Star Citizen Online: Isekai Edition-Chapter 140: The Contract and Cleaning Out the Colony (3)

"There is one more requirement that we want to put forward, though contrary to the others, it is negotiable in the aspect of its completion and extension."

Zehal put forward the last requirement, which was the work on the Obscurus that Arcuturuss owned. The starship would be the primary basis of their future Star Mercenary and Bounty Hunter occupation, so it needed to be properly done.

Right now, it would be an embarrassment to call it Capital Ship, much less Capital Mothership as the Obscrusu was far from that in the terms of dimensions and also in the aspect of the technology.

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And the shipbuilding capabilities of the Eternal Empire of the Asurya were unmatched. Even though for the Empire, it was constantly necessary to produce starships like this, that only applied if they were equipped with the most advanced technology possible.

Only then would the price reach some ridiculous heights, but that wasn’t something that the trio of the young Highborne Asuryani were going for.

Far from it.

They knew that something like that was impossible.

Instead they were more modest and Zehal cooked up a nice plot.

She wanted the Empire to make the ship bigger, far bigger, and equip it with more advanced engines and weapons.

That was all.

Not to mention, with this, they would have already used all of their cards.

Pushing any more would be detrimental for them, and even with this, they would be able to make the Obscurus bigger at least by five times, so finally the dimensions could be in several kilometers.

At the same time, they would solve their biggest problem, because for the retrofit like this, there was only one possible way on how to do it. Shipyard that belonged to the High-Level Civilization or High-Level Star Nation and there were not many of them.

Even if Arcutrus and company didn’t include the Eternal Empire of Asurya into the equation, they would need to find any other High-Level Civilization or High-Level Star Nation that would be open for them to use their shipyards and not just any shipyards.

But the military-grade shipyards that the High-Level Civilizations or High-Level Star Nations were using to build their own armada of starships. In the entire Andromeda Galaxy there was only one High-Level Faction aside from the Eternal Empire of Asurya, the Veren Republic.

In the galaxies surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy, the only High-Level Factions were the Nephilim Tribes and Automatons in the Milky Way Galaxy that were too busy to fight against each other and neither of them was really an option for anything.

Not to mention, not even all High-Level Civilizations or High-Level Star Nations had capabilities of producing starships like Arcturus envisioned. Those shipyards needed to be specifically created for these purposes, and such things were only capable of some of the most powerful and advanced High-Level Civilizations or the High-Level Star Nations.

"As you know, we are in the possession of the Adjudicator-Class Ship of Capital Ship Model and Mother Type, that needs to be finished. Because the Obscurus would be the primary means of business for the company that we plan to set up, we would like for the Empire to provide some finishing touches on the starship and rebuild it to a proper Capital Mothership."

The status of the Obscurus was something that had been lingering on Arcturus for a long time already, and if they had an opportunity to get the Empire to pay for it, it would have been even better. Not to mention, if the Empire was handling it, it would have been finished very fast because the Empire was already fully automated.

And the speed of its construction and shipbuilding was fast as lightning.

In figurative speech of course.

He knew, though, that for the Imperium, it actually won’t be significant because all of the work is automated, and the only investment is in resources.

According to the Zehal’s proposal, the Empire would reconstruct the Obscurus’s skeleton and base and install new armament systems on the spaceship together with more advanced shields and Engines.

This would probably be the most that they could get out of them, and it was rather a lot in fact. As long as they had Universal Credits, many things could be done by the Red Queen, so instead of the entire and complete retrofit of the Obscurus, they were going only for the things that the Red Queen couldn’t handle by herself.

If they could get the Empire to rebuild the skeleton of Obscurus to the state of proper dimensions for an even smaller Capital Mothership-type Starship, then it would be a tremendous help for them, and as long as they supplied Red Queen with enough resources, then they could finish the starship.

Although it would take some time, they would be able to make the most of it.

