Corpo Age

Chapter 209: Starting From Zero

Outside the window of our private meeting room, there was currently a sizable spaceship parked right by the window. It brandished a robotic arm and a drill for a brief moment before rotating them out for other gadgets.

Next was the return of the robotic arm. It held onto a thick metal slab this time, while another arm had a circular device attached to it. The circular device soon revealed itself as a laser cutter as it powered up and began to cut into the slab. It didn’t cut through it immediately, taking several seconds, but it adequately showed its power. Once it was in pieces, a scoop came into view, and cleaned up the mess.

It was only then that the ship began to back away. With some distance between us, I could clearly make out its hexagonal prism shape.

For a moment, I thought the ship would take its leave, but I was wrong. It instead turned to one of its sides toward us before the metal exterior panels began to pop up and shift to the side. In its place was a giant solar panel.

I glanced over at Kai, who had been watching me carefully for my reaction the entire time. Seeing my gaze, he simply smiled and nodded toward me.

“Care to share your thoughts?” he repeated his question, but with a different phrasing this time.

“Hmm, it’s hard to say after a brief introduction, but it seems well-designed.”

“It is,” he nodded once more. “It took our company many years of gradual refinement to arrive at the point it is at today. What you’re seeing is not only an efficient mining ship but one that can entirely be solar-powered, given that you stick to the vicinity of the solar system, of course. It drastically reduces the production cost and allows for cheap construction of larger ships.”

“And how long does it typically take to train its crew?”

“Well, that depends. We always have seasoned officers on board, so the training is significantly dependent on the crew’s prior experience.”

Kai didn’t elaborate much further. I knew his main job was bodyguard, not salesman, so this was the limit of what he could get into. I was sure if I had any questions, he would relay them to the relevant department in real-time, but I left that to Claire and her team. They could take care of the micro aspects of handling the ship while I worked on the overall deal.

“We’ll have to have our people board one of these fine ships of yours to confirm, but so far, I think the price you quoted is too steep. From what I see, this ship can only carry around forty thousand tonnes.”

As I expected, Kai paused for a moment before responding.

“This model here specifically has a tonnage of fifty thousand deadweight tonnes. We do have other sizes, depending on your needs. If you would like to rent the ships as soon as possible, we only have this tonnage or two others. A ten thousand tonnes hundred ships or a hundred thousand tonnes model. “

“Thank you for the information, Representative Kai. Please forward that over to my people.”

“Understood,” he replied with a relieved expression, as if he had just completed a major battle.

Unfortunately for him, our discussion was nowhere near complete. We simply stayed silent because I was waiting for the people in my back office to do their thing. They would notify me of any questions they had as they worked, which I would then relay to Kai. He likely had a similar process, causing the two of us to be reduced to just middlemen.

After not hearing back for a few minutes, I sat back in my seat and began browsing through the menu.

“We’ve spoken long enough. Why don’t we take a quick break? Was there something you wanted to drink or eat?”

“Green tea is fine, thank you.”

“Understood.”

I took a brief moment to reread the menu. It was because I only skimmed it previously. Now that the talks had me more exhausted than I thought, I believe I deserved a nice treat as compensation.

I first read over the options they had for milkshakes. While going over them, I spotted a ringed planet symbol next to a few entries. Reading the legend, I quickly found out that it represented space-graded products.

It made me want to ask the bot about it, but I’d rather not appear ignorant before our business partners. So I did what any sane person suffering from the same problem would do, opening the internet. I was glad that Aegis was connected with Earth’s network, exhibiting no lengthy delays whatsoever. I had enough of that back in Ceres Station, so I was thankful I didn’t need to deal with that here.

Hmm, so it’s rated for consumption while in microgravity conditions. Probably something to do with ensuring its quality.

My research reminded me of some old knowledge I had heard about. The taste and texture of food changed without gravity. Things like carbonated drinks would be unrecognizable, as any trapped air would affect the quality. Flavors could be intensified to compensate for the diminished sense of taste, which was what I suspected this space-graded products to be.

All this meant the grading was just a gimmick unless I was consuming this in a zero-g environment.

Armed with that knowledge, I ignored strange flavors like extra spicy chili or super sour lemon and went for a coconut and cookie. When I took my first sip, I knew I made the right decision.

Once we had received our order and were settling in. An alarm rang out, almost deafening us.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Alert! Ongoing code seven. Increased security personnel will be deployed. Please listen to their instructions.”

From our vantage point, we could immediately see the movements of the people below change. Like a large tidal wave, they all stormed their way into various buildings. It reminded me of cockroaches scuttling back into their holes and hiding places when the lights were turned on. Except they were quite a bit slower.

Before I could contact my security team outside to get an update on the situation, Kai spoke out, drawing my attention.

“Sounds like just a small issue. Shall we resume?”

I took another look out the window and found the activity outside had started to settle down. So many people evacuated all at once, so I couldn’t exactly believe Kai’s words. However, I doubt the issue could reach us in such a fortified facility.

“Of course. Then I won’t hold back. Assuming we proceed with your offer, can you elaborate on the level of assistance you can provide for training?”

