Gundam: From Piece to Player

Hauserley thought to himself that, fortunately, the submarine itself would not be affected by the typhoon.

Using a typhoon as cover to launch a surprise attack and eliminate the current top military leader of the Federation has a high success rate.

Chapter 379 The Gold Miner (Part 1)

"You must call me Gaman later, and you can't use honorifics when you call me that."

“Yes, Mr. Garman.”

Seeing that Karma had transformed into another person through the image transformation system, Hathaway thought to himself that the other party was far too skilled at infiltration.

"Today I'm going to play the role of a purchasing manager for a smelting company. You'll come with me to investigate the current living conditions of miners."

Miners... what Hathaway could think of were the members of colonial communes.

In the social context of the New Commonwealth, their profession was not considered respectable. Their work environment was usually on the outer walls of the colony, dark and gloomy, and their pay was considered relatively high among blue-collar manual laborers.

Textbooks promote the "glory" of these people, but their parents would never allow them to pursue such careers.

On asteroid number 423, two people in spacesuits disembarked from the shuttle ship.

Hathaway looked towards the starry sky and saw a shining silver coin—that was the sun.

Compared to the habitable ecosystems of colonies, the surface of asteroids is barren rock, riddled with craters.

The most eye-catching part of the entire 423 is the orange-red syringe that looks like it's injecting an asteroid, standing on the ground in front.

"This is a hoverbike. It's not cost-effective to build roads on asteroids, so you can give it a try."

Spacecraft landing platforms on asteroids have infrastructure, one of which is a hovering drone.

Hathaway mounted the bike with the determination to fall.

But then I found that this thing didn't fall over. Was it an automatic balancing device?

"Let's hurry, we're going to be late."

It only took him two minutes to learn how to make the thing float in the air, and then he followed Karma as they flew toward the "syringe".

"Mr. Garman, what kind of minerals are being mined here?"

"gold."

"Huh?" Hasavi almost fell off the car.

"You don't know the value of gold in industry, do you? Do you think our Space Alliance would use it as a currency anchor?"

"If we want to synthesize it artificially, we would need to use a particle accelerator to collide with each other at the speed of light, or a nuclear reactor to bombard it with neutrons. Gold is still a 'non-renewable resource' for us humans at present. It is only formed naturally when galaxies are formed. Therefore, the production and application of gold still rely on natural mining."

Hasavi understood somewhat.

I'm also looking forward to the next part of the visit. Will those gold miners really be able to follow the mining discipline?

Instead of stuffing the mined ore into their pockets.

They were greeted by Thiago, the mining company's mining manager, who was only 1.6 meters tall and had a slender build; he was a typical "technical manager."

When Kalmar introduced Hassawi, he used an alias, Arno.

“Mr. Garman, our excavation equipment is a Liebherr 102 model, which can dig to a maximum depth of 6 kilometers, and can easily drill through this asteroid.”

“That’s equipment data. Our company processes 150 tons of gold every year. I’m worried that you can’t handle such a large order. If production is delayed and we can’t deliver the output, then I’ll have to consider giving next year’s order to other mines.”

"No... Mr. Garman, we're sure we can deliver the order."

Hassawi, watching from the side, also discerned some of the underlying principles.

Lord Kalmar's character, the smelting and purchasing company, has a higher ecological niche, so it's the mining company that's begging the smelter... How can the mined gold still be unsaleable?

Is the gold market oversupplied?

"Our annual output is sufficient to meet your company's requirements. I can show you our production records."

"Anyone can fake an Excel spreadsheet. I only trust my own eyes. How about this... It's rare for Manager Thiago to be so sincere. Can I stay here for two or three days to inspect your mine's production capacity?"

“That would be wonderful, but unfortunately I can’t host you the whole time,” Thiago said hesitantly.

Judging from the performance of this mid-level manager at the mine, he had other duties besides receiving guests.

“Here’s what we’ll do: you find a production team leader on the front lines, and Arno and I will go to the front lines to observe directly. I also worked as a production capacity engineer for a while before I did procurement, so I can also assess your mining ‘capacity’,” Kalmar said. “You don’t need to worry about food and lodging; we’ll take care of that on the spaceship we’re coming from.”

“Mr. Gaman truly lives up to his reputation as an elite in our gold mining industry,” Thiago said. “I will arrange accommodations for you and Mr. Arno immediately. We have also built villages around the mine, and the living conditions are quite good.”

"As for production, I'll have a team leader show you the digging situation on the front line... His name is Hartmann, he's the production champion, but he's not very educated, so please forgive him, sir."

“Hartmann?” Karma thought of his former subordinate.

He recalled that the Principality of Zeon's naval commander during the One Year War was someone he had attended in the Republic of Zeon just three years prior.

Could this be a distant relative of his?

Fifteen minutes after Thiago made a phone call, a middle-aged man in his forties wearing an engineering helmet and exoskeleton protective suit came up from the mine in an elevator. Through AI genetic analysis and shape comparison, Kalma was able to confirm that he had any connection with the elderly man she knew.

It's just that they have the same name.

"What's wrong, Thiago? Have I been reduced to a waiter at the inn?"

"What are you saying? This is an important client of our company. Whether the client agrees to give us orders directly affects your income next year. Be serious."

