Sylia Stingray
| Sylia Stingray | |
| Born | 1987 |
|---|---|
| Residence | Marsbase Sara |
| Nationality | Fenspace Convention |
| Ethnicity | Mixed European/Japanese |
| Occupation | Businesswoman |
| Years active | 2016 onwards |
| Height | 190 cm |
| Weight | 80 kg |
| Known for | Owner of Stingray Motor Engineering |
| Website email: s.stingray@stingraymotors.com | |
Not much is known about Sylia Stingray, she is a very private individual. She moved in to Marsbase Sara sometime in 2016, registering it as her place of residence, though doesn't appear to stay there for very long. Sylia Stingray purchased Stingray Motor Engineering from Jet Jaguar for an undisclosed sum, then set about expanding the mundane side of the business. Sylia negotiated a license from AIC to use the Stingray name, and the design of the Highway Star and other Bubblegum Crisis vehicles.
Sylia is enigma, with nobody knowing her place of birth before Fenspace or even her true name. There're suggestions that Sylia may actually be some form of infomorph, or a front for another person who wishes to remain hidden. Some have commented that her intelligence appears almost non-human at times. Rumours naturally circulate around Sylia and the Knight Sabers, yet the Space Patrol have been unable to prove any link.
Sylia has a unique sense of fasion that seems to simultaneously be routed in 1987 and somewhere in the near future. Her appearance is recogniseably similar to her animated counterpart.
Sylia, to the world at large, is nothing more than an eccentric businesswoman. But that's nothing unusual for anyone who lives in space.
Stingray Motor Engineering
Stingray Motor Engineering began as YA Mundane Holding company to simplify doing business between a Fan and mundane companies - specifically allowing the Highway Star access to suppliers. With the bike's retirement and no longer being useful to its original owners, the holding company was sold to Sylia Stingray, who promptly negotiated a licensing agreement with AIC to sell Highway Star-style motorcycles.
Stingray Motor Engineering runs out of a production plant in the Shannon Economic Zone in the Republic of Ireland, and is registered as a corporation in that country. It produces motorcycles based around Mazda Rotary engines, and by all accounts turns a tidy profit. Stingray is something of a stand-off owner, and most of the day to day management of the company is handled by a small board of directors with Sylia only called upon for meetings relating to company strategy and model development direction.
| Just how does this company make money anyway? |
| Extract from Bike Magazine. March, 2019.
....if you don't know what a ring-laser gyroscope is, know this; it's how modern fighter jets navigate without GPS. And Stingray use one as part of the traction control. One wonders how the company continues to make money. But the sheer technical tour-de-force of Stingray's offerings, with turbocharging, Wankel engines, active hydropneumatic suspension, and hub-centre steering, makes me glad that they do. Because if there's one thing you can say about a Stingray bike - it'll be like nothing you've ever ridden. |
Stingray Motor Engineering also starts to operated a small assembly plant in an old warehouse on Concord Street sometime in 2023. It's nothing more a few dozen people assembling crated-in parts to dodge import tariffs. Annual output is modest, but enough to cover costs of the operation. Detroit-assembled machines have a 'D' added to the end their model code, bear a United Auto Workers stamp next to the frame number and have a few unique modifications to headlights, fuelling and exhaust systems to meet US NHTSA and CARB standards.
Effectively, the business operates as a self-contained sub-unit, purchasing components from its parent, then assembling them onsite before selling them on direct to customers using the Tesla model.
Once the cost of purchasing components from the parent have been accounted for, along with employee benefits, the Detroit subsidiary operates at a small loss - enough to minimise tax burden. Current strategy so far has been to permit organisation, with the Union itself seen as a large potential market.
Sylia is known for having a habit of buying licenses to patents held by a number of Fenspace holding companies that interest her, before dropping them into the laps of the company engineers with instructions to figure out how to use them. Stingray also receives a number of licensing payments for some supposedly valueless patents it holds.
All employees at SME are well paid for their work with a good benefits package funded directly by the company profits. Sylia takes very little money from the business for herself[1]
Mundane attributes
Away on business...: A difficult person to track down, she seems to move about a lot. Officially she lives in Marsbase Sara. but spends a lot of her time away on business, far more than is spent on SME.
Touchy-Feely: Sylia has a noted tendency to touch and feel objects around her, pressing her hand against walls or objects
Secret Identity: Sylia Stingray is the leader of the Knight Sabers
Quirks
Almost a Dead Ringer: Sylia is a close match for her animated counterpart, though speaks with a much hoarser voice, wears contacts and seems to dye her hair. She dresses almost the exact same, oftentimes copying her outfits directly from the animation. She's clearly trying hard to match her counterpart.
Let me think..: Almost a walking wikipedia, capable of recalling surprising facts on obscure topics at a few moments notice. [2]
A unique form of fashion: What Sylia wears, doesn't appear to have ever been exactly fashionable. She chooses her clothes as much for the different textures against her skin, as she does any sense of style.
The Secret
Sylia Stingray is also the leader of the Knight Sabers. The Space Patrol is aware that the organisation is led by someone using that alias, but so has everyone behind every other attempt at forming a Knight Saber-like group. The Patrol strongly suspect that Sylia is the Sylia behind the group, but thus far have been unable to conclusively prove it.
The Patrol know that she is an acquaintance of Jet Jaguar, and they have been spotted together on several occasions. Jet has admitted to being a friend of Sylia.
Stingray Motor Engineering is partially a front, manufacturing some critical components for the Motorslaves, and providing a cash buffer for the operations of the group, while simultaneously laundering the proceeds of their work through patent-licensing, design-work and inter-business transactions, ensuring a buffer between the individual Knight Sabers and any payments. [3]
Finally, Sylia Stingray isn't even a real person. Sylia Stingray is Jet Jaguar operating a puppet body.
Trivia
One of Sylia's first public appearances was at a liquidation auction selling off the assets of the Pinkard mining company, where she bought some CNC machinery for SME, and discouraged a Foglio from bidding against Jet for 77 Frigga
Notes
- ↑ When asked by a popular documentary maker about the unusual salary and benefits level offered, she merely blinked and said she didn't need it herself.
- ↑ Through Jet's interwave hookup, accessing wikipedia
- ↑ Roughly 20% of every payment to the Knight Sabers is lost keeping the business going. This covers taxation, 'donations' to local politicians who will 'maintain a positive environment for job retention' and other ancillary expenses.
