Corpo Age

Chapter 225: Inspection

I swiftly received a private call from Thorne, who was still in the midst of coughing. As soon as I answered, I could hear his voice blare out from the other end.

“We can’t afford to let this random guy examine our ship that closely! As good as our holographic tech is, he’ll notice if he plans to scrutinize every inch to find those serial numbers.”

“We’ll be fine. We hadn’t spent so many months ensuring the ship was ready in vain. Don’t worry about it,” I assured.

Before I waited for his reply, I kept the flow of conversation going with the middle-aged clerk from the consortium’s branch office. It wouldn’t do to just leave him hanging when he just asked me a question.

“Of course, we don’t mind. Would you like to come abroad now to do the check now?”

“Hm, that can work. I see you prefer to get things out of the way as soon as possible as well, so who am I to decline?” he responded as he played with his grey beard. “Please feel free to follow me. I’ll arrange transportation.”

We followed him out the back, where a parking lot was. Without any delay, a jet-black sedan drove out to greet us. The window went down, revealing two young men around my age sitting at the front.

“Inspectors, I’ll leave our dear guests to you now. Good day.”

The man did a quick one-eighty, leaving Echo and me staring awkwardly at the two unfamiliar faces.

“Come on in,” the driver said as the back doors automatically opened. “It’ll only take a few minutes, so I hope you find this vehicle acceptable.”

I quickly boarded the car and the driver no longer minded us as he drove. From his tone, I could tell his words were hollow, reciting from a script. There was no point in calling him out, so we quietly sat there as we drove across the snow globe-like city.

The traffic moved smoothly, unlike any of the planet-side cities. The reason was soon revealed to me as my view out the window suddenly gained altitude. What I thought to be a car was climbing swiftly, speeding past the cars below. Around us, dozens of other vehicles did the same.

We soon joined lanes of traffic behind several VTOLs, and I began to shift my attention from the outside view to the supposed car we boarded.

This is one of those fancy aeromobiles! I thought were so unaffordable only corporate executives used them. Well, I guess a city on the Moon would have plenty of those who could afford it.

I didn’t get to marvel at the wealth of the consortium for long before we seamlessly transitioned back to the ground level at our destination. We then strode into the port with our two inspectors, blowing by the security, and beelining straight to our ship.

The moment the two inspectors laid eyes on it, they took out their terminal and began recording. They circled the vessel, conversing with each other as Echo and I trailed behind.

“On the smaller side of a corvette. The hull’s integrity seems to be fine.”

“This really does seem like it was cobbled together with whatever was on hand.” One of the inspectors turned to me. “Does the weapon systems on it work?”

“Yes, we made sure to salvage the one in the best working conditions from what we came across.”

“Then you’ll need to register exactly what type of armaments your vessel possesses as well. Otherwise, you’d be subject to fines wherever you go or even have it confiscated.”

“Is that something you can do? Or would I need to go back to the office to append it to my registration?”

“We can do it fine. It’ll be easier for both of us if we can just finish inspecting everything all at once.”

I nodded and guided the two inspectors toward the entrance.

Thorne had fallen silent once we arrived, and I could tell he was still nervous about having strangers poke around our experimental ship. However, this situation was something I had accounted for.

When we walked into the loading bay of our spacecraft, I detected our two dear inspectors beginning to deploy various scans as they walked.

“Newly polished and welded interior plates. No point in searching for any serial numbers here. Let’s go to engineering first.”

As they requested, I guided them to our engineering bay, and they immediately lunged at the heart of our ship. They ran a hand through it as they crouched down and carefully examined it for any type of identification.

“Nothing here. The exterior feels smooth, and the dimension of this all-in-one NTX J54 propulsions seems to be stock…”

It was soon evident that the inspectors who had driven us here were the more senior of the two. His junior was a new hire, who was still learning the ropes. We listened to them talk until they addressed me.

“Mr. Shake, can you start up the ship and put the engine in diagnostic mode for us?”

“Of course.”

I brought my hand up to my chin and mouthed off for a moment, pretending I was sending commands via remote control. That wasn’t entirely untrue, as I was just ordering Lanus to carry out the orders.

A moment later, the hum of the engine filled the room and the two inspectors crowded around the terminal screen on the engine itself.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Of course, none of it was fabricated by a holographic projection as relying too much on it when they were scrutinizing everything would easily be exposed. Instead, I simply tweaked the program ahead of time.

“Everything seems to check out. The next step after this is to run our own analysis of the system here.”

Watching the inspector plug into our engine, Thorne looked like he wanted to dart out at him, so I placed a hand on his shoulder and nodded. He knew about Lanus, so I only needed to remind him about it to calm him down.

No matter how proficient the inspection software was, Lanus was at the ready to fabricate the readings. There was no way anyone could be faster or more precise than an AI when it came to tasks like this one.

The tone of the inspection soon became that of a leisurely tour until we arrived at weapons.

“Normally, you have to book our testing facility in order to evaluate the weapon systems for the license. Seeing how we’ll be expediting your application today, you’ll have to apply for the fast-track rental. What do you say you go to one of the testing sites in orbit? It’ll save us some time if your guns don’t need to be on a limiter.”

