Chapter 44: Hunter

The shooting of the second generation rich kids was just a distraction from the actual important matters.

As it turned out, only the parents cared about their deaths. The servants were actually pretty pleased that the spoilt brats were dead. They had been relentlessly abused by those guys, slapped and beaten up over every little thing, so it was little wonder they celebrated the deaths of their employers' children.

For the public, they never had a good impression of the second generation rich kids. From what I gathered, those guys had been going around abusing their parents' wealth and influence to bully retail staff, beat up poorer people they didn't like and **** whatever girl they took a fancy to.

Then their parents paid off the police and authorities to keep them quiet, to cover up their children's messes. They claimed to punish the children, to discipline them so that they wouldn't do such stupid things again, but in the end, none of their kids learned their lessons. They continued to abuse their wealth and power, arrogantly terrorizing the poorer people.

No wonder nobody missed them (except their parents, of course).

Fortunately, the kids' parents didn't come to me for revenge. They knew I had done my best to help them, or so they believed, because I made a show of calling the authorities and pleading for their children's case while "magnanimously" forgiving them without wanting compensation like so many arrogant urban cultivation protagonists demanded.

Even if they realized the truth behind my actions, there was nothing they could do. Even the rich was no match for the army. The military could easily crush them with guns, tanks and cannons. While individuals could be bought off with money, that stack of cash wasn't going to stop a bullet.

In any event, I was too distracted with other things to pay much attention to what was happening in upper class society. Those rich parents could mourn their dead sons for all I cared. Obviously, the military had covered up the incident, saying that they broke free of their captivity and sought revenge by trying to murder me, and thus were shot to death when the soldiers attempted to protect me.

They even showed the video of the rich second generation kids running toward me with weapons in their hands. No one questioned why a bunch of half-naked idiots dressed in nothing but swimming trunks happened to find weapons in the middle of nowhere. They watched the video and ridiculed the now deceased assailants, saying they deserved it. As far as I knew, this became more of a joke than an outcry against the military for abusing their power.

Of course, there were some who questioned why the military didn't warn those before shooting them dead. They could have fired warning shots, for example, and the second generation rich kids would regain their sanity and not recklessly continue charging forward. The official military line was that they did, but the kids were so frenzied and yelling incoherently that they didn't even notice that the soldiers were there, let alone hear the warning.

Also, my attackers were shot just a couple of meters away before they reached me, which served to emphasize the urgency of the crisis. If the soldiers hadn't opened fire and shot them, I would have died instead.

Fortunately, the parents didn't blame me for the kids' deaths. I made sure not to attend the funerals, though. My presence might cause more harm than good, so I decided to avoid unnecessary trouble instead of playing the role of Chinese story protagonists and gloating over the antagonists. They already lost their children and were so pitiful, so I had best go easy on them.

Consequently, I spent most of my time working on my new project. In the end, I just couldn't complete the Falcon. Inspired by the anti-gravity drives on the techno-gangs' hover boards, I wanted to build a scout-type war walker that could fly. Given the mass and weight, however, I had thought it prudent to design it for low-skimming – after all, if I wanted a fully dedicated flight machine, I would just build an aircraft or a fighter jet.

Even though I lightened the frame and tried to improve the anti-gravity technology, I found that I wasn't able to do anything with it. Unfortunately, I wasn't a genius. It made sense, though. If it was so easy to improve anti-gravity to lift such massive machines, then we would already have flying cars and the like.

By the way, anti-gravity was already used in modern machines such as fighter jets, set up in the cockpit. No, it wasn't to allow the fighter jet to defy gravity, but rather the technology was confined to the cockpit alone, to protect the pilot from tremendous g-forces that often put overwhelming stress on the pilot's body. Anti-gravity wasn't enough to lift the whole plane up, but within a localized field, it could cancel out the g-forces on a pilot's body.

I could already imagine the potential for such technology. Flying cars were one thing, but they were simply a novelty and I couldn't care less about them. No, I was thinking space travel. While artificial gravity was already a thing, I could see anti-gravity being used as inertial dampeners, to cancel out the grinding effects of gravity on the crew during take-off or when traveling at near-c (c equaling the speed of light).

However, try as I might, I couldn't get the anti-gravity to work. So my Falcon was no longer a Falcon. Even so, I was somehow able to construct a smaller war walker with a lighter frame and higher speed, at the cost of some defensive capability. I had installed a less powerful and smaller shield generator, while removing much of the armor I had otherwise mounted upon the Titan class. This allowed the new, smaller scout war walker to be more mobile, agile and maneuverable, but it was practically a glass cannon.

