Corpo Age - Chapter 138: Clearing the Fog (Patreon)

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Claire - Halls Corporation

“Lucy, you called?” The red-haired woman playfully greeted as she peeked her head into the room. There were several others inside going about their work, but they all ignored her antics except the woman furthest in the back.

She gestured for Claire to come closer, and she did just that.

Lucy, the head of the intelligence, only opened her mouth when Claire reached the seat across her. Even then, the moment she spoke, every employee within earshot simultaneously had their auditory implants deafened by the company software to prevent them from overhearing something they shouldn’t.

“Our teams that went to back up our agent, the one who had a lead on someone who claimed to be the brother of Derek’s benefactor, had just reported back. They found this benefactor dead, but had a ‘brother’ coming to go through his belongings. We not only failed to capture him, our agent was seriously injured in the process.”

“...So that’s a no-go, huh?” Claire placed a hand on her chin. “Did you speak with your agent already, or are they unconscious or something?”

“Yes, he was banged up, but still coherent. I’m sending you the report now.”

“Thanks. And is your agent going to be okay, or should I start notifying the finance guys about the compensation we’ll have to pay out?”

“The docs downstairs hadn’t finished examining him when I spoke to him. You’ll have to ask them.”

“Okay, I’ll head on over there, then. I’ll report to Rollo, so you can focus on doing your thing. See you later at dinner, Lucy.”

“...I’m still not sure if I can make it.”

“Of course you can. You’re the head, for goodness’ sake. Just delegate. You can always come back to the other stuff tomorrow.”

Lucy could only awkwardly scratch her cheeks at having been told to slack off. It was entirely different from what she expected when she decided to change career paths into a corporate role. She felt like the words of encouragement she used to hype herself up when she had been promoted were all wasted.

“...I’ll try.”

Flashing the head of intel with one last smile, Claire hummed as she made her way downstairs. The moment the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, a team of four guards from the security departments tactfully began to follow after her.

Claire continued her merry way without paying the guards any mind and soon arrived at the medical building next door. The glass doors slid open automatically for her, revealing the lobby that resembled a hospital’s.

There were a dozen people in seats, waiting for their turn, and a majority of them appeared to be the heavily augmented type of personnel, cyborgs from the security department.

She walked up to the empty receptionist counter and pressed the buzzer to call for someone. While she waited, she couldn’t help but remember the time when she had been the receptionist for Rollo’s first clinic.

Those were fun times when we almost spent the entire day together. Now there’s almost always at least several others in our presence all the time.

A voice called out to her as she was blankly staring at the guards that accompanied her.

“Oh, how can I help you, Ms. Claire?” The young man in nurse scrubs respectively asked from the other side of the reinforced glass.

“I wanted to speak with the doctor in charge of the…” She took a moment to pull out the file Lucy had sent her on her optics. “A patient named Spike.”

“Um, yes, right away!.”

Claire smiled at the enthusiastic response by the young man around her age, but face palmed when she heard the PA system turn on a moment after.

“Dr. Addison, please come to the front as quickly as you can. The COO is here waiting for you.” The young man’s voice reverberated throughout the building.

Hmm…We should really add the protocols in bold letters not to use the PA system to fulfill executive officers’ requests…Now everyone knows what I’m doing. Thankfully, it isn’t a sensitive matter this time.

To no one’s surprise, the entire lobby’s attention was on Claire and before long, a tall man in his thirties approached wearing a doctor’s coat.

Claire wasted no time, as she was embarrassed, and swiftly got to the point, asking questions about Spike’s condition.

After finding out the agent was stable and there weren’t any important matters that needed her attention, Claire made her way out. She was just about to walk past the automatic doors when she felt someone pull on her sleeve.

What are the guards do—

“Hey COO, you here for a checkup or new chrome?”

She turned around to find Thorne grinning at her.

“...What are you doing here?”

“Huh? Getting my checkup, of course. This body is quite high-maintenance if you haven’t noticed, and Rollo is too busy most of the time, so I have to come here.”

”Hmm, since you’re already here, do you want to go—” A call came in, interrupting Claire mid-sentence when she read who it was from. “Never mind, I have to take this call. Can you go get me lunch from Gregorie’s? See you later.”

She quickly walked off to the side, giving Thorne no time to respond, as she answered her call.

“Fitel, glad to hear back from you. Did you find something?”

“Yes, I have found the parties responsible for your company’s business challenges. I’m having a courier send you a data chip with the details, but as you may have suspected, a corporate rival is responsible.”

“Names?”

“There are two. The one responsible for the acts of sabotage is Sensorial Corporation, an E-Class corporation that has been around for many years. They are in the detection equipment industry, which may be what motivates them to get involved with your company with the release of your Argus.”

Claire immediately looked up the company in question using the web.

“So two companies decided to team up against us, huh? Who is the second one?” 

