Corpo Age

Chapter 200: Big Upgrades

Kriss - ???

“Don’t tell me you were late because of that game again. You’re a professional, for god’s sake, Ralph. Keep it together.”

“Calm down. It’s not playing. It’s for our investigation. We aren’t just here to find blackmail material, you know? Learning about the commercial activity, the state of their products, and their customer’s reception to it are all things we need to include in our reports. It’s not my fault there’s too much content in this game.”

“Whatever you say, Ralph. I’m done talking in circles with you. I have real work to do.”

Before Ralph could respond, Kriss promptly cut off the call. She then double-checked her equipment that was sprawled around her hotel room. Every mission required a customized loadout. The quantity of devices she relied on meant that she needed to spend an equal amount of time to ensure each and every single one of them worked. The last thing anyone needed was for their gear to fail during life-and-death situations.

For tonight’s mission, Kriss also had to stock up on food and water. It was something she hadn’t done in quite some time. The usual missions her company sent her on mostly took place in space. There was rarely a need to venture out into the wasteland. In fact, there was rarely a need to stray from Elevate City.

Still, a job was a job. Kriss dutifully prepared for every scenario and sped off into the fading horizon of NLA. Despite her company providing a different car for each operation, the interior and controls were always similar. She didn’t need to waste time familiarizing herself with where the hidden buttons were and could set her sights directly into the sandstorm.

Throughout the drive, Kriss only had to monitor the scans on the terminal. The car was set on auto-drive with the destination already entered.

During the previous day, she had successfully implanted a tracking device on a shipment she had come across. Her perseverance in stalking every single car that came out of the Halls Corporation branch office had paid off. That directly led her out into the wasteland, as she overheard the employees talking about a scheduled test.

It took Kriss a whole two hours before her GPS notified her that she was almost at her destination. As always, nothing could be seen as the everlasting sandstorm of the wasteland blocked the line of sight. Combined with the darkness of night, sensors were the only things one could trust.

That was true unless you were from a powerful corporation with access to the most advanced gadgets around. Kriss’ employers happened to be one such corporation. She grabbed a binocular-shaped crystal and mounted it onto her headgear. Instantly, she was able to see the area within a few dozen feet of her. This gave her the confidence to exit her vehicle.

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Following her training, Kriss activated her stealth suit and approached the location marked on her GPS.

As she trekked across the sand, she suddenly stopped when her scanners indicated several people were directly in front of her. To be safe, she went into a prone position and activated a function on her suit. It expanded a flat layer of gel below her, enabling her to slide across the sand without leaving any trails behind.

Like that, she managed to close the distance with several unsuspecting employees. They had set up a position inside a desert crater, where they were shielded from the winds.

Kriss’ vision just barely extended to the center of this crater. She had to position herself around the crater in order to spot the people she detected. There were half a dozen men, all dressed in black combat gear with a blue patch on their shoulders. Upon zooming in with her optics, she confirmed that they were members of the Halls Corporation due to the emblem of a snow-blue owl.

Half of them were currently unloading crates from their transport vehicle, while the other half were setting something up in the middle of the crater. It didn’t take long for Kriss to realize they were setting up a shooting range.

She watched a man in a lab coat holding up a strange-looking gun, scrutinizing every nook and cranny of it. Once he was done, he handed off the weapon to one of the burly cyborgs. It went without saying that a live-fire test was taking place. Kriss could clearly see a blue flash of light, followed by a loud shockwave.

What type of energy weapon is that? A laser? The blue light should be nitrogen and oxygen-ionizing.

The lights on the target it struck caused an even bigger scene. The target dummy quickly received a new hole. That hole glowed with a fiery orange color and radiated intense heat from the energy that had just vaporized a part of it.

She may not have paid attention to every single part of it, but that was the beauty of recording. She also had many chances as the Halls Corporation employees continued to fire again and again. They took a brief pause after each shot as they inspected the weapon and recorded their data.

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Kriss carefully watched from start to finish. The test only ended when the sky began to brighten. As they began to clean up, Kriss took that as her cue to take her leave. She had recorded valuable intel, and she couldn’t wait to send it back to her company.

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“How was the test?” I asked the researcher who I put in charge of the tests for my latest creation.

While I had worked on the power armor and its new gun, I went ahead and designed a small arms version as well. It just made sense to do it all at once.

“As you noted, the ionizing of air within the atmosphere is an issue. It leaves a pretty trail of blue, alerting anyone of the location of where the shot came from.”

