That question was hard to answer.
If you start taking salaries from the shipgirl headquarters, you're no longer just a trade partner—or even an ally. You become an employee of the shipgirl HQ.
If Hikaru really agreed to that, Yamato would be overjoyed. No matter what he personally thought, the East Asia Division of the shipgirl HQ could immediately take this status around the block and flaunt it like: "Kuramoto Hikaru is one of ours now. Everyone else—back off."
"There's gotta be a proper label, of course," Hikaru nodded solemnly. "We'll call it the Abyssal Campaign Development Fund. Salaries and bonuses will be considered support, like aid."
Yamato made a face. If Hikaru insisted on calling it that, she couldn't argue back.
Still, she hadn't expected to rope him in so easily. After thinking it over, she asked, "Then, should the salary be paid according to shipgirl HQ's standards?"
"No no no," Hikaru shook his head vigorously. "My shipgirls are frontline warriors. How can they be treated the same as those bunnies lounging around in safe bases? And besides, communal pay is never a good idea. I'm saying we pay based on capability."
There was no way he'd accept HQ's salary scale. That was basically pocket change.
Fletcher had once been hired as a lecturer at the Academy after arriving in this world. Her salary? 100,000 a month.
Sounds decent, right? But converted to market-rate resources, that only amounted to a pitiful 0.1++—not even enough to fill a gap between teeth.
And that was for a max-level destroyer-class shipgirl. Hiring her for ten grand a month? Nothing was a better bargain.
Yamato could tell Hikaru had a plan already. She wasn't the type to haggle endlessly, so she said straight, "Tell me your proposal. If I can approve it, I will. If not, I'll help you file a report."
Of course she knew Hikaru was trying to bleed HQ dry with this.
Seeing how direct she was, Hikaru dropped the "pay by strength" pretense so he wouldn't come off as petty.
He held up one finger. "Small goal—1000++. I want 1000++ worth of resources every month, plus one billion credits."
"You might as well just rob us!"
Yamato sprang to her feet. If not for Prince of Wales, Bismarck, and the others nearby staring him down, she really would've smashed a plate over his head.
Just 1000++ in resources was already worth ten billion per month at market price. Yamato's liver trembled just thinking about it.
She'd expected Hikaru to squeeze them, but not this hard.
"Don't get worked up," Hikaru said, pointing to Tirpitz who was standing nearby, half-asleep with her eyes open. "Just for Tirpitz alone, isn't ten billion a month perfectly reasonable?"
Yamato hesitated. If you were trying to recruit the world's strongest fighter, ten billion a month actually wasn't much. Pocket change.
Hikaru began counting on his fingers.
"Look, a single B-2 stealth strategic bomber? The quote is $2.4 billion. And just sitting idle for a year, the maintenance alone costs over ten million.
"That Nimitz-class nuclear carrier just launched by the New World country? Not even counting construction, it's expected to cost $130 billion over its 50-year service life. That's $2.6 billion per year.
"And I heard their latest model—the Trafford-class nuclear carrier—costs over $13 billion per unit, not even counting R&D which runs into the hundreds of billions."
He gave Tirpitz's chubby cheek a pinch. "Look at her—the world's strongest, hands down. Isn't she more valuable than those carriers and bombers? And I'm only asking for ten billion a month! Spending this kind of money is like making money. If we weren't friends, I wouldn't even offer you this bargain!"
Yamato nearly coughed up blood.
That Nimitz-class? Their military itself reported the construction cost at $5 billion, with about $80 million in yearly expenses. That $2.6 billion figure was some analyst's exaggerated estimate, including crew training, logistics, welfare, and everything else under the sun.
And to operate a carrier meant supporting 5,000 crew members. Just feeding them each week required literal tons of meat and flour, tens of thousands of eggs, and over 10,000 liters of milk. They spent around $2 million a week just on groceries.
A single shipgirl had no reason to be compared to a war machine sustaining thousands of personnel and hundreds of aircraft!
[End of Chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
[Check out my Patreon to read 20+ chapters ahead]
[[email protected]/BellAshelia]
[Thanks for your support!]