章 50: Negotiations
"... So, do you feel better now?"
Walking over to River who had finally removed herself from Jesper, Mike reached out and wiped some of the blood off of her cheeks with his thumbs before making sure nothing could drip into her eyes.
"Yeah, I'm doing great now~"
"Great, then I just need to handle the rest of the cleanup…"
While wiping high-velocity blood spatter off of a person's face wouldn't normally be considered romantic, River and Mike nevertheless created a pink atmosphere completely oblivious to everything else while they had their little moment. Faking a cough, Jessica got control of the situation before she turned to Alex.
"So, does he even care that I'm not dead?"
"... Um, That…"
Clearly caught in a tough spot, Alex couldn't think of an appropriate answer as Jessica's father had hardly reacted to the news that she was declared missing and presumed dead.
"Thanks, that's enough of an answer. Let's go greet the council, we're going to need some reparations."
"... Reparations? Miss, you're home. What are you talking about?"
Under the flawed idea that the Jessica who returned home was the same one who went missing, Alex had expected that the 3 other outsiders would be continuing their travels or grand objectives without the young miss that she had sworn and failed to protect once already.
Seeing the gunnery commander's misunderstanding, Mike stepped forward and moved in between the two people as he gave a quick command in a language Alex couldn't understand.
"Button up."
"Rog."
Responding immediately to his command, River started suiting up being covered by Dan while Jessica put on her helmet. Right as River finished suiting up and pressurized her suit, Mike spoke up loud enough for all of the surroundings to hear.
"How many patrol detachments have gone missing recently? I'm guessing it's a lot, judging by the 13 sword's decision to mine near a black hole… Or are you after something else? Perhaps something intrinsic to the high amount of exotic radiation deposited by the black hole?"
"... What are you insinuating?"
As a Gunnery Commander, Alex had a bit more privileged access to classified information than her peers, but she had only heard whispers of the unusual attacks which were claiming a surprising amount of patrol elements.
"Because the gateways are now open, it'll only continue to attract c-"
"I'll take you to the council now!"
The second Mike started pressuring her, Alex caved to his demands and started guiding the 4 outsiders towards the council building.
Meanwhile, Jessica wasted no time opening up a private channel between herself and the others so they could talk without anyone listening in.
"What is going on here Mike?"
[The 13 swords, like many other of the beastmen clans have started figuring out how to counter the crystal lifeforms by developing a new type of weapon, the problem with said weapon is its limited range.]
"Well that's going to be impossible to employ for them, either you risk an entire shard or you mount it on a drone, but you can't manoeuvre the drone fast enough because of signal delays..."
Having completed basic military training as a gunner of the 13 swords, Jessica had a good grasp on beastmen combat, basically, it was all done through drones of all sorts and shapes; barrage drones to saturate the enemy in torpedo fire, swarm drones with lasers to counter barrage drones by swarming their position and so on. Fighting that close with drones was impossible due to things like signal interference, delay and uncertainty of electronic sensors.
[Then why don't they just strap their new weapon to a fighter chassis and get it over with?]
"Because we can't really keep up with the batshit insane manoeuvres you call a 'docking' River, you've fought against those things with Mike right? Do you think I could keep up with the insane amount of G's without going through the hellscape training I've recently done?"
[Ah, yeah. True that.]
Chatting leisurely while being guided by Alex to the political centre of the Ra'si shard, the group of 4 armoured space suits with tinted glass caught quite a bit of attention, it didn't help that the were still a few stray lines of high-velocity blood spatter on River's suit.
"I'll need you to leave your weapons behind here."
Reaching what seemed like a checkpoint with armed guards stationed in uniform, Alex turned to the visitors, but her offer was not received well.
"You can't be serious."
Not yet reaching for his pistol, Mike bluntly refused Alex's stated demand before switching to internal comms.
"Jessica, we're not getting captured here, understand?"
[Yeah, I've heard from River what you guys went through last time, I have no problem.]
Although she had made the decision a while ago, this was the first time Jessica actively took a stand against her own people to protect the group she now called home.
"... I'm afraid I am, no weapons are allowed beyond this point."
(Well, shit.)
"River?"
[No problem, if they're anything like Jessica it shouldn't be a problem.]
"Dan?"
[I agree, I'll cover Jessica, you work with River if it comes to it.]
Having come to an internal agreement that they could properly overpower any guards with the hidden weapons in Dan's suit, Mike finally responded to Alex who was starting to get nervous after seeing first-hand how efficient River was at manslaughter using her bare hands.
"Fine."
With River and Mike handing over their sidearms, the group was finally allowed to continue onward into the council building of the Ra'si.
The council building itself was the administrative heart of the Ra'si, as such it was a maze of bureaucratic mire, offices and departments home to numerous bureaus which dealt with everything from land disputes to maintaining the numerous fusion reactors and drives necessary to move the shard around.
