Rothfurd Zenith scrolled through the most recent market predictions. He had just come out of surgery. Though the surgery was successful, he was anything but elated.

Vultures were circling closer and closer. Zenith Fidaeus, the company he had founded with his partner fifty years ago, had been going through a downward spiral for quite some time. Their margins had been dropping, and though over the last few years, through some applications of creative accounting, they had kept shareholder concerns at bay, he knew that these tricks were just short-term measures. What they needed to save the company was radical innovation. And innovation was increasingly expensive.

It was not that their products were not selling. They were selling quite well, in fact. It was that their offerings were so entrenched that they had come to be regarded as utilities. And nobody wanted to think about utilities. As long as utilities worked, nobody wanted to care. Except their competitors, that is - who aggressively replicated their every product line. Anytime they attempted to raise their margins, their customers threatened to switch to their competitors - who were more than happy to offer deep discounts. It was a race to the bottom.

They were all set to launch a new product, one that would change the direction of their company. But thanks to the wicked tactics of a particularly shrewd competitor, the financiers had backed away at the last moment.

The gray-haired man, still clad in the disposable gray nursing room clothing, was pulled out of his gloomy thoughts by a ding on the holcom - the colloquial for holographic communicator. As he looked at the caller, his frown deepened. Speak of the devil...

"What do you want?" His voice was tired and exhausted. The sedators were wearing off, and soon his aches would return.

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A projection of a red-haired woman in her thirties emerged. She was as beautiful as she was wicked.

"Oh, I just wanted to wish you a happy recovery. Your staff notified me that your operation was successful."

Rothfurd hated nothing more than these vanity pretexts. But still, he was too exhausted to argue back. "Appreciate your concern, Flavia. Hope you had a great day too."

"Oh, I couldn't have had a better one, Rothfurd. While I have you..." Ok, here comes the viper's strike: "Have you given any thought to our proposal?"

"Flavia, I am barely out of surgery... Can this wait?" The predatory merger that Ortimus Guild was proposing would effectively end their guild as he knew it. And Flavia was hell-bent on using every trick up her sleeve to push that through.

"Sure, Rothfurd, take your time to consider, but please be mindful of the evolving political situation." And here comes the next strike: "The Senate just agreed to pass a regulation on deep space mesh networking. Any devices that haven't gone through the Grade 5 certification level will have to be phased out within the next three years."

Rothfurd sighed. Yeah, of course, the Senate had agreed to yet another proposal in the name of galactic security. Having a Senator as your dad sure helped. Three years was too short a time to phase out the vast multitude of networked devices spread out across millions of ships. And guess who was responsible for supervising the licensing certifications? The Ortimus Regnum consolidate - owned by the Ortimus family, headed by Flavia Ortimus.

Rothfurd was sure that by the time they actually managed to get the required licenses, the deadline for the migrations would be long past. This whole thing was just a pretext to impose an array of imperial penalties on the Zenith Fidaeus guild.

"Thanks for the heads-up, Flavia." Rothfurd forced himself to keep his tone neutral. "We will take the new regulations into consideration." Then he hung up.

Rothfurd felt drained - he had given this guild his entire life. The one thing at which he had failed, above all, was that he didn't have a worthy successor who could take up the helm of his organization and push it through the long chain of hurdles.