The First Corporate War was a test more than a proper conflict. Beginning in 2004, ending in 2006, and having a grand total of two major battles between Euro Business Machines and Orbital Air. Both corporations were attempting to purchase Transworld Airlines in order to secure their air traffic assets, and eventually escalated to hiring mercenaries to act as terrorists in order to delay and prevent negotiations for the other side. This conflict ended with EBM standing down after its CEO was captured by hired guns, allowing Orbital Air to secure the now very cheap TWA.
Both assets lost millions in terms of liquid wealth, and demonstrated that physical violence was a viable tactic for corporations to engage in to every other competitor in the world. For that reason alone, Adam considered it a successful venture, even if its actual fighting was disappointingly restrained and shallow.
The Second Corporate War was a more entertaining affair, from what he remembered reading of it back in the day. Petrochem and SovOil, both attempting to expand into the South China Sea and secure the offshore oil assets present in the region, were kicked into a brief conflict when the Old Man ordered Kagekaze to sabotage a Petrochem offshore platform, causing it to explode.
Petrochem immediately accused SovOil of industrial sabotage, which they of course denied. In retaliation, Petrochem sent their own divers to plant explosives on a SovOil platform, causing it in turn to explode. Full scale conflict ensued, and over the course of 2008 to 2010 75% of all oil assets in the South China Sea had been destroyed. Petrochem managed to assassinate SovOil's CEO Anatoly Novikovo, SovOil managed to regroup and push Petrochem out entirely, and then the conflict was ordered to end by various national governments.
During the entirety of this conflict, Arasaka was able to push many smaller islands in the region into Japanese protectorate status, and thus expand their influence massively.
The amount of oil spilled rendered the South China Sea all but uninhabitable, forcing both corporations to spend large amounts in reparations to all governments in the region. Injecting substantial wealth into those economies and allowing them to kickstart much of their domestic industry. Arasaka took advantage of this extreme pollution to earn back much of their lost public favor after the Fourth Corporate War by spending large amounts of their own wealth to help manage and eventually clean up almost all of the spillage.
All in all, more violent and damaging than the First Corporate War. A good sign of fun to come.
The Third Corporate War was boring and not worth remembering. Over the course of a few months two investment funds or something used the net to steal things from each other. It ended when MAF tore the Rothstein Fund apart and forced them to pay bills or something. It took place almost entirely over the NET and therefore wasn't real fighting.
The Fourth Corporate War was the only one he got to participate in, and only near to the end. Early on when his contact in Arasaka told him of a great opportunity to earn some eddies he was interested. He slammed the phone down on the contact when he was told everything would have to be kept quiet. He was only called in at the very tail end, once open conflict got to finally start.
The first half of the conflict was simple. IHAG, a German marine shipping corp, declared bankruptcy in early 2021. Seeking to buy up the substantial maritime assets, two rival nautical corporations both attempted a mutually exclusive buyout and then hostile takeover, OTEC and CINO. OTEC eventually hired Militech as security while CINO hired Arasaka, and the corporate sabotage continued.
Both CINO and OTEC were forced to end their conflict in 2022 through national government pressures placed on them. Arasaka and Militech would continue warring until 2023, but that was for their own reasons. CINO and OTEC, both heavily devalued by this conflict and crippled by the increasingly destructive strikes that Militech and Arasaka used to clash, were both purchased by Eurobank directly, along with IHAG, in the end.
Eurobank ended up the ultimate victors in the Fourth Corporate War, controlling the assets of all three nautical corporations under the new parent corp, European Maritime. The only rival they had left was the comparatively tiny Decker, Tanaka, and Rogers shipping. They dominated the world's oceans and shipping industry all the way into the 50s, when the world started to realize that the Arasaka Sea Mines were both self-replicating and not under anyone's control anymore.
Oceanic travel died in the 50s, but European Maritime was quick to adapt using both their effective monopoly and the direct support of Eurobank as a whole. Using a combination of General Motors commercial fusion engines and the recently invented Gravtech Reactors, European Maritime almost immediately converted CINO and OTEC into a new corporation dedicated wholly to refurbishing their massive shipping fleet into an airship shipping fleet.
