“Wah! They stuck to it so fast! That’s weird mobility even for power armor, isn’t it!?”
“Waah! Tortilla Double is being hit~!!!”
We went right into remodeling after we finished eating. We’ll be knocking down walls tomorrow morning, so today we’re just going with a shower and Purification magic.
“A large military laser cannon is no joke. It packs a punch.”
“True true~~. Now that I’m really getting a good look at it, it’s a lot of firepower~.”
And so, we took beds to the bedrooms, and placed a twelve meter long fluffy futon for tall races in a corner of the living room.
Also, there’s a generic food printer installed on the other side of the counter. With that and a freezer in the cargo bay, we’re ready to buy frozen food and retort bags tomorrow.
In the end, we decided not to cook for ourselves because of how hard it would be to prepare everything and clean. We have a generic liquid food printer on the counter too, so we can enjoy various teas, carbonated juices, fruit juices, and milk any time. Right now we can also have pizza, air fried potatoes, and cola.
“Eek!? Was Herald of Autumn that big!? It fills everything we can see from the cockpit!”
“Uwa~, you can hear my panicked voice~.” So embarrassing~.”
We removed all the metal chairs from the right side of the living room, replacing them with L-shaped couch sofas on the left and right, with a fifteen millimeter rug that’s as thick as an aluminum mat, and many pillows.
We also fixed a low table on the floor with three seats to be the designated pizza potato cola corner.
“Yeah, of course you’re pulling back… Eh? No way! You’re charging in!? Against that!? Against a thing many times your size!?”
“Uwa, that’s what happened~. I already had the seat belt off at this point~…”
There’s also a big ass monitor on the wall. It’s huge. Over a hundred inches. It also works as a game console or desktop computer, and we can connect information devices and watch movies on it.
“Aaaaaah! It’s gonna hit! It’s gonna break! The shields hit and carved each other!”
“Eek~. Even watching now, I can’t~! It’s too scary~~! How did we survive~!!?”
Kori brought something from the ship’s camera that’s better than a movie. We’re watching something edited by an AI application. It’s the free trial version that only puts out twenty minutes of footage, and has its logo on the bottom left.
“Thirty percent of the shield was lost!!! This is instant death! Eh, it went into slow-mo all of a sudden, is it showing your last moments? Is that a torpedo!? Another one! It hit!!”
“Uhi~~! That was cool~~! The shield went crash!!! We won gahaha!!!”
It’s a little embarrassing, but I feel proud. I wonder if this is how people feel when they see comments on game footage they upload on nico douga.
“Uwaaaah! The Herald of Autumn split in two and exploded! Wao!”
“Tortilla Double’s the strongest~! Tortilla Double’s the strongest~! You have no taste in ship names.”
What’s with that sudden barb? Stop or I’m gonna fall to my knees.
“Fuah, this was better than a mercenary or adventurer documentary. A lot of mercenary documentaries nowadays are more about interviews that combat footage.”
“And a lot want to show off their ships~.”
“Yes, I know channels like that.”
Saratha nods and gulps down cola with a bit of melted ice. That’s not Kori, it came from the food printer. Kori’s cola is more sour and fits perfectly with a float. If I ask, she’ll be embarrassed but give it to me.
“They say you can make a lot of money with that alone once you hit ocean rank. But highway and lower can have AI edit videos and upload them to video sites too.”
“But the battles themselves are small, and they’re put together in a way that’s obvious they’re going to win~.”
“You don’t come across something big every day.”
“Said the guy from a primitive planet that came across one on his second battle after coming out of cold sleep.”
Can you two not stare at me like that? I didn’t ask to be put in cold sleep.
“But anyway, that’s how the battle went. Can I replenish the torpedoes? And the missiles?”
“You can order missiles from shopping sites and get them through the port authority or Mercenary Guild. But they might not want to part ways with their torpedo stock.”
“That’s what alchemist crafters are for~. You can buy used torpedoes and take them apart and put them back together~.”
“No, wait, is there such a thing as a used torpedo?
In this space age, torpedoes weigh over a tone, are unguided, and have explosives in their warheads. The use of nuclear and antimatter weapons has been forbidden by the Alliance, mainly because someone who grew up in a colony fired three digits worth of them in a planet thinking it was like in space. Normally, only production, possession, and usage of conventional weapons is allowed. If the Alliance’s army gets wind of this rule being broken, they will seriously come after you to crush you.
“For safety reasons, the detonator of a torpedo self-destructs after a certain distance. They can also run out of propellant or hit scrap, and turn into a torpedo that can be salvaged.”
“If I found one while salvaging, it could pay for the rent and electricity bill, so I’d be all uhifuheho~.”
“I see. So if they’re in a salvageable state, they can be repurposed with the crafter, and used if you fill them with propellant?”
Kori says it’s like that while messing with her smartphone, and then shows me a list of used torpedoes. There’s a lot… And one is twenty thousand puni. Used guided missiles are a hundred puni
“I see… I really can only use torpedoes on big targets, or they’re going to put me in the red. These are used ones, right?”
