To kill a person, you aimed at the head.
The car equivalent was its gas tank. Hit that weak spot, and it didn’t matter how much HP it had. For a tanker, besides the fancy reinforced tank in the trailer, there was a separate square one right below the front tractor.
One shot was all it took. The gas tank exploded with a boom. As heavy as the cylindrical trailer was, the force of the explosion still lifted it a few feet off the ground. Pulling his arm back into the vehicle, Kaname took that moment to speed up as fast as he could toward the opening. The car barely made it through the meter of space before the huge steel maw clamped down behind him. The pursuing vehicles, a second too late, plowed into the tanker with a succession of loud crashes.
As he checked behind them in the rearview mirror, Kaname mumbled to himself, “I think we can relax for now.”
“But there’s still a bunch more cars coming from down a different road!”
“They’re probably just a contingency team. The ones we crushed will have been the elites. These guys are the backup. They won’t be as strong. No problem for us.”
“How can you sound so sure?”
“We’re close to F. Ober headquarters. If we assume that somebody planned this, they should have positioned their main forces closer to the target. I mean, otherwise…”
Kaname didn’t finish that thought. After checking the sidewalk was clear, he swerved the coupe right onto it and up an accessibility ramp, launching the carbon frame of the vehicle into the air like a skier making a jump. The car flew past an intersection, over a row of short metal posts, and straight into the F. Ober building. Not the lobby or the parking lot but straight through the glass window of an upper floor.
“Aaaaaaaaaagh!” Tselika screamed from the passenger seat. Kaname ignored her.
The glass shattered everywhere. Kaname yanked on the hand brake and spun the car around ninety degrees, using all four tires to bleed off the vehicle’s speed. Tables and chairs were strewn across the space as the car plowed through the meeting room, stopping just centimeters short of crushing the AI employees against the wall.
Meanwhile, Kaname’s pursuers tried to stop their momentum, screeching to a halt on the F. Ober grounds.
Then there was a terrifying, mechanical growl. Not from the coupe or the pursuers outside. Out of nowhere appeared several enormous armored vehicles, and attack helicopters rushed between the buildings to join them. The new force opened fire on the intruders.
Kaname looked exasperated.
“…Sounds like the company’s PMCs got them. Don’t they know it’s suicide to go up against AI mercenaries unprepared? What do you think will happen if you try to fight infinite soldiers with only a finite amount of ammunition?”
PMCs protected only the grounds of the companies that contracted them, but they were unmatched on that front. You could have as many Dealers as you wanted, break whatever laws you wanted, have all the money and items you could ever ask for, and they still wouldn’t allow you to land so much as a scratch on the company’s factories and buildings, much less interfere with their business directly.
…Well, that was what made fighting them so engaging. It was more fun to play smart.
Anyway, now that they were on the grounds, Kaname and Tselika were safe. Not because the mercenaries harbored any particular favor for the two but because they possessed something of great value to the company: the briefcase. The surviving enemy Dealers came to a halt, surveilled by the multiple armored vehicles and gunships of the PMCs. It seemed unlikely that any one of them would be able to set foot on the premises without being blasted in retaliation. The worst thing that Kaname would need to be on the lookout for would be an attack from a sniper, he thought, as he slowly got out of the car.
But for some reason, Tselika didn’t seem to want to leave her seat.
“What’s wrong? Hurry up, Tselika,” Kaname urged.
“Ugh. I hate going onto other people’s property. We Magistelli deal in contracts; it’s not right for us to touch things that don’t belong to us.”
Of course, she could still open doors or walk down hallways, but it was beyond her to grab a fire extinguisher and bash somebody over the head with it or to break into a vault and steal wads of cash. Nevertheless, she had no problems taking the wheel of Kaname’s car and running over an AI employee or grabbing his rifle and going on a shooting spree. In many ways, the restrictions were rather lax. Perhaps it was supposed to hold Dealers liable for the actions of their Magistelli.
“It’s not about whether you like it or not. I need your abilities.”
“Bleh.”
Tselika reluctantly got out of the car. Kaname gave her a sidelong glance and went to retrieve the briefcase from the trunk. Almost pinned to the wall of the trashed meeting room, the AI-controlled manager responded with a smile that was just a little too perfect.
“Thank you kindly. After confirming the success of the mission, we will deposit the funds into your account as per our agreement.”
Kaname waved his hand dismissively. It wasn’t the reward that interested him. It was his stockpile of aluminum, currently only worth its weight in pebbles.
“Tselika, check the metal trading prices!”
“Yes sirree! Everything has gone according to plan, so I expect we shall see our jump… Aha! In just the last couple of minutes, the price of aluminum has risen from one snow per gram to ten thousand! A free market with no trading limits is a force to be reckoned with. We’d better sell immediately or the AI might freeze the market!”
As the demon smiled, graphs scrolled across her green-and-white pit-babe outfit—fur-trimmed jacket, bikini top, miniskirt, gloves, thigh-high boots—detailing the sharp turn in aluminum and kuchnoid trading with F. Ober.
Kaname felt something that wasn’t quite a smell. It wasn’t a jolt, like electricity, or a numbness. It was an inexplicable sensation that tickled the tip of his nose.
“Not yet,” he said. “Ten thousand isn’t good enough.”
“My Lord…? Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“Wait another five minutes. We’re aiming for twenty-five thousand. Hold out until then.”
“But if the market gets flooded, our transmission might get jammed, and our orders might not get through! Wait, forget that—if the price rises too much, the buyers will pull out! We’re in a good position right now because we have a large stockpile of the stuff, but aluminum itself is everywhere. You can extract it from empty cans, for crying out loud! Once F. Ober finishes its buying frenzy, it’ll have plenty of sellers to choose from, and they’ll go with the lowest bidder. There’s no point in having a mountain of aluminum that nobody wants to buy!”
“Two and a half minutes.”
“There’s ten thousand transactions being carried out every second! A few seconds is like an eternity in the investment world! Once the peak passes, that’s it, and our gold mine will be reduced to worthless rock again!”
“Ninety seconds.”
“Grgggh!!!”
“Trust me. I can smell it.”
“The Lion’s Nose? There are wrinkles all over your forehead!”
Tselika bit her lip, as though she was watching a baby crawl across a rickety rope bridge.
Yet Kaname still waited.
And he waited.
And then…
As the graph on Tselika’s bikini top passed a certain threshold, the color changed to a bright red.
“Ah! Threshold passed! That’s twenty-five thousand!” Tselika yelled.
“Then sell it all! And don’t leave a single gram!”
“Got it! There! Phew, that was a close one.”
Numbers raced across her curves.
Besides F. Ober, countless Dealers snapped up the aluminum like a pack of hungry piranhas, hoping to make a quick profit off reselling it. The money came rolling in. Just a second later, the line took a sharp downturn. The bubble had already burst.
The dream had lasted only a few minutes, and aluminum cans had once again become regular old trash. If they had been seconds too late, any hopes of profit would have gone down the drain with it. The weird sensation in Kaname’s nose had disappeared as well.
“I estimate our tens of thousands of snow worth of aluminum have turned into roughly 1.7 billion, My Lord.”
The AI employees continued to observe as though nothing had happened, despite the future of their very company being batted about left and right like a tennis ball. Kaname paid them no mind, either.