Of course, the energy shield provided immense protection, but given the lighter and smaller generator, it was only capable of withstanding perhaps 50% of what the Titan-class war walker could endure before his shields collapsed. Maybe less.

But then again, given how fast this new chassis of war walker moved, as long as they evaded and avoided most of the incoming fire, they wouldn't need such powerful shields in the first place.

Taking a step back, I studied the new war walker I had just built. Unlike the Titan, this new model was more humanoid, resembling a blocky, headless person. It was more similar to the exoskeletons that the Han Industries produced, but obviously bigger, being about 4.5 meters tall and 2 meters wide. Beneath the box-shaped shoulders was a single canopy, where the cockpit was located. Having stripped away most of the armor, I had instead used shatterproof glass that raised and lowered to allow the pilot to clamber in or exit. The arms were left humanoid, with digitized fingers.

There was a single heavy duty Avenger laser carbine strapped to its back, as well as a field combat knife with a monomolecular blade wreathed in a disruptive power field when activated – something that was inspired by the techno-gang as well. The new war walker could swap armaments on the fly, depending on the environment it was operating in, without needing a refit or technicians to remove and recombine modular components like the Titan.

Given its amplified mobility, this armored bipedal platform was more suited for confined and narrowed environments with unstable terrain. I was thinking jungle warfare…or even fighting within certain big buildings such as factories and warehouses (obviously the war walker would have trouble fitting inside a regular civilian's home).

After one long look, I nodded, already deciding on the name. The forest environment lingered in my mind, reinforcing that decision.

"Hunter. I think that suits you more than Falcon."

And thus was the Hunter-class war walker born.

*

"Weren't you supposed to be working on a shield boat?" General Goh asked, astonished, when I presented to him my latest invention.

"Yeah, I was." I scratched my head. "But that project was delayed…didn't I already send you the reports?"

General Gary Goh stared at me for a few moments, and then nodded. He went through several of the electronic documents, swiping his finger across the holographic screens that floated around him before pausing on one of them.

"Oh, yeah. You did."

"My company is currently recruiting the staff we need to build and design the shield boat. In order to construct the prototype, we have to expand my company. I obviously can't do it myself, which is why I'm currently waiting for my vice-president to come back to me on the hiring front."

"And the shipyard still hasn't confirmed yet," Gary agreed while checking his emails. He scowled. "That's the military for you. Hurry up and wait. It's more of the bureaucracy, but there's always this snafu happening. It's annoying and things get delayed, but there's nothing we can do but be patient."

"Hence I'll have to ask you to be more patient regarding that. We'll need another six months before the shipyard gets everything ready and I have all the required staff. Even though it'll probably take a month or two to hire them, I will need to train them, to acclimatize them to the company's work conditions before I throw them into the deep end with the ship project."

I sighed and shook my head.

"Also, the shipyard promised me a space, but they tell me they will need to move a lot of their current projects, remodel the entire dock to fit my requirements. As well as take away their machinery. Apparently they expect me to bring my own machinery and construction equipment."

"If you need me to send an order to them to leave their equipment in place, I will do so immediately."

"Well…no, that's fine. You don't have to do that. In fact, one of the training and acclimatization programs is for my new staff to build their own equipment." I was thinking about my hydraulic equipment, but on a much larger scale. "I would rather acquire that whole dock and own it under Shen Industries, rather than rent it out."

"No can do," General Gary Goh said flatly. "Those docks belong to the military. We lease it to you subcontractors and outsource the construction of naval vessels to companies like yours, but we can't just sell military property like that. They belong to the government, and we cannot afford to privatize that sort of land. I hope you understand."

"Yeah, I do." I sighed and nodded. Privatization and neoliberal capitalism were among the most terrible disasters to befall human civilization during the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, where governments run by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan imposed their capitalistic ideals upon the world. South America was devastated by such capitalistic principles as socialist governments were overthrown by dictators who sought to privatize and sell off most of their countries' assets in order to make as much money as possible.

With the disastrous effects of those still resounding today – neoliberal capitalists, often led by oil oligarchs, advocates of coal and fossil fuel and climate change deniers who wanted to maintain their monopoly on privatized energy generation – I could understand why the contemporary government was afraid of anything that even hinted of privatization. Even now, privatization and some neoliberal practices had yet to go away completely. The military outsourcing production of weapons, ammunition and technology to private companies was one good example, though this was more of a callback to the post World War II military-industrial complex rafted by Dwight Eisenhower.

I said nothing more on the subject but Gary Goh still had more.

"Show this…" he gestured at the Hunter blueprint I had sent to him as a holographic window. "In the next military exhibition. I'm sure all the big shots want to see it."

A grin grew across my face and I nodded. "Yeah, I will."