Save the Day Program, once again. (Gundam IBO/Satisfactory SI): Chapter 12

Outskirts of Chryse Autonomous Region, Chryse Guard Security, Mars.

Within the office of the mercenary group’s leader, I sat with a grim face as the head of the group, one Maruba Arkay, grinned as he finalized the payment on his end.

“So, that’s that, Mr. Thornton. The payment has gone through, and you are now the official owner of CGS from now on.”

The greasy smirk on his face, which showed his satisfaction at ripping me off, made me want to punch him with all my might.

Unfortunately, if I do something like that, I will take his head clean off his shoulders, and having his dirty blood on my hands is something that I want to avoid.

At least directly, anyway. I do have plans to silently eliminate him and his ilk remotely.

Within the two weeks that I’ve spent on Mars after our discussion with Representative Burnstein, I have made a lot of progress in establishing my company as a part of this world’s economy.

On the other side, ADA had been making use of her physical body a lot and has managed to smoothly enroll the children that we rescued into the various local schools, which just so happened to have received a sizable donation from FICSIT.

Seriously, my AI is such a tsundere that she refuses to admit how much she has come to care about the children in the short time we had them in our custody.

I think it has to do with the fact that ADA was originally designed to be a child care AI before her creator and his start-up were bought out by FICSIT and integrated into their R&D department, where ADA was reconfigured into what she is now.

At the same time, she had also taken the opportunity to train the young adults into becoming productive members of our company by showing them how to use a downscaled version of my Build Gun to build our factory.

The one that she created for the young adults has the same kind of security system as my Build Gun, with a DNA lock where they won’t work unless they are being used by their authorized user.

Aside from that, the ‘Build Gun Mk. 2’, which is the name she gave them, is missing every other feature that my Build Gun has.

The only thing that the mass-produced Build Gun can do is project a hologram and keep it in place for construction.

What use does that have? Well, it helps with construction.

Specifically, it helps guide the nanites produced from within the arms of the Humanoid-Type Mobile Workers that ADA modified to replicate the construction part of my Build Gun.

It was my idea that I gave her, inspired by the Planetary Annihilation games from my world.

By separating the nanite guide into a handheld build gun shell and the nanites themselves into the Mobile Worker unit, we have ensured that, by themselves, they would be practically useless and will only work when brought together since the nanites will remain as nothing more than compressed liquid of unknown composition within their tanks without the guidance of the holographic projector of the build guns and the data from the construction database.

Even then, the construction database that they have access to has been heavily restricted and will always ping ADA whenever it is used.

It is not that we do not trust the children that I have spent time with in the past month, learning more about them and their personalities. It's just that we are in a Gundam universe where corporate espionage and technology theft are commonplace, hence our paranoid security measures.

Although I must say that the children are very much motivated in bringing fame to the company since they have been working quite zealously on the tasks assigned to them, even going as far as working overtime despite ADA and me dissuading them from doing so.

The construction of our main factory and mining facilities, which were projected to take more than a month, was completed in a week, allowing us to start mining the Half-Metal and other resources nearby much faster than predicted and earning us profits much quicker than anticipated.

Such was their zeal.

Of course, being their boss, I could not take their hard work for granted, so I issued a bonus to all the employees and gave them a paid time-off for two weeks.

Who knew that paying your employees well and treating them as actual human beings would increase productivity through the roof?

However, once the word spread somehow that we were already mining Half-Metal and getting ready for trade, we ran into our first problem on this planet.

Mercenaries and Pirates.

Specifically, mercenaries hired by the other corporations and forces on the planet want to steal my resources.

The first wave was from some no-name mercenary group that wanted to overwhelm my factory with their retrofitted Mobile Workers armed with machine guns and rocket launchers.

Unfortunately for that group, they faced a few dozen Rodi-Frame Mobile Suits, which were being controlled by ADA and had their Ahab reactors replaced by a downscaled Fuel-Powered generator, allowing them to operate within city limits, hence protecting my assets.

ADA also replaced their hydrogen thrusters with our Therman Propulsion Rockets that are compatible with the Liquid Biofuel, increasing the mobility of the mobile suite to a whole new degree.

I have no doubt that I will make a lot of money once word spreads that I can produce mobile suits that can be used within cities, even if their operational time is limited since they use a finite fuel source, but that is for later, once I have properly established an impregnable fortress for myself and my company.

The children had originally volunteered to pilot the suits themselves to defend the factory, but were heavily reprimanded by ADA, who told them off in her usual bland tone.

An understandable reaction on her part.

Ever since we found out about the existence of the Alya-Vijnana system, we have been researching it quite heavily and have found out a lot of information that made us have mixed feelings about its existence.

On one hand, the nanite system used in this technology is so advanced that even ADA felt very fascinated with them and wanted to study them as much as she could. The sheer potential for biotechnological breakthroughs, specifically in the adaptation of the human body to hostile environments and general enhancement of living beings and man-machine interfaces, is breathtakingly tempting.

