CHAPTER 15
It took some time for the Admiral to get back to me. “Governor. We understand your reluctance but we are not here to conquer your small system. We are heading toward a celopod planet recently discovered to eliminate this bug threat. We can get a much greater pay day with artifacts from their civilization than we could find here.” Good thing the Prometheus was in disguise. Before replying I commed Rose and made sure to mask the entirety of advanced tech we had installed on the mining ships and station. I had a feeling if Admiral Jack got wind of it he would change his mind if this was not a ruse.
“Be that as it may I would still prefer you respect our wishes. We will allow shuttles to travel back and forth from where you fleet is stationed and allow a single cruiser in orbit at a time. I am sending you the price sheet for items you may wish to purchase.” I waited anxiously for his reply because I did not like the sense of this man at all.
“Agreed. Admiral Jack out.”
It took the fleet a day to reposition. I learned that the Malkavian Corp was trying to be the first to engage the celopods and get the experience boost from it as well as the high resale of any unique items they found. It gave me some reassurance in that they probably didn't want to risk losing a ship or two here. Things were going quite well for the first three days as we were making a healthy profit on the trade and only a few incidents occurred with the crews on shore leave. They mainly complained about the small size and backwater nature of the planet. The fleet was scheduled to depart the next day and I got a comm request from Admiral Jack again. I took it, “Governor Jedediah Knight. Thank you for being gracious hosts. You have quite a fine planet here. I have not had the privilege of such fine wines and spirits in many months. I wanted to ask you if you are willing to part with some of the 50 battle suits you have in Mycell.” Oh crap. I had forgotten to tell my police officers not to gab. Next time I would be more careful. Those suits were mid tier and worth about 120 thousand each. Fortunately he had not learned of the suits at the Academy. Those were heavy suits and worth twice as much. I needed to plan a good response here to not make him upset.
“Admiral, I am sorry but those are the planets primary civil defense force. However we have very few men capable of using them right now. I would be willing to sell 26 of them for 130,000 credits each. The mark up is so we can order replacements after you depart.” He nodded and smiled with a grin I did not like. I knew it was hard to find battle suits outside of the core worlds. One of his men had probably seen that they were also pretty much new and in perfect working order.
He returned with a counter offer. “I will buy all 50 suits for 150,000 credits each Governor. These excess funds should be more than sufficient to purchase new suits.” He knew as well as I did it would take months to get them shipped out here and valuable shipments traveling such a long distance tended to be intercepted. I decided to counter his offer.
“Admiral I have another 30 suits on board my flagship, Prometheus. My trade advisor has told me the cash would much better for our economy than battle suits we cannot use. Would you take all 80 suits off my hands for 155,000 credits each? Most of the suits were just recently taken out of their shipping packaging and are in mint condition.” I smiled in an open manner. He was talking to someone off screen. It was a bit of an argument and with the screen muted on his end I couldn't make out what was being said. My guess is 12.4 million credits was a pretty hefty sum even for one of the top corporations in the game.
After about a minute of back and forth the Admiral came back on, “We have a deal Governor. We will take 20 suits immediately and inspect them. If with like what we find we will transfer 12.4 million credits and then take the remaining 60 suits. It was a pleasure doing business with you. Admiral Jack out.” I smiled. He thought he was making us weaker and perhaps he thought on his way back from his campaign he would stop in again and pillage the Capsulite system. Little did he know I could make hundreds of these battlesuits for just a few thousand credits of raw materials. I put the 30 suits to the top of the queue for the replicator and had Rhino squad rough up a few of them to show some use on them.
The exchange went smoothly and the Admiral asked if I had any more suits squirrelled away that I would sell. He needed them to upgrade his infantry. I assured him he had all the medium battle suits we had on hand at this time. I was greatly relieved when they exited the system. My spy network did let me know his crew had been snooping around a lot and we found the police officer that had shown two members of the crew on leave the suits. We didn't fire him but did assign him to a town far away. I was also told there were two plants left behind. My security teams had carefully monitored everyone leaving the shuttles and who got back on. The two men were posing as ‘new’ immigrants in the city of London. I was very impressed with the diligence on my security force. If they had not been so fastidious those men would of just blended into the massive influx of people. It made me worry there might be other plants on the planet. I was just relieved neither man was a PC character or a companion. I had both scooped up stealthy and put into permanent confinement. No point risking anything. If the Malkavian corporation came back I would plead ignorance. My interrogators let me know the men had spilled that they were to access the entire system defense network and also were to enter the Academy as fresh recruits if possible. This made me a little paranoid but Athena assured me her screening process would have caught them.
The credits from the sale of the battle suits went directly to increase enrollment at the Academy by 825 cadets. I needed to get some good navy personal quick. I replaced the 60 medium battle suits with 120 to account for the increase in the police force. I also doubled the internal security measures. We needed to keep everything tight from now on. No more leaks about our capabilities. We had 70 men who could use the suits and I challenged the department to get 240 men trained on them and when that happened I would send them another 120 suits.
