Chapter 92: The Funny War and the Half-Signal

The Enzio-EAP War.

It was a bizarre conflict where neither side seemed to have the slightest intention of actually fighting. People had taken to calling it the "Funny War." Taro personally felt "Cold War" was a more fitting label, but honestly, he couldn't be bothered to argue the point.

Since the opening bell, there had been a grand total of twenty-seven skirmishes and a measly fifty fatalities. In terms of ship-on-ship violence, plenty of vessels had traded blows and suffered various degrees of "structural oopsies," but almost none had actually been sent to the scrap heap. Both sides were so busy backing away from each other during combat that no one ever bothered to give chase and deliver a finishing blow.

"It’s been nearly three months and I still don’t get it. This isn't a war anymore; it’s just a glorified staring contest," Taro grumbled, slumping in his chair.

He was currently aboard the bridge of the Plum II, running a patrol loop through the Katsushika system alongside two consort ships. Technically, as the big boss, Taro had absolutely no business pulling patrol duty. Clark and the other higher-ups had tried to talk him out of it, but Taro insisted on taking to the stars whenever he had a spare second. It kept his piloting skills from rusting, sure, but more importantly, it let the rank-and-file see the CEO getting his hands dirty. If he had to choose, Taro wanted to be a "Leader," not a "Boss."

"The Enzio Alliance? Honestly, the less happens, the better," Marl replied, glancing back from her station with total indifference. "The company and the station are running like clockwork. I’d be perfectly happy if the war ended exactly like this."

She wasn't wrong. Rising Sun’s operations were going so well it was almost spooky. The only real headache was the Food Development Department, which was currently vacuuming up cash at a terrifying rate. Taro tried to tell himself it was just "forward-looking investment," but the sheer scale of the bills made him want to vomit if he thought about the project failing.

"I guess. Peace is great and all. Though as a guy getting rich off selling weapons, I’m probably a huge hypocrite for saying that."

On the flip side, the experimental deployment of the large Railguns around the Katsushika Star System was moving right along. Several stations had already started racking up confirmed kills against pirates and raiders. They didn't have enough of a track record to start exporting them to other systems yet, but Taro figured that was only a matter of time.

"Is Rin still saying the same thing?" Marl asked.

Taro nodded, crossing his arms and leaning back so far he was practically horizontal in his seat.

"Yeah. Even over there, nobody knows what the hell is going on. Apparently, every request for a summit has been kicked back. Rin says it’s like a thick, invisible curtain has been pulled over the whole alliance. But she did mention some big movements lately. Prices are skyrocketing over there even faster than here, so something is definitely brewing. Since we ignored Enzio right up until the war started, we don't have a single spy in their inner circle. Wait, do we actually have spies? That’s a thing?"

"Do we have spies? Of course we do, you idiot," Marl huffed. "Our own company is being poked and prodded constantly. If it weren't for Alan’s security and your encryption, we’d be in deep trouble by now."

"Ugh, for real? Wait, is my treasure collection safe?!"

"Treasure?" Marl’s eyes narrowed.

"Miss Marl," Koume’s synthesized voice chimed in. "For specific details, please search Mr. Teiro’s private quarters. Second drawer from the top in the storage box to the right of the entrance. You will find a nauseating horror residing within."

"How do you even know about that?!" Taro shrieked. "And it’s not horror! It’s art!"

"Koume, incinerate it later," Marl said flatly.

"Have mercy!"

[OVERDRIVE: TERMINATED]

The Plum II arrived at its next patrol waypoint, mercifully drowning out Taro’s pathetic wailing.

"There’s the beacon," Taro muttered, steering the ship toward the encrypted marker to download the data from its passive scanners. These Wide-area Scan arrays were peppered all throughout the Katsushika periphery.

"Looks clear. No anomalies for the last two hours..." Marl paused, shaking an empty bag in her hand. "Hey, Teiro. Is there any more of this?"

The bag had previously been full of Taro’s handmade sesame dumplings. The dough was synthetic, but the sesame seeds were 100% "natural" food grown by the Food Development Department.

"Wait, you polished off the whole bag already? Those are still high-tier luxury goods, you know!"

"You said 'still,' which means we’ll have plenty soon, right?" Marl asked, licking her fingers. "What kind of yield are we looking at?"

"Honestly? No clue," Taro admitted, looking up at the ceiling. "Moving from a lab to a full-scale farm is a total wildcard. This is where actual agricultural expertise is supposed to kick in, but I’m basically winging it. We’ve got the High-speed Growth Gene baked in, so once we nail the template, it should be fast, but..."

Taro sighed, thinking back on the last three months of development hell. In the world of natural food, three months was a miracle—a blink of an eye. But they had only managed to reproduce the organisms; the list of remaining problems was still a mile long.

