章 14: 14 - Shopping with a manchild part II

"So... How long.... Were we captured anyway?"

Stuffing his face with a genuine, completely organic, full English breakfast Mike was equally busy stuffing his mouth as fast as humanly possible while asking River questions.

"We were captured for a little over two weeks, and after getting out of there you slept for about 4 days straight so it's been a little under 3 weeks since we arrived at Crown station with the princess in tow. I only slept for about a day after all that."

Impressed at how fast and efficiently Mike was packing food away while still having the time to ask questions, River was happy to see him getting some life back in him after being held captive in frankly inhumane conditions.

"Although I figured that if any one of us would survive this it would be you River, I still am glad to see that you're okay..."

Having murdered the entire plate of food and washed it down with a large glass of juice, Mike got overly sentimental for a few seconds before his body reminded him that it wasn't used to solid food or a large amount of it with a squeal that sounded like a pig getting crushed in a hydraulic press.

"... I'll be right back."

Clutching his stomach, Mike made a hasty retreat in the direction River pointed while she fruitlessly attempted to stifle a burst of laughter.

Luckily, any unfortunate accidents were narrowly avoided through great valour and outstanding heroism in battle.

Taking a shower now that he was there and all, Mike found some clothes to put on in the bathroom and returned to find River drinking tea with quite a perplexed look on her face.

"... Is this the first time you've had tea?"

"Yeah, it sure is strange to drink plants like this... Oh yeah, I've talked with the princess and already negotiated our reward so we're clear to leave whenever, but I think it would be best to stay here at least one more day."

"Sure."

Clenching his arm to check the state of his body, Mike found that he still wasn't entirely back to full strength, thus staying a day more to rest up sounded like a good idea.

"Great, then I'll take advantage of that and try out some more food, the stuff they have here in the Imperium sure is great."

"I don't think most of the imperium gets to eat anything nearly as fancy as this stuff, but more food sounds like a great idea, I wonder if the chefs here know how to make a decent steak au poivre..."

Deciding to kick back now that River had already handled everything, Mike had realised when he ate breakfast how much he had missed proper food after eating the kind he had to get through a plastic straw

."Steak what now?"

"Steak au poivre, it's French for pepper steak, usually a medium-rare fillet mignon or ribeye served with a pepper sauce and stuff like carrots, mash or stuff like that."

"... I have no idea what any of those words mean."

Having decided to tell River everything, Mike stopped being particular about what he was saying while keeping any people listening in the dark.

"Okay... You know what a steak is right?"

As a pirate's daughter that had spent all her life in a backwater system, River usually ate synthetic food made out of stuff like genetically modified algae and protein made from... Stuff. Even if she wanted to have what she considered to be a fancy meal once in a while it would still mainly consist of 3D-printed meals and things coming from a tin can.

"I do... Or rather judging by your expression I don't, I can't help it, the fanciest thing I've ever eaten had to be rehydrated beforehand..."

"Freeze-dried stuff isn't all bad, it is pretty hard to prepare most of these things in space, even if you have gravity then there's still the insane risk of having an open flame or cooking surface. It's pretty hard to make recipes and preparation methods invented on a planet work in space."

Although she had gotten hints of this before, River got the feeling that Mike would be more at home being some planet-dwelling megacorp heir instead of being the space-born mercenary he was.

"You really do sound like a planet dweller sometimes..."

As mankind had long since left their home, living in space on space stations and in small colonies on the surface of planets void of atmospheres became the norm.

Habitable worlds were just going outside without a vacuum suit or at least an artificial supply of oxygen weren't all that common and thus hotly contested capital worlds where only the top of society lived comfortable, long lives in a lap of luxury. Even planets suitable for terraforming, the long and extremely expensive act of transforming a planet to one suitable for habitation were contested, and fledgling empires and republics were usually founded around them in order to eventually create a habitable capital planet, incidentally, that was why the Trane Imperium was founded with Crown station in orbit of a terraforming candidate the Imperium was developing.

"That's because I am. I was born and raised on a 1 G planet with blue skies and only a moderately collapsing ecosystem, but we can talk about all that later."

"Right, surveillance... Now that you've pointed it out twice it's really hard for me to ignore it."

Although they had no concrete evidence, both Mike and now River felt like they were under watch, even if it just was cation after getting tortured by the same people who were now paying for their stay at a gaudy hotel it was still hard to calm down and just relax.

"I take it the reward you negotiated was substantial?"

"Oh yeah, although they tried to just settle it with that... Whatever you called it fighter and peerage for the both of us I demanded plain credits instead so we now have about 5 mil in the vault."

(So enough to buy 3 Scorpions with a bit to spare... Awesome.)

"Great, then let's do some shopping while we're stuck in here anyway."

Grabbing a tablet that was lying around, Mike quickly accessed a local merchant website. "Shopping for what exactly?"

Studying River's face for a few seconds Mike realised she had actually forgotten what they had talked about time and time again.

