Corpo Age-Chapter 268: Huddle

Vin - Halls Corporation

Inside the command center of the NLA branch of the Halls Corporation, the regional manager, Vin, was currently sitting in his office, doing some mundane paperwork. He was mostly just signing off documents so he could complete his work on auto-pilot mode. This allowed him to direct most of his attention to the various security preparations his company has been making.

Just as he was getting into his groove, a priority call came in. Red letters filled his vision, and he promptly connected to the call.

“Anything you need, Rollo?”

“I don’t have much time to go over the details. Still have a few other calls to make. Just type in this following code into you know what. You’ll know what to do after.”

His boss immediately muttered several pass phrases and abruptly ended the call. Vin was no stranger to his boss’ antics, so he didn’t question it and did as told. He exited his office and headed for the basement.

There, a server room, reminiscent of the one located in Elevate City, awaited. It was where the NNA version of Lanus was hosted. As a man of action, he wasted no time and typed in the phrases onto the terminal and the screen soon showed a set of documents that went over a certain scenario. However, there was no action plan in it. It simply told Vin of what could happen.

“God damn this bullshit. Always relying on me to fill in the blanks,” Vin grumbled.

As the gruff veteran returned upstairs, he was immediately ambushed by his assistant.

“Sir, an envoy of the Trent Clan has just made contact with our men in the wasteland. They’re here to lodge a complaint about the excessive bombing of the wasteland and asking for reparations.”

“Didn’t we already contact all those clans beforehand?”

“They’re arguing the damage has been more severe than we made it out to be. They’re saying they can barely find any water sources now and need our support. What should we do?”

“Oblige with their request for now. Give them material support only and notify the intelligence department. We’re okay with charity for a good cause, but not others taking advantage of us.”

“Understood, sir.”

The assistant took a half step in the other direction before turning around.

“Is there something else?” Vin asked.

“Um—should we proceed with hosting the employee onboarding for the newbies? I’m not sure it’s a good idea when we’re already—”

“Stop. We’re going ahead with it and that decision is final. We can’t let things disrupt our business operations that easily. Otherwise, we’re going to start having to deal with a lot of headache-inducing problems from the other corporations.”

“—Understood, sir.”

By the time I returned to my ship with my new friend, I had already dug out everything I needed from his systems. The more secure something was, the easier it was to find. It was like how a vault had a unique and gigantic footprint. The digital world worked the same. That meant I had access to the direct line to Silas Vexel, the leader of the opposition forces.

The only thing left was to get Lanus to triangulate his location, so I could go pay him a visit.

I completed that three hours ago.

My ride was now on its way to my destination. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that far away, but the coordinates led us to a desolate part of space.

“We should be almost there,” the captain of our flagship informed me. “As we suspected, the coordinates lead to an old, depleted asteroid belt. They’re likely on some sort of stealth vessel like ours, or they built a hidden base in one of these hollowed-out rocks.”

“I see,” I replied as I let out a sigh.

The odds are even whether Silas is on a ship or a base, but for his sake, it better be the latter. Otherwise, he is stealing my idea!

“I’ve received a positive reply from NPC,” Thorne said from the side. “He says since this place is a lot closer than expected, he’s ready to deploy every last bit of his reserves to breakthrough the enemy lines to get here.”

“Huh? Wouldn’t that allow the enemy fleet to freely reach deep into his own territory? They’ll definitely raze all his facilities to the ground.”

“It’s worth it, Rollo. They can destroy all they want, but being the winner of this conflict is the only thing that matters. He can rebuild after, and it makes sense that both sides will limit the destruction of everything else. Even this Silas person wants something to rule over if he wins.”

“Still—I don’t think it’ll be that easy to just disengage like he claims. The casualties they’ll incur from turning their literal backs to the enemy is nothing to scoff at.”

“That’s why he says it’s only a last resort. If you succeed in your stupid gambit, then there’ll be no need to enact this plan.”

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“No problem, then. I’ll succeed.”

I ignored Thorne’s stink-eye and went back to giving my equipment a look over. The stupid gambit he was referring to was simply my plan to infiltrate the enemy and take out Silas, alone. He still believed it was stupid, despite learning about my abilities. I even explained to him about my newly gained skills, too. There was no getting through his head that this plan was the safest bet.

After all, I don’t think anyone could keep up with me anymore. My infiltration skills were top-notch, and I upgraded my equipment in the area that matters. There wasn’t enough time to do a thorough update, but hopefully, that didn’t matter. My tech should outclass anything in existence now.

That didn’t mean I was invincible, but with the element of surprise combined with my skills, I should be able to take out my target before they could deploy any countermeasures.

Our vessel slowly sailed into the asteroid field without incident. We had our scanners working overtime, but they couldn’t find anything. The only thing we could rely on was the SAID belonging to the Executor we captured.