"The Terraform Center is backing us, so I’m sure they’ll figure it out," Marl said. "Besides, this whole project just confirms your theory about Earth. You found plants and animals perfectly evolved for human-optimal environments, and you hit the bullseye on the first try."

"It wasn't exactly a bullseye. The second half of the search was just me slamming my head against the keyboard until I found something. 99% of those samples were weird alien junk. Limiting the search to Earth-like environments was the only thing that saved me."

Planets with stable, Earth-like atmospheres were rare. Plenty of worlds used to be stable before hitting an ice age, turning into a desert, or getting blasted by stellar flares. And every single planet that even vaguely resembled Earth claimed to be the "Birthplace of Humanity."

"Excluding the self-proclaimed 'Cradle of Life' planets was likely the deciding factor," Koume added. "Had those been included, the search results would have gained approximately six additional zeros. However, Mr. Teiro, I must ask: did you act with any actual expectation of success?"

Taro tilted his head. "I mean, a little. I’m a human from Earth and I’m here, so it stands to reason other Earth stuff made the trip, right? Data, seeds, whatever. I figured it hadn't vanished—the galaxy is just too damn big to find anything."

He reached out and flicked the Galactic Star Chart on the holographic display, spinning the countless points of light into a dizzying blur.

"I suppose you're right," Marl said, her eyes drifting across the starscape. "Fields of study have become so specialized that everyone ignores the stuff they aren't interested in. I bet there’s a mountain of ancient knowledge and tech buried out there, just waiting for someone to trip over it."

She looked back down at her empty bag of dumplings.

"You said you ate mostly natural food on Earth, right? A kitchen in every house... eating delicious meals every single day. I’m so jealous."

"Eh, I didn't realize how good I had it back then," Taro said. "People were so picky about food that selling GMO grain was a huge political scandal. Wait, what did the Natural Food Faction say about the new samples?"

"The research results? Oh, they loved it," Koume replied. "It seems that as long as it is a biological species and not a chemical slurry, they are satisfied. There is no strict definition, as each sub-faction has its own peculiar dogmas."

"Sounds like Earth. We had vegetarians, religious restrictions... people love making food complicated."

"So the 'Natural' people are happy," Marl said. "Are you going to put the growth genes in the animals next?"

"No, that’s a hard pass. The bio-techs said it’s impossible for now. We have no idea what it would do to a complex organism in the long run. They’d probably just grow into 'meat-piles' that couldn't breathe."

The High-speed Growth Gene was the only reason they had rice and sesame ready in three months. Thanks to the Imperial Genetic Manipulation Research Institute, they could harvest crops in a few weeks. The downside was that the plants were fragile as glass and sucked the soil dry of nutrients, but on a space station, they could just pump in more chemicals and keep the weather perfect.

"I see. So for the cows and pigs, we just have to wait for them to breed the old-fashioned way?" Marl sighed. "The calorie efficiency is going to be terrible. They'll be incredibly expensive. Still... you complained so much, but everything is going surprisingly well."

"Not exactly, Marl-tan. The thing about natural food is that the taste changes based on everything. The air, the water, how you treat them. If we produce tons of it but it tastes like cardboard, nobody will buy it. Like I said: the real work starts now."

"I guess... I mean, even tea tastes different depending on where it’s from."

"Negative, Miss Marl," Koume interjected. "In this era, tea flavor profiles are a result of factory processing and chemical ratios. They are not organic variations like the ones Mr. Teiro is describing."

"Oh. Right. Now I feel stupid," Marl muttered, her face turning pink. "Anyway, just hurry up and mass-produce these. They’ll sell like crazy."

She ran a finger along the inside of the bag to catch the last few sesame seeds. The roasted, nutty aroma wafted over to Taro, making him wish he’d packed a second bag for himself.

"And to think, you used to say: 'I can't eat these gross little bumps!'" Taro teased. "Look at you now. Hooked."

"Shut up! I didn't think they'd be this good fresh! And I never said it like that!" Marl snapped, her face flushing even redder. Suddenly, she froze, her eyes snapping to the sensor array. "Wait. I’ve got a hit."

The slapstick vibe vanished instantly. Taro tapped into the ship’s sensor feed through his BISHOP link, only to find a report that made his brain stall.

[WIDE-AREA SCAN: 12.5 REACTIONS DETECTED]

"...Wait," Taro muttered, squinting at the screen. "What the hell is a 'half' reaction?"

Author’s Note: I previously reported that the biological reproduction took six months, but after considering the advanced state of technology in this setting, I have revised it to three months. At this stage, they are still just "reproducing" the samples, not mass-producing them. Sorry for any confusion!