Chapter 7
Date: January 5, 3026
The first of the year, came and went, with the new year and the end of the festivities, was also the beginning of our contract with the local militia. For every Scorpion that was fully intact, we made a hundred thousand C-bills.
Every Hetzer that came through netted us a hundred and fifty thousand C-bills. All of the APCs and other vehicles Quikscell produced gave us varying levels of income from them. But with the contract in place and four factory-fresh Scorpions parked in my garage that would only take us a day's worth of work to fix, we were going to be making more than enough money to start fixing up some of the stuff in the back of the yard.
While the contract with the militia was going to be our bread and butter for a while, the real money lay in fixing up 'mechs and flipping the for millions of Eagles and C-bills. That was what we intended to do in between work for the Militia, with the eventual goal of saving up the funds for me to start purchasing equipment.
One of the things I'd discovered while staring at one of the Scorpions for a while, was that eventually, I didn't just get the information on how to fix and repair the tank. It wasn't just the specs. No, the deeper I went, the more information unveiled itself. How to make the tools, the factories, the weapons, and eventually the full tank itself.
With that in mind, I'd done some research in the local library. Not having an internet analogue did limit me somewhat, but I was able to figure out that there were a few designs that were 'somewhat' open source or that the licenses were vague enough for me to manufacture them without the full extent of the law coming down on my head.
Among them was a 'mech standing in the gantry to the rear of the shop, it was going to be the way that we turned Siler's Salvage from a salvage and repair yard, into the beginnings of a manufacturing powerhouse.
Only problem was, it was going to take a while and the appropriate contacts. Because knowledge was only a part of the picture when it came to building factories and businesses. You had to know the right people, navigate the laws, and ensure that your people were well taken care of.
So, as with the military-industrial complex back in the good 'ole US of A, the government contract came first. Then you could goof off with whatever you wanted. Which meant that I was here in the middle of the night, roaming around the lance of vehicles, documenting the problems and how to fix them before adding it to the book we kept in the back of the shop.
My goal was to have everything so well documented and copied multiple times over that when we eventually hired new people with no experience, that they could just follow the directions in our book and would be able to not only test, but fix any problems they encountered.
"Dammit," I mutterd under my breath as I pulled myself out of the last Scorpion. "I can't believe we're starting with such a shitty reputation."
I didn't know if it was because we had previously worked for them, luck, or the militia trying to test us, but just about every concevable thing that could be wrong out of the factory, was wrong with these tanks. Thankfully, my previous experience, along with some trial and error, had let me compile the problems into the notebook I carried around along with the known fixes.
Sitting on the barrel of the turret, I stared at the wall before cradling my aching head in my hands. It was there when I blinked, when I looked around, it was like the text just scrolled endlessly in my mind.
Scorpion Light Tank
Manufacturers: Quikscell Company, Joint Equipment Systems, Hellespont Industries
Manufacturers Future: Benson and Bjorn
Weapons: Deleon 5 Autocannon, Gatling Gun 20mm
Possible Weaponry dependent on technology access and user desires
Engine: SitiCide 100 ICE
Armor: ProtecTech Light (Possible Ferro Fibrous upgrade)
…
..
.
It didn't stop at the list of the armor, it just kept going on down, all the way to production of the various bolts that held together smaller parts. I knew the formula for metals and materials that hadn't existed beyond some theoretical wet dream, I could tell you how to mix things to produce a lighter, more durable armor, along with a half-dozen other things that were particular to the Scorpion.
What I couldn't tell you, was why I knew these things. Or why it hurt so much to try and hold onto the information and write it down. But hurt it did, and the harder I tried to force the information to stay while looking away from the tank that fed me the information, the worse it got. So eventually, I simply sat there and allowed the information to fade. A handful of pieces and bits stuck out, like memories that I treasured from childhood or something similar. But that was all.
Thankfully, I'd always written fast and legible, the cursive lessons my mother made me take paying off with the neat, precise handwriting that had filled up this entire notebook with informatinon.
The beginning was what would need to be transferred to the manual. It detailed all of the problems, labelling them as 'possible' rather than 'actually happening' but it also detailed how to diagnose and repair them if and when you encountered them.
