Epilogue
OUR DISCUSSIONS WITH THE GRANNY went smoothly.
“I was the one who told Mimi about it, so I expected this to happen,” Celestia said.
“I see.”
“Either way, it’s not like we’re losing out.”
Granny and her crew would receive nonmedical spoils, which they could then sell here in this system or in other systems as they pleased. In terms of bounties and ship takedown rewards, we stuck to our initial agreement, so there wasn’t really cause for conflict. Then we sent the necessary documents to the mercenary guild, who should be able to figure the rest out for us.
Hm? I was just letting other people do all the work? Of course I was. Leaving this type of work to professionals was ideal. I was just a guy with a little skill piloting spaceships, so what’d you expect?
“We’re heading over to the mercenary guild now. Take care.”
“You too. We’ll contact you if we encounter any big jobs.”
“Please, nothing too big…”
I wasn’t sure what Celestia’s definition of “big job” was, but I couldn’t help feeling like she’d ask me to help her burn down the hideouts of a huge enclave of space pirates using merely our combined forces. Yikes. I ended the transmission with a sigh.
Elma and Kugi, who’d finished preparing for departure, were staring at me.
“What?”
“Nothing in particular. It’s just—when all’s said and done, you really do work hard, don’t you?” Elma said.
“I believe that is a wonderful trait, my lord.”
“Why’re you suddenly praising me out of nowhere…? I push as much work as possible onto other people.”
“But you take care of jobs you can do yourself on your own. You could make Mei or me do them instead,” Elma said.
“Isn’t that normal?”
“Yeah, yeah… Of course. Let’s head over to the mercenary guild.”
“Huh? What’s with that reaction…?”
Elma was in a good mood, and she and Kugi each grabbed one of my arms, dragging me along. I wasn’t a blockhead who couldn’t read others’ intentions, but I really couldn’t figure out why they’d reacted this way. If something this small was enough to label me hardworking, then just how lazy was this universe’s average mercenary…?
I felt that was a question I’d rather not know the answer to. It was better to remain in the dark about some things.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I think my head’s going to explode.”
“Just get Mei to work it out instead.”
When I brought up the matter of Mimi’s share, it spiraled into a discussion about what percentage a mercenary’s spouse received, as well as the typical salary for a ship’s doctor. Now I felt like my brain was overheating.
Elma must’ve felt the same way, given her wry expression. Meanwhile, Kugi had no idea what was going on; she currently looked like a baffled space cat. Discussions involving numbers were always complicated—I could never keep up. Not even half of what I was being told was entering my brain.
A simple summary of the discussion was that, given Mimi’s current skills, increasing her percentage by 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent was appropriate, and an appropriate salary for Dr. Shouko—in light of her skills and qualifications—was twenty to thirty thousand Ener in base monthly pay, plus an appropriate bonus whenever her skills as a doctor or researcher provided extra value.
“Hmm…isn’t Dr. Shouko’s cut a little too low?” Elma asked.
“I’ll just have to make up the difference through bonuses.”
“That could add up to thirty to forty thousand Ener a month. That would count as extremely high pay, wouldn’t it...? Or is that amount merely insignificant to platinum-rankers?” The mercenary-guild receptionist stared at me in disbelief.
I guess it isn’t a small sum. Still, if you compare it to how much the rest of the crew earns… Well, I guess it’s not like my wealth’s overflowing at the moment. And I suppose base pay of twenty to thirty thousand Ener isn’t bad at all.
In terms of spouses sharing finances, even when we consulted standard imperial law regarding a marriage between a mercenary and one of their crew members, our situation seemed to be a bit of a special case. At that point, the guild worker went into a lengthy spiel that sounded like a sutra or incantation or something. All I really picked up from it was that, for now, as long as we kept operating as mercenaries, we should separate our finances, and I should be sure to pay Mimi as well. I could hold off on filling out forms regarding the legal division of property until she decided to leave the mercenary lifestyle to focus on childrearing instead. At least, that was what I got out of what was said.
