Chapter 114: The Great Grain Robbery (Sort Of)

The common room was so silent you could hear a circuit board hum. Then, a heartbeat later, the room exploded into a chorus of "You’ve got to be kidding me."

"Oh, come on, Taro. That’s literally impossible. What are you even smoking?"

"Food production is a nightmare of specialized know-how and proprietary secrets! Where on earth do you expect to find someone willing to just hand that over?"

"Exactly! If it were that easy, the locals would have done it ages ago to stop themselves from starving!"

"It’s a fun little daydream, I suppose," another added with a sigh, "but let’s be real. Is it actually possible?"

One by one, they pelted Taro with verbal brickbats, their faces painted with varying shades of disappointment. But the cacophony died an instant death when Koume spoke up in her usual, eerily calm tone.

"I see. So that’s the play."

It was a short sentence, but her voice sliced through the room like a heated vibro-blade. Everyone turned to look at her, faces frozen in disbelief. Seizing the momentum, Taro stepped back into the spotlight.

"Look, I get it," Taro said, holding up his hands. "The 'problem' is that food production is high-effort, high-tech, and costs a metric ton of credits and time to set up. I do run a Food Production Department, believe it or not. I’m not totally clueless."

He flashed a grin that was about eighty percent mischief. "But what if..."

He leaned in, his eyes gleaming. "What if we had something that grows at light-speed and is packed with calories? Something with a proven flavor profile and zero toxicity. It grows at one atmosphere, one G, and can handle a temperature swing of sixty degrees. All it needs is nutrient-slop and water. The equipment is so basic you could repurpose a literal trash compactor to grow it. It’s a total cheat. Honestly, all you need is a bucket and a handful of this 'Magic Grain' and you’re basically a god of agriculture, right?"

He looked around the room with a casual shrug. "Right?"

Sakura slammed her hands onto the table, her face turning a vibrant shade of insulted crimson. "Are you mocking us?! There is no such thing as a miracle crop!"

But before she could launch into a full-blown lecture, Marl’s eyes went wide. She let out a gasp that sounded like a vacuum seal breaking.

"............Rice!"

Despite the galaxy being a total mess, the Takasaki Shipbuilding yards were humming at full throttle. While most EAP factories were churning out sleek warships, the Niigata Star System facility was busy mass-producing something... weird.

"Hey, Bill. What the hell is this thing supposed to be?"

A shipyard worker squinted at the endless line of metallic cylinders rolling off the assembly line.

"Search me," his buddy replied, not looking up from his terminal. "Management is playing 'I’ve Got a Secret.' Rumor is they’re decoys. Stuff 'em with C4 and ram 'em into an Alliance blockade, probably."

The first worker scratched his helmet. "They don't even have Turret mounts. It’s just a Life Support System, an engine, and two measly Debris Incineration Beams. Is the company planning to flee the sector in a fleet of tin cans?"

He shook his head, baffled. The shipyard had already pumped out hundreds of these mystery tubes, and the orders were "Unlimited"—which in corporate-speak meant "don't stop until the machines melt."

Calling the cylindrical objects "ships" was an insult to ships. They were the bare minimum required to move through space without exploding. They had a thin shell to keep the radiation out, but as for armor? Forget it. In fact, some sections of the hull were practically translucent, letting in ultraviolet and visible light like a cheap greenhouse.

They weren't modular, either. You couldn't upgrade them. You could technically dock another module to the outside, but the engine was so weak that if you tried to plug in a shield or a Turret, the whole ship would probably pop a fuse.

"No cryo-pods? No living quarters?" the worker grumbled. "What are those long shelves for, then? Are they honestly going to stack people on them like cordwood? That’s dark, man."

Most of the interior was taken up by long, spindly racks and a network of pipes. The pipes were riddled with holes at regular intervals, clearly designed to spray something, but for the life of him, the worker couldn't imagine what.

"President. We’ve received a... donation of vessels from a company called Rising Sun."

In a star system deep within Enzio territory, a construction mogul looked up from his desk, his brow furrowed. "Rising Sun? Never heard of 'em. Are they EAP?"

"No, sir. They seem to be an independent outfit, but their paperwork suggests they’re very much 'Not Fans' of the Alliance. It’s all a bit confusing."

The mogul’s frown deepened. "Ships? Is it a bomb? A Trojan horse? And how the hell did they get them past the border?"

"We’ve scanned them top to bottom, sir. Nothing dangerous. No idea how they got here, but they came with a very polite set of instructions. And, well... it seems they’re telling the truth."

"Let me see that... Seedlings? Cultivation requirements?"