"Yes." Master Hartmann understood what Thiago meant.

This way, the other person's true nature will be restrained. It seems that he has a pretty good relationship with the manager.

As they slowly entered the mine.

Kalmar looked out of the well; in fact, his understanding of the gold mining industry was something he had only learned through cramming.

This is actually fine, because he had done the same thing before when he visited other companies in the Space Alliance incognito.

If he were to visit under his original identity, some things he would normally be able to see would no longer be visible... Now that he no longer holds a public office, he can also see the potential problems in various industries under the alliance.

Labor disputes and the degree of actual exploitation.

This wasn't just about showing Hasavi the world; it was also his first time here himself. As for whether it would expose any problems...

The fact that the problem was exposed shows that the system is unreasonable, and it should be resolved. He didn't treat Hasavi as some kind of "foreign guest".

This time, it was the assistant, Hassawi, who couldn't contain his curiosity and asked the man, "Master, why do you do this job?"

"Make money," Hartman replied.

"Then why do you want to make money?"

"It started because I had four children to support, and the pay in this line of work was very high."

Chapter 380 Gold Miners

"Four?" Hasavi exclaimed incredulously. "That's far too many!"

"Having twins in two consecutive pregnancies is really difficult," Hartman said.

"Originally, I was a military academy student who joined the Federal Marine Corps... Oh, I mean the Earth Federation. But after a year of war, I was also afraid of dying, so I came up with a way to fake my injury and escape the whole war."

"When the war ended, the army no longer needed me, so I had to work on construction sites operating excavators to make a living. During that time, I got married, but because I had a child, I didn't have any savings... Then I saw the Space Alliance immigrants, who had free housing. My wife and I discussed it and decided to try our luck by immigrating. But it turned out that I could only do manual labor."

Hartman said with a self-deprecating laugh.

"Judging from your age, your children should be graduating and starting work soon," Hasavi comforted you.

"Hmm, that's not bad. My eldest became an engineer for the Jupiter Fleet, that's really impressive; my second became a doctor, that's not bad either; my third teaches at a school, that's alright; I'm most worried about my fourth, he's always obsessed with MS competitions and wants to go pro... Maybe my views are a bit outdated, but I can't imagine making a living by playing games."

"Mining is hard work, have you ever thought about retiring early, sir?"

"Retire?" Hartman frowned. "Do young people think that a middle-aged man like me is useless?"

"No, that's not what I meant. I just thought that since your children are all working, you shouldn't have such a big financial burden, right?"

“Before, I had to support them, but now I can spend the money I earn myself. I’m almost saving enough Creation Coins to have an extension surgery. After the surgery, I can live to be 200 years old. Also, I heard from Lord Karma that in the future, we can go into a hibernation pod until the day immortality technology is mature. It’s so good to be alive.”

"eternal life?"

Before Hasavi could even process the shock of the word and instinctively turn to Kalmar for an answer, the elevator jolted violently.

"Be careful, we've reached the bottom of the well," the uncle warned.

The surrounding rock strata were illuminated by the cave, and the outer walls of the rock strata were supported by rings of metal frames. Unlike the narrow underground mine that Hasavi had imagined, the mine shaft below was more than 10 meters wide.

A white, armored vehicle with a huge drill at the front, tracked and firmly fixed to the ground in zero gravity, must have used some special technology.

"Come in, guests, this is my livelihood."

Hartmann started the armored vehicle, and Kalma and Hathaway boarded it. Seeing this, Hartmann slowly pressed the accelerator, and the armored vehicle began to travel through the tunnel.

“These tunnels were dug out by tunnel boring machines. If they encounter something that they can’t dig through, then they have to use other equipment.”

"Don't you need explosives for the other equipment?"

“Explosives pose a risk of directly collapsing the mine. Our company boss used to be a technical officer, and he was thinking about whether we could use MEGA particle cannons instead of traditional explosives. However, this is, after all, civilianizing weapons. If it is used for sabotage, it would be terrible.”

"Fortunately, our company boss is quite quick-witted and used some tricks to successfully pass the approval of the Asteroid Mining Inspection Bureau."

Hasavi coughed quickly, worried that the man would lose his job.

"Ah, it's a legal means, a legal means." Uncle Hartman clearly realized that there was something wrong with what he said.

They finally arrived at the production area, and the three of them jumped off the drill-tracked vehicle.

This is the front line of gold mining. You can see a winch pulling the wind in the mine tunnel, and several workers wearing exoskeleton protective suits holding cutting machines that look like beam sabers. They can easily dig out a large rock with some gold on it. In addition, there is a tracked robot, and the muzzle on it is probably a mega particle cannon used to break up the rock.

A tracked loader is loading the collected gold ore, piling it into metal levitation spheres one truckload at a time, which are then pulled out of the mine by a strip-shaped robot.

—Because it's possible in zero gravity.

After watching for a while, Hassawi thought to himself that this was actually an alternative corporate production line.

The mining costs themselves are also quite high.

"How are your salaries calculated?" Kalmar suddenly asked.

"Basic salary + excavation volume + average hourly wage." The uncle clearly had no political sensitivity and blurted it all out as soon as asked.

"How many."

The master gave a number, and Hasavi saw Kalma frown.