Right, left, up, right, fire up the sub thrusters, and desperately dodge the attacks from the combat ship that’s on my ass. The sound of a radar lock echoes in the cockpit, and I try a corkscrew maneuver diagonally left. But the laser lands a direct hit on my rear engine…
“Daah! I lost again!!!”
“<Haha! Genma, you have a pattern when you run away.>”
“Seriously? Dammit.”
“<Seriously. That’s ten puni.>”
I transfer ten puni via the smartphone, and get out of the simulator called a cockpit.
I’ve been having matches here in the Mercenary Guild with ten puni on the line.
It’s been two weeks since the station defense, and in just a week’s time, I won twenty-eight matches and lost forty-six.
“That’s your fiftieth loss, right?”
“Forty-sixth! Don’t exaggerate!”
“What’s the difference? If you lose more than you win, your wives are gonna leave you.”
“That’s why I chose PVP.”
When I called out to the bored looking mercenaries to bet a thousand yen per match, they all came running. My head is kind of spinning after doing more than ten every day. I haven’t had enough sugar, or maybe I’m just really tired.
I just faced a beardy middle aged guy that looks like a dwarf, because his height only gets to my chest. He’s picking on me for booze money.
“Lost again, uh Genma?”
“You say again, but I’m still ahead of you.”
The guy provoking me has pointy ears, so he’s probably an elf. He’s been having these betting matches because he wants money for organic fruits. His record is worse than the others, but he still naturally provokes me.
“Then face me next, Genma.”
“No, I’m done for today. I’ve done ten.”
This one just looks like a humanoid praying mantis. And he’s strong, to the point where I started questioning if he was peeking behind me. Even if I caught him from behind, I didn’t feel like I could hit him. Apparently he’s really strong in physical fights too, and beat back a one-eyed three meter tall guy that provoked him.
“Oh, are you gonna run while you’re ahead?”
“Shut up dammit. I’m done for today.”
It’s been almost a month since I changed from the electrician Genma Narumi to the mercenary known as Genma. My life on Earth in the year 2025 ended, and my life in the strange space of the year 8963 began. And I’ll be leaving the colony tomorrow.
It’s been pretty fun.
▽▽▽
I get on a moving footpath on my way to the space port, and quickly reach what’s now my home, the spaceship called Tortilla Double. Come to think of it, I own my own house at thirty years old. Even if I found it and it’s supposed to be for military use.
I open the rear hatch remotely and enter the cargo bay. It’s no exaggeration to say it’s currently empty. Because of what happened a couple of weeks ago, we decided to get more foot soldier battle drones, so we bought bipedal type combat drones and have them on standby.
I don’t think they’re going to see that much use, so I thought I might as well go for ones for base defense that looked like droideka, but I was told those are too expensive, and were out of the question.
I look out of the corner of my eye at a poor five meter tall battle drone that’s been disassembled for remodeling and repairs, as I go up the elevator. Wasn’t it going to be serviced today? Come to think of it, should we get more maintenance drones? I think as I enter the living room.
“I’m… Back?”
There are five maintenance drones in the living room. Bipedal robot types with only the framework. I wonder what they’re doing, but then I see an spherical escort drone that’s been taken apart into four pieces. Poor thing, it’s been sliced up.
“Welcome back~. It’s okay, it’s not dusty~.”
“Welcome back. We’re using the living room for a bit.”
“What are you doing? You left that poor giant battle drone in pieces in the cargo bay.”
I say as I approach them.
One is Kori, a slime girl who has hair that looks like ice cream and a body that looks like carbonated cola. She’s a laflotty, an artificial life form, and according to her, a service race. She’s wearing a white dress today, and she can change her shape at will.
The other one is Saratha, who is what they call a snake beast person. She has reddish short hair in a bob cut, with a towel to keep sweat from dripping. Her eight meter long thick tail is all over the living room, and she’s wearing work clothes with many pockets and a skirt, because her tail won’t fit in pants.
It looks like she’s really working, lying down on two metal chairs to support her chest and stomach, and letting gravity pull her ample chest towards the floor. I doubt she’d do that in front of other people…
“I found it in a scrap belt, and since there were three, I figured I could use the parts to make it work… Okay, puny please.”
“Ooh~! It fits perfectly! I’ll go get the puny!”