It was the last half of the notebook that I casually pulled the pages from before placing them in the binder I kept in my backpack. So far, I had notes detailing things from all of the things we'd worked on. From the 60 ton Griffin, all the way to the more modern stuff, I'd let my ability run a little wild and wrote down everything that appeared.
Still, I didn't think this was the sort of thing you 'controlled'. No, this felt more like the sort of thing you just learned to live with and work around. A sort of useful monster you kept around until it was no longer needed. Regardless, I was done for the day, and hopped off the autocannon turret to head inside into the loft that was my current temporary home.
"I swear, it's like you're always hungover when you first wake up," Sylvie muttered, withdrawing her hand from where she'd been shaking me awake.
"Sorry," I yawned, covering my mouth as I stretched and slowly allowed my brain to come to a steady idle.
I hadn't used to have issues with waking up in the morning. While I hadn't necessarily been a morning person, I'd always been ready to go once I woke up for the day. However, since the first time I'd had my ability 'display' the information to me, I'd been struggling with getting out of bed in the mornings.
It was like my brain was using sleep to completely reset and repair itself from the pain, because every morning, I felt a lethargy that broadly opened up to being full of energy throughout the day.
Where was the energy I was promised if I upgraded to a nicer, younger model of body? I mean, for some reason my clock had been turned back to what I looked like in my mid to late twenties instead of mid to late thirties. Why couldn't I have kept the knowledge and simply used the newfound energy?
"You up?" Sylvie asked, breaking through the slow, tired thoughts.
"Yeah," I yawned again. "I'm up. Just let me get some caffeine into my system and I'll be right down to help the guys."
"Edmund," Sylvie shook her head. "You need to take a break. When was your last bit of time off?"
A day off? I cast my mind back to Earth and tried to remember the last time I'd taken a vacation. It had been for one of my nephew's birthdays. I'd spent a few days with them, and then felt guilty that I wasn't out there working with my employees, and had flown back to start working again. Ever since then, I'd come for a day, get bit by the workaholic bug, and head back to work. Vacation just didn't cross my mind. That was the sort of thing you gave to your employees for their hard work, not the sort of thing you did.
"If you can't remember, then it's overdue for one," The blond smirked at me. "You just secured us the deal we needed. The boys and I can handle a few Scorpions. We'll even document everything in that book like you want us to. Fair?"
"A startup's opening stages are the most critical," I protested. "I need to be here to make sure everything works."
"If it doesn't work without you being there, it's not much of a sustainable business, is it?" Sylvie asked, stopping my brain in my tracks. "We're all adults here, and we see how much you work. Just take some time. I know Kalidasa's not one for beaches, but there are a few places to lounge around and soak up some sun and go swimming. Come back in a week, recharged and ready to use your fancy words to explain the next steps to me."
She glanced around the loft I'd been sleeping in too and wrinkled her nose.
"And take the time to find a house, or an apartment. It still smells like Gramps up here, and I don't think either of us want to know what it is he did up here in his spare time."
Any protest on my lips died as I processed everything. I had been just living in a loft with a couch above the garage. It was a comfortable couch, but that wasn't an excuse to live like a bum.
"Alright," I agreed. "I'll take a week or two off to get my housing situated and take a bit of a break. Just promise me you won't touch the 'mech in the back. I have plans for it. Anything else is fine, break them, destroy them, I don't care. But that 'mech is important."
"I don't know what you want with a nearly six hundred year old 'mech," Sylvie shrugged. "But we won't put out hands on it. Now get outta here and take a shower, you stink."
"Alright, alright," I lifted my arm up and took a sniff before lowing it in disgust. Yeah, she was right. It was more than time for me to have a place to call my own.
I'd need something close by, but far enough away for me to not feel like I was at work, along with something that connected directly with a computer mainframe once we reached that point. I could write well. But typing was much easier, and I couldn't wait to transfer everything that came through my brain into easy to see and read informaton on the computer.
With that in mind, I lost myself in my own thoughts and headed for my truck. I needed to find a realot. And a bank, I still needed to get an account set up here before I did any actual shopping for a house.
It was the future of the 80s, if I could afford it, the house was probably there. It was finding something that would work when I had the cable to connect back to the workshop that things would become an issue. But for now, a place to lay my head would be fine.