As for our woes, everyone believed that the NUSA and Militech surging a Corps worth of mechanised infantry into Southern California had displaced a bunch of Raffen Shiv and other undesirable elements north, and we did seem to be encountering them on our leg back to Night City. The Free States hadn't been caught napping, though; they had appeared to know what was coming and had been undertaking a partial mobilisation of their own, with people whispering about military advisors in the area with thick Russian and Japanese accents.
This had been a small group of murderous psychopaths, and hopefully, there had been no fatalities on the Bakkers' side. I already saw that there were a few wounded, though.
At exactly the same time, I glanced around the large conference room I was sitting in back in LA. I was a little perplexed at how I had received an invitation to this meeting. It was a meeting of the Corporate Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. It was a meeting to discuss any communal action that the business interest was going to take in response to the President placing the entire city under Martial Law.
The only two Corporations that hadn't been invited were Militech and Petrochem, who were both working very closely with the NUSA government now. I kind of felt bad about Petrochem, as they had lost more market capitalisation in the wake of the algae release than even Biotechnica. They not only owned many, many farms, but they also owned the refining and distillation facilities to convert wheat into biofuels as well as most of the filling stations in the country. Well, actually, I didn't feel bad for them at all. I just hadn't intended to harm them, but they were still a giant corporation, so I felt that they'd likely land on their feet.
It was the latter filling stations, though, that saved them from serious fallout, as the demand for CHOOH2 hadn't decreased at all and seemed to be increasing, with prices higher than ever. They were taking a short-term hit, and maybe even a medium-term one, as the large refining facilities might not be useful anymore, but they still controlled consumer access to most fuels, so I thought that they would be fine.
Although I was invited, it was clear that I wasn't valued very much as my assigned seat was way in the corner. That was fine with me. I was segregated with the foreign corporations, and even amongst them, I was seated next to Corporations that only had a token presence in the city or ones that were, like my company, very small.
The fact that I was invited at all fell to two factors. First, the law in the NUSA was peculiar. Namely, foreigners were not permitted to own domestic companies, with very few exceptions. I could, for example, own my private practice, but I could not own the company that produced my sleep inducers. However, foreign companies could own domestic companies, so the ownership structure of everything I had was rather Byzantine, and everything in the NUSA ended up being owned by a Japanese joint-stock company, or kabushiki-kaisha, of which I was not only the only shareholder but also the chairman of the board and chief executive, as well.
This, combined with the fact that I had an end-user license for military hardware and owned a fair bit, led my enterprise to be designated by the Chamber of Commerce as a Corporation. I supposed it fit, but only in the same way that a fat, lazy tabby and a lion were both cats .
All of my American companies were named after Dr Hasumi's first name, Sakura, but that would have been a bit egotistical in Japan, so I decided to name the enterprise Baika Holdings. Baika was the Japanese word for plum blossoms, which very easily could be easily mistaken for cherry blossoms, so I thought it was clever and subdued.
It was flattering that Baika Holdings was considered a Corporation, although I would have personally preferred being overlooked here. It wasn't like anything I would say would be listened to. I wouldn't even be allowed to say anything, not with multinational giants in the room, so it was better to be completely forgotten, I thought. Still, I thought I had to give the Chamber of Commerce face by showing up. Otherwise, they might be offended.
I carefully took my seat in the corner, a small paper tent marking my place as "Dr S. Hasumi, PhD, MD, CEO Baika Holdings." I glanced at the seat next to me. I was seated next to the General Manager of the Jinguji Los Angeles branch store. That was about right. My "Corporation" was on about the same level as a local branch of a designer clothing store.
