RP: 188604 [Adventure Capital] 3 : Not trying too hard this time

"Bah!" Uso said, "I still own you Jason, and you've got a job to do keeping this one out of trouble."

She would ruffle Alex's hair to make her point.

"And if you're going to drag business up while we're here, then we should spend some time together and talk about Bright Venom... I've been putting off doing the after-action bits."

There was a little, harsh, electronically distorted laugh from the semi-dormant Arccos.

"Groundbreaker, I hired you to rebuild the Great Lighthouse. A venture we're still doing once I know we won't shake the boat any harder after our last adventure... We have the Locksmiths on our ass as is." Arccos opened a single eye, looking across the room. "I'm also not your supervisor, your boss, or your commanding officer. I don't know how things work in the land of citizen deoradh, but I'm really not the person to come to if you expect to be micromanaged or really told what to do to begin with."

"If you need to discuss terms, or payment as Jason probably should... Now is the time."

"I see what you mean. I'm pretty familiar with that sort of thing." Jason's eyes flicked over to the all but identical young man standing across from him. "At least something similar." When his gaze returned to the Groundbreaker he had one eyebrow aloft. "A ship full of art?" Most of what he did know about the freespacer culture had left him with the impression that physical pieces of art weren't exactly valuable trade goods for them, so it seemed like an odd gift. Maybe they were as cash-strapped as the USO was as far as nation-states go and it was intended for them to make a pretty penny on the market with?

The other topic that she broached, as made apparent from the tone of her voice, seemed like a far less safe conversation to follow through on given their present company...all though as always, Arccos didn't seem to be in the mood to mince words. Of course, it seemed Uso had other reasons to be mad. She wasn't the only one who had been putting off things bu given the sheriff's prompting their probably wasn't going to be a better time to bite the bullet. Hopefully it didn't end with him taking a literal one.

"Yeah, I'm up for hashing that out, but first things first." The pilot took a deep breath, staring her in the eyes. "You don't own me. No one does. I WORK for you." Jason pointed to Alex. "Just like he does."

"Well, you're free to be owned if you're in to that." Arccos added, snapping her eye shut again. "People are in to all sorts of shit I guess... Even Uso seems to be in to it at times."

"Just remember that if you're seen to be a rogue nation practicing slavery it's begging for a humanitarian intervention, and summary absorption into any given empire wishing to expand westward. Need to not just look good, but be good... At least texturally."

"The less said about that, the better." It seemed Queenie had the opposite idea about the ship and art.

In response to Arccos, she said, "I don't need management or supervision, though strategic objectives would have helped. That, and I'm not too thrilled that the work I've been doing doesn't seem to produce any results other than a pyramid, not that I could expect it to. Anyway, all I have is a mandate to build an alliance, which might as well be a mandate to build a nuclear reactor using the contents of the minibar. I've accepted that."

She laid back in her reclined chair, still observing the dome overhead, or at least seeming to.

"Take a protip: People on that dustball don't know what they want or need." Arccos said, mouth shut, synthesised voice just playing out of her false vocals like she was a communicator in an empty robot frame, "Work out one of those two, and shove it down their throat until it comes out the other side of their fat heads."

"If you need hints: Orbital elevator for ease of transport. Algaeia processing unit-slash-dam in the riverlands for creating biomass export units and potable water. Bunker complex to retreat to in the eventuality of attack or environmental collapse. Landing port on one of the nearby ice planets for harvesting water units for logistic support."

"Not quite what I need," Groundbreaker Eight-Four said, carefully. "I've no trouble imagining projects to undertake, but I have nothing to work with. Even then, what is it all for? Charity? That's not exactly my goal here, though I might settle for it if I were rich and powerful. Rather, I have enough tools and resources to landscape a small garden, or perhaps build an electrical cabinet, and no way to justify doing so."

"Well what do your people want from us?" Jason turned around at the mention of charity, sounding a tad exasperated. "Wherever your from must have given you some sort of goal here. Alliances are made for a reason. If you need a workforce, plenty of us have drones that you can borrow from including me and that's not even counting the actual people we have under us. We still have a lot of metals from before the Veks pulled out, I think, but if you're looking for what you can get out of it? Name a price. A military alliance? Food? Water? Weapons? Materials?"

"Disregarding that you're only willing to be charitable to people who got a very short end of a very small stick on the condition that you're able to be far better off than them," Arccos said with a bitter tone of distaste, "Half of those things I suggested give us further access to tradeable water and biomass which will allow us access to any number of resources which can be sent to your people in exchange for the aid of their very skilled and talented engineer. We have junkers, we have swifts, we have manufactories, we have local workers, and we have huge pyramids of raw materials which can be used to create these projects, and we can lend them to you."

"By all means, give them the robots and metal if you think they'd use them better," Groundbreaker replied, more lightly than bitterly. "I'm asking for the means to do work, and to have an agreement in place so that my last days can be thought of as more than just 'the time when I was used up and discarded'. I just... never mind." She shut her eyes and smiled placidly, a steam kettle of irritation boiling just under the surface.

