CH 305

After successfully selling off the foreign high-speed small-class combat ship we snagged from the Red Flags to Space Dwerg, we next made our way to the shipyard.

“Boss really had them on the ropes huh?”

“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’d do with 1.8 million……”

The mechanic sisters whispered to each other while trailing after us.

I thought that Tina and Whisker would need to stay behind in the company for work, but it seems that it will take some time to analyze the starship we brought in, select the personnel who will conduct the research, and review the report submitted by the sisters. So, for now, they were told to continue their original assignment – working as my ship mechanics.

I’m not sure if it’s really due to assigning personnel and allocating tasks taking some time or my threats taking effect though…… Well, having pro mechanics accompany me when choosing a new starship is a nice outcome, in any case. The two of them are industry insiders after all. I can expect expert advice from them from a different perspective compared to mercenaries like me and Elma.

“Aren’t we going to visit the branch offices of other ship makers?”

“That would be more advisable in places where Space Dwerg has an overwhelming presence like the Brad system, but in places where the competition between companies is going strong, it’s more convenient to go to the shipyard directly.”

Elma explained the situation to Mimi after hearing her question. In SOL, you simply needed to browse a game menu while inside a colony to access the shipyard stock for buying and selling ships, but in this world, we’d have to go around and visit them ourselves.

Eh? Why don’t we just transact using holo comms or something inside our ship? Well, it’s not like you can’t do that, but it looks like very few folks buy ships that way.

“Un, considering Elma-san’s piloting preferences, we should be getting a highly mobile ship, right?”

“Yep. Basically, what folks look fer in small-class ships are speed and maneuverability.”

“The downside is the trade-off between those and overall firepower. There’s also the power output to consider.”

Tina and Whisker seemed to have shifted the discussion to the ship Elma will be piloting.

Just like Tina said, what’s generally sought for in small-class ships are speed and maneuverability. How much firepower you can stuff in them without compromising those has been a constant issue for ship makers. Since you naturally can only fit a small power generator inside a small-class ship, the energy output will consequently be limited, so balancing between maneuverability (thrusters and boosters) and firepower ( laser cannons and the like) has always been a headache-inducing problem for ship makers.

“There’s the option of supplementing firepower by usin’ ballistic and explosive weapons though.”

“It’s true that multi-cannons, seeker missiles, and torpedo launchers require less energy to operate, but they can be pretty heavy after all.”

“That’s a pretty big issue fer small-class ships. And aside from the weight, the maximum loadout is also a problem.”

“Krishna’s such a huge cheat in that respect.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

I responded to Elma’s reproachful gaze with a shrug.

Well, it’s true that Krishna’s a high-performance ship that’s pretty close to cheating. Even though it’s considered as only one of the largest small-class ships, the power output of its special generator actually surpasses most medium-class ships.

Thanks to that, it has more than enough mobility thanks to its powerful thrusters, it’s equipped with equally powerful energy shields, and there’s also plenty of room left to handle multiple heavy laser cannons. Of course, even though it boasts pretty exceptional performance among small-class ships, it still wouldn’t be able to compete with imperial battleships and cruisers in a head-to-head confrontation. It also wouldn’t be able to match up in terms of energy shield performance. Krishna is definitely a pretty powerful small-class ship, but it’s by no means invincible.

“What kind of ship do you prefer, Elma-san?”

“Performance is important, of course. But aesthetics is also important.”

“That so?”

“I kind of get that.”

“Is that really the case?”

Tina and Mimi tilted their heads to the side after hearing Elma’s words, and Whisker nodded in understanding. I’m more of a performance guy instead of a looks guy, but I don’t have any problem with Elma’s claim that looks are also important. I’d also rather pick a cool-looking ship if I didn’t consider performance after all.

“How about you, Big Brother?”

“It’s not really my style to focus on appearance, but I think it won’t do good for motivation if you simply pick a ship with good performance but doesn’t match your taste.”

“That’s a pretty wishy-washy answer y’know.”

“That’s just how it is. If you really like the looks of your ship, then you probably wouldn’t like to see it damaged. Conversely, if you don’t like its looks, you’d probably handle the ship pretty roughly and wouldn’t care if it gets damaged.”

“I see. Come to think of it, that does seem to be the case.”

It looks like Tina was convinced by my explanation. Actually, the feeling you get when looking at a ship after it gets completely assembled and repainted and going all『The heck, this is really cool. It’s the best, ain’t it?』can’t be made light of. I think the feelings sailors have for their ships is also very important.

We continued to discuss such stuff while moving within the colony (mostly through the transportation system instead of actually walking) until we finally arrived at the shipyard.

“Hee, so it’s this kinda place huh.”

