chapter 90
In the armoury, I wasn’t the only one gearing up. Sam and Dean were here as well with their squads. While I took my time, they were already almost finished, soon after rushing out to secure our immediate surroundings.
While this place should be safe, the same principle goes like with the ship that tried to get close to us to take what was ours. A show of force would deter any who think we are an easy target.
“Captain, I have already detected and stopped three attempts of hackers to get into our system,” FH said as she contacted me through our bond.
“They will probably never stop if you just defend, so go on the offensive when someone tries next. But don't try to get any information about the people who are attacking us like this, just do your best to destroy their equipment and overall just be a giant pain in the ass.”
“Yes, Captain,” she answered in a tone that I had never heard before. She seemed gleeful for what’s about to happen.
Whoever is doing this, and I bet there are more than just one group, will not be pleased if their equipment is destroyed, but it will teach them a lesson. Other than that, nothing should happen if they aren’t truly stupid. If we were to get any information about them, that would be a different story, so hopefully FH will keep to my guidelines.
I sensed vibration in the hull and realised that the back ramp must have been opened. Through my bond with my ship, it wasn't hard to see through some of the cameras, although doing this constantly would be exhausting. What I saw was our combat units moving out, doing a proper sweep of the hangar, then taking up guarding positions.
All of it was done incredibly efficiently. At least now they could start gaining real experience and not just go off of VR simulations. As I looked around, I realised the distinct lack of screens that I could access to view the map of the city.
That needed to be fixed. After I added it to the list, it was a short enough walk to the hydroponics on the third floor to view the map of the city. The city itself was truly huge with a completely functioning ecosystem. How much does it all cost to keep everything alive on this barren moon?
I couldn’t even imagine the number, because I didn’t actually know how all of this was possible. Hopefully we could figure it out, because knowing this would be quite nice in the future, as who knows what we will be doing then.
Zooming in on the map quite a lot finally took me to the street level of the area around this hangar. We were almost at the middle of the trade district, with not too long of a walk to the city centre where all the important businesses and government buildings were.
“FH, how good are the online services here? Could we do everything from here, or do we actually need to go places?”
“Personally showing up is a requirement for most things, but everything can be set up online, so no need to wait in lines if you have an appointment.” That’s some excellent news.
“Bob, I added you to this conversation, FH is here as well. From the logs I’ve seen that you have already been able to sell off quite a lot for an excellent profit. I assume that selling off the rest will take more work?”
“Most definitely that’s the case. The city’s request list is the easiest way to get rid of stuff. This means a lot of people are bringing cargo just for that list. If we could have gotten here just a few days ago, we could have sold off about 7% more of our stuff. We could always wait until new things are added to the list, it seems to change constantly.”
“That’s a good point. We aren’t in too much of a hurry. FH, how close are you to building the database for prices of this place?”
“Fortunately, a lot of what people sell and want to buy have listings online, so I already have a good overview. Quite a lot of the other AI’s are also helping me, as most of the time they have nothing else to do.”
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“That is some good work. FH, and I will go over the prices and see what we’re keeping around for the long term and what we could move almost immediately,” Bob proposed, with FH quickly supporting that idea.
“Excellent. I will leave it to you. I will be leaving soon and taking Dean’s squad with me. If any of you need to leave, even just to go around this complex, take Sam’s squad with you.”
“Yes, Captain,” they both answered.
Next I found Lola's bond and spoke through it.
“I bet you have already found the correct government office to see about renting a big enough place for us?”
“More than that. There are actual listings that we can look at, even book ahead of time so no one else could take it before us.”
“That’s quite nice. I bet you already have a list of recommendations.”
“There aren’t too many locations that would be suitable for us, as we need to fit our ship as well, but here are the top three. I’m betting you’re going to want to take the last one.”
She sounded quite confident in that. The first one was quite a large complex with a large enough hangar for our ship. The problem was it was a bit too large in the wrong ways, with a lot of the space dedicated to quarters. It was at the edge of the trade district. The rent was due every 20 days, and it was quite a significant sum.
