54 Valerias Change (1/2)
After Ivan's rejected proposal to include a hidden guard over planets where the interests of Celestial Trade lie, he decided to change his approach. He could easily remove members from the board or force the decision through taking advantage of his authority and prestige, but he treated the Celestials as his own people and had his own set of rules for such a thing.
He had initially threatened the senior executives to remove them, but that was only to assert his position as the head of the table and ensure they didn't get too full of themselves.
He chose to instead sway their opinions into his favor with directed information.
He first took some clips out of the footage from the Scalian attack on Kav'sall, making sure to capture their entire fleet as well as the most brutal parts of the battle where the Scalians caused wanton death and destruction across the planet's surface.
Ivan included predictions on the result of an attack to the Vulpes home world and how much damage would be done by the time they responded and arrived at it. He also focused on the protection on several key planets and potential consequences if they didn't have someone stationed there to defend against such attacks.
”Hmm, it's a bit biased, but this will help in the next meeting,” Ivan said with a sly grin as he posted the document into the Celestial Network, somewhere everyone could access it.
The report would eventually find its way to the common people as well as the other Senior Executives, who would have to agree with Ivan's proposal next time or else face the discontent voices of the general population. While most Celestials had a disdain for lower level lifeforms, they still viewed the Vulpes race, which they originated from, in favor.
The next task on Ivan's agenda was the fund allocation toward purchasing the 50,000 new stasis pods which were to be modified. Vulpes and Celestial technology still couldn't reproduce them as they were incredibly precise instruments which couldn't simply be copied. They required a unique process and several synthetic materials they didn't have the ability to reproduce at the moment.
A single stasis pod cost approximately 34,000c, while Ivan's tablets sold for 4,000c as well as the 0.5% transaction fee on trades conducted through the SubNet. The sales contract would provide Celestial trade 266 million credits with the discounted sales price per tablet, while the other initial 20,000 he put up for sale would add another 80 million to that total.
The total cost of 50,000 stasis pods however was a staggering total of 1.7 billion credits. Even with everything, he could only buy approximately 10,000 stasis pods. Ivan took his time crunching the numbers on sales, commissions, and other predicted income from certain large clients he hoped to produce and came up with a preliminary three year plan to implement it.
Ivan looked over at a business card on his desk. It was a three-dimensional card sealed in a special clear sealed pocket to allow it to exist in subspace.
This was the introduction card to meet with Everal Argentear. Ivan knew he had at least a significantly large amount of money, and was interested in the four-dimensional technology, so he considered meeting him sooner and probing his goals along with what financial investment he could provide.
*****
Once he finished up his scheduled business and had no more important pieces of business to attend to, Ivan travelled through the towers of CTHQ toward the main research subdivision.
Iris followed by Ivan's side while Valeria tailed not far behind.
The inside of the CTHQ was becoming more detailed every day. There was an entire subdivision dedicated to interior decorating. They commissioned, created, and decorated the inside of CTHQ with intricate tapestries, carpets, woodwork, and art pieces in the Victorian style.
Upon reaching the research subdivision, Ivan let himself in and calmly looked over some of the experimental energy circuit designs and research. In the center of the massive research room was the blue cube left by the future Ivan, the Tesseract as Mazur had named it.
A small number of research team leaders were crowded around the Tesseract as Mazur manipulated it to alter the projection it emits and reveal a different energy circuit along with the related scientific data on how it works.
”President!” Tsaire, who had become one of the leading researchers, happened to turn around upon hearing footsteps and saw Ivan, Iris and Valeria.
”How is your research going?” Ivan asked briefly.
”It is going excellent, President.”
”Good, so why is there not a database on known energy circuits and what they can be applied to or used with?”
All the researchers were rooted to the spot at a loss for words. Several of them began to stammer and look for excuses, but were saved by Mazur who held up a hologram of recent company changes.
”He's just messing with you all. There is new policy changes during the recent meeting of senior executives, we are required to contribute to a confidential database all energy circuits we have finished researching and potential usages of said circuits. This database hasn't been formed yet, so we don't need to do a damn thing.”
Ivan chuckled helplessly at being outed by Mazur while the researchers wanted to cry but had no tears.
”Indeed, the paperwork will be handed down through the company to all research subdivisions soon. It is important because how are other Celestials supposed to create things if they don't know what it is possible.”
”So what is the boss here for? You even brought the Mrs. President and the brat,” Mazur bluntly asked with a twitch of his whiskers.
”You seem to be comfortable here, no?”
”I spent too long connecting those damned SubNet satellites to the Federation ones. Don't think you can make me go anywhere else anytime soon!”
”Really, because I came here to drag you over to some barren corner of the Galaxy to run some research on some atypical phenomena of the local physics occurring on planet Kilaris II.”
”You're joke isn't funny,”
”I'm not joking though.”
”Shit, I haven't even had time to put my feet up! Are you fucking serious!?”
”You mean paws, right? Don't worry, I was only joking.”
Ivan talked through the entire thing with a poker face and in a serious voice too.
Meanwhile, Mazur's whiskers were twitching in a suppressed rage that was about to explode, especially once Ivan told him he was just messing with him.
”That is happening, but another team of Celestials will be going to investigate it. It is all over the galactic web and has been designated as a Class V danger zone. 500 Galactic Fleet battleships have surrounded the planet and are investigating the cause, but haven't been able to come to any conclusions.”
Mazur was actually interested in the phenomena, but not so much he would immediately depart to investigate. With his lifespan issue solved, the only thing that currently grasped his obsession was the study of energy circuits.
”What I do want you to research into is a method to store more energy in the subspace ships. When using the weapons in the surface universe, they empty the reserves simply too quick.”
”Hmm, that is a difficult problem. It is possible to install more energy storage tanks and some more energy absorption circuits. But to have more compact storage or a wider energy absorption area would take a lot of research.”