We hadn’t removed it from them per se, but we did maintain control over it. It was currently still on one of the ships participating in the fleet battle, intermittently sending signals over the private channel connected to Silas. To be exact, we went over the logs to find their method of communication and replicated it.

Having dedicated all their assets to one battle, Silas naturally desired regular reports. Thanks to that, we were meticulously tracing their location. Well, Lanus was, but the results were what mattered here.

“Report,” my trusty AI called out. “The relative distance between you and the objective is less than two hundred thousand klicks. Action. Pinging the most likely locations.”

A hundred thousand klicks were not a lot among the vastness of space. The average distance between the asteroids here was around one hundred thousand klicks. The alert meant our target was literally next to us. We didn’t spot anything during our approach, so the target was likely inside one of these rocks.

According to my new knowledge of stealth tech, the complexity of maintaining an active camouflage across their entire hull over a long period of time was too great for their capabilities. Even I couldn’t do it yet due to the lack of suitable materials. I would likely have to level up my Electromagnetic Materials skill several more times to create a material that could meet the stringent requirements.

With a general direction of where the hidden base could be and only three asteroids within range, it was time for me to head out to the shuttle.

“I’ll leave it to you guys to hold the fort down,” I said as I made my way to the door of the bridge. “Please do come rescue me if I send out the signal. I’m relying on all of you to do good work.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to have our fleet bombard the shit out of the asteroid. That way, you can get your wish to be a martyr even if you fail,” Thorne sharply replied.

We stared at each other unflinchingly.

“Hey, hey. Calm down, you two,” Claire diplomatically said. “Why are you two always so stubborn?”

Neither of us said anything as we continued our staring contest. It was only when Claire sheepishly tried to walk in between us that we both stopped and burst into laughter at the same time.

I barely managed to keep my eyes on Claire’s weird expression as I tried to hold it together.

“Huh? What are you two suddenly laughing about? Um—”

Both Thorne and I were competent enough to know his plan was just a joke. A hidden base like this, or any proper base, would be prepared to deal against such simple attacks.

Sharing a look, we wrapped an arm around each other’s shoulders and looked at Claire in the middle.

“It’s okay, Claire,” I called out. “We’re not really fighting. I’ve always told Thorne to be direct with me when it came to what he thought of my plans. It keeps me grounded, pushing me to question it again and again. That’s why I know I’m so sure about following through with this plan. Come on, let’s do a final huddle before this operation. I have a feeling we won’t have another one that can top this one in a long time.”

Claire awkwardly joined us, completing our three-man huddle.

“Um, if we’re doing this, then shouldn’t one of us be giving a speech or something?” Claire asked.

“That’s lame,” Thorne immediately retorted.

“If you want to say something, go ahead,” I offered.

“I’m not letting you guys get the easy way out. If we’re doing it, we’re all doing it.”

“I don’t have anything to say,” Thorne defended.

“No need for cliche pep talk. I doubt you boys need it. Instead, shout out what you want to do when this is over! I’ll go first!” Claire took a deep breath. “I want to have someone else do all the paperwork! I just want to do something new every day!”

She then turned to Thorne.

“Umm—”

“Come on. Just say whatever comes to mind, you big oaf.”

“I want to—I want to save everyone from human experimentation! That includes you as well, Rollo! No more. Once this is done, you should have the means to keep everyone else in check. Let’s hold those asshole corpos accountable for the shit they do!”

Then they both turned to me. I blinked blankly and stole a peek at the crew members beside us. They all had their eyes glued to the screen before them.

They must be ignoring us to the best of their ability, so they won’t laugh at the cringe behavior of their bosses.

Two hands landed on my face, pushing and pulling me to face the two culprits.

“Fine,” I shook my head as I relented. “I want to be clean of all this complicated business! I’m going to do my best to set up everything so it won’t crumble without me and retire! I’ll make sure everyone else can retire as well! To a world where anyone can leisurely sip on a milkshake without being worried about being murdered or screwed over!”

My face flushed in embarrassment and I decisively rushed out the door. I would rather die inside if I heard anyone laughing after that.

I couldn’t properly word what I wanted, but the basic idea was there.

Ever since I saw how Titus, the owner of AeroDynamic, operated, I wanted to copy him. Retiring from the position of CEO, letting someone else do the work while I just oversaw them.

After this war was over, I should have enough time to realize more technologies that would keep up on top of anyone else. Combined with the support of SocialCorp, I could finally make meaningful change.

I needed to turn this shitty dystopian society into something more livable. I needed it to be peaceful enough that I could live my life in peace. If it meant putting in the extra work to make a peaceful life available to others as well, then so be it.

With my feeling sorted out, I boarded the shuttle and launched into the coldness of space.

There’s only one big obstacle left, blocking my way to a cushy retirement, and it’s time to blow a hole through it.