Gate (3)
"You're telling me you don't even know where it goes?"
"That's right."
The moment I heard those words, the thing in front of me stopped looking like a gate and started looking like a garbage chute.
"Are you kidding me? Then how the hell are we supposed to use this thing?"
A warp gate only had value if it connected two points. Without a destination, how was this any different from a door to nowhere?
"Then why did you even call us here?"
So they'd dragged me away from a perfectly good day of squeezing honey out of my administrative slaves just to show off an unfinished gate with no known destination.
At my reaction, Alina slipped forward in Vermouth's place and offered an answer.
"Well, of course — we required the assistance of a certain small fleshling to secure sufficient resources and capital for the gate's construction."
"…Hmm?"
In other words, they wanted to use me as a sponsor.
Hearing that, Riel and I both felt our sanity quietly leave the building.
"Excuse me, but doesn't the Ministry of Technology and Science already rank in the top five government departments by budget?"
"…"
"Where exactly did you blow through that mountain of funding, and why are you coming to us with your hand out???"
"Th-that's…"
"Think about it. Our Foreign Executive Ministry's total budget execution is only about twenty-five percent of yours."
Riel often doubled as the Foreign Executive Ministry's de facto finance officer, so when Vermouth and Alina started chanting give the money, her irritation detonated on the spot.
That's my girl, Riel. Go tear them apart.
As for me — the one who was supposed to rein her in — I maintained a carefully deliberate silence and settled in to watch the show.
Faced with all this, Minister Vermouth's expression crumpled into something dangerously close to tears.
"Besides Minister Arto, every other bastard who saw this said it did nothing for them!! They called it a waste of time and tore into me for it!!"
"…"
"They're people who don't even understand what gate technology is worth — they just write it off as budget waste! Who else am I supposed to ask for help?!"
She launched into a magnificent self-pity monologue and shoved it straight at us, and Riel — who had been mid-budget-assault — faltered and actually took a step back.
At that, I decided it was my turn to step forward.
"If research funding for the gate was the problem, why didn't you just come to me from the start?"
Honestly, by Vermouth's own assessment just now, she had never expected anyone but me to properly value this thing. So she should have come to me first, planted a solid ally at her back, and then gone begging for budget. The results would have been far better.
Vermouth seemed to concede the point, nodding with a grimace.
"Urgh… I've got nothing to say to that."
"Did it never occur to you that showing up this late and dumping it on me out of nowhere might make even me reluctant to help?"
"…"
"Frankly, if this is how you're going to handle it, I have no intention of helping either."
The moment I said that and turned to leave, Minister Vermouth — a minister of the great Holy Sevelian Empire and a high-ranking noble holding the title of marquis — threw every last scrap of her pride out the airlock.
"Nooo!!!"
She latched onto my pant leg, wrapped the mechanical tentacles linked to her spine around my body, and wailed.
"There's really no one left who can help me except Minister Arto! And just building and maintaining that gate core has already burned through every last bit of our spare funding!!!"
Faced with the truly grotesque spectacle of Minister Vermouth sobbing at full volume, I couldn't hide my dismay.
"Okay, hang on, just let go for a second so we can ta—"
"No!!! I am absolutely not letting go!!!"
I never imagined a marquis could look this pathetic.
Of course, Vermouth's behavior had long since crossed every line of propriety, so the Purge Squad members on permanent escort duty melted out of nowhere and moved to forcibly sever the mechanical tentacles coiled around me.
But just before they could—
"Minister Arto! If the power cuts out here, the gate core we barely managed to form will be rendered completely unusable!!"
"…Can't you just rebuild it, then?"
"We scraped together rare resources that even the entire Empire doesn't have enough of — smuggled in from nations across the galaxy — and poured every last scrap into this thing! Building another one is imposssible!!!"
At Vermouth's eardrum-terrorizing wail, I waved the Purge Squad off, exhaled a long sigh, and spoke.
"Fiiine… All right. I'll figure something out somehow, so…"
"Thank you!!!!"
"So kindly release the tentacles already, and let go of my pants."
"Ah — sorry."
Of course, even after Vermouth's undignified display ended, my pants did not return to their original condition.
Sometime later.
Half a year had already passed since I'd mobilized every political and financial connection I had — including Artraia herself — to secure budget and resources and dump them on the Ministry of Technology and Science.
