Scavenged Restoration 53

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 53

-VB-

Styk.

The world that broke the Federated Suns. 

Over a dozen heavy mech regiments had come down on Styk with the intent to force its inhabitants to become an unwilling supplicant of their First Prince. 

Instead, they found only ruin. 

Her world destroyed eight mech regiments in full. She and her people mauled another six regiments. It was no small thing to say that a single world which managed to do this without being a natural fortress world, a regional capital or even the national capital gave its people a lot of prestige and pride. 

For Samantha Boshirov, the Diem of Styk, the Fourth Succession War had been a glorious event. While she had not participated in the frontlines, she had dedicated almost fourteen hours each day to the war effort in her own ways. 

The once heavyset woman sat in her old chair at the Parliament of Styk’s office for the Diem, and felt … content. 

Then there were knocks. 

She sat up straighter in her seat and glared ahead. As a Diem and a member of the directorship caste, she needed to provide an example of what her caste should be like: calm, firm, serious, and always on the look out.

“Good morning, Your Excellency,” a man spoke up as he entered her office. 

“Good morning, Michael,” she greeted her oldest and most senior secretary. He came from a family locally known for producing many Supporters. While most of them became teachers, logisticians, and accountants, he had become a secretary. He had also served her predecessor. “What’s on the agenda today?” she asked him.

He came to stand in front of her desk and put down multiple folders and datapads. “Currently, the Firebee factory is undergoing some renovations. With the coming of the expected reduction in the need for mass produced light mechs, we are following through with the Chancellor’s orders for slight renovation in how the factory is run.”

“More automation?” she asked with a frown.

“Indeed, diem-ma. Currently, the Firebee factory on our Styk is at 25% automation, and the chancellor wants to bring it up to 40% at the very least by 3035.”

“Hmm,” she muttered. “That will be at least a hundred engineers and workers who will be out of a job, then.”

“It is a concern, yes,” he nodded. “As the diem, you have some power on how our world will approach this problem. Of course, you knew this.”

She snorted. “Of course, I know that. But the chancellor… he must be looking at something we can’t see.”

Michael nodded, his eyes shining with admiration and respect. “He is a far better chancellor than his father.”

“Ssshhh!” she hissed at him. “You don’t know who might be hearing!” 

She really didn’t want to lose Michael because some Maskirovka agent thought that he was somehow disrespecting the Liaos. 

Yes, legally speaking, everyone had the freedom of speech on Styk. However, freedom of speech didn’t stop one from receiving consequences of that speech, especially when one spoke words about the Liao.

The elderly secretary chuckled. “I doubt they will take my words to mean anything bad. Who can deny that our current chancellor has done more than his father did? Objectively, he stopped what should have been the final hour of the confederation.”

She sighed. She understood his words, but that didn’t change the fact that she was still wary. 

It was hard to change just because the chancellor was different from his father. While his father had not been a bad chancellor (and many will loudly proclaim that it was his efforts that kept the confederation in one piece before Chancellor William Liao came to give them glory), he hadn’t been a good person.

More than a few artists and intelligentsia had disappeared here on Styk after speaking of Chancellor Maximilian Liao in a bad light. 

And Chancellor William Liao did stop the final hour of the confederation with his decade long preparation.

Twelve mech regiments should have led to the fall of her planet. Would have had there not been multiple factories churning out mechs and replacement parts at all times. Bigger worlds with more people and more defenders had fallen to less mech regiments during the course of the Third Succession War.

“What else are we looking at?” she asked. 

“Labor transfer has been approved by the chancellor.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

And it was! 

Styk had been attacked yet it had fended off its attackers. However, this didn’t mean there hadn’t been casualties and damages, especially in industrial zones that needed to continue working while the battles broke out mere kilometers from their position in some cases. Not every industrial hubs had been saved by the heroes of the confederation like Tormano Liao. 

She let out a sigh. 

While there were no titles like princes and princesses in the confederation, she had fallen in love with the man when he came back from the final battle in his Cataphract. He had looked so dashing when he came out of the mech’s cockpit and declared victory for Styk and its people. 

Too bad that she was a member of the directorship class and not a noble. Or that the youngest Liao of the current ruling generation was apparently happily married. 

That broke her heart. She’d needed a lot of vodka for that. 

… Didn’t change the fact that he was still dreamy. 

Then she snorted. 

‘The fact that I can daydream about the hero is a sign that I feel safe,’ she thought to herself as she accepted the rest of the paperwork from her secretary, who threw her knowing glances. 

Because she and her people were safe. 

And Styk strived to repay the chancellor for the protection and trust he gave them. 

And the start of that was her lifting up the stamp and pressing it down on the order to start the labor transfer process from nonessential areas to essential ones to help speed up infrastructure recovery across the planet. 

-VB-

Fo Shu Han was a Capellan. 

