Save the Day Program, once again. (Gundam IBO/Satisfactory SI): Chapter 8

Within Gjallarhorn headquarters, the General Affairs Bureau’s people were going through their regular work, which is to say, lazing about and doing as little work as required of their position, when their algorithms pinged an intern about a new registration and request from the Jupiter Sphere.

Feeling intrigued, the intern took the data to his superior.

“Um, sir? We got a new firm registration from Jupiter Sphere, from one Mr. Mercy.”

The superior raised an interested eyebrow at those words and smirked.

“Looks like good ol' Mercy got himself a good deal then. Approve the registration and mark it as ‘Inspection complete’. Also, mark it as having all equipment and meeting all labor laws necessary.”

The intern nodded his head and checked off on the Inspection status, along with labor law compliance inspections and equipment safety inspections as per his superiors' orders.

 “There is also a request for an Ariadne network license.”

“Approve it as well. Mercy will pay good money for fast-tracking things like this.”

“Ok.”

Once again, the intern simply approved the request, putting it straight into their systems, far ahead of various other civilian and industrial requests that had been waiting for approval for a few months now, showing how important it was to have proper connections in this day and age.

“They also have a request for the possibility of buying a few Ship-grade and Mobile Suite grade Ahab reactors.”

Suddenly, unlike what the intern had imagined, where the man in front of him would simply approve the request like before, his superior became serious at those words and sat straight in his chair, going through the details of the request and properly looking at the profile of the company in question for the first time since this conversation began.

The Intern has yet to know that anything pertaining to Ahab reactors is something that no one in Gjallarhorn took lightly, especially since none of them wants to invite trouble from the Seven Stars.

“FICSIT Inc. Dealing in raw ores and industrial resource manufacturing? Do we have any further details on what they are selling?”

The Intern nervously forwarded the data on the company to his supervisor.

“As it says, they claim to deal in ores, specifically, Iron and Copper, along with finished Industrial resources, such as Screws, Iron products, Aluminum products, and other such stuff. Although our Jupiter Branch says that they will soon be venturing into the semiconductor business as well.”

Suddenly, the supervisor could not help but burst out laughing.

“What does a company that deals with such things want to do with Mobile Suite grade Ahab reactors? Reject that request. But approve the request for ship-grade Ahab reactors. The poor sobs will need to transport their inane goods somehow, right? Also, when you leave the room, lock the door behind you. I’ll need to speak with Mercy about this.”

The intern swiftly carried out his orders and approved the request for three starship-grade Ahab reactors for sale to the company while rejecting the request for trade of the Mobile Suite ones.

The moment he did so, on the other side of the solar system, a certain AI on Pluto received the news and felt a certain level of displeasure at the rejection.

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I felt a sudden chill go down my spine as I worked on building walls around my factories to shield them from view, alongside finding ways to improve the Mobile Worker designs with ADA’s help.

Why do I feel like someone somewhere is going to have a very bad day?

Shaking my head to get rid of those thoughts, I turned back to the task at hand.

“So, how goes our acquisition of land on Mars?”

“Suboptimal, Administrator. While the prospect of buying the land itself is not hard, the problem arises when we eventually establish our base of operations over there. From what I managed to gather, we will have to give up full automation of our factories on Mars if we ever venture there, since the laws over there are rather strict and the Gjallarhorn branch is much more active compared to the Jupiter branch.”

“You mean to say that we will have to hire actual employees on Mars instead of just employees on paper if we want to establish a presence over there?”

“Correct. A prospect that I feel is very inefficient. There is a reason why FICSIT developed an entire Industry worth of automated tools. Introducing humans into anything leads to errors and the possibility of failure beyond acceptable thresholds.”

I felt insulted at her words, but I cannot deny the truth either.

Humans really are a headache to deal with.

Having human employees and workers always leads to problems such as revolts, traitors, unions, unreasonable demands, occupational hazards to their health, which leads to redesigning the machines to be much more inefficient than they need to be, and the list goes on and on.

Not to mention the additional costs of paying them, giving them healthcare, living quarters, bonuses, and other such expenditures on top of maintaining the machines as well.

A complete loss all around. Especially when I am trying to reach the top of the food chain as soon as possible.

