Saint Petersburg. June 1909.
Success, as Alexei knew well from his previous life, attracts two things: money and predators.
The Neva Technical Solutions office had ceased being a simple clandestine apartment in the industrial district. Thanks to the first contracts and the phantom capital injection that Alexei had diverted, in addition to mentioning that Stanislav had injected, the company now occupied an entire floor in a discreet but respectable building near the Admiralty.
Professor Stanislav, pushed by necessity, had had to expand the staff. He had hired three young draftsmen and, most importantly, a lawyer. A young legal shark named Alexander Kerensky.
When Alexei first read that name in the personnel report, he felt a pang of irony so sharp he almost choked on his porridge. Kerensky. The man who in the original history would lead the Provisional Government in 1917, the man whose indecision would open the doors to the Bolsheviks. But in this year Kerensky wasn't a failed politician; instead he was a young legal shark, hungry, socialist, and with a visceral hatred toward British imperialism, which made him the perfect weapon if used well.
However, the war had become dirty.
At Peterhof Palace, where the family spent the beginning of summer, Alexei found himself in the music room. He was listening to his sisters practice.
Tatiana, who at twelve already possessed the elegance of a great lady, entered with a box of piano sheet music under her arm. She sat next to Alexei, who pretended to play with lead soldiers on the carpet.
"I bring the office reports, Alexei," Tatiana whispered, making sure the governess was distracted with Maria's lesson on the other side of the room. She opened the sheet music box. Between the Chopin and Rachmaninoff sheets, there were dense legal documents with notarial seals. "Mr. Kerensky says the situation is... complicated."
Alexei took the papers and quickly hid them inside an illustrated storybook. His eyes scanned the legal summary with the speed of a modern processor.
"Patent blockade," Alexei murmured, frowning.
"Kerensky says something has filed 'injunctions' in Berlin and Paris," Tatiana explained, reciting legal terms she had memorized without fully understanding their weight. "They allege something called 'priority of invention.' They say they invented the rotary valve before that and that our drawings are copies."
Alexei let out a dry laugh, devoid of humor.
"They're lying."
"How are you so sure?" Tatiana asked, organizing the sheet music to maintain the alibi. "What if they also have clever engineers?"
"It's impossible for them to have it, Tanya," Alexei responded, turning a page of the report. "They've filed vague sketches with falsified dates to scare us."
"But they have more money for lawyers than we do," Tatiana pointed out pragmatically. "Kerensky says they can maintain the lawsuit for years. And if we can't sell the patent, we'll run out of money for the company."
Alexei looked at the map of Europe hanging on the opposite wall. She was right. It was a war of attrition. That company was using its financial weight to asphyxiate the competition in the cradle. They didn't need to win the lawsuit; they only needed Neva Technical Solutions to go bankrupt paying legal costs.
It was a standard corporate strategy. Brilliant and ruthless. Much used in the 20th and 21st centuries.
"We can't compete with them in the courts; we don't have the money," Alexei admitted. "But we can change the battlefield."
He turned toward his sister. Tatiana looked at him with that mixture of adoration and discipline that made her his perfect lieutenant.
"Tanya, I need you to write a letter. In your best German."
"To Aunt Irene?" she asked, referring to the Empress's sister who lived in Prussia.
"No. To someone much more important for us. To Professor Max Planck, at the University of Berlin."
Tatiana's gray eyes opened wide.
"The physicist? The one in the newspapers?"
"The same. Stanislav says he's a man of honor, a pure scientist," Alexei said. His mind traced the chess move. "We're going to send him our theoretical calculations on the thermodynamics of the new engines. Not as a patent application, but as a 'humble academic consultation' from a group of anonymous Russian researchers."
"What for?" Tatiana asked, confused. "If we give it to him, won't we lose the secret?"
"That's the point," Alexei smiled. It was a predator's smile, incongruous on his childish face. "If the German scientific community validates our principles and Max Planck publishes them in an academic journal... then it becomes public knowledge."
Alexei took a lead soldier and knocked it down with a finger tap.
"Once it's public, nobody can patent it. Nobody can. We break their monopoly by turning the technology into humanity's property. We'll make it open source."
Tatiana blinked, processing the magnitude of the mischief.
"You want to give away the secret... just so they can't have it."
"Exactly. We'll burn the forest so nobody can sell the wood," Alexei pronounced. "If the playing field is leveled, we'll win, because we know how to build it, not just how to draw it. Write that letter, Tanya. And make sure it seems written by a tired old professor, not by a girl, please big sister."