There was a quiet hum of conversations going on, as the presentation hadn't started yet, and the Jinguji manager raised an eyebrow at me and said politely, " Hello, Hasumi-sensei, was it? I can't say that I've heard of Baika Holdings at all. Don't see many CEOs at this meeting. It's all usually Regional Directors or lower like myself. "
The manager was an American, but he was speaking Japanese to me, so I decided to reciprocate. I grinned at him and didn't prevaricate, " It's basically my personal company. In addition to owning my private cybersurgical practice, we also manufacture boutique amounts of consumer electronics." I frowned for a moment and then decided to be honest, but at the same time, I downplayed the products I was selling, " This year is on track to break our record... we may see fifty million in revenues, total." Whatever we sold this year would break the record since this was the first year in operation.
That was both a lot and, at the same time, absolutely nothing. The total was correct, too, although my EBITDA would only be around thirty-five million if that were the case, and I'd still have to pay taxes on that. I just mentioned total revenues because normally an EBITDA of thirty-five million would imply revenues three times what I claimed, as my product had an excellent margin.
Corporate taxes in the NUSA were not that large, but they would still take a large chunk out of the profit, even if I minimised them by reinvesting most of the profits back into the enterprise. I still had two more quarters in this fiscal year, too, so it was a bit early to be counting my eggs in any event.
The Jinguji manager nodded politely at me, and at once, both pigeonholing me as a non-entity while at the same time seeming very impressed and a little nervous. A small company with fifty million Eurodollars in revenue was nothing, but someone owning that company was someone on a higher caste than mere Corporate managers like himself. I'm sure he was trying to determine by the side eye he was giving me if I was someone important's daughter, given a personal play company to manage while I had fun in North America.
Then he blinked, " Oh... do you own that clinic in Chinatown? I had heard a few nice things about it, which would make it the only reputable place in that part of town."
I grinned and nodded, " Yes, that's me. Mostly it's my own practice there, but I do hire part-time surgeons as well when I am busy." One was working there right now. I had too much of a steady business to only open the shop when I wanted to work. It had to be open, for the most part, every day now!
The surgeons I hired were really only contractors, using my operating theatre, stock of cybernetics and existing customer base, which was very similar to most surgeons' relationships with hospitals. They got paid per surgery performed.
We all quieted once the meeting came to order. It was conducted using some bizarre version of Robert's Rules that I frankly did not know nor particularly wanted to research. I wasn't going to participate in any event, so I just sat there politely. For the most part, the big names were cautiously optimistic about the way things were happening, although the rules of Martial Law were a bit constricting. For example, I could not have my armed forces patrol the streets around my property like I usually did, only to defend against active assaults on my buildings.
I didn't particularly like that, as waiting until the enemy attacked first and being forced to soak the first hit wasn't a winning tactic, but it was what it was. If I had known about this restriction, I would have bought another thirty robots from Arasaka even if it had cost me another one point two million eddies.
Security was, in some ways, a sunk cost, unrecoverable, but that wasn't really the case when most of your security force was robotic. Theoretically, there was capital depreciation on security robots over the years as they wore out, but I had known properly-maintained security bots that were still in service forty years after they were manufactured. Planned obsolescence was a somewhat standard practice in consumer electronics, but not so much for military gear. Everyone still produced that stuff to last, at least for the most part.
If I ever needed to sell them for a quick eddie, while I couldn't get their full cost, I could still get the majority of it back. At the same time, each robot was expensive. Gram for gram, they cost four times as much as the Militech drones, but they were a lot more flexible in how they could be used.
That said, I still needed to pay the salaries of a few human security specialists, though. But these people acted in more of a loss prevention role, preventing my own employees from stealing from me rather than defending the workplace from external threats.
Most of what the people were saying at this meeting was boring, but some of it pertained to me. Due to the city being under Martial Law, shipments into the city would be curtailed. They would be reduced not so much in scope but in frequency, which meant that larger convoy shipments would be the norm. This meant that storage was going to be a problem, and it was requested any members that had unused warehouse space contribute, for appropriate remuneration, of course.
I mentally signalled my ability to contribute. I was actually using my own warehouse now with both the large shipment of components and finished product awaiting fulfilment, but barely a tenth of it. My place would be considered "medium security" now, so right what was needed the most.
