Chapter 776.2: Extravagant Rewards
Chapter 776.2: Extravagant Rewards
At the same time that reconstruction was getting underway, the New Alliance and the Southern Sea New Alliance were also conducting an inventory of the legacy left behind by the Chalas administration.
Outside the North Island Heavy Industry, two Chimera armored vehicles guarded the front and rear entrances respectively. In fact, they had remained there for two full weeks!
At first, the employees working there had been frightened. But once they realized that the only people being taken away for questioning were senior company executives, they gradually relaxed and stopped paying much attention to it.
Their wages, moreover, had gone from food vouchers issued by Chalas to Silver, and fairly generous amounts at that. Most employees had even less reason to complain. Well, that was except for those who had designed weapons for Mutant Humans.
Chalas had once hoped to narrow the gap between the North Island Federation and the New Alliance's ground forces by arming Mutant Humans with technology from the Prosperity Era. To that end, he had ordered North Island Heavy Industry to establish a dedicated Mutant Human-equipment R&D department.
The weapons produced by that department had not only appeared on the battlefield of Sandbar Island, but had also shown up in small numbers on the Northern Front and even on the battlefields of the Spur Province.
Thus, when they received notice of a meeting, everyone involved, from the project managers down to the engineers responsible for the actual designs, was trembling with fear.
To everyone's surprise, however, the people from the New Alliance did not make things difficult for them.
Standing in the conference room, Ample Time looked at them and spoke casually. "... The Southern Sea New Alliance has no intention of holding you responsible. After all, you were civilians acting under coercion. Our position on this matter is the same as theirs. We likewise believe that primary responsibility should fall on the decision-makers, with secondary responsibility borne by those who assisted them, rather than by the people who were dragged into it."
At those words, everyone, from the company's senior executives to its rank-and-file employees, let out a sigh of relief.
If they had been given a choice, of course they wouldn't have wanted to design weapons for Mutant Humans. But with Chalas' gun pointed at their heads, they didn’t really have another option.
Looking at the visibly relieved employees, Ample Time paused before continuing, "However, from this moment onward, your department will be officially dissolved. You and your current projects and research materials will be transferred to a new institution, where you'll cooperate with Boulder Town Arms Industry to develop and manufacture anti Mutant Human weapons."
"Of course, anyone who doesn't want to participate may file for resignation or apply to return to their original department. We won't force you to do something against your will like Chalas did. The war against the Torch Church is certainly important, but we also respect your choices."
The New Alliance had no Mutant Human soldiers, so naturally there was no need to develop weapons specifically for Mutant Humans.
No one was surprised that a department which should never have existed in the first place was being abolished. However, after hearing what arrangements would follow, everyone began whispering among themselves.
Ample Time said nothing further and gave them plenty of time to discuss it.
A moment later, one of the executives raised his hand. After receiving a nod of permission, he stood and asked, "May I ask... will we have to move to Boulder Town?"
That was the issue he cared about most, and it was also the chief concern of the engineers and specialists under him. They weren't refugees, after all. They all had families of their own, along with established social circles and connections in the local community. Moving to a new settlement wouldn't merely mean adapting to unfamiliar customs and a different living environment. Everything from their children's education to countless other aspects of their lives would be affected.
Understanding their concerns, Ample Time smiled and replied in a gentle tone, "That won't be necessary. Our signal towers will soon extend to North Island, and submarine cables will follow after that. Communications between the New Alliance's settlements will only become more convenient. The new institution will remain on North Island. Most of the cooperation will take place online, supplemented by regularly scheduled exchange meetings."
After hearing that promise, everyone finally relaxed, and expressions of joy appeared on their faces. The reorganized North Island Heavy Industry was still offering extremely generous salaries. If possible, they naturally wanted to keep their jobs. Besides, from now on, contributing their knowledge and abilities to a just cause would help ease some of the guilt they felt over having once designed weapons for Mutant Humans.
"Then I'm staying!" The executive who had asked the question was the first to raise his hand. Seeing that, the others began raising theirs as well.
"Me too!"
"Count me in! Designing equipment is pretty much the only thing I'm good at anyway."
The department had 35 core staff in total. 3 applied to return to their former departments, and 2 submitted resignations. The remaining 30 executives and engineers all accepted the conditions for transfer into the new department. The entire process went remarkably smoothly. After finishing the meeting, Ample Time quickly picked up the next list and began preparing for the next one.
During Chalas' rule, he had sought to concentrate the limited resources and productive capacity available to him entirely on the war effort. Through administrative measures, he consolidated the industrial facilities on North Island inherited from the Shelter 70 era and established a massive military-industrial corporation known as North Island Heavy Industry.
The company was practically a copy of Boulder Town Arms Industry, only even more extreme. Its production lines covered virtually every field imaginable across land, sea, and air.
The LB-1 jet fighter, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, Alligator amphibious armored vehicles, the exoskeleton-compatible assault rifles issued to the Marines of the Federation... all of them were produced in workshops controlled by their company!
Such an extreme concentration of industrial supply chains would have been almost unimaginable in the real world. After all, even something as simple as the chips used in missiles couldn't be supplied entirely by a single company.
But for survivor factions that had inherited portions of Prosperity Era technology, producing equipment from the old era wasn't particularly difficult. Many components and manufacturing processes that had been irreplaceable in the old days could now be substituted with excellent alternatives.