Tina exclaimed while sounding quite impressed after looking around. To be honest, I was kinda pleasantly surprised too. It was a swankier place than what I initially expected after all.

“It kind of gives off a vibe similar to the Black Lotus’ break room, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I was wondering why it seemed kinda familiar. So that’s it.”

Whisker nodded in understanding after hearing Mimi’s remark. The beautiful-looking sofas and long tables, the ornamental plants and terrariums installed in various spots, and the holo-displays that played starship advertisements were all reminiscent of the break room of the Black Lotus.

“The booths for each company are located at the back huh.”

It’s kinda like the motor shows I see on the news back on Earth.

“That’s right. You can check out the ships over there, and you can discuss deals at the back. Do you wanna look around first?”

“Un, wouldn’t it be better if we had a consensus about what type of ship we’re aiming to purchase first?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s true. I’ve also been considering it a lot, so let me hear your opinions too.”

And so, we decided to have a quick discussion at the customer lounge space near the front before going over to the company booths.

“I want a ship that’s both fast and packs a decent amount of firepower…… What do you guys think?”

After she finished ordering drinks and got to her seat, Elma started the discussion.

“I see. Well, that does make sense if you’re going solo, and even more so when you’re gonna work as part of a team.”

I nodded at Elma’s words. However, Mimi and the others didn’t seem to get it and they all tilted their heads to the side.

“In other words…… what does that mean?”

“In other words, if we want to stick to our current style, we should choose a ship with a clear concept that would effectively fill the gaps in our formation and supplement our strengths. Conversely, if we want to change things up, we need to choose a ship that would complement the new style we’re going for.”

“I see……?”

Mimi still didn’t seem to get it after hearing Elma’s explanation, but Tina and Whisker seemed to have been convinced – or rather, they seemed to have understood what we were getting at. This is the difference between the sisters who have been involved in designing and remodeling starships for many years from a technical point of view and Mimi who has never been involved in such things until she boarded my ship.

“Isn’t our current pirate hunting style basically fishing for them using bait? Black Lotus is used as a decoy, and the pirates who get attracted would be ambushed by Hiro’s Krishna, with the Lotus deploying its weapons to pincer them and provide support fire.”

“Yes, that’s the usual flow.”

Mimi nodded in agreement. It sounds easy enough, but if Black Lotus gets detected before I’ve finished setting up an ambush, the operation would be a bust, so it actually takes skill to pull it off.

Well, let’s leave out that topic for now.

“That’s why, currently, we can hardly prevent pirates from slipping away whenever a gap appears.”

“True. Come to think of it, that does seem to be how it is.”

If only one or two ships run away, we can probably still catch up to them after some time. But if four, five, or more ships make a run for it, it would be difficult to take down all of them. They scatter all over the place when trying to make their escape after all. As if conspiring beforehand…… though it’s actually how the situation is in any case, we advanced our discussion.

“So if we want to patch up the hole in our current set-up, we need to consider procuring a ship that has good pursuit capabilities, and if we want to be more thorough about it, we should aim for shooting down every target before they even attempt to escape in the first place.”

“I understand now.”

“Now that Mimi’s finally convinced, let’s proceed to exactly what type of ship we’re gonna go for. If you wanna have both pursuit capabilities and ample firepower at the same time, I think a missile ship equipped with missile pods is a good way to go.”

“But the maximum operation time will take a hit because of the extra weight the missile pods will add to the ship.”

“True. But since the missile pods require less energy to operate, you can use the rest to power the thrusters. Wouldn’t that ensure a certain level of mobility?”

“Yeah. Also, firing the missiles will gradually reduce the weight, so you can speed up even more.”

The more ammunition is expended, the lighter the craft gets, so as a result, the craft would go faster even with the same thruster output. It’s possible to purge the missile pods after you’ve expended all their missiles, but…… those things are expensive, so that’s usually not considered. Yep. Though doing so is kinda a man’s romance in a sense.

If you purged those missile pods in the middle of combat maneuvers, chances are they’d get blown away to the far reaches of space at high speeds, making it next to impossible to retrieve them. No matter how much budget you had, purging the missile pods each and every time you engage in combat will result in decimating your wallet at Mach speed. The missiles themselves are already costly enough as it is.

“In that case, it’s the running costs that we need to be concerned about, right?”

“That’s right. We don’t really engage in drawn-out battles anyway, and we can always return to Black Lotus for resupplying and refueling in between engagements, so we don’t need to focus much on uptime. Just like Mimi said, it’s the cost of the seeker missiles that we need to consider.”

“Those things are surprisingly expensive after all.”