"So, how's the weapon project going?"
Although the smell of incense and woven grass mats would normally not be something which belonged in the very centre of political power, the beastmen in general and 13 swords, in particular, were proud of their traditions stretching all the way back to the time they were a single planet species.
William of the council of 3 leading Ra'si carried the core of these tenets proud and loudly, he was a man of tradition and little emotion who was mainly concerned with making his ancestors proud and protecting the Ra'si.
"We still have the same issues as previously discussed, the macon manufacture rate, linac fire rate and endurance are all within spec… The problem is still the range."
The second member of the council represented more liberal ideas, the traditional clothing he wore which harked back to ancient history wasn't properly fastened and instead of sitting up straight like the two other members of the council, he was lazily sprawled out on the floor. Appearance aside, Hank was worthy of respect due to his scientific achievements alone.
"How exactly is it you can't make the range better Hank?"
"I've tried to explain that countless times to you so far William, the carbon nanotubes are tough yeah, but when you stuff them with exotic materials which creates the proper bremsstrahlung impact effect and impregnate them with electrons to move them they become inherently unstable, it's not even a matter of material science, at this scale even quantum mechanics work against us."
"Then go back to the drawing board, or find a person who can handle your prototype platform, we can't keep delaying this forever… The rest of the 13 swords depend on us to figure this out."
While the two members of the three-man council continued their usual back and forth, the third member remained quiet and mostly disinterested in the state of affairs, or that's at least how it looked on his face as Casper was currently the best candidate to pilot the insane prototype Hank and his team had come up with, the only thing which equalled Capser's instincts was his ability as a pilot and with a sword.
While these talks could have continued as they usually did for hours, the council was interrupted by a knock on the door following an unexpected announcement.
"This is Gunnery Commander Alex, I've brought the party of extragalactic travellers, along with Jessica."
While two of the council members were at least slightly surprised by the insinuation that William's long-lost black sheep had returned alive, the person himself was hardly moved as he made an announcement.
"Fine, let them in."
As Alex had reported, she entered along with 4 people wearing black armoured suits with tinted visors, that is except for Jessica who had removed her helmet and wore a mixed expression on her face when she saw her dad who still refused to acknowledge her, not even after she had come back from the dead.
"Ooooo!~ Jessica, how good to see you didn't die!"
Immediately Hank, who had been laying flat on his back seconds before, ran up to Jessica and embraced her with a bright and somewhat fake smile on her face.
"It's good to see you Hank, but we have more important things to discuss."
Turning their attention over to Mike as she peeled Hank off of her, Jessica did the best she could to keep her expression neutral.
"Greetings, council of the Ra'si."
Making his presence known, Mike kept his helmet on as he stepped up in front of Jessica, separating the council and Alex from his team.
"The name is Mike, while I wanted to start off on a more friendly note of cooperation or technical exchange I must start off with something else. Because you destroyed our ship we'll need compensation for that before moving forward and assisting you with the crystal lifeform mutual defence."
"HA!"
Finding Mike's statement more entertaining than anything else, William showed a fierce smile as he loudly scoffed.
"We got our problems here under control, we've been fighting the crystal lifeforms for longer than you've been alive pup! What the fuck do you think you can suddenly offer to help us to change this?"
While William towered above him, Mike hardly even flinched as he knew he had reliable backup if things came to it.
"I'm thinking the appearance of delta-class crystal organisms has drastically changed that assessment."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh yeah, of course, you would have had different ways of designating them… The ones who move way faster than the others and command their brethren. You can't just keep out-gunning those when their mobility exceeds yours by an order of magnitude."
"..."
With Mike hitting an apparent nerve, William fell silent. While he very much wanted to do something drastic, age had mellowed out quite a bit compared to his earlier years and aggression had been largely replaced with diplomatic experience and an iron will.
"Hank, this is your area more than mine."
Taking a step back instead of doing something stupid, William passed the torch onto one of his fellow council members.
"Do you already know what our problem is about?"
Taking a direct route, Hank got straight to the core of his current issue, if Mike already knew what the problems were and how to solve them, Hank didn't really care about anything else.
"..."
Glancing towards the rest of his squad, Mike wondered how much he should reveal, but after getting the go-ahead from everyone he decided to go for it.
"Your weapon has too little range for it to be employed effectively, we can help with that for a price."
If he could get his hands on a ship, Mike didn't really mind helping out the 13 swords to fight the crystal lifeforms, as that was one of the reasons he wanted to visit the beastkin world in the first place.
"I don't exactly see how you can help us… Unless a member of your group can pilot a ship while pulling over 12 G."
"Just 12? I can do that standing on my head."
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット