Chapter 983: Emergency Contract Request
Chapter 983: Emergency Contract Request
I gathered the girls after serving them breakfast, which was a mix of salad, hamburg steaks and potatoes with pancakes.
The reason for that was to go over what hustles we might take while waiting for the Reapers to confirm their contract with us.
I suspect they would only find us after a few days so we might as well find something to do in the meantime.
Valiea and Ragbar were hanging nearby, since they won’t be heading towards their club until night time, they were just chilling right now and listening in.
We weren’t really discussing anything secretive so I didn’t mind their presence of course.
Amber scrolled through the list that I got for them, "Hmmm... I wanna do something exciting though~ All of these look so boring..."
I shrugged, "How exciting do you expect the jobs around here to be?"
"I mean... We could probably take on any of these jobs by ourselves. Look at this... Clear out a bandit hideout in the maintenance section... I could probably just do it with only my pistols and nothing more... Lea could probably take all of them out before they even realise where she’s even positioned too. And Ries can just walk in with her Power Armour and there wouldn’t be anything these guys can do to her. Sending all of us there would be an overkill."
Mara turned to sniff at her, "Well... If you want a challenge for yourself, you could always just drop yourself into a bug’s nest and clear it on your own."
Amber pouted at her, "Are you trying to kill me you crazy hag?"
Mara sipped on her tea, "Mmm... But you’re so resilient, Amber. You could even find your way to Captain’s side even while dead drunk, can’t you? Surely you can handle that on your own?"
Amber started smacking Mara’s arm playfully, clearly annoyed at her but more in the teasing way.
I was just in the midst of finding their antics amusing when a sudden notification buzzed from my Codex.
I tapped on it, prompting it to project a screen in front of me which looked like it was an emergency hustle request.
’Emergency contract. Limited to Mercs Gold ranked and above. Report to station’s Security Master’s office for briefing.’
My eyes scanned through the details, or rather, the lack of details on this contract and turned to me girls with a raised eyebrow.
"What’s this about?" I asked, looking at them quizzically.
Surprisingly, it was Valiea who spoke up, "Oh my? A request directly from the station’s Security Master? That means there’s something pretty big going on for them to request something like that."
Vier’s tail swished thoughtfully behind her, "The fact that they are looking to hire Mercenaries instead of relying on the station’s own defense personnel... It must be something that they cannot directly interfere with but it’s also too dangerous to leave alone. I suspect that it might be something that puts the entire station at risk which they need someone to deal with."
I frowned at that, "That’s... Bad, isn’t it? I’m guessing the pay is going to be good as well?"
The black Dragonling shook her head, "Unfortunately... Seeing the state of this station, I highly doubt that they could afford paying much. Which is why they’ve placed the threshold at Gold rank instead of a higher rank since they can set the reward at the standard rates for Gold Mercs instead of the higher ranks."
"Hmm... But I assume that the fact there’s a hustle like this means it’s not a good idea to just ignore it, right?"
Ries made a face, "We can just leave it to the others to take care of it, right? It doesn’t have to be us."
Yumiko’s tail twitched behind her nervously, "I don’t like it, Mistress... I believe... It’s best that we at least find out what is happening..."
Hmm... Well... Since we have the rewards from the bug tests... It’s not like there’s any other hustle around that could pay us at that level either...
So really, any job we take now is just basically us doing stuff for fun.
I pursed my lips, "I guess it doesn’t hurt to go and check it out? I think we might at least get some recognition for it even if the pay isn’t good if we complete it, right? That would help us increase our Merc ranks and also help with our GalaNet stream too."
Amber perked up, "Ohhh! It could actually be pretty interesting! Let’s do it! Let’s do it!"
I wanted to tell her to curb her expectations but I guess it’s better that she’s excited about it instead of not so I just nodded along.
The rest of the girls also decided that we might as well go and check things out there since we didn’t have much to do anyway. It wasn’t like this station had a lot of things to do after all.
Valiea and Ragbar saw us off as we left their penthouse with the promise to visit their club again tonight, though I did warn them I wasn’t going to do another performance with them tonight again.
Cooking for everyone however... That’s something I don’t mind doing as long as they got the ingredients for me.
We left the building and stepped onto the streets of the city.
Normally, stations would simulate ’day’ and ’night’ cycles by making use of illumination within the station’s interior where ’day’ involved brighter lights which would then be dimmed when it was ’night’, all of this determined by the Standard Hours which was what everyone in the USC controlled space use as a measurement of time.
I heard that the reason why they would even bother simulating this day and night cycle in stations was primarily because of the fact that studies had shown this was better for space dwellers’ health while living in space.
I’m not sure about the science of it but I’m glad that I didn’t need to worry about adapting to whatever random time the place was set for each station I visit, especially since the stations would be in space anyway.
Essentially, there’s no such thing as jet lag here.
Anyway... That was what was supposed to be the standard for all stations at the very least, but here... It’s supposed to be early afternoon according to the time and yet the lights were only just a little brighter which made this place feel like it was still early morning or really late afternoon.
I frowned and squinted my eyes up at the ’sky’, realising that the station’s administration was most likely limiting the power to the lights which made the place so dim despite the fact that it should be daytime.
This place really sucks huh? Now I wonder if this station was worse or is Denibi even worse?
Scratch that... I think Denibi might be worse since the place was designed more like a slum than a city...
The good thing was that the place looked more lively and there weren’t any sounds of gunshots-- Bang! Bang!
Ok... Scratch that... I just heard gunshots in the distance so the thugs are still quite active even in the day...
We headed for the train station and boarded the train heading towards the administration district.
And because I was already expecting it, I wasn’t really that surprised when two guys suddenly started beating each other up on the train with one guy ending up stomping on him to death before stepping off the train.
The dead body remained in the car for one more stop before people from the Cleaner Corp got on the train to dispose of the body and clean up the blood, wiping any evidence that anything had happened at all.
I wondered if they don’t even arrest any criminals here? Or do they only care about the major crimes and don’t see one or two murders as something important enough for them to deal with?
"Was that what you had to deal with yesterday?" Lea asked with a casual tilt of her head.
I shook my head, "Yesterday was worse. That was pretty tame... I saw a group fight while walking from the station to the apartment too and that was more intense than this one."
The girls did not comment on that, though I saw that they had a far off look in their eyes like they were thinking about something.
Funny that I actually got used to this in just a single day... Then again, I suppose this wasn’t the worst thing I’ve witnessed in this new universe.
We managed to reach the administration district without any other incident and stepped outside.
The good thing was that this place looked cleaner and a little better than the district we had just come from but the bar was already pretty low to begin with so it wasn’t much of an improvement.
The supposed Security Master’s office was located in one of the tall towers within the district and I could see a few people who looked like Mercs also heading in that direction.
Looks like we aren’t the only ones who received that emergency contract.
Let’s see what it’s about then.
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