What Do You Mean I'm The Captain Of A Yandere Mercenary Company?

Ugh… I really should have worn gloves for this or something…

I mean… I eventually got used to it but my thoughts then drifted to how troublesome it was going to be for me to get all this blood off.

Ries definitely didn’t seem bothered by all the blood and the way she extracted the dead bodies from the power armour made me believe she must have done this quite a number of times before.

Unfortunately, the one that I had blasted into two and the one that Amber had shredded to pieces were not able to be hacked open.

More specifically, the one that I had split into two could only have the top half open up but since the bottom half was completely cut off, it could not be opened.

And the one that was blasted into pieces by Amber was also unable to be opened because its computer was also destroyed.

I thought Ries would just throw these away but then she left for her workshop and came back with several tools where she started cutting away at the armour and disassembling it piece by piece.

She was even making use of the AI from the hacked power armours to guide her through the disassembly process so that was cool.

After we had extracted all the corpses out of the power armour, we simply dumped them inside the airlock room and we’ll just throw them out into space once we exit Travel speeds.

Just as I was thinking about going to the bath to wash off the blood from my hands, I received a message on my Codex from Mara telling me that her contact was requesting to speak to me.

Wow… That’s fast… I was expecting it to take a few days before Mara got back to me about this…

Guess I should have remembered that my girls are all especially competent in what they do…

Since Ries didn’t really need my help anymore, I left the cargo bay to head back to the bridge where it seems only Mara was left while Lea and Amber were nowhere to be seen.

”Where’s the rest?” I asked.

”Lea went to check on her plants while Amber went to get some snacks.”

”I see… So your contact?”

Mara nodded at the Captain’s chair, indicating that I should take a seat at it first.

I did as she asked and Mara came over to me, leaning over the armrest to show me her personal terminal.

”There’s someone I know inside the military who knew about the people involved in this case and was trying to cover up the loss of the equipment. She got in touch with them and they are quite interested in getting back whatever we are willing to offer.”

I raised an eyebrow at her, ”So they are contacting me right now?”

She nodded, ”From what I hear, they sound quite desperate so we should be able to get a good price from them.”

”Anything I should know before talking to them?”

”Hmm… No names, that’s number one. Secondly, remember that they are the ones who are desperate to buy, we are not desperate to sell. Lastly, don’t tell them more than they need to know and the only thing they need to know is the price we are willing to sell at, where they should send the Credits and where they should go to collect the sale.”

Ok, that’s really specific… And I believe she’s speaking from experience.

I turned back to the console in front of me, ”Alright, I guess I should contact them right now?”

”Yes. Voice only, no video. I also took the liberty of loading up a voice modulator so we don’t need to worry about them tracking your voice.”

That serious, huh? Alright then…

I did as she asked as she directed me to call the person in charge.

The call connected only after three rings and a screen popped up where the words ’Audio Only’ was displayed.

The other side remained silent so I assume they were waiting for me to start talking first.

”Hello?”

”This is the Merc who found something that belongs to the military of the UTG, correct?” A disembodied voice came from the other side of the call, clueing me in that they were also using a voice modulator.

I nodded, until I realised how stupid that looked since they couldn’t see me, ”That’s right.”

”I will be frank with you, what you have rightfully belongs to the military and it can be seen as you stealing from us. We are willing to overlook this if you agree to just hand it over to us.”

What? This person can’t be seriously asking that-- Oh wait. They must be trying to bluff. Mara did say that they were desperate to get it back and I bet that they wanted to do this as quietly as possible so that their superiors do not know about their fuck up.

”If that’s the case, I suppose I should just contact the nearest military outpost and report about this and hand it over there instead.”

”No!” The person on the other side rejected a little too forcefully, revealing their true position on this matter.

The other person must have also realised this blunder because they quickly changed their tone, ”Listen… We really need this back and as quietly as possible. No one must know that this is missing from our stores at the moment, ok? You would be doing us a big favour if you were to just hand it to us.”

I crossed my arms under my chest, ”Listen here… We had to deal with a bunch of thugs that had been occupying the station and we risked our lives to clear them out before finding this pile of equipment in their storeroom. Are you seriously expecting us to just hand over all of this without any sort of remuneration after we put in such a big risk to obtain them?”

There was a short pause from the otherside before the person answered, ”No… I understand your position… But we do have problems of our own as well…”

”And that is not my concern, yes? We were the ones who got back what you lost that you never bothered to reclaim and now you want us to just give it to you for free when we can sell this to someone else to recoup our losses from fighting those thugs? If you aren’t going to offer a fair price ”

”Wait, wait! We… We can’t pay you…”

”Then why the hell are you contacting us? Are you really expecting Mercs to just work for free?”

”No, wait… We can’t pay you directly because this would have to come out of our own pockets… And we don’t have the Credits to afford the price of the equipment that you have on hand…”

”So what are you suggesting then? Because I am definitely not accepting any suggestion that involves giving it away for free.”

The person on the other side stopped talking for a moment and I leaned in to hear some whispering from the audio. I’m guessing the person on the other end must be consulting with their superior or something so I waited for them to finish their little discussion.

Eventually, the person came back and the voice somehow sounded different despite the voice modulation so I’m guessing someone else took over the call.

”We cannot pay you Credits, but we can pay you with information, would that suffice?”

I turned to raise an eyebrow at Mara but she also shrugged at me.

”That would depend on the information you’re giving,” I answered.

”You have to agree with the terms first?”

I frowned at that, ”That’s not how the dynamic here is working at the moment. You will have to give us the information first before we decide if it is worth the equipment that we recovered. Why do we want to sell this equipment for information that may or may not be profitable to us? How are we supposed to earn any Credits from this information?”

There was another period of silence which I guess meant that the people on the other side were having another discussion once again.

I waited for them to finish and this time it took them a little longer before they got back to me.

”Alright, we’ll tell you the information first. But before that, we have to let you know that the potential Credits you could earn from this is pretty much unknown but even under the worst circumstances, it would be quite substantial if you know who to sell it to. You did not get this information from us and you only stumbled upon this location by chance, got it?”

Now that got my attention. Is this some kind of top secret military dumping ground for high tech stuff or something?

My ship console beeped and I tapped on it to open up a new screen that displayed a galactic map.

On the map was the location of a system and within the system was a station that was marked as ’Installation 772 (P-105-N1C)’.

Err… What does this--

”Take it, Tera,” Amber requested, my blonde haired lover suddenly appearing beside me.

Where did you even come from?!