“Drones look more like computers on the inside than I would’ve thought…”
“You mean stationary information devices? I guess so, they’re pretty similar. They’re just precision machines with movement controls and shield deployment devices.”
Kori goes to her room and brings puny (in that adult joke thing she got the other day), and sticks it in the drone.
“Kori… What did you…”
“You didn’t like it, so it’s not being used anyway.”
“I guarantee it hasn’t been used.”
I hear a sigh, the exterior is reattached, and the shield sphere goes back to being an actual sphere. Saratha sends the code to it, and it lights up a bit. It starts running around me, and then enters cleaning mode. These drones that aren’t bipedal only have cleaning functions
“So~? How was it~?”
“Hn, the client this time is the Tamani Oishi corporation. They’ve been around for ten years, and they go around farming stations buying perishable food to send to the colony. They have three large transport ships with hyperdrives, and use them to go around the star systems around here. This is pretty much the same I saw when I first looked into them.”
I tell them what I saw on the internet and through word of mouth.
Our destination is Akul Prime. We figured it was worth checking out because it’s a technology colony.
Also, since it ships a lot of machine parts, starting with high grade electronic equipment, and it imports raw materials from other star systems, there are a lot of space pirates, making it a good place for mercenaries. And if it doesn’t work out, we can just leave.
The client, the Tamani Oishi corporation, sets its sights on colonies that seem rich, and sells fresh food that tends to be expensive. I figured To Akul Prime had farming stations, but since there are so many space pirates, there isn’t a lot of money to be made there, and it doesn’t have small stations.
They’ve been buying and selling around here for five years, and since the internet in the Zadar colony says their volume and prices aren’t bad, they’ve become a talking point in the agricultural community.
“There was one guy in the guild that said he accepted jobs from there multiple times, and that they were proper serious people. Apparently they’re really good aside from the name.”
“Tamani Oishi is weird~.”
“Someone was screwing around when naming it.”
“But they’ve been around for ten years, and you won’t forget it after hearing it once.”
In these two weeks, I got a third class ship piloting license implant, went around gathering scrap in the scrap belts of Mishun Prime to earn money to park, and even went out to space to live there to save money. But we’ve been working properly. And I was surprised by how profitable selling scrap can be.
But the real reason why we stayed for two weeks is that the quest starts tomorrow. And so, we prepared and waited.
“Let’s have dinner and go to sleep after you clean up the living room! We have an eight o’clock start tomorrow. And no drinking!”
“Yes~.”
“Eeh!? Why not!!”
“Because you get really frisky!!!”
Drunkards, good grief…
▽▽▽
We left the colony before eight the next day, so we standby for half an hour in the space where we agreed to meet.
A large transport ship arrives at eight on the dot. The radar also detects two small combat ships around it.
The large transport ship looks like it’s made up of long rectangular boxes that form a trident. They’re hailing us.
Kori is in charge of receiving communications in the cockpit. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come to realize that doing stuff like that and checking on the state of the shield is a hassle, so I’ve been having them do that sort of thing.
“<This is Tamani Oishi No.3. Tortilla Double, right? This is Suzuri, the communications officer of this vessel.>”
“This is Tortilla Double~. I’m Kori, the communications officer~! Thank you for having us~!”
“<Tortilla Double, can I see your pilot and mechanic?>”
“Excuse me, this is Genma, the pilot of Tortilla Double. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Hello, I am Saratha, the mechanic of Tortilla Double.”
“<It’s a pleasure to meet you. Tortilla Double, we are about to leave, so please synchronize hyperspace.>”
“…Synchronized.”
“Synchronized~!”
The job is to rendezvous near the Zadar colony, and escort them as we make our way through the hyperspace lane and until we reach the Akul colony in To Akul Prime. That means our ship will accompany them through AI controls.
We get twenty thousand puni regardless of when we get there, and while we’re free to take down bounties, we can’t salvage because it’s a waste of time. We’re scheduled to arrive in ten days, and we can pay to receive additional supplies from Tamani Oishi No.3.
I also got a flier for organic food when I accepted the job. It comes with a trap in the way of a ten percent discount if it’s part of the paid resupplying.
Saratha has her eyes on the alcohol, and Kori on the fresh fruits. I’m more curious about the dinosaur egg yolk retort bags and the giant shrimp frozen sashimi that looks like spiny lobster.
We can get soy sauce from the food printer, so I’m tempted!!
Hah that company name is sure funny
Thanks for the treat.