readied himself to reproduce the design of his dreams.
"I hope it works. I know it can work. It has to work."
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