After saying so, Elma put one hand on her cheek and sighed. The price per shot of a commonly used seeker missile type ranges from roughly 500 to 800 Enels. If converted to standard Japanese Yen, the price seems extremely cheap, but this is mainly due to the reduction in manufacturing costs due to the use of replicators, reduction in material costs due to improvements in asteroid belt mining and other space mining tech, and the subsidies provided by the Mercenary Guild. It’s the result of these several factors.

The biggest contributor to the lowering of ammo prices is the existence of replicators that can create most things with the touch of a button, including advanced guidance devices, as long as there was enough basic data and materials. But it’s not like you can create anything with it. Without the requisite data, it’s impossible to reproduce things with a replicator, and there are certain materials that are incompatible with a replicator as well. Hence, replicators aren’t omnipotent.

“Even if it’s only about 500 to 800 Enels per shot, if you fire an average of 20 shots per battle, you’d be looking at an expense of 10,000 to 16,000 Enels. We would be making a loss instead of profiting more often than not.”

Compared to the anti-ship reactive torpedo that costs 500,000 Enels per shot, the cost was significantly lower, but it’s not like we fire those torpedoes like there was no tomorrow. If your only concern was surviving or winning in combat, it was fine to expend all the firepower you could, but mercenary work is basically a business after all.

“Blowing up pirates with seeker missiles will cause a lot of damage to the exterior of their ships, so there’s a good chance of damaging laser cannons, multi-cannons, thrusters, and such that are equipped on their ships, right?”

“Yeah. And as a result, the costs will pile up and we wouldn’t be able to get as much returns as usual.”

“It sounds like there are more downsides than advantages though……”

Mimi groaned while scrunching her eyebrows.

“Man, those things are really troublesome. Those darn missiles. Explosions can easily saturate energy shields, so if a ship takes a hit directly, the hull gets damaged a lot. That means the stuff attached to it like weapon systems and thrusters get wrecked as well, bringing down its overall combat capability. That’s why using them yourself is troublesome, and I definitely don’t wanna get hit by them so I gotta make sure to dodge or shoot them down.”

“I gotta say this though. Only weirdos like you dodge seeker missile barrages while humming and whistling without care, Hiro. We can’t just choose a ship with speed enough to shake off seeker missiles as its sole advantage. Also, I definitely can’t shoot down an entire barrage of missiles with laser cannons alone, and even if there are energy shields, a small-class ship will be wasted instantly the moment it eats just two direct hits.”

Getting “wasted” means the shields getting completely saturated and brought down in mercenary-speak. In other words, it’s the state when a starship is completely defenseless after losing its shields. Krishna’s armor is particularly high-quality so even if its shields are brought down, it can still take one or two direct hits, but more than that would definitely be dangerous. In the case of a general lightweight small-class starship that emphasizes speed at the expense of toughness, two direct hits of seeker missiles will definitely bring it down.

“Un, I see. So, are we getting a missile ship then?”

“Let’s see. In terms of overall range, firepower and speed, it does seem to make the cut.”

“Also, the target wouldn’t be able to easily activate the FTL drive while being chased by seeker missiles. A strategy where Hiro with Krishna serves as the main attacker while I concentrate on pinning the target down with missiles doesn’t sound bad at all, I think.”

Elma then added that she also wanted some laser cannons as secondary weapons. Shortly after, drinks were finally delivered to our table, so we took the chance to have a short breather.

“Come to think of it, is there any particular reason why we need to stick to choosing a small-class ship?”

Mimi suddenly asked such a sharp question.

“Un, that’s quite sharp of you. I also think we don’t have to be particularly focused on small-class starships, actually.”

I agreed with Mimi’s opinion. Judging from her unsurprised expression, it seemed Elma was also thinking the same thing. The mechanic sisters tilted their heads to the side in tandem.

“Black Lotus’ hangar is only fer small ships y’know. Ain’t it impossible to stick a medium-class ship inside it?”

“But it will work on the premise of not heading to the Lotus’ hangar for maintenance, right? Sure, a small-class ship can undergo maintenance inside the Lotus. But then, we wouldn’t be able to stuff and restore a captured ship inside it just like we did this time because the new ship will be taking up the space.”

“Ah, I see. We’d only be able to store one captured ship at a time if we buy a small-class ship, so if we captured two, the ship will need to vacate the hangar in order to free up space. If that’s the case, then buying a medium-class ship and not worrying about parking it inside the hangar in the first place does make sense.”

The two quickly understood where we were coming from. Mimi was making an expression that seemed to say 『I see!』, but I bet she was only curious about why we were so focused on small-class ships earlier and didn’t think of the particular details like the sisters.

“Alright then, shall we discuss medium-class ships next guys?”

And so, we moved from discussing small-class ships to medium-class ones.