Carbon-based semiconductors, for instance, had fundamentally overturned conventional silicon-based semiconductor technology, and that was merely one technical detail among many.
It was like how an ancient craftsman might have needed 81 days to forge a legendary divine weapon, only for it to still potentially lose to a modern stainless-steel kitchen knife. Meanwhile, if a modern person wanted to reproduce the legendary weapon of an ancient craftsman, they could simply toss a steel billet onto a machine and pass it through quickly. At worst, the finished product would merely lack a bit of soul.
It was difficult to say whether the Chalas administration's industrial strategy had ultimately been good or bad, but one thing was certain. It had made things incredibly convenient for whoever came afterward to loot the spoils.
The auditing agency commissioned by the New Alliance took only a short week to examine all the accounts and produce a more efficient spoils recovery plan.
The New Alliance's first priority was to break up the enormous North Island Heavy Industry conglomerate, convert part of its excess production capacity to civilian use, and integrate the remaining capacity into the New Alliance's own production network, turning it into part of the broader New Alliance industrial system.
Simply put, North Island Heavy Industry would be transformed from a company that could build anything, but only adequately, into at least three specialized industrial bases.
In other words, the people who built ships would focus exclusively on figuring out how to build better ships. Those responsible for amphibious equipment would specialize in amphibious equipment. Those designing guided weapons would concentrate on guided weapons.
As for research into Exoskeletons, rifles, aircraft, tanks, and the like, the New Alliance already had a large number of excellent military-industrial companies dedicated specifically to developing such equipment. The production departments under North Island Heavy Industry only needed to focus on developing and manufacturing components.
This restructuring was partly driven by the need to consolidate resources and partly by strategic considerations.
Once integrated into the New Alliance's industrial system, the residents of North Island would enjoy better lives than before thanks to more advanced methods of production.
But if they ever separated themselves from that industrial system, their lives would also become worse than they had been before.
While Ample Time was busy holding meetings with the employees of North Island Heavy Industry, Old White led a group of people into one of the company's warehouses.
The interior was extraordinarily spacious, roughly the size of a football field, with all kinds of heavy equipment parked throughout the enormous space. A small portion of it consisted of equipment they had already encountered on the battlefield, such as the Alligator armored vehicles fitted with two different types of turrets, as well as the infantry landing craft that had appeared on Sandbar Island. Other pieces of equipment were things they hadn't gotten the chance to see in action, such as a main battle tank that stood a full four meters tall.
Its long, thick cannon barrel looked to be around 120 millimeters in caliber, while the crew compartment was absurdly spacious. It didn't look like something designed for ordinary humans at all.
Peepo walked over to the tank, jumped onto the turret, and peered inside through the hatch before reaching a conclusion. "80% chance this thing was meant for Mutant Humans."
Kidney Warrior scoffed. "What good would it do without air superiority? The moment it entered the battlefield, it would just become a giant target."
Dog Good Names Left shook his head and slowly replied, "Not necessarily. Depends which battlefield you're talking about. It definitely wouldn't have been much use on the Northern Front, but that might not have been true in the south. If the North Island Federation’s fleet had managed to secure control of the sea, our aircraft really wouldn't have been able to get in there. And fighting something like this with an exoframe would've been pretty exhausting."
On terrain like Sandbar Island, for instance, if the Mutant Humans had been given a few tanks, it would have been fairly difficult to stop them using nothing but infantry-portable equipment.
After climbing down from the tank's turret, Peepo walked over to a blocky metal frame nearby. The moment he saw the humanoid armor mounted in the center of the frame, his face lit up as though he had discovered a new continent. "Holy shit, exoframe?!"
There was an interface for a fusion battery on the rear of the armor. Judging from the overall shape and design details, it looked practically identical to the suit worn by Old White. Without question, this was an imitation of the Dragon Cavalry.
Seeing that this esteemed member of the Burning Corps had finally stopped obsessing over the tank designed for Mutant Humans, the technician accompanying them hurriedly explained, "This is the Sea Lion exoframe... This is an experimental model developed by North Island Heavy Industry based on the blueprints for the Dragon Cavalry! We improved the motor systems so that, when Helium-3 is unavailable, it can use deuterium-tritium fuel instead... Unfortunately, we simply didn't have enough resources to build a heavy-water plant, so development of this suit was put on hold."
Listening to the technician's explanation, Kidney Warrior couldn't help exclaiming, "Good lord... There really is a ton of good stuff here."
Peepo nodded involuntarily. "Good thing the North Island Federation was stuck on a few islands. Give them a continent, or even just a few more islands with richer resources, and this civil war probably would've kept going until the game servers shut down."
Dog Good Names Left, however, seemed unimpressed and merely curled his lips. "Bad students always have the fanciest stationery."
Their equipment had gotten flashier and flashier, but hadn't it still been blown up one after another on the battlefield?
Old White, who had remained silent until now, laughed heartily and gave the technician a gentle pat on the shoulder. "Once you're with us, you won't have to worry about those problems anymore. We've got all the resources you could possibly need. Whether you want to build a heavy-water plant or any other kind of facility, we've got the conditions to make it happen. All you need to do is keep this project going."
And it wasn't just the Sea Lion either. With a few modifications, that tank designed for Mutant Humans could actually be put to use as well.
Add in the newest destroyer sitting in the shipyard, already nearing completion, and Chalas really had dropped quite a pile of loot.
Their victory could practically be called a bumper harvest!