“Will there be a fee with this expedited application as well?” I asked, like any good frugal mercenary would.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen thousand.”

I took in a deep breath and nodded reluctantly.

Our ship then flew out of the Soluna, toward a sizable asteroid that was repurposed into a punching bag.

Leaving Echo in the control of the ship, I accompanied the inspectors to the weapons control terminals. For our new prototype guns, I had no choice but to cover it up with a projection of a bulky turret on the exterior of our vessel. The profile of a particle beam was just too distinct, but thankfully, the exterior wasn’t some place they could just go examine in person while we were mid-flight.

However, the real test was the actual shooting. Even a child could tell the difference between a typical cannon and a shiny beam of light.

Well, it would be a real issue if our ship was equipped with a normal ship-grade particle cannon. Instead, we were testing a prototype for the commercial model of our cannon. The reason why it was no longer a problem was because our commercial model was designed with compatibility in mind.

If we forced our customer to upgrade at the sacrifice of their old weapon system, it would make them feel like it was a monumental decision, and thus delaying it out of fear of uncertainty. If we made them perceive it as an upgrade in lieu of a replacement, making sales would be that much easier.

With that logic in mind, our commercial variant was designed with the ability to load and fire like a traditional railgun.

“Charge is at maximum. Let me know when to fire,” I stated.

Not letting me wait, the lead inspector immediately gave the signal.

“Fire!”

The low humming of the railgun screeched out all at once, sending the round straight toward the giant asteroid. Upon impact, our instruments recorded a thunderous impact, as tiny pieces of debris scattered in every direction.

“Not bad for some salvage. That should be enough testing now.”

---

After our inspections ended, I dragged Thorne back into the city in order to complete our first gig in Soluna.

The advanced city adequately showed it was a capable behemoth, with plenty of resources at its disposal. It was enough that I didn’t want to hack around on the intranet, in case they traced me down or locked down the ports as they searched.

That’s why I had us resort to the old-fashioned way of tracing down our missing victims.

The gig I had accepted for our debut involved rescuing several individuals who had been taken due to their debt. The provided information from my employer was just their backgrounds and last seen location. To find them, we would have to get our boots on the ground and look for them ourselves.

We had no clues on the perpetrators to go on, so just monitoring the city-wide security cameras wouldn’t do much. The victims wouldn’t be seen in such public areas, provided they were even alive.

“Do I really have to use this equipment?,” my partner, Echo, complained.

“Yes. It’s about what us mercenaries can afford. We’ll need to hit a jackpot before we’ll get our upgrade.”

We stared down at the stock, gunpowder-based pistols in our holsters.

“They’re not all that bad. Look.”

I held up my firearm, unloaded the magazine, and cleared the chamber. Then, I swapped in another mag and cocked the gun.

I then jumped onto the streets, heading toward where a young girl had last been seen. On the way there, I noted down the position of every camera until I found the one where the last image of our missing suspect had come from.

From there, I saw several corporate offices and sales offices that had a better coverage of where our target had gone, so I quickly borrowed their devices. I aimed and fired, launching the electronic intrusion round into the camera.

With a connection established, I was able to easily gain access to its logs. I rinsed and repeated this step until we were full on footage.

Thankfully, neither of us would have to fast-forward through it. It was something Lanus could do in our place.

It wasn’t long before our AI sieved through the footage and found us something usable. From there, the gig went down the same way as any of our old ones. We traced them through the city and infiltrated to where our rescue targets were.

The only tricky part was to do it silently without killing any of the kidnappers. Many of them were corporate-affiliated personnel, working as debt collectors, so killing them would only attract trouble. Thankfully, we weren’t strangers to non-lethal solutions, but it did make things take longer, as we had to sneak up on each guard and inject them with a tranquilizer serum.

When we finished, we didn’t waste any time in turning in the gig. We returned to the same bar where I took the job from some waitress. She came to greet Echo and me the moment we sat down.

“Welcome! I see that you’re here two nights in a row. I’m glad you’ve taken a liking to our little establishment.”

“Yeah, had to bring my friend here to celebrate a productive work day,” I replied. “Also, I wanted to show him that drink you recommended to me last time. Can we get the same thing?”

“Can do, but are you sure you don’t want something stronger this time?”

“Hmm, as long as it has your recommendation.”

Within a few minutes, she returned with a neon green drink for each of us. We didn’t bother taking a closer look at the drink as we quickly dove into its contents.

There were only three gigs to choose from this time, but the rewards were much more attractive. With a clear objective in mind, we chose another search and rescue mission.

We went over the datachip that came with the bill as we walked out, but we both paused our steps just as we got out.

“Captain Shake,” Echo called out. “If I’m not mistaken, the meeting listed should be dated for today. To be more specific, in the next hour.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

I grimly nodded as we both had a second to process the other details that we had only just received. This new gig may be more lucrative, but it comes with more complexity. For starters, we were to work with another team of mercenaries. We were scheduled to meet with them as soon as possible, which meant in an hour.

Gotta love the good ol’ last-minute details they thrust upon us. I guess it comes along with being in the role of pawns for others.