However, on the other hand, the crude implementation of this technology by implanting it into the bodies of children and having them pilot death machines has given us both a feeling of deep disgust.

Especially since ADA’s projections show a rapid deterioration in the children’s bodies should they continue using this system in the future.

That being said, we still think that this technology is far too useful to simply discard, hence the research ADA is currently conducting on reversing the damage caused to the human body by the Alya-Vijnana system and further refining the technology for general use.

Aside from that, this attack on my factory highlighted the need to acquire proper defenses for my factories as soon as possible, hence my arrival at this mercenary outfit.

From what we found out through extensive research, Chryse Guard Security, or CGS, is a rather established and well-known mercenary outfit in the region with good equipment and reach, along with a big stockpile of weapons and defenses.

Normally, it would have cost somewhere from 10 million to 20 million credits to outright buy such an outfit for my company, an exorbitant amount of money that not even I can produce this early in my career.

However, when you are only buying the company name, its mercenary license, its weapons stockpile, buildings and assets, along with the Human Debris which are also considered goods, and a single, defunct, Mobile Suite stored under their HQ, the cost drops drastically to a mere 5 million, which is still a lot but a price that I can manage.

Again, I know that I have been ripped off by this man, but I cannot care less about that since such an amount of money would become pocket change for me once my factory is properly established and I start my trade.

That being said, I am still feeling good about this purchase since I have obtained something that every boy would have fantasized about at least once in his life.

A real-life Gundam.

Yup, the defunct mobile suit being used as nothing more than a generator by CGS is a Gundam unit.

How do I know this? ADA.

As has become our usual routine, she had hacked into their systems beforehand, long before we even thought about making any kind of acquisition. It was during this break-in that we found out about the existence of the Gundam unit, which helped in my decision-making to acquire this outfit.

I have no doubt that ADA will have a field day analyzing and trying to replicate the machine once we ship it back to our HQ, since the Gundam Frames are hailed as the deciding factors in the Calamity War, by helping bring an end to it.

Although technically, this will be my second Gundam since I got the Gusion from the Brewers' ship, that thing does not look like a proper Gundam in any way, so that does not count in my heart.

I watched silently as Maruba Arkay poured a glass of whisky and grinned.

“A toast to a successful deal.”

“Indeed.”

I took the offered cup and downed the alcohol, despite knowing that it was probably laced with some kind of anesthetic.

Once done, I continued staring at the man without blinking an eye, which probably unnerved the guy since it must have been a rather potent anesthetic, given the spike in drowsiness I felt before it disappeared thanks to my augmentations.

As the seconds ticked by and the man continued his fidgeting, I spoke with a neutral voice, spooking the bastard.

“How long are you going to wait? Mr. Arkay? The anesthetic is not going to work, so you might as well call in your lackey standing outside the room.”

“W-What are you-?”

“Do you think I am some rich guy who doesn’t know how these things work? I conducted extensive research on you before coming here, Mr. Arkay. Research that showed many acquisition attempts made by many groups, only to fail at the last step for some reason and mysteriously lose a lot of money in the process.”

I grinned at his pale face.

“It does not take a genius to guess what probably happened in those deals. My guess is that you either threaten them or knock them unconscious, and then somehow create legal documentation where the firms don’t hold any power over CGS but still end up paying money for ‘hiring your services’. Am I right?”

As I continued speaking, the man’s face became increasingly neutral.

Finally, he could not take it anymore and pulled out a gun he kept hidden under the desk.

Unfortunately for him, FICSIT Inc.’s standard employee augmentations include reaction time enhancements as well, which meant that I easily caught his hand the moment he pulled the gun out and broke his wrist with a simple tug.

His pained cries echoed across the room as I took the gun from him and broke it into pieces with my bare hands.

“Maruba Arkay, I know a lot about you. I’ve researched your company and its employees rather extensively, and what I have found paints quite a shameful picture.”

“FUCK YOU!! HAEDA!! GET THE FUCK IN HERE!! HAEDA!??”

I stepped on his throat, stopping his scream and making him look at me with pure fear.

“Haeda Gunnel, and the entirety of your First and Second Groups will no longer respond to you, Maruba. Because I have already bought them out. You are on your own.”

A partial lie.

It is true that I bought out the two groups since the third one was involved in the trade already. But, the reason why they will not respond to the bastard is because the majority of them don’t exist anymore.

As is normal for any mercenary organization, the number of crimes and cruel acts that these bastards have committed in the past is so high that they could practically write an entirely new Geneva Convention based solely on these guys’ exploits.

The minority of the group, who have not committed much crime or were innocent, have already been shipped off by ADA to be left in Chryse Autonomous Region’s security, while the rest of these bastards were killed off by an ‘accidental’ explosion of volatile materials.

With Maruba subdued and the police already on their way, all that is left is to wait until this monster in human skin is taken away.

After that, I’ll have my employees deconstruct this building and everything in it to be transported back to HQ along with the Gundam.

All in all, a productive day in a shitty universe like this.

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Marabu Arkay:

Fuel-Powered Generator:

Thermal Propulsion Rocket: