Chapter 85: The Five-Thousand-Unit Jackpot

The meeting with Dean finally wound down, and Teiro watched him depart with a weary wave. His relief was short-lived, however; Dean’s adjutants swarmed in immediately to begin the grueling, practical side of the negotiations.

Recalling the railgun production costs he’d crammed into his brain, Teiro fought a desperate battle for every last credit of profit. Marl stepped in whenever his common sense failed him—which was often—while Koume provided bursts of data with mechanical precision. Alan was nowhere to be seen, but they kept him on speed dial via BISHOP. Whenever a question about military protocol or red tape cropped up, he was there to provide an answer.

“We’ll proceed in this direction, then. We’ll be in touch if anything else arises.”

The three adjutants offered a crisp, two-finger salute. Teiro and the others returned the gesture with the hollow eyes of the damned. As soon as the door hissed shut, they collapsed into the sofa like a pile of discarded laundry.

“Uuugh, I’m dying... What time is it?”

“It is currently 3:00 AM, Mr. Teiro,” Koume replied, sounding entirely too refreshed. “A marathon session. Well done.”

“Those guys didn’t look tired at all...” Marl groaned, her voice a mere raspy whisper. “So that’s the power of the Imperial Military. Monsters.”

Teiro and Marl were practically melting into the cushions, drained by five hours of high-stakes haggling. Koume, meanwhile, remained as poised as ever. Teiro watched her with pure envy as he rotated his arms to crack his stiff shoulders.

“But man... that was something else, wasn’t it? Hehe.”

Teiro shot a sideways glance at Marl.

“Yeah,” she replied, a mischievous glint returning to her eyes. “It really was. Hehe.”

Koume joined in with a serene, “Yes, quite something.” The laughter they’d been stifling finally exploded.

“Wahaha! We did it! A massive contract!”

“Ahaha, we’re rich! Five thousand units, Teiro! Five thousand! What do we even do? Our factory can’t handle that kind of volume!”

“This is merely the beginning, Miss Marl,” Koume added. “Once the utility is proven, additional orders are inevitable. Given that they are paying almost exactly what we asked for, the projected profit margins are... astronomical.”

The three of them celebrated like they’d just won the galactic lottery, clutching hands and cheering. Once the initial high wore off, however, the cold, hard reality of logistics set in.

“The factory, though... Renting is a waste of money. We’ll have to buy a plant somewhere. Or do we license the production out?”

“Absolutely not!” Marl snapped. “If we do that, they’ll steal our tech before the first check clears!”

“However, Miss Marl,” Koume interjected, “if knock-offs are inevitable, it may be wiser to saturate the market ourselves at an early stage.”

“True, the structure is pretty basic... Wait, but wouldn't the civilian sector have no use for it? It’s not like they’re doing saturation attacks, right?”

Koume wagged a finger in front of his nose.

“Technology waits for no man, Mr. Teiro. I recall that BB Makina is currently developing a very intriguing New-type Railgun. If that project succeeds, I believe we can satisfy civilian demand quite handily.”

Teiro broke into a cold sweat. Wait, did a report like that actually cross my desk? To hide his sudden lapse in memory, he leapt to his feet with forced enthusiasm and declared they were heading to the development labs immediately.

The Katsushika Industrial Station was a testament to the power of Teiro’s wallet.

Built as an extension of Katsushika Station 1, the two were linked by a single, massive, pipe-like corridor. From a distance, the whole thing looked like an iron dumbbell with a terrifyingly thin handle. To anyone unfamiliar with the absurd tensile strength of [STRENGTH FIBER], it looked like it was one sneeze away from snapping in half.

True to its name, the Industrial Station was designed to house various manufacturing modules. Even though it was still a construction site, modules were already docking in a constant stream. Teiro had footed the bill to move the original factories from Station 1 over to the new hub via Rising Sun. As the station bloated in size, keeping the 'work' and 'home' areas separate was vital.

“Sectors four through nine are officially online,” Marl said, tapping away at her handheld terminal. “Eleven through sixteen won’t be ready until next month, but the leases are already signed. Business is booming.”

Teiro watched her work with a mix of admiration and nausea as he clung for dear life to the railing of the High-speed Moving Lane. No matter how many times he rode it, he could never get used to the stomach-flipping sensation of the lane switching from high-speed acceleration to a dead-stop deceleration.

“I don’t know, calling this a ‘station’ feels generous. To me, it just looks like an ugly heap of scrap metal.”