“The second one is a company is one you are acquainted with. They are called GrainScape Tech. They are part of the High Gate Group you may have heard of.”

“What? Those guys! Our alliance signed a ceasefire with them already. What are they doing? Do they want to continue to fight?”

“Word of advice. Do read the documents you have signed carefully. I believe a ceasefire only mentions direct hostilities.”

“...Thank you for the information, Fitel. I’ll send you the rest of your payment with a bonus once your data chip arrives.”

“Pleasure. Please do call if you have any further business.”

The call ended with Fitel getting the last word in and Claire immediately scrolled to the pinned contact on her list and started another call.

-----

I locked down all my terminals and access to my workshop before I headed up to the meeting room. I had called for everyone to gather to discuss our next plans against the foes we had uncovered.

When I stepped inside the meeting room, I glanced around and found all the seats had already been filled. There were all heads of various departments and security officers who had been with the company for some time.

“Everyone, we’ve uncovered a nefarious plot against us. It seems our old enemy, GrainScape Tech from the High Gate Group, didn’t receive the memo of the war being over and has instigated another company to act against us.”

I quickly connected the projector to my SAID and had it project the files from Fitel. It depicted the information on our two foes, GrainScape Tech and Sensorial Corp.

“Sir, isn’t this a breach of the ceasefire agreement? Should we call for our allies?” One of the security officers asked.

“No, the agreement only encompassed direct hostilities. They could argue they had only provided some information about us to an allied company, and our allies would buy it. It’s no secret that many of them do not want to resume the war. For that same reason, we won’t be able to simply retaliate against them directly.”

“These scumbags with their sewer tricks!” 

“Then what should we do against them? We can’t just let them get away with it, right?” Claire directed her question to the entire room.

Everyone began whispering, so I held up a hand to silence them.

“We will get to that later. For now, we need to focus on stopping the sabotage. That means dealing with the executor of their malicious plot, Sensorial Corp.”

I pulled up the company’s information. They had production sites spread around the New North American and South American continents, but the bulk of it was here in Elevate City, along with their headquarters. It was a common setup to have assembly take place here because this was a convenient geographic location to ship out their products.

As their name hinted, they specialized in various sensor devices, including cybernetics. 

This is setting up to be a battle of their detection tech against our stealth tech, huh?

“I want info on their strategic assets, floor plans, defenses, and a battle plan as soon as possible. Do you understand, security and intel department?” I glanced over at Thorne and Lucy.

Lucy nodded with a serious expression while Thorne looked to his adjutants, who managed the bulk of his workload for him.

The meeting soon finished after we discussed various countermeasures and our policies going forward with the sabotages in mind. Now that it was clear our products were being tampered with, we decided to up our compensation to your clients, including previous ones who already made a claim to preserve our reputation among our clients as best we could.

There was no sense in letting our opponents get away with small victories.

My employees worked fast. The next morning, we reconvened to go over their findings.

The topic of the meeting was the operation plan for raiding Sensorial Corp’s head office in the city.

“As expected, they have a lot of active and passive scanners spread throughout their compound. The most troubling thing for us, however, is the pressure plates they have all over their property, including their back entrances, stairways, and other secluded areas. It’d be hard to sneak in an advance team to sabotage their defenses with those in place.”

It was a surprise more companies didn’t make use of weight sensors, but the time for us to confront a corporation that made generous use of them had come.

They weren’t a huge problem until they combined it with surveillance. They would need cameras or someone there to see if something was off, which we could exploit if we could hack into their systems. Still, we would need to come up with solutions to minimize the risks.

“...They shouldn’t have weight sensors on the walls and ceilings, right?” I said. “That would be expensive and overboard to implement on their property.”

“We haven’t gotten all the details of their base. There may be weight sensors all over sensitive corridors.” Lucy replied.

“Leo, how confident are you in breaching their systems to disable these sensors?”

“Against a veteran E-Class Corporation with a solid foundation? It’s possible, but they’ll know we’re intruding on their systems within minutes.”

“We should consider a frontal attack and just blow everything out of the way.” One of the officers muttered.

“We’re not trying to destroy them and start a war here. They’re too spread out for that. If we did that, they may retaliate the same way in turn. We only need to bear some teeth at them to get them to back off…Does their owner live in the same complex?”

“Yes.”

So it likely wasn’t viable for us to attack or infiltrate them with what we currently had. It wouldn’t be enough to get them to stop their sabotage.

That meant if I wanted to infiltrate their base quietly, I would have to concoct something new to get around the weight sensors.

Once I can infiltrate their base, but then what…? Killing their executives would just spark a war.

“They’re entirely hyper-focused on their sensor industry, right?” I glanced over to find Lucy nodding. “In that case…Let’s consider fighting fire with fire. They can’t possibly be stupid enough to go down together with us. Look into which products are their best-sellers.”

If I can build them, I can also break them. We’re diversified enough with our transport business to take a hit. Let’s see if you can do the same Sensorial.