CINOTEC became a foreground corporation again, now selling the very, very valuable commodity of cheap retrofitting to prevent naval assets from becoming completely worthless. Their only potential rivals in the area being Orbital Air, a corporation that Europe as a whole did not want to buy any products from if they possibly could avoid doing so.
With this history in mind, Adam decided that Europe would definitely be his first destination once this CINOTEC crew finished refurbishing the Ebunike to be air-worthy and installing all his fancy new Laser AMS. With tensions only continuing to rise over the years, he was reasonably certain that someone would attack someone and spark a good old fashioned war in the area.
Hell, if he gets hired onto the right group, that might embolden them to the point of direct strikes immediately. He might be able to light that powderkeg if he played his cards right, then he'd be in business for months, potentially years to come before needing to move onto the next conflict. He wasn't worried about going out of business completely, humans kill humans, it was a fact of life.
He just needed a ship and company of like minded murderers to watch his flanks for him. What was the point of a war you couldn't enjoy?
Trick question, all wars were enjoyable. A war that wasn't enjoyable contained too little fighting and therefore wasn't a war. Detecting incoming movement, he shifted his placement against the asphalt wall behind him to get a discrete hand on the wall. Seismics were a nice feature to have, one of the few new ones he got.
Leaning against the wall of one of the many fortifications he once paid Maelstrom to maintain for him, he was watching the small swarm of CINOTEC employees performing a survey on the now thoroughly-empty Ebunike. After the survey, they would give him an estimate, and he would shell out however many millions it would take to retrofit the whole thing.
Buying a new ship required waiting a few years in a list. They didn't just build massive quantities of ships for on-demand purchases, corporations took orders and then put you next on the waiting list for that product. It usually took a few years to actually get your order filled, because shipping was always in demand. Most large expensive things were purchased this way, because building products that potentially no one would buy was just bad business sense in most cases.
It would be slightly more expensive to retrofit the Ebunike, but an order of magnitude faster to get done as he didn't need to wait for his turn to crop up. The sooner it got built the faster he could get out of this shithole.
All his old shit had already been moved out, and was currently being evaluated further in an auction house vault. Apparently the inspector wanted to call in specialists because some of his shit was old, go figure. He made sure to be explicit in what would happen to her, her family, her friends, and her corporation if this was an attempt to steal from him.
The ugly woman was more offended by the implication that it was potentially theft than his threats against everything she was attached to, which was the first respectable trait he saw the creature display. Good job meatbag, you had exactly one redeeming feature thus far.
Rounding the corner behind him, the brat and his mother walked up to him. Both paused when they saw the workers crawling over the Ebunike.
"Oh, they showed up already?" The brat asked, to which he nodded in confirmation.
"The girls?" He questioned idly, focusing on the only proper borg among the workers starting to make its way over towards him.
"Still window-shopping apartments, not sure why they're getting into it so much. We're not gonna be staying there longer than a few… months right?" The brat responded, he grunted in confirmation. The woman spoke up at that. "Because it's fun for them, D."
He was paying attention to the borg now within speaking distance. He tilted his head as a question to the modified Samson. The Samson, wearing nostalgic overalls and a hardhat, spoke in that rumbling metal way that all Samsons did.
"Drydock, thirty years or so?" He growled out in the voice of an old sailor. "You open the seagate?"
"Twenty-seven years, no." Adam growled right back. "Attempted sabotage."
The Samson considered that with a roll of his jaw and narrowed optics. "Nothin' 'tempted 'bout it. Sabotage is right. Drydocking her so long opened leaks in the hull. She's taken on bit o' water."
"What'll it cost?"
"We'll need to call in a lifter to bring her outta tha' water. Gates busted too bad. Company prices usin' it and the struts at another ten thousan'."
Adam grunted in frustration, before nodding in acceptance. "Prospects otherwise?"
What he guessed was the foreman nodded once grumbled a reply. "Small girls like this ain' too difficult. Installin' those AMS will need a structural refit on top of tha' bow replacement, also might need some capacitors, dependin' on what engines she's usin'. Looking at around fifty five ta fifty seven mill an' a month o' work."
Adam grunted in acceptance, not as bad as he was expecting then.
"Oi Eustace!" One of the workers, a young man with dark skin and braided hair jogged over to them. The Samson glowered at the interruption.
"Tha fuck did ya negros break this time?" Despite the slur, the worker seemed unphased and continued on.