I enjoyed my first football game. Black Fleet Phoenixes versus Chevalier Knights. The stadium held 25,000 people and was packed. The game was pretty good through the first half before the Knights opened things up. The cadets, while disciplined and fit were no match for the more athletic university athletes. I knew if the academy was the same size as Chevalier University it would be a closer match. Both schools had been throttle the other four colleges on the planet in all the sports. A huge rivalry was developing between the Knights and Phoenixes. I thought this was great. I had worn my uniform to the game but it had not helped the final score. Athena had 500 students at each of her four universities but she had more important things to pay for right now. She even gave me a snide remark that if I wanted the other schools to be more competitive I should spend my own money.
Well it had been only fourths since I had taken over as governor and I had shifted my attitudes from being an explorer to a governor. I really wanted to get out into the galaxy. I know MD wanted to. I let MD know we would be going out for an interstellar spin. We would make sure we were full of supplies to keep the replicator going. There were two systems close by that I did not have any data on. One was 9 light years away and the other was 3 light years from that. I figured it would be four or five days total to check out both systems. I also took this time to sell 145 system maps. Since the Malkavian forces were out here I didn't want them to find any systems and then get the money for them. So I chose a big block of systems around where they were headed and all the systems that were close by the Capsulite system. I charged 40,000 for uninhabited and 80,000 for inhabited. The inhabited systems only had humans. It took only two days for the data to sell. It yielded me an even 6 million credits. I also new this new ‘reveal’ would draw attention to me or Black Phoenix Corp but the secret was out with the Malkavian’s passing through. I used the money to raise population of each of the colleges by 100. The extra money needed for the Academy came from the Chevalier government. I told Athena in mirth I expect her universities to do better on the field.
We battened down the hatches and heading out to explore. Entering FTL was best described as going down in an elevator. It was a momentary feeling of weightlessness. Rhino squad commented that it was one of smoothest transitions they had ever experienced. Normally you felt yourself getting really heavy and then very light. Most noobs vomited the first time. The trip to the system was going to fairly quick, only a few hours. I stayed on the bridge to watch the stars scroll by slowly. Coming out of FTL into the system was anticlimactic. Gravmetric scans outlined the system on the display. The star itself was a class A star. Which meant nothing to me. The system had seven planets, three of which were gas giants. Two asteroid belts. “No RF or other communication detected.” Maddie chimed in. Which basically meant probably no life. The system graph coalesced on the screen. On my game screen the system designation came up, Gamma-Theta- Epsilon-6. A prompt allowed me to change the name. I named the system Katrine. I hoped this got me something special when she logged in to the game in a few hours. MD prompted, “we should do a loop to scan all the bodies in the system, best time would be 47 hours at max speed.” Ok so we had to spend two days to catalog everything. I was already bored even the minor jump to experience didn't seem that great. I also obtained some bonus for visiting a second system. Once we cataloged everything ourselves I would get a few more experience. Over all maybe 4,000 experience for the two days. I usually got that much experience each day being a planetary administrator. Oh well I was commited. It turned out to be worth it as Katrine was more than enthused about me naming the system after her. The trip around the system was worth the effort. We found a dense rare metal asteroid patch. Metals we desperately needed for the advanced systems. Normal scanners would not have picked it up but we had super spectrographic scanners. It would be worth sending mining ships out here. If they just put the rare metals in their hold each load would be worth around 100,000 credits. Other than that one find there was not much sense in coming out here to mine as the cost of travel and time would not be worth it. It would take about 12 months of continuous mining by two mining ships to exhaust the find.
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After the compete survey we headed out of system for the next destination. It was a short trip with our awesome star drive. The next system was much more interesting. It had class G star. It had only 4 planets but one of them had liquid water and probably life. Only one asteroid belt too. I let Katrine name the system and she called it Severt. I little vain of her but she said since the systems were next to each other they would spell her name out. We had a 44 hour scan of the system and had to pass closer to the water planet to get a better read. Everyone was on the bridge as we approached it 20 hours later. The planet was 50% water, had a barely breathable atmosphere. The land masses were speckled with green and orange foliage. Only small life signs came up. Nothing bigger than a horse. We could see some herds running along the grass plains with zoom. They looked like minnie elephants to me. The planet crust had a high concentration of iron and carbon, 37%. This meant natural diamonds probably were very common. It was 10% larger than Earth. I decided to land briefly for samples at MDs request. I gave everyone 4 hours to explore.
As soon as we touched down MD sent out his collection drones. Rhino squad shadowed me and Katrine as we inspected the plant life. I made the mistake of touching a yellow flower only to have it squirt an acid jet at me. It left a mark on my battle suit. Rhino squad giggled before muting their comms. The water was very alkaline so any fish would not be edible. It was fun to be the first to explore a new planet even if it was just a computer generated one. After the time elapsed we boarded the ship. MD said a local predator had destroyed one of the drones. This worried me immensely as those drones were really tough. On the bridge we watched the footage. The drone came over a rise and small humanoid shape with gray skin jumped on it. The beast passed right through the shield! The drone tried to electrocute the beast but it had no effect. Then the beast started tearing the drone apart with its bear hands until it no longer functioned. The beast also seemed to be immune to general scans and could only be picked up by movement. It emitted no heat signature or UV other than its eyes and mouth. I had Rhino squad on guard as we checked to make sure none of the goblins were nearby or on board. MD picked up a four of them 300 yards away studying our ship. They were not a new race of space fearing beings because this would have triggered an alert. They also must be more animal than sentient because this would have also triggered an alert in an experience gain. I was very curious what their skin was made of to allow such stealth and resistance to electricity. It was an opportunity I didn't want to waste. I ordered Lina to get ready with Rhino squad. We were going to capture one of these critters!
MD warned me as we left that the strong of the battlesuits was only slightly better than his drone that had been ripped apart. I had faith in our numbers and the experience of rhino squad. We headed for the four goblins and they fled before the six battle suits charging them. We approached quickly and these creatures were not fast but I could tell they were agile. I had put John in charge and he ordered every the open up with laser rifles on the trailing goblin. Everyone was hitting but me. The creature was struck by hit after hit. The hide had dull scorch marks but appeared otherwise unaffected. We continued to fire and after taking nearly three dozen hits it screeched in pain. The other three stopped and turned to see the issue. One of them went back to help his comrade while the other two continued to flee. The beast we had wounded had slowed slightly and turned on us. We had been trailing at 50 meters and firing but now the goblin adjusted in stance and flung itself toward us. We all scattered as it lunged the slowest of us to react was Lina. The beast grappled her armor seeking a hold. Using her body for leverage it ripped off a chest piece. It started going into the servos and electronics screaming wickedly. Rhino squad circled the beast and kept firing into the damage already done to its back. It ignored the hits and got to Lina’s flesh. The beast grabbed flesh and ripped it from the hole in the armor. Lina screamed into the comm channel and was batting the beast with her hands. The second closed on Francis. He extended his mono blade and meet its charge. Francis caught the beast of the hip and slashed through the tough hide exposing thick red blood. The beast howled and staggered. He must have hit a muscle as well. Taking the queue from Francis John, Grace and Ben switched to mono blades and rushed the goblin on Lina. They cut the beast up in short order. It looked shredded more than sliced up. Many gashes dotted its skin and some flaps hung covered in red gore. Francis was able to subdue the second goblin on his own. He was very good with the mono blade. I mean scary good. He dodged and parried the beast with ease and kept nicking it until it bleed out.
I rushed to Lina’s side but she was dead. Fortunately she was a companion and would respawn in her quarters on the ship. I am sure she would be in a great mood. Her body was already dissolving leaving just her power armor. We collected the armor and corpses and headed back to the ship at best possible speed. I was glad none of rhino squad had been killed. I was carrying one of the goblins and it was heavy. Even with the suit I guessed it weighed about 200 kilos, for a 5 foot monster that was ridiculous.
Lina was there to greet us. She did look pissed. MD took the carcasses to his lab to examine. I gave Lina a weak smile and headed to change. I ordered Maddie to get us into orbit in case those beasts came back in numbers and decided to rip their way into the hull. I took a long shower and then headed to the dining room for lunch. Platters of sandwiches were laid out with orange juice and beer. Everyone else was eating and talking about the most exciting thing to happen in months. Lina seemed better and was describing the feeling of being disemboweled. At least she wasn't upset with my decision to capture one of these beasts. We ate and enjoyed each other’s company. I wish Katrine had been logged in. Before everyone left MD entered the room to give his preliminaries.
He was excited because he had never seen anything like this before. These creatures had evolved a carbon silicon mesh layered skin. It was about a centimeter thick but had about 1000 layers. It was an ingenious way to deal with massive electrical storms on this planet. It also had the benefit of having modulating layers that could disrupt generic shielding. He was super excited to try to replicate a similar coating for battle armor and possibly ships. I was happy the trip was worth it.
As we were leaving the system I asked MD if we could post a false reading of the system. Maybe make it so the one planet registered as uninhabitable but with life? The game didn't allow you to post false reports for sale unfortunately. How about if we left out information? Could I leave out the scan data for the entire habitable planet? It worked. Not exactly false information, just missing information. I immediately assumed other people had figured out the same thing. There were probably hundreds of rich asteroid fields out there that never had been reported. Since this system was close to the rim I doubted anyone would waste time coming to check it out. Especially if the rest of my scanning showed nothing of interest. It was a silly way to protect this miraculous find. We continued the scan and fortunately found nothing of interest besides a really high metal content throughout the system. I sent the two systems data for sale and soon collected 80,000 in credits. I would have to make sure to harvest those rare metals in the Katrine system before someone else came out this way and did it before me. Perhaps I could sell the information to Barstow and then buy the metals from them.