The man pulled up the data on his BISHOP interface. He started reading with a look of pure skepticism, which slowly melted into shock, and finally settled on wide-eyed, jaw-dropping terror.

"You... did you tell anyone about this? Is there a report for the higher-ups?!"

"N-no, sir! Not yet! I’m sorry, I’ll file it immed—"

"DON'T YOU DARE!" the man roared. "Keep your mouth shut! I need to make a call... now!"

With trembling fingers, he opened an encrypted channel. He wasn't calling the government. He was calling the Resistance.

"An Emergency Line? It’s from Murdoch..." A Resistance leader stared at his screen. "Look! He got them too!"

The secret network used by the Resistance was lighting up like a Christmas tree. From dozens of different star systems, the reports were identical.

"President, the Bioengineering Department just finished the tests. The 'grain' is clean. No toxins, no hazards, no hidden genetic kill-switches. It’s exactly what the manual says it is."

"YES! Get into production! Now! Before the Alliance Government catches wind of this! I want every other ship project scrapped!"

"Sir? All of them? The Alliance will have our heads!"

"Who cares?! Listen, they might seize the ships we just got. Fine. They’ll find some legal loophole to steal our property, because that’s what those vultures do. But—"

The man let out a jagged, wicked laugh.

"Any new ships we build based on this design? Those are ours. Completely. There’s no copyright, no patent, no nothing. It’s just a basic tube. The Alliance won't have a legal leg to stand on to stop us from growing our own food. We just have to act like happy little citizens who are thrilled to finally have a snack. And if they still try to take it away..."

He grinned, a expression of pure, unadulterated malice.

"The Alliance will lose every shred of public support they have left. And that is the one thing they can't afford."

It went exactly as the Resistance had hoped.

The Enzio Alliance Government, with its total control over the local networks, had spotted the Seedlings almost immediately—Taro hadn't just sent them to the rebels, after all. But they were slow. If they had been a monolithic entity like the Empire, they might have reacted in time. But the Alliance was a three-headed dog where each head was trying to bite the others.

By the time they realized the "Magic Grain" was a threat to their monopoly, it was too late. The people were hungry, and taking their new food away was a recipe for a revolution that would make the current Resistance look like a book club.

When the government finally decided to move in and seize the "suspicious vessels" two weeks later, the delay was fatal. The Seedlings were everywhere. The new ships were already being built in every backyard shipyard in the sector.

The real kicker was how absurdly hardy the crop was. It could grow anywhere humans could breathe. Usually, growing space-plants required a degree in bio-chemistry and a machine the size of a house to simulate a specific planet's climate. Plants were high-maintenance divas.

But this stuff? Within a month, people were growing it in the back of cargo ships and in the dusty corners of Residential Stations. Confiscating it all was like trying to punch the ocean. The locals were a bit weirded out by the taste and the concept of "natural food," but once they realized they didn't have to rely on Alliance rations, they were hooked.

"Are you sure about this, President? This product could have made us more money than a small moon."

Heinlein, the head of the Rising Sun Food Development Department, looked at Taro with a pained expression. He held a data chip containing the complete blueprints and "How-to-Grow-Rice" guide that had been shoved into every ship sent to Enzio.

"Yeah, I know. We moved the schedule up, but it was bound to happen anyway," Taro said, leaning back in his chair. "I mean, it’s a seedling. You grow it, you get more seeds. It’s self-replicating."

It was a nightmare from a business perspective. You couldn't DRM a plant. Sure, they could have sold processed rice, but you can't hide DNA. Eventually, someone would have figured it out.

"We could have held the monopoly for a few years, at least," Heinlein sighed. "But I suppose this is one way to do it."

Taro hadn't been completely altruistic. He’d filed patents for a few key genetic sequences within the Enzio systems. The royalties were pathetic, and the chances of actually getting paid were slim to none, but he didn't care. This wasn't a product. It was a tactical nuke.

"If even a couple of companies pay up, we’ll be fine. Plus, they’re doing all the hard work of growing it locally now. Though, honestly, we never could have pulled this off without that initial EAP funding."

They had sent out over a thousand of those mini-Agricultural Stations "free of charge," complete with the blueprints to build more. If a hungry star system got hold of that tech, they weren't going to let it go.

"Anyway," Taro muttered, his expression shifting to one of genuine annoyance. "The real problem is this."

He looked down at his hand, rolling a small, dull stone between his fingers. It was Razor Metal ore—the literal backbone of the Galactic Empire’s infrastructure.

"Resources. I have absolutely no clue how to disrupt the supply chain for this stuff. Now what do I do?"