However, I also need to leave Pluto as quickly as possible. This Dwarf planet does not have much in the way of resources, and what it has is not enough for me or ADA to achieve anything that we want to do.

This means that I will have to leave this place and move somewhere else.

With the resources we managed to buy from the Jupiter colonies, illegally and legally, we managed to build a temporary signal booster for ADA to work with, which allowed her to perform scans on the various planets and moons, searching for prospective locations to establish our next base of operations in a year or so.

It would be very suspicious for us to move our HQ immediately after registering, after all.

From what ADA found, many of the nearby celestial bodies are rich in minerals and materials, but they are not as evenly distributed as I am comfortable with.

Except for Mars and, to a lesser extent, Venus.

The red planet has many cities across its surface since it has already been terraformed in the past, before the Calamity War. However, much of its surface is still up for grabs since the population on the planet is comparatively low, even when compared to a regular space colony.

A perfect location to establish a permanent base.

However, with ADA's new discovery, it does not look like that good of a prospect anymore.

“I have a plan, Administrator.”

“I am listening.”

“I suggest you establish a base on Mars and hire the humans to work for you, even if it reduces the output of our ‘products’. However, we will also keep the Pluto base running as well, keeping it as an auxiliary base and the testing grounds for our weapon systems and other prototypes that we cannot test without drawing the attention of the authorities.”

“And what about the company? It will be very suspicious if our output falls drastically compared to when we are running things from Pluto.”

“I have another plan in place for that scenario. We will establish a new R&D department around the same time we establish the Martian base. We will claim that our R&D is taking up most of the resources, hence the fall in our output capacity.”

“….A good idea, but not perfect. We will workshop it further. We still have a year to think about it. Also, how are things looking on the Transportation side of things?”

“Much better. I have already gone through the designs we stole for the various cargo haulers and modified them according to our requirements and standards. We have also been approved to purchase three Ahab Reactors from Gjallarhorn for our ships, although they denied the purchase for the Mobile Suite grade reactors.”

Ah! That’s why I felt the chill from earlier.

ADA was annoyed by the denial of her request.

Sucks to be them, I suppose. Especially since they have now undoubtedly earned the ire of my AI.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

ADA brought up the designs of the new ship on my HUD, as I felt pretty impressed by the design.

It was strictly utilitarian with a few design elements and changes here and there. But overall, it was a near replica of our old ship upon which we arrived in this universe, except with a lot of its internals modified to work with the Ahab reactor instead of the standard FCSIT Anti-Matter reactor.

Which is a good thing since the Ahab reactors are practically a pseudo-perpetual motion machine that can generate power semi-permanently.

It is the Minovsky physics equivalent of this universe, the technology that changed the course of history.

Unfortunately, the secrets of its manufacturing and its inner workings are heavily classified and kept off records, so much so that even ADA was unable to find anything about them, even after breaking into Gjallarhorn HQ and scouring through their data.

And it was not just the Ahab reactor, but also the secrets of the various banned technologies that Gjallarhorn kept under a tight lock and key. A healthy level of paranoia to have, but one that is working against me right now.

Right now, Gjallarhorn has a strict monopoly on Ahab reactor manufacturing, making it nearly impossible to gain a new reactor without proper clearance and heavy scrutiny.

At least, that is what is supposed to happen anyway.

Again, let's just say that I know which palms to grease and which lives to threaten to get my way most of the time.

Hopefully, once we get our reactors, ADA and I will be able to reverse-engineer the technology and make our own reactors.

“The design looks good. What is the projection looking like for the fabrication?”

“ETA is twelve hours per ship, and the resource drain will empty our current stockpile of resources, including everything that we bought from the Jupiter Sphere.”

“…Fuck. That is freakishly expensive.”

“Of course it is, Administrator. I am not building the inferior machinery that these humans call ‘Spaceships’. I am building ships that meet FICSIT standard.”

“Whatever you say, ADA.”

With that, I got back to work on modifying the Mobile Worker, letting the AI do its thing.

Soon, I will have access to ships that will start delivering cargo according to the contract I drew up with SAU, allowing a steady stream of credits and reputation to roll in.

This will finally allow me to start the first step of my plan.

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ADA's new spaceship, FICSIT Inc. Cargo Hauler: