Nestor turned out to be a thin-lipped man in a stern grey suit. After a quick chat, Agni convinced him to sell us a high-capacity shield generator and six smaller, pint-sized devices for the low, low price of one million dollars.

Joy.

Nestor also had a jammer, although a much less sophisticated one than Plavic’s. It generated a Level 2 jamming field, which only stopped EM, acoustic and thermal sensors. Didn’t stop people from recording a video and reading our lips, so Agni spoke with a hand over her mouth to reassure Nestor, who followed suit.

“I’ll be about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars short for the shields,” I grumbled to Agni afterwards.

“I’ll lend you the difference. Trust me, this shield generator will save your life.”

“I got that from his explanation.” Nestor’s answers had convinced me that the generator would provide at least 1000 shield points. “I just… don’t like owing money to people.”

“Fine, you can pay me in materials.”

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“What materials?”

“The stuff you make your armor out of. Aren’t you trading it to people?”

“Uh… no?”

“Why? You’ve got loads of it lying around your warehouse. You could make a fortune off it on the black market. Or, heck, on military contracts, since you’re so chummy with them already.”

“... right, of course.” In all the chaos, I’d forgotten General Xavier’s ‘request’ to share any technology I could spare... “I doubt I could make enough of it, though.”

“Why not? It can’t take you that long to make it.”

“I can make about two kilos per minute at most. Hardly enough to make a difference.”

“So how much would it take for you to armour, say, one of their tanks in it?”

“Twenty tons, at least. That’s about a month’s work, just for one tank.”

“Wait, did they say you’d need to put twenty tons of armour on a tank?”

“... er, that’s how much armor a tank usually has?”

“Did you talk to your friends in the military about how much they would NEED. Not how much you THINK they would need. And what they would do if you gave them, say, five hundred kilos of fullersteel.”

“That’s a good idea.” I hadn’t really thought of the possibility much, but it seemed sensible to armour the tanks that were going to be fighting the aliens - maybe a thin layer would still help. And if it helped me pay for the shielding system, well worth it.

“Now that’s settled, we should order.”

“Order?”

“Yeah, this is a five star restaurant. Might as well enjoy the food, right?”