“To be honest, mercenaries tend to carelessly spread their seed before eventually dying somewhere,” the guild worker told me.
“Ouch…”
“And they typically do so in passing, since they tend to wander from system to system,” she added. “The way you bring them all along with you is respectable, Captain Hiro. Very respectable.”
The woman’s lips were smiling, but her eyes weren’t. Even if you left out Mei, since she was a Maidroid, there was Mimi, Elma, Tina, Wiska, Kugi, and Dr. Shouko—that made six women in total whom I brought around with me, which definitely was a little questionable. I was self-aware enough to understand that point; still, it really wasn’t my fault. Complex circumstances deeper than the sea led things to end up this way, so please, let me off easy.
“Setting aside the number of women he has with him, he’s generally quite faithful, so don’t worry about us,” Elma interjected. “And he doesn’t drink or frequent brothels like most mercenaries. He doesn’t have any weird drug dependencies either.”
“My lord is a very kind man.”
“Oh my…”
I really wished the guild employee would stop glaring at me as if I were some philanderer. This wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t like she had a right to criticize me.
She cleared her throat. “Regarding the rewards for the pirates and pirate base your group recently crushed—this number being the total sum, including the base materials’ value—we calculated that your share comes out to 23,060,000 Ener.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, that base was pretty small.”
“Yeah. The asteroid made up most of its mass, after all,” Elma agreed.
“But didn’t we just make a lot of money?” Kugi asked.
“I guess so,” Elma said.
“Yeah, I guess it wasn’t bad,” I said.
Looking at the breakdown, the largest percentage was our reward for destroying the base, followed by what we were making for the base materials. Then, finally, there were our profits from bounties and materials salvaged from the pirate vessels we’d taken down. We still needed to sell the loot we’d plundered, so our total earnings from destroying the base would probably come out to slightly over thirty million Ener. We had yet to convert that plundered loot to cash, though, since we planned to take it elsewhere to sell it. Depending on the situation at our destination, we could earn even more than I predicted.
“We just received an inquiry from the Arein System authorities,” the guild worker told me. “Just to confirm, you wish to purchase a large quantity of advanced medical supplies, correct?”
“Oh, yeah. We figured that selling the goods we retrieved elsewhere would be more profitable than offloading them here. We found a lot of medical materials, so we decided we might as well fill up with more before heading to where we want to sell them. Wait… Why would the authorities send you an inquiry about that?”
“Most likely because you’ve requested advanced medical supplies rather than normal ones. Sales of such supplies are heavily regulated, since they can be used to create dangerous addictive drugs. A professional license is required to purchase some such materials… But as someone in your crew has such a license, that isn’t a problem for you, Captain Hiro.”
“Ah—Dr. Shouko. Come to think of it, there’s a small manufacturing setup in her lab.”
Since someone in my crew had the materials, facilities, and expertise necessary, we could’ve become drug dealers producing dangerous substances if we’d wanted to. That was why the authorities contacted the mercenary guild and asked them to confirm whether it was really okay to sell us those items.
“If you abuse your position and the trust that accompanies a platinum rank to deal drugs, we will rescind that rank and place a dead-or-alive bounty on your head. Such actions would also be a grave criminal offense under imperial law.”
“Hey, I have a reputation as a good guy, don’t I?” I protested. “Don’t worry. That’s a dangerous way to make money; I can earn plenty without resorting to such methods.”
“Indeed,” the guild worker said with a smile. “As a representative of the mercenary guild, I also wished to tell them not to patronize one of our platinum-rankers.”
Oh, I know that smile. That’s a “So if you know what’s good for you, don’t you dare do anything that besmirches our platinum rank’s reputation” smile. Got it. “I’ll let you handle communications with them,” I told her. “For now, direct my reward to my account.”
I decided to let Mei handle distributing it. She was good with numbers.