The Mech Touch

The choice of deciding who got to be in charge of the Larkinson Clan or the Living Mech Corporation was not a trivial matter. Either of them were incredibly influential to the lives of Ves and many other Larkinsons.

The right people in charge could lead them into prosperity while the wrong people could easily collapse everything that Ves had ever built!

Though Ves would have preferred to be in charge of everything, he was only one person and he did not wish to compromise his mech design career any further.

He had no choice but to embrace the necessary evil of trusting others to perform all of these jobs on his behalf.

Ves had no fundamental objection to raising Novilon Purnesse and Raymond Billingsley-Larkinson as two of the three chief ministers of the Larkinson Clan.

As the first ones to hold these new posts, they would be able to wield a wide amount of influence. They also had the privilege to set up a lot of precedents that subsequent chief ministers would feel compelled to follow.

It was therefore critical that the first batch of chief ministers were completely sound. While Raymond was not quite the perfect candidate that Ves had in mind, the current COO's age, pedigree, demeanor, prior performance and trustworthiness completely met his approval.

He was okay with letting Raymond take charge of the clan at large. In fact, he had already been doing this in a limited capacity as a member of the soon-to-be-defunct Executive Council.

The Executive Council was basically a weaker version of the body of chief ministers. Both of them were supposed to be the main executive branch of the Larkinson Clan, but the former proved to be inadequate due to the lack of strong leadership emphasis. It was quite difficult for the clansmen to get excited about being ruled by a glorified committee.

Therefore, changing Raymond's second responsibility into his primary one was not that drastic of a change. The only difference was that a chief minister was a lot more authoritative than a mere member of the Executive Council.

What Ves wasn't so sure about was who Raymond had in mind as a replacement.

Raymond's projection adopted a serious expression. "There is no easy way to say this, but the Living Mech Corporation has long suffered from an increasing shortage of executive talents. It's easy enough to fill up the vacancies at the middle and lower level of the hierarchy with existing clansmen who have been studying hard to increase their qualifications, but there are limits to how much you can improve. For a company as big as the LMC, you can't promote any average middle manager to a crucial executive position. We need to draw from a different pool of manpower, but the issue with that is that this pool is incredibly tiny within our clan."

Ves saw where this was going. "So you decided to draw talents from a larger pool."

"Correct. When our fleet was parked in the Pelsa Ryndover System, we instructed the recruiters to allocate some resources to headhunting potential executive talents. Talulah Silver's manpower pool is much more extensive than ours, so we had no problem finding plenty of decent executives. Still, when we brought them to our fleet, we encountered quite a bit of issues when we tried to induct them into the clan."

"Let me guess. These guys failed the loyalty test, right?"

"Yes." Raymond sighed. "Unlike the bulk of the recruits who have yet to achieve success and are sincerely grateful to our clan for giving them an opportunity to rise, those who already feel as if they are winners are considerably less committed."

"So all of those prospective executives you picked up were selfish bastards who only cared about filling their pockets and taking advantage of the LMC's lack of senior leadership talent to land a cushy job that allows them to play around with trillions of hex credits, is that right?"

"...Close enough. In the end, only a fraction of our selection managed to get through, but that makes them all the more remarkable. They are less selfish than others and developed a genuine bond with our clan and people."

Ves didn't care too much about the executive positions these newcomers took up. What he did care about was making sure that the person at the top was firmly in his pocket. As long as this was the case, the LMC probably wouldn't harm his interests.

"Tell me about the person you think is a worthy candidate to lead the LMC."

Raymond transmitted a brief record over the communication channel. Ves quickly read through the material. He was mildly impressed.

"Dr. Gilbert Hantler studied to become a mechanical engineer in the Ivena Federation and graduated with honors." The elder Larkinson said. "He went on to work for a major mech company that was founded by a Senior Mech Designer. He slowly climbed his way up the ranks before switching over to a management track. He did well in this capacity and continued to study in order to increase his leadership qualifications. In his last years at the company, he served as the company's chief production officer."

This was quite a solid track record. Dr. Hantler had managed to accomplish more than almost any other citizen of the Ivena Federation in the sixty years of his life. What impressed Ves the most was that the man possessed a common civilian background and slowly climbed his way up through his own efforts.

"Why him?" Ves probed. "Why not another recruit? I doubt he's the only candidate that is acceptable to you. What puts this guy ahead of your other choices?"

"There are several reasons why, but if I have to pick the most important one, it's that Dr. Hantler is the most steady and conservative out of all of the other choices."

"Oh?"

Raymond smiled. "When I interviewed them about what they wished to accomplish while they were in charge, all of them presented bold visions of a larger and more proactive Living Mech Corporation. They all had the impression that their primary responsibility was to do their best to grow the company so that it can channel more profits to the clan."