Otherwise, it looked quite good and would definitely have everything we needed. The next one was on the outskirts of the central city. The hangar space was bigger, which was good. Overall, it seemed a better fit, although it was now further away from anything important, which could be a good thing.
The last one was an even bigger hangar. The walls also seemed quite thick, and there was also an outside land area with walls. This more resembled an army base where they would keep big vehicles. This one was quite far out, in one of the larger towns near the border of the city. You could see from there the view of the barren moon.
That seemed a bit too far away, why did Lola think I would want this? It didn't take long to figure out why she thought that.
That town that was out there was a more manufacturing-focused one, but more importantly, there seemed to be quite a lot of scrapyards around, and one was basically a 5-minute walk away from the hangar. The price was also quite reasonable.
“The third one it is, if you haven’t found anything else,” I said to Lola.
“No, nothing new, but isn’t it a bit too soon to make up your mind?”
“Just got a good feeling about this place, and no, not the skill kind of feeling. Get FH’s help, figure out everything you can about that place—the good and the bad—and see if we could live with either one.”
“It will be done before you leave.”
Next I headed down to the first floor. It was quite busy down here, with barely any opportunity to walk about as drones moved about quite fast carrying all types of cargo, with bigger ones moving large crates. Bob was at the centre of it all, like a watchtower commanding attention and observing all.
Carefully I made my way out of the ship, starting a visual inspection to see if anything was wrong. Of course, other smaller drones were already doing this, as this was their job.
The inspection list was constantly updating whenever another task was completed. While this was a simple landing, we were still using it as an opportunity to do full inspections of everything, like we would have gotten out of a combat situation.
We had so little proper experience that we needed to use everything new as a way to learn. My attention went to the large hangar doors, not at the ceiling, those were closed, but the ones that opened us up to the rest of this complex. There were already dozens of large crates stacked near the entrance, with Bob making his way towards them with four combat droids following.
While I could’ve joined them as a couple of people walked in to inspect the cargo, I chose to let Bob handle it while I continued my inspection.
“Can I speak to your captain? He should be here handling such tasks?” I heard one of them say a bit louder.
“I’m sorry, but the captain is quite busy. You will be dealing with me,” Bob answered, his tone brooking no argument.
The other person, however, seemed to not want to give up.
“That’s a person there. If the captain is not available, we can speak to him.”
Bob looked towards me even though I was still paying full attention to the ship.
“That is the captain, and he's busy. Do you want this cargo or not? Because I’ve already gotten paid for it. The laws of this place are quite clear. With nothing wrong on our end and you not wanting the cargo, we could just sell it again and keep the credits.” That shut the other person up.
“FH, is there really a law like that?”
“It’s close enough. Bob asked for the trade laws of this place a few days ago. I believe he is now quite well versed in them.”
“What about that attitude? Is there a dislike of artificial constructs?”
“Of course there would be. It’s everywhere, at least to some degree. But from what I’ve observed, there seemed to be quite a lot of tension between fully biological and cybernetic-enhanced biologicals, with fully robotic ones going into that last category.”
Wonder what he would think if he actually knew half of me was cybernetic?
“I actually don’t know, because you have bio cybernetics, and everyone seemed to disagree on where the line is. Some seem to have the understanding that replacing some limbs that you've lost is completely acceptable, while others are even against that.”
“That’s a bit unfortunate, but somewhat expected.”
It took about 30 minutes for the first bit of cargo to be taken away. By this time FH and Lola finished their investigation and found that the 3rd place, was good enough. While there were some more active gangs there than the ones in the city, they were also less armed. We should easily be able to defend ourselves if the need arose.
They also booked me a time slot in one of the agencies for two hours from now. We also had to be in one of the government offices in 30 minutes to get permission to stay here long term. After that, they also located a few skill stone shops where I would be going afterwards.
“Dean, are you ready? We don't have much time.”
He and his squad jogged towards me. They looked like they were ready to go to war. All of them were wearing what was now standard equipment for every combat droid. All of them had quite good body armour, the FH-02 rifle, a smaller pistol, and all of them also had a sword.
We were as ready as we could be at this current moment.
“Excellent, let's move out.”