"A gun for you, and a proper vac suit too. So what kind of weapon do you want?"

Showing River the screen packed with different kinds of compact firearms that River would be able to swing around in tight spaces without issue, Mike put on a sales pitch as he saw her light up.

"Let's start with the type, we have a wide selection including ballistic, laser and even plasma munitions with the option ranging anywhere from single action to fully automatic with 2 to 10-round bursts and accessories that range from useful to straight-up absurd... I mean why the fuck would you need a reheater on a revolver?"

"What do you recommend? You have that ballistic pistol with a suppressor right?"

"My custom Sage-6 yeah, that one is a bit of a special case but I think there's something near the performance of it here somewhere if that's what you want."

With personal weapons based on the system as Interstellar Online, 3 basic damage types made up a rock-paper-scissors balance with weapons and countermeasures which were balanced against the useability of the weapon types.

Laser weapons were the simplest to use and maintain, with no recoil, projectile speed of the speed of light and almost bottomless magazines it was the type with the most advantages, but just as many drawbacks. While laser weaponry was easy to aim it often took a few seconds before anything happened to the target, what's worse the laser could easily be scattered and lose effects from man-portable energy shields or even smoke, dust or just vapour in an atmosphere.

On the other side of the spectrum was ballistic weaponry, firing physical projectiles meant recoil, meaning follow-up shots often wasn't accurate and those projectiles needed space for storage, meaning limited magazine capacity but easy use of specialist munitions like the tranquiliser Mike had used on River that one time he organised her kidnapping.

Last but not least, plasma munitions were somewhere between ballistic and laser weaponry with the magazine capacity and projectile speed near that of laser weaponry. While somewhere near the effectiveness of subsonic specialist ballistic munitions there wasn't anything nastier than a wound from a plasma blaster, meaning basically anyone looking for trouble wore shield packs to protect against them.

"... So in the end what do you recommend?"

Having gotten the rundown of the different weapon types from Mike and learned just how much of a pro he was at the subject, River still felt it was best to go with Mike's recommendations."

Well, that depends... I'm definitely biassed towards ballistic weaponry since I've been using those for sport growing up so I feel like that'll be the best choice, sure carrying around ammunition and refilling spend mags is a bit of a chore but if you want to kill a person you shoot them in the head with a bullet, no shield counter against that. That and you should have no issue with the recoil."

"... I see, then something ballistic and automatic?"

Chewing over Mike's advice, River settled on a ballistic weapon, but the moment she said automatic Mike's smile took a bit of a hit.

"Have you ever used a firearm before?"

"Nope."

"Then I wouldn't recommend something full auto, a burst weapon would be better."

Deciding if she wanted to know exactly why recommended against getting a fully automatic weapon, River decided to spare herself a lecture and just went with his suggestion instead.

"Okay, then a burst weapon."

Filtering the catalogue based on River's input, Mike narrowed things down to a series of subcompact personal defence weapons that could either be used as a pistol in semi-automatic fire or in burst fire using a foldable, sliding or collapsing stock.

"Sturdy and resistant against EMP's would be the best so that rules out anything with holographic sights and automatic fire controls. Let's see... Oh, these look good."

Showing River what he found on the tablet, Mike gave River the option of 5 top of the line subcompact polymer PDW's with iron sights, in fact, they were so similar that the only thing River could distinguish them by was the place and size of their magazines.

"... The one with the magazine behind the grip, I guess."

"A Razor 9X, good choice. I'll add that to the cart along with a holster, 5 mags and an assortment of hollow point and APFSDS rounds... Oh, it's the same calibre as the one I use, that means we can use the same store of rounds."

"What about a suppressor too?"

"Yeah forgot that, thanks for reminding me."

After settling on the finer details, River and Mike spent just as long on getting a top-of-the-line bulletproof vacuum suit with laser and plasma shielding and by the time they were done with that, the dinner Mike had had the foresight to order was delivered.

"W-what is that?"

"Steak au poivre. Or at least the chef's best approximation of my half-butchered explanation, but the chefs in this place are pro so it should be good anyway."

"I don't really care about or even know what it is, but it looks great."

Examining her own plate, River made the mistake of trying to appear fancy by sampling the meal, while that wasn't bad in of itself she made the mistake of sampling some of the larger peppercorns in the sauce.

"Wait, those are-"

"ARK! What the fuck!?"

"-... Almost whole peppercorns, please eat those together with the actual steak."

While River was fighting a coughing fit Mike found the dish to be an overall faithful rendition of what he had been treated to at a fancy restaurant after acing an exam.

(So the fancy food is the same as on earth while the trade goods and some of the ships are the same as in Interstellar Online... I really don't understand this world.)

The entire thing was such a mismatch of realities that Mike eventually gave up on thinking about it altogether, leaving the whole issue of how he would explain to River where he was from and how he knew what was going to happen to tomorrow's Mike, just how any student experienced in the art of procrastination would.