To Teiro’s eyes, the station was a chaotic thicket of struts protruding like a metallic hedgehog. Eventually, it would grow into a massive, organized megastructure like other modular stations, but for now, it looked like a Dadaist sculpture gone horribly wrong.

“Every station starts out as an eyesore, Teiro. I’ve never built one before, but we’re following the blueprints to the letter. Look, there’s another one.”

Marl pointed. A Work Ship was currently towing a Block-type Module toward a waiting strut. A private spacecraft—presumably belonging to the company that owned the module—hovered nearby like an anxious parent. Its cargo hold was wide open and completely empty.

“So my room is basically just a LEGO brick like that? No wonder moving was so fast. But what happens if you need to pull out a block from the middle? Is it like a giant game of Jenga?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. There are dedicated heavy-load lanes for removals. Everything, even the massive warehouses, is designed to be broken down into these minimum units. Size doesn't matter; they can pull anything out.”

“Got it. So what if I want to expand the interior? Do I have to go all mob-boss and buy out the neighbors?”

“We don’t use 'yakuza' tactics, Mr. Teiro,” Koume said. “The solution is simple: you just add more struts to the core. Every module in the sector gets pushed further out from the center. It costs a bit more in structural engineering, but it’s much cheaper than a hostile takeover.”

“Well, someone thought this through,” Teiro muttered. As the lane decelerated, the G-force flipped, and he skillfully rotated his body to lead with his feet. Marl and Koume followed suit with effortless grace.

“But if that’s how it works, can a station just grow forever?”

Koume shook her head. “Think of it like a skyscraper on Earth, Mr. Teiro. The more people and things you have, the more elevators you need. The High-speed Moving Lanes are our elevators. As the station grows, the transportation systems consume more and more space until the efficiency bottoms out.”

“At that point, it’s easier to just build a second station,” Marl added. “Unless you’re a core Imperial hub like Delta. Those places are designed from the ground up for massive scale... Anyway, we’re here. Watch your step.”

Teiro let go of the railing, his legs still feeling like jelly, and followed them into a side corridor. They stopped before a door labeled: RISING SUN MECHANICAL DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT - BB MAKINA.

“Ah, President! Welcome, welcome! Everything is ready for you. Step right this way.”

Makina greeted them in the pristine new office, looking suspiciously giddy. Teiro assumed Koume had tipped her off and followed her into the testing area.

“So, this New-type Railgun,” Teiro whispered to Koume. “Is it actually a big deal, or are we just here for the optics?”

“I wouldn't waste your time on minor upgrades, Mr. Teiro,” Koume replied, her eyes fixed forward. “See for yourself.”

Through a thick window of reinforced acrylic, the firing range erupted. Every few seconds, a blinding flash was followed by a gout of screaming plasma. It wasn't the clean, focused discharge of a beam weapon; it was the raw, violent signature of a railgun. Teiro immediately pinged the lab’s Integrated Data Bank via BISHOP.

“Whoa, are you kidding me?!”

The live test data was insane. The railgun shells weren't just flying straight; they were performing erratic, high-G evasive maneuvers that rivaled Teiro’s own manual piloting.

“This is going to change the face of war... Wait, no it isn’t.”

Teiro’s excitement died the moment he looked at the actual machine.

The apparatus was gargantuan. It was so big he suspected it was hogging an entire station block just to function. A team of eight technicians stood around it, frantically tapping at terminals to keep the thing from exploding. They were wearing crisp, wrinkle-free deep green uniforms—fresh recruits from the Security Department.

“Man... if one gun is this big, you can’t fit it on a ship. Maybe you could cram two onto a battleship if you stripped everything else out?”

“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Marl agreed. “You couldn't even fit a shield generator on a cruiser with that thing taking up space. Why is it so bloated?”

“The BISHOP control interface,” Koume explained. “Coordinating eight people using BISHOP in real-time requires a processing core equivalent to a ship’s main computer. Unless you have someone like Mr. Teiro who can handle Distributed Processing solo, the input-output lag creates a massive bottleneck.”

“Exactly,” Makina said, stepping up beside them. “The gun itself is standard size, but the support hardware is... well, you see it. It’s not exactly 'plug-and-play' yet. However, we don’t think it’s a failure. In fact, we think this could be our flagship product.”

Teiro stared at the massive machine, his brain churning through the tactical possibilities. Then, the realization hit him like a freight train. He practically bounced off the floor.

“Oh! I get it! I take it back! This is brilliant! It’s insanely useful!”