A private message came to me, requesting to sublet half of the building. And I smiled until I saw who it was from. One of the Biotechnica representatives. Ugh.
I didn't have any reason to decline, though. It wasn't as though I could tell them my real opinion of their enterprise. And honestly, it wasn't as though I even had that great a grudge against them. That said, I was still working slowly to determine which pharmaceuticals made the most profit. I could still study them and then anonymously disclose the production method of any secret but lucrative drugs. I could do that at least once more, maybe even twice, before it got suspicious.
I didn't like thinking of it as revenge but as corrective action. Even a stupid dog would stop shoving his snoot into a fire if it got burned a few times. So really, I was helping them, even if they didn't exactly know why their snoot was on fire!
Oh, who was I kidding? It was revenge.
Still, I replied with a tentative approval, subject to review by counsel and included my attorney's contact information. I also sent him a quick text telling him to review the agreement for anything particularly odious. I didn't really have a business manager to negotiate a price, and it wasn't exactly my forté either, so I was just going to use the standard rate for square footage multiplied by the security factor I was providing and then multiply that by two for the 'stick it to them' factor. If I didn't do the latter, then I wouldn't be taken seriously.
For the rest of the meeting, I just sat there, still and quiet. I was simultaneously performing open-heart surgery in the middle of the desert with what amounted to a first-aid kit, with a donor heart that wasn't anywhere near an appropriate genetic match. Not impossible, but it did take most of my attention. When I was done, the Bakkers would have forty-eight hours at the most to rush someone to the nearest city and acquire a cybernetic heart before the one I implanted was wholly rejected by the patient's immune system, even after suppressing it. I hadn't brought any cybernetic hearts with me, and I wasn't going to offer to individualise it for my patient, even if they died as a result. I hadn't sworn some arcane binding [Oath] to heal all who came before me, after all. I was just being polite.
Besides, it would be a fun adventure for some of the family, anyway. Something they could tell their friends and family when they were done, as they would legitimately be saving a life. Sacramento was only about six hours hard driving away, and two of the younger members of the clan were already strapping in and ripping down the desert ahead of us, headed to the I-5 South to get there.
Getting out of the meeting, I quickly got into my Mizutani Shion and drove away, trying successfully to get away from the many armoured SUVs that most corporate entourages had before they caused huge traffic issues leaving the hotel venue we were at. I just drove randomly, taking some time to think. I meandered over to Long Beach in my musings and pulled off to the side of the road, looking across the river to the port, just in time for a rocket to smash into a small building, reducing it to rubble.
Militech and Petrochem forces were, even now, staging in the port of Los Angeles in brigade strength. A mixed force of infantry, mercenaries and engineers. They issued demands for any and all illegal occupants of the ports to leave. A lot of regular squatters did, and they let them leave, but after forty-eight hours, they had begun a systemic genocide of anyone remaining, supported by both divisional artillery and combat-aviation brigade from the NUSA's 40th Infantry Division. It was clear that whatever their plans were, they didn't really care about the existing buildings.
If there was the slightest resistance at all, they would call artillery and MLRS rocket strikes, demolishing the entire building. It had become a thing for crowds gathering right next to where I was to watch the "show" from the Long Beach side of the river, oohing and aahing every time a salvo of missiles or guided Howitzer shells from kilometres away flattened a building.
For me, it was kind of imposing to think about. This was real military power, not my several dozen dinky robots. Just one barrage of a couple of those big guns could completely destroy my building and everything I had built, and I had absolutely no defence against it.
I got the impression that they intended to demolish most of the buildings in the abandoned area of the port anyway, as their engineering units would quickly roll in behind the mercenaries and Corporate SecTeams, using mostly robotic front-end loaders and other heavy equipment to quickly clear the ground, with large trucks carting off rubble and debris twenty-four seven.