“That can’t be helped. I already got rid of the corona discharge. There’s nothing I can do about the ionizing issue. At least it won’t have that problem in space.”

I couldn’t help but think back to the sniper’s test done within the confines of lab zero. The larger and more powerful particle rifle emitted a powerful white light, causing a shockwave as a result. In a way, that became the recoil of the weapon. It was so powerful that one couldn’t safely shoot it without being in power armor.

I had dialed down the power for the small arms version to the point it no longer left a trail of plasma, but there was no avoiding the light it left in its wake. Due to dialing down the power, it no longer made sense to use a sniper platform for this model, so it became a regular rifle instead.

“Sir, was there anything else you found missing from our report?”

“No, you may go.”

He nodded and exited my room. As he walked out, Thorne entered.

“You done with that spectacle of yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Caught onto any rats?”

“There’s no way to know for sure. I made sure they didn’t activate any scans. I don’t want to tip any of them off. The entire point of this farce is for them to see our new toy.”

Thorne mulled over my words for a few moments before showing an expression that screamed, “I still don’t get it.”

“So it was a necessary farce, right?” he asked. “I won’t lie and say I understand every nuisance of how corpos do their thing. But I can’t shake the murky feeling of purposefully exposing our strength.”

“Thorne, it wasn’t a bad thing. Not all corporations constantly have a knife at each other’s throats. Many of the well-established ones are able to peacefully conduct their business for years at a time. It was how Sensorial went about their days before that incident with us. In a lot of situations, using one of our many trump cards as a deterrence is much better than saving it for the battlefield. Profitable too.”

“Okay, yeah. I get the logic, but I guess my heart hasn’t caught up to it yet. Forget about it.”

The test for the new particle beam, named Azure Lance Type-R, was conducted with the intent of exposing it to others. We had plenty of up-and-coming trump cards ready to join our arsenal. Exposing a minor one as a deterrence was more than worth it. It demonstrated to others we possess advanced particle beam technology.

With this move, all the small corporations should refuse to antagonize us. Even middle-sized corporations would be reluctant to fight us without a good reason. It could also get our potential enemies hyper-focused on the Azure Lance, drawing attention away from other trump cards.

“Let’s put it behind us for now, then. We have to get started on the cybernetics test. Are you ready for your procedure?”

“Yeah. I came here to tell you that Cora’s team had finished installing all the prototypes on team seven. They’re waiting for you down at their test site.”

“Okay, let’s not keep them waiting, then.”

I gestured for Thorne to come over to a corner of my workshop that acted as my personal cybernetic clinic. Then I began the process of refitting his entire kit. It would take some time, as I would be replacing the majority of his parts. That meant I would have to sedate him, robbing him of his consciousness.

I had thought I missed the feeling of operating on someone like the old times, but that only lasted until I cut into his organic bits. The mess of blood and meat was never a pretty sight.

Regardless of my feelings, it was necessary. I had successfully completed our cybernetic set, so it would be dumb of us not to upgrade. Once the test with Thorne went without any issues, Claire would be operating on me as well. It seemed she had continued her cybernetic training. It didn’t take up much of her time as she let the cassette do its work while she slept. Plus, Lanus could advise her if needed.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

This new upgrade was going to be a major one for everyone in my company, but it won’t be the last one for me or Thorne. That was because I didn’t only come up with one model for internal use but several.

In the past, I left the model with the best performance for company personnel only. Now it was no longer possible. With my skill points past ten points in three different areas, the materials available to us could no longer keep up.

No company sold the high-level materials I needed for the type of application I wanted to implement into reality. The only way forward was to do it myself. Thankfully, I didn’t need to put points into material science. The skills I had included the theoretical knowledge of how to synthesize the niche materials I needed.

The only problem was the lack of raw materials. The small traces of exotic minerals I needed were especially rare on Earth. Either all the corporations had already mined it or Earth was never rich in these exotic materials. With no seller available, it left me with no choice but to wait until I could mine the materials myself.

For now, I would have to make do with the peak of what regular materials could handle. It wasn’t that bad of a plan as our soldiers would be sticking with them in the long run, anyway. The exotics I needed the advanced version were only available in such small amounts that it would take ages before I had enough just to craft the set of cybernetics for just myself. It was destined not to be mass-produced.

Nevertheless, it was unmistakable that our combat power would soar after this. It should approach the realm of what high-level corporations like Nova Tech possess.

The important thing was that we wouldn’t be helpless against them any longer. We now had enough teeth to bite back.