He was a Capellan with a lot of debt. He was not, however, a bad man. That debt wasn’t something he got for himself or one that he signed up for. All of it had come from his mother, and he’s lived two decades of his adult life just trying to pay it off. 

Because the alternative was getting killed by the mafia. 

“Y-You want me to what?” he asked the man who’d come to see him.

“You can never pay it off and you know it,” the mafia man said before he took a deep pull from his cigarette. Then he let out the smoke with a sigh to the side. At least, this one was nicer than the last guy. “The loan’s interest alone is eating up half of the monthly payment, and with how the interest is going up these days and how the contract ties its interest to the planet’s interest rate, you know that you will soon be working just to pay off the interest.”

Fo Shu gritted his teeth as he looked down.

“One bad day,” the mafia man sighed. “One missed payment and my family comes knocking. And if you can’t pay it off, then your boy will as a grunt of the family. Or your daughter as a server.”

Euphemism for whores. 

“S-So what do you want me to do?”

“We heard that you’re being transferred to Styk. A promotion, they said. Good for you. And all we want you to do is ‘lose’ the keys on the last day of your first work week, ignore that it’s been ‘lost’ for two days, and report it as stolen by some street orphan on the day you’re supposed to go back to work. It happens a lot in Styk, I hear. Of course, you will ‘lose’ the key to our hands, capiche?”

Fo Shu rubbed his hands nervously. “A-And…?”

“My family will come back, and we will rewrite the contract. The interest rate will be capped, a certain whole number percentage will be forgiven, and you will forget what we talked about, what you will do, and what we may do with that access.”

“B-But I’m just a mechanic.”

“Aye. And my family has a few mechs. We need some parts … on the cheap, you know?”

He gulped. 

And pushed his luck. “I want the contract change now. Then I’ll do it.”

The mafia paused and stared at him. 

He felt a shiver run down. His arms and legs shook.

He wondered if he pushed too far. 

Then the man grinned. 

“So you’re not a dumbass like your mum was, eh? Good for you.”

Then he snapped his fingers, and the front door of the house opened. Another mafia man walked in with a datapad and showed him the contract. 

The first mafia man made some changes and handed it over to Fo Shu.

He read it. 

It was just as he said. 

5% forgiven and interest capped to 3%.

He signed it. 

And mentally asked the chancellor for forgiveness for his weakness.

-VB-

Hanse stared down at the datapad. 

It was one of three that was supposed to have been sent out from Styk (‘that damn meat grinder’). It was the only one that arrived to New Avalon. To his hands. The other two had been intercepted and all agents with the datapads had been killed in action. 

What he looked at was a copy of that datapad’s data, and the original was stored deep within NAIS now. 

“And this…?”

“Automation,” Banzai said with awe. “And not the half-broken mess we have in all of our libraries. This is a complete breakdown, manual, and repair guide to automation Star League used in its factories.”

“Star League era automation?” Hanse asked with wide eyes. “We knew that the Capellans had something but…” A pause. “Is this how they were able to make so many of those Firebees?” 

“Has to be,” Arden Sortek grunted. 

Having been caught and humiliated during the Battle of Styk, he had been ransomed back to the Federated Suns at a high cost. Since then, he’s grown a personal hatred of the small fire-loving light mechs the Capellans showered with their patriotism. 

“I agree with the colonel,” Banzai hummed without lifting his eyes up from the manuals. “We know that the Firebee itself is an old design and the equipment they use are also subpar. There is no way the confederation with its fewer factories and weaker industries could have produced as many Firebees as they have now… if they didn’t have this.”

“So what we saw when they were preparing for war…”

“They didn’t prepare like we did. They were restructuring their factories to take advantage of this. That restructuring let them become more efficient, and even if they had a late start to the actual preparation, that efficiency let them overcome our numbers and produce mechs on the worlds that were under siege,” Banzai sighed as he set his datapad down and leaned back into his chair. Almost slouching. “They must have had that memory core for at least a decade. Almost right as he became the chancellor.” Then he also moved the screen to show what the spies saw inside the Capellan factories and their supply lines. “They’re also streamlining their industries. Each world produces everything it needs on the spot, and there are multiple factories, built on loans and grants offered by the confederation.”

Hanse set his datapad down and tapped it. “That’s in the past. We look forward to the future now. We apply this to everything we can. We streamline our industries. Vertically integrate them if we have to, just like the Capellans are doing.”

“And the factory and license owners?” Melissa asked with a frown from his side. 

“They will have to fall in line if they don’t want a repeat of what happened during the Fourth Succession War. If I have to give them incentives, then so be it, but they must modernize with every scrap of technology we can steal from the Capellans.”

He looked to the second datapad.

The one that summarized everything going on within the Capellan Confederation, but most crucially, showed them what they had feared the most since the unveiling of the Capellan warship.

“Because if we don’t, then we’ll be eclipsed by their warship navy soon.”