At the same time, with this, the Red Queen would grow in power the most, because Obscurus was a place where most of their hardware was located for the time being, so if she could build more hardware for her, she could continue in her evolution.

And she would be once again closer in nature to the Automatons like the ones in the Milky Way Galaxy.

"Type 2, nothing more. For minor details, you would need to communicate directly with the Department of the Starship Design and Manufacturing."

Capital Mothership-Type Starships were divided into several Types depending on their size, as the size was a deciding factor in the typology of the Capital Motherships.

Type 1 meant that the dimensions of the starship were: Length - Up to 2 kilometers, Width - Up to 2 kilometers, and Height - Up to 3 kilometers.

Type 2 meant that the dimensions of the starship were: Length - Up to 5 kilometers, Width - Up to 5 kilometers, and Height - Up to 10 kilometers.

There were just two types; there were several more above. Some of the biggest Capital Motherships were really monsters of metal, bigger than entire moons, and could destroy entire planets.

Capital Motherships for many civilizations also served as World Ships, capable of carrying entire civilizations on their decks, as they were not just simple, ordinary starships, but they were something much more.

"Maximum of the Type 2 and we can have an agreement."

Agent Mercury in the end didn’t have much choice but to agree to the conditions, even though he found many of them steep. They were certainly far more than 10 Billion Universal Credits in the long run.

Yet, the Empire would be able to benefit far more from this entire ordeal, because the number of High-Level Factions that were able to research Pseudo Bug Queen wasn’t that big and there were many players that would pay a lot to obtain some of their findings.

So, technically speaking, it wasn’t like the Empire was suffering loss, as they would obtain their own benefits from the entire thing.

In the end, everyone was satisfied with the agreement, as everyone thought that they had obtained a lot. However, Agent Mercury knew that the agreement was more favourable to the other side due to the various conditions regarding their company.

The fact that the government would have much smaller stake in the company was already hard pill to swallow, but to hear that they would be able to buy another 10% even if it was overpriced was even more problematic.

He knew that corporations that were pushing the boundaries of the Imperial Technology were their backbone in winning the arms race, and much of this was done through the reverse-engineering of the different technologies from different High-Level Civilizations or the High-Level Star Nations.

Such ventures were immensely profitable and generated a lot of taxes for the government as well as a lot of income for the government, because the number of large corporations where the government didn’t hold a stake was zero.

Exactly zero.

But he was just an agent of the Directorate, not one of the bigshots that was making the important decisions. It wasn’t his job to tell anyone what to do in this regard, and if the higher-ups in the Imperial Government agreed to this, then it wasn’t his place to say anything about that.

Most probably the Empire was planning to sell the information about the Pseudo Queen Bug to the different buyers.

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Agent Mercury knew that the Empire was arming and preparing for the war against the Veren Republic, and they needed to increase their technological base by obtaining more technologies from the different High-Level Civilizations or the High-Level Star Nations.

Not only that, but also the resources that would be crucial in maintaining the war machine of the Empire and that won’t come cheap. Information on the evolutionary development of the Queen Bug was something that many would pay a lot to obtain.

"It was a pleasure doing business with your Agent Mercury."

Zehal said as the Agent of the Directorate left the room, leaving there only Arcturus, Jeniael, and Zehal. Seeing the Agent of the Directorate departing made Zehal sigh in relief as they were finally done and the woman was satisfied with the results.

The entire negotiations with the Agent Mercury, who was representing the Imperial Government, took something about more than one hour until they were finally finished and everyone was satisfied in some sense.

"Well... that went rather well, don’t you think?"

Arcturus asked as he was rather pleased by the outcome of the negotiations because they obtained everything that they wanted. It was debatable that if they could have obtained more, but they could have also obligated less.

He was content with it because most, if not all, of the things they had obtained were immense benefits for their future development within the Empire’s borders. Doing any business within the nation like Eternal Empire of Asurya was pretty challenging on it’s won due to countless restrictions.