“New ones are about fifty or sixty thousand~? If we only consider today’s scrap, it’d be a loss~.”
“Although it’s not surprising that a big space pirate ship has a bounty of tens of thousands of puni.”
It won’t always go as well as it did this time. Also, looking into the Herald of Autumn shows me it wasn’t made to be a combat ship, even if it did have the ability to fire fifty missiles at once. I want to be loaded with more missiles and stuff like that, but apparently there isn’t much variety in the Zadar colony.
“So should I order four used torpedoes? Along with fifty missiles and propellant?”
“Yes~. Let’s have them delivered tomorrow~! Ah, we can have them taken apart and put back together while the bath is being built~!”
“So tomorrow there will be remodeling all day. I want a medical pod too, but let’s save that for next time.”
“Yes, let’s go with that.”
It’s getting to be that time, so I clean myself a bit, and we try sleeping together on the twelve meter futon. It’s surprisingly comfortable.
▽▽▽
The next day, I have something like a banana milkshake and eat something like pancakes with something like bacon with a smokey flavor, and it arrives. The big monitor in the living room does a wipe and shows me what the external camera sees, an old man with animal ears approaching with a cargo drone and a container.
“Those look like missiles, so is that the second hand dealer?”
“Geh~! It’s from that fox guy! And the boss is here~~~~!”
“Uwah, the fox guy. Of all places, it had to be from there.”
So they know him?
“We’re stayin’ here, so just take the cargo drone.”
“Sounds like you really don’t like him.”
“We got work through him sometimes. Only as a sub sub-contractor.”
I hear a transmission coming to the cockpit, and open it with the smartphone.
“Hello! Good morning! Thank you for your contact! I brought what you ordered, but is it a good time for you?”
“Good morning, no problem. I’ll be right down.”
I leave the pancakes and bacon, and finish only the banana milkshake. And have Saratha cast Purification magic before going down through the elevator.
The cargo loading ramp in the cargo bay is lowered, and I go down with a drone. Of course, I have my laser pistol and a simple appraisal magic item, brought from Saratha and Kori’s place.
“Once again, good morning. I’m Genma, the pilot of Tortilla Double and a class three grassland.”
“Good morning! My name is Peacitt.”
He says while bowing with his right arm on his chest.
“Well then, I was having breakfast, so let’s get this done. Do you mind if I use an appraisal magic item?”
“Of course not.”
I learned how to do this as we deepened our relationship in the futon, so I can do it. The magic item says everything is in order. Four self-destructed torpedoes without propellant, along with twenty missiles in the same state.
“It’s been easy to work in this nice weather. Speaking of which, it seems scrap dealers have been busy lately.”
“Eh?”
“Apparently they found something big. You’re a mercenary, so you must know something.”
“Nope.”
Don’t start chatting about something weird in the middle of work. And he started with the weather in the colony, and is now directly probing me for information!
“By the way, how are Saratha and Kori?”
This guy’s a pain!!!
“Oh, did I make you wary of me? I’m just curious. They haven’t accepted jobs lately.”
“Ah, I see.”
With the inspection done, let’s just pay and transfer it to the drone.
“Come to think of it, I have a high quality food printer with me. How about it?”
“No thank you.”
He’s pretty pushy, but the way he just blurted it out makes me feel like he doesn’t even want to sell it. Did he hear our conversation in the restaurant yesterday?
“Done. Please check if the transfer went through.”
“Eh, checked. Shall I transfer the goods then?”
He still has that smile pasted on his face. I’m not good with people like him, they used to anger me in my past job. Let’s just stare at the cargo.
“Thank you for your business. I hope you do us the honor of being our client again.”
“Thanks. I’ll call if I need anything.”
What a real pain!!! If you want to probe someone for information, don’t just ask!!
▽▽▽
After checking that Peacitt left the dock, I give the drone instructions to put down the cargo, and go back to the residential area.
“That guy’s a pain!!!”
“Right~?”
“Did he try to get information out of you? That’s the price of fame.”
Kori and Saratha work their information devices, and give instructions to the alchemist crafter to use the drones to knock down a wall in a bedroom to turn it into a bathing room. And they made sure my food wouldn’t get dusty.
“You created that scrap, right? Are those two here? Do you want a high quality food printer? He asked.”
“He’s probably showing you he can be an information dealer too. He has connections to all highway ranks in the Zadar colony.”
“But rumors say more than half the mercenaries in the Zadar colony don’t like him~.”
“I’m a rank three grassland though.”
Saratha looks up at me.
“He figured you wouldn’t stop there at the bottom. That’s the price of fame, get used to it.”
“It was like that with all documentary mercenaries~.”
“So I should learn from my predecessors? Can you tell me about good ones?”
I really drew attention to myself. And this is my third day in the colony.
Thanks for the treat. 👍