"We don't recognize the engine models, not in the database." The Samson grumbled at that before turning to Adam.
"Ya remember the model or is this some custom bullshit?" He asked.
Adam shook his head. "General Motors MicroFusion 260." He answered with a grumble of his own.
The Samson nodded in appreciation before rolling his optics and turning back towards the worker. "Check the fuckin' paperback catalogue next time you lazyass shitskins! Not just the fucking chip database."
The worker was still unphased, and replied with a calm smile. "It's locked up in your toolbox Foreman Eustace."
The Samson paused at that, before spitting to the side and stomping off to presumably unlock his toolbox for the workers. The worker stayed behind, watching the foreman stomp away, before turning to Adam and talking. "Don't mind ol' Eustace, he's too much of a hardass to actually treat us unfairly."
"I didn't ask." Adam grunted out, not caring one way or the other on the topic. The worker nodded.
"Even so, I like to talk."
"You don't mind the slurs choom?" The brat made the mistake of engaging in a conversation. One of his brows was raised in mild curiosity. The worker gave an easy shrug at that and replied.
"Ol' Eustace is pushing a hundred and thirty. Spent his whole life workin' to put his sons and grandsons through college. Got all his grandkids cushy jobs workin' security in space even. Just in time for the Seven Hour War to hit."
Adam grunted. Yeah that would explain it.
"Seven Hour War?" The brat asked, showing off a deficit in his education. "Never heard of it."
"Workers on the O'Neill 2 orbital habitat organized a rebellion and takeover back in 2022. Killing all the ESA security, securing the onboard ortillery weapons, and bombing ESA and EEC facilities." He explained. "Most of the workers were Africans."
The worker gave an easy going shrug at that. "More or less, choom. Three of Eustace's grandkids were on the new O'Neill 2, another four were in the various facilities bombed. He never let go of tha' grudge."
"And you just tolerate it?" The brat wasn't convinced.
"Eustace spits slurs with tha' best of them, choom, but they're just words. An' the alternative? Feed into tha' cycle of hate? Most of us decided against that a long time ago." The worker grinned. "I like preaching the good word choom. And the good word is to be good to each other. So don't judge ol' Eustace too hard, he's an ol' dog who's been hurt too bad to stop barkin'."
"Oi! Wrenchmonkey! You don't get paid for chattin'!" The Samson in question yelled from next to the ship. The worker turned to acknowledge the shout, before pulling out a pamphlet and handing it over to the brat.
"Think on it choom. I just wanna make the world better than when I found it. Hope life goes good for you." The worker finally jogged off to join the rest of the workers again. The brat flipped the pamphlet over in his hand with a raised brow.
"...What was that?" He sounded slightly baffled by the conversation. "It sounded like a sales pitch but without a product."
Adam grunted. "Evangelists." He offered no further clarification than that, the brat had the net, he could look it up.
The brat nodded before reading the pamphlet aloud. "The Earth and You : Steps to make a better tomorrow?" Ah, an environmentalist. Well that explained the touchy-feely bullshit that the meatbag was spouting.
There was a silence for a few minutes, as the brat tucked the plastic sheet away for some reason, and he and the woman took their places leaning against the wall next to him, watching the workers do their jobs inspecting the Ebunike.
Eventually, the brat spoke up. "...So what else is on the agenda for today?"
Adam considered it for a moment. The girls were looking for an apartment, Grayson was still here to watch the workers, he had already asked Rogue to put the word out that he was looking for PMC employees…
"Nothing scheduled." He replied after a time to think about it.
"Huh." The brat answered. Another period of silence followed before the brat spoke again. "Got time for a spar then, Smasher?"
Adam considered it for a moment. He nodded and was about to respond when the rumble of hunger sounded off. He and the brat turned towards the only meatbag present. The woman's cheeks tinted pink under the attention.
Adam snorted. "Call the girls brat, we'll get food first."
The brat let out his own amused snort. "Where are we eating?"
"Woman, pick a restaurant." Adam delegated the decision to the brat's mother.
After a good twenty minutes of indecision, Adam determined that was a poor idea. They finally settled on simply going to the first diner they stumbled across.
The burgers were low quality and the chairs too weak for his frame. He ended up having to lean against the wall instead.