Postal Marine 1: Bellicose by Ben Wilson Page B

Bertin arrived. He was flanked by four employees.
    Sirom spoke up immediately. “Hold on. We're not supposed to bring an entourage. That is explicitly called out in the simulation terms.”
    Bowdoin looked at the entourage then back at Sirom. “Four is hardly an entourage. Had you asked, I would have told you that you could bring up to six without it being an entourage.”
    Besides, two of them are bodyguards.
    Sirom looked carefully at the four that accompanied Ryante. None of them looked like they were capable of a firefight.
Are you sure?
    At some point, you are going to have to trust the insights of an artificial intelligence. I am far more capable than you are in picking up on things. A faint halo appeared in Sirom's vision outlining two of Bertin's non-entourage.
    Sirom pointed at the men Smee had outlined. “Bodyguards? Ryante, did you think I was going to shoot you?”
    “I'm sorry, Mister Maijoi, did I give you leave to call me familiar? I've had several threats on my life. I don't go anywhere without some protection. How could you even think me capable of assassination?”
    Sirom tried to find the words. Smee took over. “When the Macrodyn Manticore destroys yours, who knows what you're capable of. Especially after the process has been stacked in Cel-Tainu's favor.”
    Bertin laughed. “You really are delusional, ‘Prophet.’ I have every confidence that our design will prevail.”
    Smee continued to speak in Sirom's place “Is that because you've had a year to run private simulations against our design? A chance to find the weaknesses.”
    Smee detected the subtle shift in Bertin's face, something that might have been picked up by a trained human expert. Smee's attack cut through the veneer of class etiquette, which the likes of Bertin relied upon to cover his unethical actions. Frauds who know they can't win will use society to cover their actions. Bertin was such a man.
    “How dare you.”
    “I dare, Mister Bertin, because it is clear this process has been rigged in your favor. No offense to Lord Bowdoin, who is clearly surprised by this revelation.” Smee sought to give Bowdoin coverage to his own culpability. Sirom had complained before that data on the Macrodyn Manticore had been given to Cel-Tainu. For Cel-Tainu to have the data, Bowdoin had to give it to them. “I've taken the liberty of bringing to the Trial a recent revision to our design. My information says you provided your data only last week. So, the rules are only properly served if we can bring our update.”

    Bowdoin frowned. “Mr. Maijoi is right. He can submit revised simulations.”
    What are you doing, Smee? There are no revised simulations.
    Relax. When are you going to learn to trust me. After all, who designed the ship? I have the complete designs in my memory. Besides, when you were putting together the simulation, I added an obvious design flaw. It was something that Cel-Tainu could discover and tweak their design against. All I have to do is comment out the block of code that implements the flaw in the design, and our Manticore will thrash theirs.
    How can you be so sure?
    Remember when your communications team picked up the Cel-Tainu design that they submitted? I had a chance to look at the design. There was an obvious flaw, beyond its having the flight characteristics of a lump of senrima dung. All I did was tweak the simulation code of our Manticore to feed into that flaw. I made their flaw a strength. Unless I missed my calculation, they will have accentuated that flaw to exploit the one I coded in.
    That's evil.
    That's business. You need to give up your chimera that business is a noble enterprise. Maybe at the shopkeeper level. But, you can't keep a two-thousand year-old corporation in business without a little underhandedness—or a lot of underhandedness. Why else would you call your corporate spies your ‘communications team?’
    Bowdoin spoke. “Fine. Sirom, I'll give you a cycle to produce your simulation. Then