Arcutrus understood that it was mainly tied to the history of the Empire as the one nation.

Asuryani, as the race descended from the Earth’s branch of Humanity, which was one of the branches of the Human Race across the Cosmos. Even though the Humanity was one of the most ordinary and unassuming species, they were also one of the most widespread races, of which nobody really knew their ancestral origins.

Only in the very ancient age, their ancestors must have spread through the Cosmos due to a diaspora of some sort.

But as the Asuryani were descended from the Earthlings, they knew of the dangers of the corruption and when the capitalists dictated the fate of the countries, when rich people installed themselves on the governmental posts and redefined the term "oligarchy" to a whole new level.

Due to that, the Asurynai strictly controlled the powers of those with money as there were more restrictions on rich people than on the Brain Bug that was levitating in front of them in the Xeno Containment Unit.

Many owners or stockholders in corporations of the Empire were forbidden from holding political positions, administrative positions, military positions, there were restrictions on their rights within the Empire, and many, many others that were basically preventing them from having even a shred of influence within the government in various matters.

Many within the Imperium called it "Cat’s Gold Price" or "Fool’s Gold Price", because while they obtained money at the same time, they lost many of their rights that many ordinary Imperial Citizens. Fool’s Gold name for Pyrite, which was extremely similar to gold but much less valuable...

Some argued that many of the restrictions were rather draconian, especially the ones about the political rights, which were almost nonexistent for the people classified as "Financially Above the 90%".

The Empire had their own classfiiciantion about who was subject of these resdtrction and they were basically putting people in the three categories.

The first were the ordinary Imperial Citizens with property not exceeding 10,000,000 Universal Credits, with the Added Neutral Zone of Subjective Judgement being around another two hundred thousand Universal Credits.

Added Neutral Zone of Subjective Judgement meant that if someone crossed over this, then his case would be individually judged.

Approximately 90% of people were in this category.

The second category was for Imperial Citizens with property exceeding 10 million Universal Credits but not crossing over around 100,0000,000 Universal Credits, with the added Neutral Zone of Subjective Judgement being around 3 million Universal Credits.

In this category, the person was subjected to some personal restrictions and higher scrutiny than the average person.

And then there were those who had property above the already-mentioned one hundred million Universal Credits. The upper 1% of the Eternal Empire of the Asurya. Even though they were filthy rich, ironically, these were also the categories to which Arcturus belonged right now, and there were countless restrictions on them and their behavior within the Empire.

The level of structure and governmental control is overwhelming.

The general rule was, people lost almost all of their political rights, they couldn’t hold elected office or anything even remotely connected to it, not even informal advisory roles were allowed.

They couldn’t enter Armed Forces, hold any rank within the Imperial Military, or be otherwise affiliated with the Imperial Military. At the same time, there were many more minor rules that were relatively insignificant, but were making the broader picture.

Arcturus found some of these restrictions rather ridiculous, but certainly he understood where they were going with it.

He knew firsthand how the rich could corrupt and destroy the nations.

Though...

There were exceptions.

Like in everything.

Indeed.

The Empire was making exceptions for those who were powerful Professionals, esteemed scholars, or used their wealth to develop the nation, and not just hoard it in their vaults and bank accounts.

In this way, the Empire was giving them a way out of how to not really bypass the restrictions, because bypassing them meant that it was still forbidden and not sanctioned by the state.

This was different as the state itself was allowing them to behave like this if they used their wealth for the betterment of the nation. For example, many of the billionaires in the Imperium would often donate a lot of money for the research and development, to various charities under the Imperial oversight, or to develop the distant colony worlds and so on.

Not to mention, if there was all-out war, then it was subtly expected that the billionaires and the upper 1% would be the first in line to support the Imperial Warmachine.

"It could be better, but we shouldn’t get too greedy..."

Zehal said as she herself was most satisfied because she knew the best what exactly they obtained in today’s negotiations.