The afternoon after we’re done setting up the server, I go to a room near Vasilisa’s. It’s on the elevator side, third counting from the center of the starboard side outward.
This is going to be Vasilisa’s mixing room.
There’s already a shelf covering a wall, with equipment made with the alchemist crafter to prevent it from falling or flying away. And on this shelf there are many transparent bottles, some empty, some not.
There’s a chair and desk you would find in an office on the end of the room, and on it there is a pan and an electric stove.
In the front part of the room, where in my room there is a toilet and a shower, there is still a shower, but the toilet was replaced with a sink.
There’s nothing more. I don’t know what the layout is going to be or what’s going to be placed here, but we might get rid of it if it doesn’t produce anything useful to us.
She said she was studying, so I want to look at it in the long term. Maybe we could consider implants.
But the heart of the matter is Vasilisa’s white liquor that she makes with stuff like alcohol powder and water, and she takes a two hundred fifty milliliter bottle with a wide mouth from the shelf.
“Rich mercenaries sure are something else, cultivating organic strawberries like that!”
“This is good.”
“Right!? But isn’t it a waste to pickle this in alcohol? You can make something similar in the liquid food printer, right?”
“That’s why a quarter of a liter is too little. It’s good in theory, but it makes me wonder if there’s a point in making alcohol out of it.”
“Pickled alcohol… That’s like a completely new culture for a space dweller like me, so that’s fun in itself.”
Says Saratha.
“I wanted to try making ume liquor, but I don’t have plums.”
They come from trees, so it’s kind of hard to grow them in space. In theory, we could set up sunlight lamps in the cargo bay, and get a container’s worth of dirt, but I don’t feel like going that far.
Also, plums grow a little fast. We could just eat them as is, but we’d get tired of them. We’d have to consider processing.
“Plums? Well, we could try if we had them.”
“The fruit is a bit small, so I don’t know if that would work in space. Maybe it would just barely be enough for ume liquor.”
“Ah, you were born on a primitive planet, right? That must have been all sorts of tough.”
“And fun in its own way.”
Making pickled alcohol, or fruit alcohol, is easy. You wash the fruit, remove the stems, dry, then place it in a bottle with white liquor and crystallized sugar.
“Go for it then!”
“You’re just gonna watch!?”
Well, I want to drink, not actually do it.
Vasilisa is pretty good at it. She lightly washes strawberries in a colander, and quickly cuts the stems with a fruit knife. Is this really your first time doing it?
She pats them dry with paper towels, and places six strawberries in a wide mouth bottle that’s been sterilized, followed by fifty grams of crystallized sugar. Then she adds white liquor until the strawberries are submerged, and it’s done.
“It’ll take about six months for this to be ready to drink.”
“Is that not perhaps too long!?”
“Isn’t there a way to make it faster~!?”
“That’s just how it is. It takes time to bring out the fruit juice and extract.”
“I wonder if it’s good…”
“I will prepare strawberry liquor with the food printer.”
The girls that joined in halfway through have no sense of elegance for these things! Well, it’s fine. Once we put everything away, let’s pour that over ice cream and eat it.
After we put everything away, I lean on the mountain of pillows between sofas and take it easy.
I put ice cream with strawberry liquor on a pancake, and have Iris cut it. It’s placed on a low table, and we all have some, including Iris.
It’s nice, but I feel like strawberry jam is better. And as I think that, Vasilisa turns to me while scratching her cheek.
“Hey… Is it really okay to be taking it easy like this?”
“We received fifty thousand puni for the salvage.”
“Yeah, Suzuri. And I already told them this, but the Mercenary Guild is paying a million puni for the whole ordeal with the ship crab. They don’t want us blabbing about that too much, especially about that million.”
“A million…!?”
“Yes, that was all~.”
“Kinda stingy.”
“Hnu… We would have earned more if we were allowed to salvage that shield ship…”
Everyone’s reacting as expected, except Vasilisa. Shield ships are something else.
“What happened to the ship crab anyway? We didn’t hear anything about it…”
“Mishun Prime is selling it to the Alliance for a couple hundred million.”
“Geh~~~~!!”
“I saw something about Mishun Prime buying a destroyer, but is that…”
“Yep, that’s right.”
“Isn’t it irritating? That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Many eyes are falling on me, but if the Mercenary Guild backed down, there’s nothing a little mercenary like me can do. I guess I could call their support warm, since they still gave me puni.
“And so, we’re resting today, and then going back to Akul. Honestly, I feel like we’re not welcome in Mishun.”
“Yes, this dock is a bit on the far side. It definitely felt like it when I came here yesterday.”
“Gege~~!! Let’s leave today! Miss Iris, prepare for hyperlane travel~!!”
“The download will take a bit longer, so we need to wait.”
Yes, we’re downloading the server and storage. Encyclopedias and star system information are being brought in data storage devices we ordered because it’s faster that way.
Also, Iris is going to make web pages for us while we travel between star systems.
“Well, after that, we have to decide where to go. I think the trip to trace my roots is done, what with Mishun Prime glaring at us.”
Vasilisa looks at me like she’s questioning what I mean by roots, and Iris approaches her to explain.
“So we’re going back to Akul~. I hope their Mercenary Guild has work~.”
“It’s the off season of the eels, so we’ll have to look for something else.”
“Perhaps we should inquire what mercenaries there do during the eel and turtle off season.”
“Party until the next hunting season. Those without money continue working, patrolling, and intimidating and hunting space pirates targeting mining ships.”
“Oh? Aren’t we the partying type of mercenaries?”
Asks Saratha in response to Iris.
“No money means more work. Our goal is to save up money to buy a mothership.”
Wouldn’t a million puni be more than enough for six people until the next hunting season…? I hear Vasilisa ask, but we’re going to work.
“Ah, I know. So, you took interest in that stuff about the mixing room and being a chemist. I want to investigate it properly first, but there’s this interesting sector. Do you want to hear about it?”
Vasilisa starts showing something on the living room monitor, and I use Saratha’s tail as a pillow… She just moved her tail, so I’m waiting with my head on a pillow. And I’m slapped on the leg with the tip of the tail.
What I see on the monitor is colorful. Many flower fields in space, with red leaf forests. What is this?
“Is this hyperspace?”
“No, it’s a pretty typical region of space centered around a star. It’s called Pokapoka Flower Field Prime, and it’s said star shields originated there.”
Looking at it more closely, I see flower fields and forests on many asteroids, with some sort of film further out.
It looks interesting. Maybe we should go there directly from the Zadar colony if we can get defensive drones or small combat drones to replace the ones we lost.
“It does look interesting. If there are no objections, we could go there. We should prepare today and tomorrow, and I want to replace the broken defensive drones. Also, I was thinking about getting Vasilisa a learning assistance implant. You can study while we’re in hyperspace.
She sounds surprised, but we need to get her at least from aspiring chemist to chemist trainee. I don’t know how many years it will take, but an implant should at least make it easier. Tens of thousands of puni is a small price to pay if we’re talking about staying permanently.
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