"Is there something wrong with that?"

"While it is certainly important to ensure the company's profits can keep up with the growth of our clan, I believe that it is more important to ensure our company is not at risk of collapsing at some point in the future. The plans the candidates set forth are too risky for my tastes. Many of them involve increasing our leverage in order to explosively expand our market reach and presence. While these plans are sound on the surface, when you look deeper they all serve as preludes to unbridled expansion and risk taking."

As someone who wasn't a stranger to risks, Ves didn't think it was wrong to pursue an ambitious goal. Sometimes, a company might end up in dire straits if it remained stagnant for too long.

That said, he understood what Raymond was worrying about. "Officially, the LMC is like any other company that exists to provide as much value to the shareholders as possible. In most cases, this means issuing fat dividends or raising the share price. While it's nice to earn more money, that's not all I want from my mech company."

"In our current state, the LMC is an irreplaceable source of income to the clan. If anything happens to the profitability of our main cash cow, our clan will heavily suffer. I don't think you want that to happen. This is why I have settled on Dr. Gilbert Hantler. Because of his engineering background, he is more focused on optimizing our company's processes than trying to expand our market shares. That is not to say that he is inept in marketing, but he is the best person to put in charge if you want to increase the stability and efficiency of our mech company."

Ves fully understood Raymond's rationale now. Many of the other executives who obtained degrees from fancy business schools were trained and taught to conduct business in a more entrepreneurial or proactive fashion. This made sense as what was the point of hiring a manager if nothing ended up changing?

However, the current state of the LMC did not necessarily require a bold leader who was willing to take risks. By putting someone in charge who mostly focused inwards rather than outwards, the mech company might not make any waves, but the chances that a major crisis would erupt would become significantly less.

Of course, that wouldn't help much if an external crisis beset the company, but it hardly mattered who was in charge in that case.

"I'll need to meet with Dr. Hantler in person before I am comfortable with putting him in charge." Ves eventually said. "I'm not comfortable with appointing a newcomer to such a critical position without even meeting this fellow in person."

In truth, he was mostly convinced about this man already. The candidate's track record along with Raymond's endorsement were worth a lot. Ves just wanted to verify Dr. Hantler's qualifications in person as a final check.

If he detected something strange or if his intuition felt something amiss, then he could step in before Gilbert Hantler was in a position to harm the clan.

"I'll dispatch Dr. Hantler to you whenever it is convenient." Raymond promised.

The call ended a short time later. Overall, the Larkinson Clan was about to become a lot more elaborate once the new chief ministers started their terms.

"That's two chief ministers already." Ves turned to Gavin. "There's only one more to go. Who is the Larkinson Army's choice?"

His assistant responded with a nervous smile. "Uhm, I'm not sure you're going to like this. According to General Verle, he would like to put forward Commodore Abigail Evern."

It took a brief second for Ves to recall the name. He hadn't really immersed himself in the running of the mech forces lately so his memories of them had faded in the depths of his mind.

However, it didn't take long for Ves to recognize the two remarkable identities of this middle-aged woman.

"She's a Penitent Sister! Not only that, but she's a former scion of the Evern Matriarch Dynasty!"

Even though Abigail had disgraced herself to the Hegemony and no longer maintained ties to the matriarchal dynasty, this did not change the fact that her background was vastly more controversial.

She was a Hexer!

"General Verle predicted your reaction, boss. He said that before you say no, you should meet with Commodore Evern in person. In fact, he recommends that you pay a personal visit to the flagship of the Penitent Sisters. They've changed quite a bit over the past half year. They're a lot more likeable, especially after they expanded their ranks with lots of rookies. There's not as much Hexer baggage with them anymore."

Ves realized that he had indeed become out of touch with the clan in the last couple of months. He allocated so much of his time to his various design-related projects that he shut himself off to the other developments of the clan. Even though he wanted to leave most of the day-to-day responsibilities of leading the clan to the new chief ministers, that didn't mean he should remain locked in his ivory tower all of the time.

Still… with how much Gloriana was riding on everyone to finish the expert mech design projects as soon as possible, it wasn't easy to squeeze some time for a sightseeing tour.

"I'll head over to the Penitent Sisters when I have time. I think it is important to meet a potential candidate for chief minister in her natural habitat."

If he wanted to take the full measure of Abigail Evern, then he wanted to meet her in the environment she felt at home. Calling her over to his office aboard the Spirit of Bentheim was pointless because the radical change in environment would certainly cause her to become more restrained.

Ves scratched his head in frustration. "Does the Larkinson Army also suffer from a leadership deficit? If General Verle can't come up with someone better than a Penitent Sister officer, then our clan is probably in a worse state than I realized!"