Chapter 112: Business Trip

Chapter 112: Business Trip

I stole glances over at the vice president of Ferrumus Corp, Bi Sun, as he continued to stare at the screens before us that showed various drone footage from around the world.

He hadn’t answered for a few minutes since I mentioned a potential cooperative opportunity that would also undermine one of their rivals, Virtue Corp.

I didn’t want to rush him, so I could only wait patiently while taking sips from my glass.

It was only when my cup was almost empty that he finally broke his silence.

“I believe there is some merit to hearing what you have to say. I must warn you though, our company has been quite busy recently with recovering from the war and our size sometimes slows our decision-making, especially when it comes to these non-urgent matters.”

I swallowed as I processed what he was saying. I believe he was saying, in the typical corpo roundtable fashion, that his company was divided on the matter regarding their rivals and this wasn’t something he could decide alone.

“Shall we arrange a meeting for us to discuss in detail, then?” I asked.

“Acceptable.” He took another sip of his drink. “I can arrange a meeting in two days, at our branch headquarters. Here are the details.”

I quickly read over the file he sent for the time and place. There wasn’t anything special consideration I had to take note of except for how to get to the meeting place. Inside the file, there were security codes and a warning to arrive no earlier than fifteen minutes.

It was so detailed because Ferrumus Corp’s branch headquarters wasn’t actually in Aegis, but in a separate space station that orbited Earth. Without following the instructions with the relevant security codes, any ship that approached them would be blown to pieces. That wasn’t even something I had to be worried about right now because I didn’t even have a ship to bring me there in the first place!

Not long after he sent me the meeting details, his daughter ran back toward him from the neural pods. Seeing how it wasn’t likely for us to speak further, I silently slipped away and went back to our group’s seats.

I nodded at Amos, who seemed relieved nothing had gone wrong while I communicated with Thorne about our upcoming plans. We silently spent the remaining time there until our shuttle came to bring us back.

As soon as we boarded the shuttle, I turned to Amos.

“Do you know any pilots we could hire within a day or two?”

I had tried searching for a ship to get to Ferrumus in two days while we had waited for the shuttle, but all rental services needed to be booked a few days in advance to schedule a pilot. If we wanted to fly there on such short notice, we would have to convince one of the other ships to ferry us there or find a pilot ourselves and rent a ship.

“Hmm...”

He wordlessly sent over a payment request for five thousand credits for consultation fees. Once I paid, he sent over several contact information.

With nothing better to do while our shuttle ferried us back, I got to work and began reaching out to our potential pilots.

Two days later, we headed for the rental company in the early morning. We were all decked in either power armor or spacesuits as we prepared for our trip today.

When we got there, a tall woman was already waiting for us outside the rental office in a skintight spacesuit.

“Nice to meet you in person, Priya.” I swiftly greeted our pilot for the day.

“Sir,” she said as she sized us up, especially at our power armor.

She didn’t seem to be a talker, so we quickly went inside to finish the procedures of the rental. It wasn’t complicated on my end when I had ample funds to place as a deposit and our pilot had the proper licenses, but our pilot insisted she inspects the ship herself before we finalized the deal.

The employee at the office led us past a security gate where there was no artificial gravity on the other side. We barely had time to adjust to the lack of gravity as the employee didn’t loiter and headed straight to the nearby elevator, where they entered a bunch of commands into the terminal before hurrying us in. I watched the elevator go up several floors and then laterally for some time before it came to a full stop.

The doors opened to a spacious hanger where a small ship was floating in the center, with several chains keeping it in place. Priya didn’t wait a second before jumping off the ground, floating up toward the gunmetal grey ship.

She brushed her hand across its hull as she made her way around it, using the propulsion system in her suit. It shot out gusts of air through various exhausts on the suit to help her navigate through the zero-g environment. She circled the ship once before heading toward a hatch and turned back to the employee who had guided us here.

“Open it up.”

Even through the helmet of the spacesuit, we could all feel her impatient gaze. The employee quickly floated up toward her and entered the passcode into a terminal next to the hatch. As soon as it opened, Priya rushed in, followed by the helpless employee who had to keep watch over their company’s equipment.

The figure of both of them disappeared, and we didn’t dawdle any longer as we moved to catch up. I also took this time to test out the modified jetpack I had equipped our power armor with to propel myself up.

The powered armor was connected to my SAID, so to activate the jetpack, all I needed was a simple mental command.

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EXP:

2130/2300

Musculoskeletal:

211

Neural Reflex:

65

Visuomotor Coordination:

87

Endurance:

59

Sensory Perception:

127

Upgrade Points:

0

Upgrades:

Stealth +7Hacking +5Cybernetic Engineering +10Stealth Technology +10Software Engineering +8Electrical Engineering +10

Enhancements:

SAID: Zenitech Sebastien v2

Bio-Coprocessor: SocialCorp Lightning II

Optics: Mirage Tech Clear-Sights mk.12

Cyberarm (Left): Nova Tech Heracle Mk. 3

Cyberarm (Right): Nova Tech Heracle Mk. 3

Auditory: SocialCorp Echo IV

Vocal: SocialCorp Orator III

Cardiovascular: BioGen Lifepump 5

Sensory: Halls Corp Argus Elite Custom

Additional Processing: Halls Corp Custom ST

Miscellaneous: Halls Corp HSU Custom Shade

Just as another round was about to start, an alarm blared out from the intercom, bewildering all of us. None of us were trained in how to operate a spaceship, so if anything went wrong, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do.

Priya’s voice soon rang out.

“There’s a ship that’s—” We could hear the distress in her voice before it got cut off by the violent shaking of the ship that threatened to throw us onto the floor.