Deficiency is Human 1 (Patreon)

Deficiency is Human. I Just Own Up to It.

Chapter 1

-VB-

“Alan.”

“Yeah?”

“You are an idiot.”

I tried not to shrivel at the withering glare that my secretary leveled my way. “What did I do this time?”

She slapped down a hardened smartpad (made specifically for her). “You wrecked five destroyers to take out a tiny pirate outpost!”

“How else was I supposed to save all of those people?! The pirates were killing their prisoners and slaves to not let me rescue them!”

“So you burned five destroyers to save a few hundred people?! Each of those destroyers is worth twenty-five million ice!”

“... Yeah? So? It’s not like I’m poor.”

Emily shrieked as I waved off another one-hundred twenty-five million ice loss.

“Boss, you can’t just throw away a small colony’s monthly income for a few hundred people!” Emily yelled at me while slamming her hands down on the rugged black steel office desk that somebody a decade ago popularized among the nitty-gritty colonies.

“But they were our people!” I whined rightfully and not a little petulantly.

Emily relented on that point. After all, half of the people I rescued were our employees and their dependents. Of course, I was going to rescue them even if it cost me a pretty penny! She was also my advisor and secretary, not a board of directors member or the like. I was more playful with her.

Besides, we may have lost a lot of metal but we lost almost no one aboard those destroyers.

She just sighed. After all, money was easy to come by. Ice, or ICE (International Credit Exchange), was the currency most often used by both the core worlds and colonies in civilized space. And my company made billions. That may sound like much, but I and my company weren’t even in the top ten thousand companies. Hell, I only had a thousand employees!

That’s how profitable weapon manufacturing was, especially when I controlled everything from mining to refining and manufacturing and transportation.

Emily’s smartpad beeped and she picked it up. She read through the first few words and then grimaced.

“Boss, the system admins are claiming that our mining claims have run out.”

I frowned. “Which one?”

“Regu-”

“Regulus system. Yeah, I know what happened.”

Regulus System. It wasn’t our home system or even our top priority. Our ten miners there only mined the most ubiquitous material known to man: feldspar. It’s literally everywhere. Here on Arbitrary VII, it made up half of the planet’s crust, which was exactly the case for Earth as well. In the long past, it was considered useless for any heavy industry purposes despite containing lots of aluminum and iron because it was so hard to refine it back then. Well, ore refining had come far since then and it was … not unprofitable to refine it. It was a lazy way to make a pittance, but it’s kind of fun watching a ship just swallow an asteroid and shit out shiny metals.

However, the Regulus system government was known for deep-rooted corruption, despite being so close to the core worlds. Or maybe because it was. Coreworlders looked down on colonials like myself and Emily.

“Bastards are probably smirking while trying to shit on us,” I grunted before reaching for my own smartphone and dialed a number. I connected my earcomm to the fifty year old device that I hadn’t changed since my early business days and waited.

“{Good afternoon, this is the office of -.}”

“Good afternoon, Patricia. This is Alan. I need to talk with Jeffrey. Is he available?”

“{O-Oh! Mr. Alan. Of course, I’ll get Secretary Arnolddotter on the line. He should be available…}”

I waited… and then …

“{Alan! Whaddup, buddy?}”

“Jeff, you old dog. Patricia sounded younger. Did someone pay for her rejuvenation procedure?”

“{You know me. I like to keep the old people around. Why fire them when I can make them better, yeah? So what’s this call about? You rarely call unless it’s about business.}”

“It is about business. Regulus administration just screwed me over.”

“{... Mind explaining?}”

“Well, we need another round of shipments of ore from my girls and boy over there, but someone decided to prematurely end my company’s mining claims. Now, my production for the latest frigates are going to be behind because of it.”

“{... The ones that I specifically ordered?}”

“Yeah, man. It just sucks, you know? Now, I have to wait for shipments from further away. Price isn’t gonna change, you know. It’s just the wait time.”

“{How much longer?}”

“Oh. I don’t know. Short estimate?”

“{Any.}”

“A month?”

“{... and you say that a mining claim had been prematurely ended?}”

“Yeah. It’s astonishing how a week after our competitor moves into the system, our claims are getting revoked.”

I could hear a kettle boiling from the other side. I wasn’t sure if it was the actual ancient kettle he kept for his tea ceremonies or his blood boiling.

“{Give me … give me a day. I’ll see what’s up.}”

“Jeff, I love you, bro.”

“{Shut it. You’re the only manufacturer who gives us a discount.}”

The call ended after that, but Emily looked aghast.

“Y-You called War Secretary Arnolddottor…?”

“Is there anyone else you know who’s family name is ‘Daughter of Arnold’?”

“Boss, he had fired ten thousand government employees last time he got mad!”

“Are you talking about the Crabs Scandal?”

“Yes!”

“Yeah, well, they deserved it and you know that, too.”

She bit her lips, took a deep breath in, and let it out slowly. “I suppose we’re going to benefit from it.”

“Exactly. Who the fuck violates contracts and just revoke a mining claim nine years earlier than they were supposed to?”

---

It was only later that I learned Jeffrey went nuts on the Regulus system bureaucracy, gutting the entire administration and fucking over at least five dozen Fortune 10K companies who were implicated in the corruption there.

That’s what happened to anyone who messed with Jeffrey’s pet stealth frigate project.

Speaking of which, I should speed up the manufacturing process as thanks for his work. And a bottle of Jovian Bourbon, too. He’d appreciate that.