If there was ever a time to meditate, this was it.

Once things had gone silent, she transmitted to Jason, "My people are self-sufficient, but weak. We are ostensibly under the DIoN's protection, but this hasn't been tested yet, and it's good to have backup plans. We can use heavy elements, including metals, and radioactives, especially, but not in great amounts, due to our small industrial base.

"There's many things we can't do, not from a lack of knowledge or materials, but because there just aren't enough of us to support every stage of production. Building new starships and colonies is one of these things, perhaps the most critical. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just giving us starships and worlds, due to the conditions...

"This. This is it. There are no simple answers for us, but simple answers are all the USO seems to have. That's why this isn't working, why I do not expect to ever complete my mission here."

Alex frowned when he heard Jason's comment about owning. He turned toward Uso before speaking.

"What makes you think you own anyone, let alone Jason?"

"Well for starters I bought him fair and square," Uso said, "I literally own his life, along with all of the obedience and control software that comes with. The we're all friends attitude is great, but lets not forget the politics of the real. Arccos controls a war-fleet that could very easily kill everyone on the planet. I could kill everyone on 188604 with the push of a button. We've got more mercenaries willing to stab us in the back for a higher paying job than I know what to do with. Our biggest benefactors want to vivisect me. Yamatai is looking for a reason to come stomp on our sand-castles. And the locals we've been killing would love to kill us right back.

Like any purchased organism, you've gotta earn your freedom through work... Luckily Jason seems to like what he does."

Uso paused for a moment, crossing her arms,

"Not to put a damper on things, but we're all here because it benefits all of us."

She then turned her attention to Arccos,

"And now I'm in a bad mood. You wanted to get some water and such right? I was thinking that the Vek were great and all but they work too slow to be viable for a larger operation. However... between your gate-things and my 'knowing how to blow stuff up' I think I have a proposition that will work for us both. The Gas giant in the system has a bunch of moons, all of which are either too small to have anything useful, or too big to get at the good stuff easily.

I was thinking we could blow one up and then just grab the choice pieces."

"We need to up production, and get a real army. We're getting too big to rely solely on the ships to protect the planet." Arccos said, eyes snapping open and leaning forward, like all this was suddenly worth her full attention.

"I can process the ore and refit the fleets from the destruction of a planet or two, but you're going to need get more effective armies than just Ragnarok if you're going to hold the place much longer considering all that." She sat back again, tucking her hands behind her head, "Jason, go steal all your clones to rally an army that'll be loyal out of thanks, and 'earn your freedom' in the process. You can just put a bullet in her if needed, but we like being friends I suspect."

"I am well aware that keeping my face bullet-free involves keeping enough competitors around to stop any one group from taking over.

'Course, with Vier out of the picture while she rebuilds,

The Hounds looking for a better contract,

And Van Banning doing Van Banning stuff..."

Uso would pause for a bit,

"And it ain't like I can just buy more Alex's. Jason's got too much ambition to be a foot soldier and Alex isn't exactly cut out for that kinda thing either. I suppose that leaves me with cheap robotics or waiting for Ragnarok to boost their numbers."

Still laying back with her eyes shut, Queenie gave Uso some input of her own. "The locals seem able to adapt to your tech, at least as far aiming, maintaining, and reloading weapons goes. I wouldn't underestimate them, given what they've been able to adapt to already. The only difficult part would be teaching them to take cover, and that's not easy with cheap drones, either."

Akemi figured he'd probably get told off by Arccos but he decided he'd try adding his two credits to help anyway. "Well I don't know about you guys and I don't know how much you'd think it'd help but I'm intending to hook up with at least one noble family and semi take it over so I get whatever army or servants or whatever it has under my control and some loyalty. I was thinking it'd be swell to marry into one. If they were like Yamataians I'd just marry as many as I could. If I do that I figure I would have some more manpower thus so would you guys. To unite them and get them to bond some I'd just organize them to claim more land from raiders or bandits and help them police it. That and teach them farming."

Alex had an idea all of a sudden. One that might be able to help solve the problem of a military for the USO, at least partially. A school, in which they could train new soldiers and pilots, and educate the young people of the planet. It seemed like a good idea, so emboldened by how his last idea, the U-1, was received, he decided to speak up.

"What if we make a school to educate and train some of the people my age on the planet to pilot and fight. It would give us a small portion of a military, and based on what I've seen of the living conditions here, a good deal of the people would be happy to stay in a modern building."

"It may be cheaper than bots... I suppose that I could trust fleshy people a bit more than machines manufactured off world...

Speaking of, How's your pet flying robot coming along?" Uso asked.

"The U-1 has just finished trials. I'm thinking that my unit can be used for a testbed for new tech."

Alex frowned.

"We also need to give it a nickname. Calling it the U-1 is tedious."

"Ugh, Nick names... We should go with something randomly generated from the rainbow tables. Something like: Cheese Plate." Uso suggested. "Not something that will scream fighter craft or mecha... It'll take all of two seconds for people to figure out what flying Punchkicker is."