I was deep in the middle of work when Minister Vermouth of Technology and Science opened a direct line and, without any preamble whatsoever, announced:
"Thanks to you, Minister Arto, construction of the gate has been completed successfully!"
Then she hung up, having obliterated every principle of beginning, middle, and end.
What.
I sat frozen in place for a moment, completely failing to process what that was supposed to mean — until an event message popped up immediately afterward, and I nodded along as I turned to Riel beside me.
At last, the Holy Sevelian Empire has decided to publicly demonstrate the development of a remarkable new technology that surpasses conventional hyperspace lane navigation.
A structure vast enough for fleet-scale forces to transit simultaneously has, by its sheer scale alone, left an overwhelming impression in the memories of countless media outlets and citizens.
Favorability of other nations toward the Holy Sevelian Empire: +50 for 5 years
"Riel. Looks like the gate construction project is finally done."
"Finished faster than I expected."
The construction speed was so astonishing I couldn't hide my amazement.
"They successfully built one each at the Kardian Black Hole in the far south and the Aiar System in the far north."
But if that was the case, didn't that mean they'd already had resources on site before we even started supporting them? Factoring in transit time for materials, it almost had to be true.
When I voiced that doubt to Riel, she just shrugged as if it were nothing.
"Turns out they borrowed resources from local corporations and planets to start construction, then paid them back once the real shipments arrived."
"…"
So they'd essentially maxed out the cosmic equivalent of a credit card. The thought settled into my head that, well, that level of flexibility was probably necessary.
And while we were trading those minor observations—
Ding♪
An alert suddenly chimed from my terminal. Riel went over, picked it up, and handed it to me.
> Warp Gate demonstration footage scheduled for simultaneous broadcast empire-wide
> Viewing requested of all civil servants and military personnel in every sector…
> Officials of vice-minister rank and above to be provided audiovisual hyperspace link via office communications
It was the kind of mass text that reminded me uncomfortably of my previous life. Feeling a vague sense of unease, I told Riel to turn on the office screen.
"Uh, the remote is sitting right in front of you, Minister. Do you really need to make the person on the opposite side of the room do it?"
"Yes."
"Don't you ever get tired of always making me do everything?"
"No? Not at all? It's always fresh and delightful."
There was a brief interlude of teasing in the middle, but one way or another, Riel grumbled her way over and switched on the office screen.
Doon-doon-doon-doon…
The moment the display lit up—
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doooon~
"Fare thee well~ O Ka'zan~"
"…"
An aggressively cheap-sounding BGM rolled out, followed by a propaganda-film opening that looked like something straight out of a World War II newsreel from my previous life.
"…"
"Minister Vermouth couldn't keep a lid on the madness again and did something weird."
After that nearly unendurable bargain-bin opening finally passed—
"At last, the Holy Sevelian Empire's first demonstration of warp gate navigation is about to unfold before your eyes."
"Oh."
A crisp announcer's voice accompanied the reveal of a warp gate structure so enormous it rivaled a decent-sized moon.
"It's insanely big."
"You're telling me."
It looked similar to the one from the game, but it was so vast that my brain seemed to refuse the comparison outright — insisting that this simply could not be the same thing.
Not that I had the luxury of dwelling on that right now.
"We are also joined by Minister Vermouth of Technology and Science, who successfully developed the warp gate. Good day, Minister Vermouth."
"Yes, hello there."
Watching Minister Vermouth's dazed expression — the look of someone who had wandered onto the site without a clue and promptly been kidnapped by the media's feverish coverage — turned out to be surprisingly entertaining.
According to the event message, the warp gate itself would function normally without any major issues. So I settled in without particular worry, watching the test ship's feed on a split screen separate from the news interview, and reached for a drink I'd prepared in advance.
"Three, two, one… warp out."
FWOOOOSH!
"Warp gate successful… wait. Where the hell is this?"
Pfft—!
That is, it would have been fine — if the scenery the test ship emerged into hadn't been some planetary system I'd never seen in my life, instead of the Aiar System.
"What on earth is th—!"
And because I was so completely focused on that reality—
Crrrk.
—it took me a moment longer to notice that Riel, now wearing the full spray of the drink I'd just spit out, was staring at me with eyes that could melt steel.