“Sending our experienced crew to onboard your people will have to be a different contract. The costs vary significantly for each instance. Some crew learned quickly while other lagged behind. The compensation would have to reflect the effort we put into the training.”

In other words, if you want us to train your people, pay up.

“Hmm, we’ll get to you shortly with those details so you can provide us with an accurate quote.”

Our talks after that further dove into the details of the deal. We practically became the middlemen, reading off questions and answers from someone else. The various departments of our companies were the ones dictating the terms, so we simply conversed with a friendly demeanor despite the contents of our conversation.

After an entire hour, we had a tentative agreement drafted, but a lot was left pending. Our time was up, so both parties exited out of the establishment together. Or so I thought. Kai took a separate exit elsewhere. When I inquired about it, I found out they led to private berths for spaceships.

“Seems like we’re starting from zero up here. We don’t even own a car or anything, yet,” I commented as we walked out onto the streets.

“The procedures to transport something so big aren’t easy or cheap,” Claire quipped. “We’ll have to produce them up here ourselves once we got the permits sorted out.”

Hmm, that sounds easy enough if we didn’t consider the entirely new business environment we were in. We’ll have to find new suppliers for our tools, materials, everything! Unless they have a branch here as well, but they’d have to be D-Class and above.

While we stood there, waiting for our taxi to arrive, the sound of something being knocked over caught our attention. It came from one of the alleyways, and we very quickly found out what had caused it.

A person sprinted out of it at full speed. He glanced left and right with a nervous expression. It was obvious he was being chased, and my guards were fully aware of that. They positioned themselves between us and prepared to take action.

Just as we feared, he soon spotted us, or more specifically, the taxis that were pulling up before us.

He only made it two steps in our direction before Thorne reached me. To a regular onlooker, it was almost like teleportation, as he moved fast enough to leave an afterimage. He grabbed him by the scruff.

“Back off if you know what’s good for you,” Thorne said, before throwing him onto the ground.

The abruptness of his situation caused the man to only be able to stare dumbfounded at my cyborg friend. We didn’t wait for him to snap out of it, swiftly boarding the vehicles, and leaving him behind.

“I thought the security around this area was supposed to be good,” Claire said as soon as we got some distance from the scene.

Once we made a turn to the main street, I began to spot crowds of people on the sidewalk.

“They’re too many dockworkers nearby, so it can’t be perfect, I guess. Driver, do you know what’s going on today?”

“Sir, they announced code seven earlier. Didn’t you hear?”

At his words, I double-checked the Aegis official website and confirmed that only meant there was a minor security situation in the general area.

“Yeah, but isn’t it supposed to be minor? What’s with all the people standing around here?”

“Well, it is minor to corpos. There are checkpoints set up around this entire area, and the regular folks have to wait in line to get out.”

“Hmm, thank you for the information.”

After that, I stayed on our internal communication line to converse with my companions while we all observed the crowd in silence.

“I was going to talk about this in our debrief once we get back, but I guess we can talk about it now.” I paused to get their full attention. “We’ll have to hire dockworkers, some experienced EVA workers for the shipyard ourselves, along with the crew that will be manning our ships. We’ve trained a bunch of pilots back down on the planet, but we’ll need a trained crew to supplement them.”

“Yeah, and we’ll likely be hiring people from this crowd,” Claire replied.

We didn’t forget to hire these personnel beforehand, but was a purposeful choice we decided on. It cost a lot of money to transport people up here, and many of them had families. It would be a hassle hiring people who would be willing to stay apart from their families in space and pay for their transport, so we decided on Aegis locals.

That way, we would be less likely to get those who would be homesick upon realizing space wasn’t for them. The people of Aegis were familiar enough with this environment to make a proper decision.

We had to brainstorm what our hiring requirements would be and put together a training plan for our new employees. There were a lot of things to consider in order to get them up to par with our standards. Many things needed to be shipped up, such as their equipment. Then, many training facilities needed to be set up.

With all that in mind, we arrived at an armed checkpoint. We could see the dockworkers waiting patiently for their turn to be let out so they could return home. I watched as they were subjected to a thorough scan under the watchful eyes of the local police.

The officers were armed to the teeth, wearing a space-worthy version of a combat suit. It came with a sleek helmet that consisted mostly of what appeared to be tinted, tempered glass. They treated the dockworkers harshly, shoving them into the scanners. Some of them even made their victims strip naked despite clearing the scan. It would be an understatement to just say the mood was oppressive.

As we went into the checkpoint, our taxi was stopped as well, as one of the officers flagged us down.

After a few words with the driver, our windows were let down as the officers inspected us.

I could see that he had screens pulled up on his optics, and his expression quickly changed to a respectful one a second after he laid eyes on me.

“Sir, have a good day,” he saluted before quickly tapping on our driver’s shoulder. “Go ahead.”

I kept an eye on our other cars, and they received similar treatment, being let go after confirming their identity.

Once they were all cleared, the makeshift gate began to open for us.

Just as our vehicle started moving again, a gunshot suddenly resounded nearby. It caused all the officers on the scene to flinch in that direction. The problem was that it came from within the crowd. I watched on with a mix of emotions, waiting to see how things would turn out.