This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/GIJoeVibin on 2024-04-09 20:59:34.

You wanted a good story? Hmm, well. Alright, here’s one from my industry days.

Until I got this job, I worked for what Humans call a think tank, writing analysis for companies, nations and interstellar powers wondering what equipment to buy for which job. I’m not foolish enough to believe anything I wrote ever caused any procurement decision, but I know it certainly helped swing people one way or the other. And I enjoyed it, and I got paid a fair amount, so it was more than worth it.

And so, my work would send me to exhibition after exhibition, travelling from star system to star system, to watch manufacturers and salespeople make their pitch on all sorts of things. It was a good job, well paying, and I got to see a lot, although I find myself in my latter years less interested in doing that much intersystem travel, and so you find me settling down here. Of course, many of the people reading my work and making decision would have had colleagues attend these exhibitions, but I often served as a sort of second opinion, particularly since I would put together a bunch of my research, make comparisons, and so on. A breathless colleague’s glowing review, mixed with a more sober assessment by me, would often be enough to start a discussion.

Anyway, the story. So, I was asked to cover some expos in Human territory, and it had been a while since I was there, so I jumped at the chance. Well, as high as a Valnur like me can jump. It’s a figure of speech, it- nevermind. It was a long stay, which was unsurprising, as the shows were scattered across United Nations space, and ran at different times. But I rotated from expo to expo, show to show, planet to planet using the time between to either write new articles, or simply explore the planet in downtime. A truly wonderful time.

There were many airshows: Zhuhai, Farnborough, Bengaluru, I could go on. All fantastic experiences, watching everything from fighters to civilian luxury jets showing off. A few demonstrations done in the void of space, attempting to sell specific spaceship designs, which were rather a treat to watch. The Pacific Coastal Republic put on a rather fascinating one near that was entirely dedicated to logistical vehicles, and let me tell you, that had all 3 of my hearts racing. I could have spent a decade there, looking at them all.

But the one that will always stick with me was a land warfare expo on Nakula… no, hold on, it was Sahadeva. I always get those two mixed up, they’re the binary pair of habitable planets, you see. Beautiful sight. But that’s off topic.

It was, as I said, a land warfare expo, one that was pretty popular with Hekatian firms too, given the Vega system is rather close to Commonwealth territory. And given the planet was mostly uninhabited but still habitable, it had the advantage that the demonstrators got to go big, blow up vast tracts of land to advertise their new artillery and so on, without any legal difficulties, or without being bothered by those pesky peace protestors. All very annoying, people complaining about the negative effects of the arms trade or whatever when all you want to do is just report on the latest weapons.

So you would go out there, and you would watch as whole battalions would manouevre and fight fake battles across open plains, to entice you into endorsing whatever product they were selling. Tanks, IFVs, artillery, drones, fighters, gunships, you name it. And one day I’m watching a range day, where various companies try to show off how their thing hits further and better than anyone else’s.

This was, for once, a rather big deal, as the Commonwealth had just announced it was seeking a new tank gun, as part of a modernisation program. So everyone was doing their best to impress. The organisers set out lanes for each company, and parked a bunch of military vehicles at various ranges, so everyone would get to show how good they are at destroying each.

The two major competitors in this undeclared bidding war were a Hekatian company, and a Human company. The Hekatians had brought out their newest design, an impressive model that was cheaper to buy and to run than the Human competitor, and was based on the existing turret, thus making it rather appealing since there would be very little retraining needed and parts could be saved (or so they claimed: I later found out they had been slightly exaggerating just how much commonality there was).

Their tank raced about, showing how the new turret did not impact it’s manouevreability, all us spectators and interested buyers watching on crystal clear drone feeds. Then it raced up to it’s firing positions, and began to let loose with it’s particle beam. It was really rather impressive, the flash of the beam, the lurch of the target, and satisfying holes punched through each of them, all done as the tank flitted from position to position. The teams began playing the footage again and again, showing off the power of their weapons, their accuracy, and so on.

Then came the Human demonstration. Their tank did much the same in the manouevring test, which was unsurprising given the whole point was a new gun, not a new engine. It sallied up to it’s first firing position, unleashed the particle beam, and much the same as had happened earlier was repeated… except this time, the targets didn’t just lurch, with holes punched through them.

No, they exploded, one after the other, burning fiercely as funeral pyres of black smoke billowed out into the sky. One of the targets to explode in this manner was, rather conspicuously, a mockup of their competitor’s turret. When it was over, the Human marketers grinned, and began looping their footage, as the Hekatians quietly disappeared out of sight.

Of course, there was something afoot with it all, but I wasn’t quite sure what they had done. Wild theories flew back and forth between us observers, including the idea that the weapon had somehow been overtuned, that the targets had some design flaw that had been exploited, that they had been extremely lucky, and so on. The Hekatian team attempted to have their competitors thrown out, claiming they had broken the rules, only for their attempt to fail: it was the opinion of many observers that the Humans had somehow bribed the organisers to get away with this flagrant breach of the rules.

I never managed to get a clear answer, until I stumbled into one of the Human team a few years ago, and pressed her. She admitted, finally, that they had indeed faked a more dramatic result, except that said dramatic result was achieved not by any of our fanciful theories. Instead, they acquired large quantites of petrol, that liquid stuff you run really antique vehicles on, piled it up inside the targets, and when each target was hit…

Since this was not, technically, banned by the rules, which specifically focused on placing explosives and detonating them, rather than adding fuel for fires, they had gotten away with the whole endeavour. I asked why they had cheated at such a event, only for them to respond that “it wasn’t cheating, it was showmanship. Very different.”

The Humans won that contract, by the way.

Author’s Notes

Not much to say, this was a quick little piece based on what was a one-line brief for several months, before I decided to write it entirely over the course of today. Hope you all enjoyed!

If you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee, it helps a ton, and allows me to keep writing this sort of stuff. Alternatively, you can just read more of it. If you are interested in doing narration of my work, please contact me through Reddit DMs ahead of time. I promise I don’t bite.