Chapter 8. Business is business, even among the stars

Despite some concerns, I passed all the checks without the slightest problem, yet my new "civilian" shell was several orders of magnitude superior to the old one. So, having passed a full biometric check, I boarded the nearest aircar and, having paid for the trip, joined the dense flow of air highways, trusting the specialized VI in choosing the route and controlling the equipment while I examined the architecture of Thessia with interest. And this planet is truly the pearl of the galaxy: incredibly rich in rare resources, with beautiful architecture, clean air and, most importantly, inhabited only by beautiful women. Moreover, the homeland of the asari is so rich in the zero element that almost all the flora and fauna have acquired unique properties and can exhibit limited biotic characteristics, not to mention the only race of natural biotics in the galaxy.

The aircar flight did not take much time and after twenty minutes I got out of the transport right near the Capitol, where Benezia was waiting for me in a rather formal dress.

"Hello Benny." He hugged his friend when they met and, pulling away, noticed. —Was that turian really able to instill in you a love for more professional clothing?—.

"Be more serious Gordon, we are heading to negotiations with two matriarchs at once, now is not the time for jokes," the WOMAN remarked seriously, grabbing my arm and leading me to the entrance to the building. - Moreover, we parted with Primus. He wanted to go ahead and propose to me, but for me it was just an affair.—.

At the entrance to the Capitol we were greeted by a pair of Asari paratroopers - an Asari combat unit known throughout the galaxy for its combat training and biotic abilities. After conducting a thorough search, we were still allowed to go further than the reception area. It is worth saying that all the asari here were extremely serious and professional, and while Benezia led me along the corridors to the matriarchs, I did not notice a single smiling girl. Some gave us a curious look, but most simply ignored us, immersed in their own worries.

Having reached the hall and allowing Benezia to collect her thoughts, we finally entered and stood before two beautiful blue-skinned women who examined us with curiosity: matriarch Iris and matriarch Celestia. It's hard to imagine that these seemingly young beauties are over seven hundred years old.

"So this is the elusive Gordon Freeman, I've heard a lot." one of the matriarchs began the conversation and hastened to answer my surprised look. —Benezia talks about you quite often during non-working hours.—.

From Celestia's confession, Benezia's cheeks acquired a darker shade, causing restrained chuckles from the matriarchs, to which Benezia herself, muttering something like "Stop standing around, let's get down to business," sat down in one of the free chairs, offering to sit next to her, and hurried to move on to a more constructive direction.

"First, let me express my gratitude, I am grateful that you are ready to consider the possibility of placing my company on Thessia..." he began to speak, but was interrupted by the glances and condescending grins of the two matriarchs.

"Darling." Iris smiled. —You have already been allowed to place your production facilities on Thessia, the asari held a vote on your question and the majority of votes decided to grant this request. We are here to decide on what conditions you will do this.—.

After Iris's explanation, Celestia handed me a tablet with an open contract and gave me time to familiarize myself with it.

In general, asari politics are very interesting and quite...democratic? Not in the sense that people of the 21st century put into this word, looking at the hypocritical West with their aggressive suppression of dissent, but in the very original sense that was put into the word Democracy - the power of the people. Any asari can take part in voting on particularly important issues via the extranet, and a specialized VI counts the votes and immediately displays the result on the appropriate website.

Although, of course, many asari are simply not interested in politics, and organizing a vote on any issue is not the smartest or most convenient idea, and therefore the main issues of politics are dealt with by the parliament, in which representatives of the asari republics sit. The parliament is headed, and in general, the matriarchs have the greatest influence in Azari society - the most ancient and wise Asari, whose age, as a rule, starts from seven hundred years. Although many matrons - asari, whose age starts from 350 years, are also actively involved in politics and sometimes their influence is not inferior to the influence of matriarchs, but this is rather an exception to the rule. Such an exception, for example, is Benezia, who has many followers and matriarchs who share her beliefs, although Benie herself has not yet become a matriarch, but has approached the age threshold of becoming a matriarch.

"What?" I couldn't resist moving on to the points of agreement in the contract. —What does "land lease" mean? I wanted to purchase land from you for production lines.—.

Under my frowning gaze, Iris only smiled softly but condescendingly and tried to convey it as if it were a small child. —Understand, the asari will never sell the land of their home planet to a stranger, and the lease is quite satisfactory for the asari community.—.

-...okay, I can come to terms with this, and the condition of priority to the Azarian market is quite understandable, but not ninety percent of the products? I have an agreement with the Citadel to sell exclusive equipment for SPECTER as a priority market. And ships, what do ships have to do with it? I don't deal with legal proceedings!" I even jumped up from my seat in bewilderment.

-Is it true? And according to our data, several decades ago, a very powerful, fast and technologically advanced cruiser was built at turian shipyards according to original drawings. Machiavelli it seems? Its anti-proton engines caused a real sensation among the turians, although they were not adopted for service due to their high cost. What about your light frigate Leonardo, which you used until recently as your personal transport? Its performance is superior to any ships in this category, both in speed and maneuverability, and in protection." Matriarch Celestia demonstrated a fair amount of awareness, checking the information on the tablet in her hands from time to time. —However, we are ready to come to an agreement, so do not hesitate to offer your terms.—.

***

As a result, I managed to reduce the percentage of my products going to the domestic Azarian market to fifty, leaving half of my output at my discretion. Although 25% goes to the Citadel for SPECTERs, so that only leaves a quarter for the free market. We also came to an agreement regarding the lease; Benezia will buy the factories that interest us and will be the owner of the land on which the production will be located. Although to do this, I had to make her a shareholder and transfer 15% of the company's shares, whereas previously I was in no hurry to sell them, much less transfer them. Well, at least you won't have to spend money on purchasing and re-equipping factories, and the development of ships for the Azarian fleet turned out to be a very profitable government order worth hundreds of millions of credits, although the upcoming amount of work is very impressive. Although this is difficult work for organics, and not for synthetics with advanced technologies.

Well, as a cherry on the cake, the asari provided their lawyers absolutely free of charge to resolve the situation with the Khaliath Armory, because while our contract will last for another forty years, I simply will not be able to fulfill new agreements with the asari because a very large percentage of the product goes to the Turian Hierarchy agreement with Khaliat Armory. Although, considering how brazenly Bartus has recently tried to copy my technologies in his own weapons, it will not be difficult for asari lawyers to collect evidence and break our agreement in court.

So, having parted with the beautiful matriarchs, I, in the company of an equally beautiful matron, went to celebrate the conclusion of an excellent deal. Although Benezia, without changing her habits, tried with all her might to seduce such an unapproachable me. Honestly, it's like salt in the wound, reminding me that due to the lack of an organic body, many pleasures are inaccessible to me.

"Beni, weren't we going to a restaurant?" I was surprised that our aerocar, a low-power flying vehicle shaped like a car and designed to fly in the atmosphere, began to fly up to the residential area, bypassing numerous entertainment establishments.

—Did I say that we will celebrate in a restaurant? "You know, I also know how to cook," the woman squinted slyly. - And then, in the forty years of our acquaintance, you have never visited me. This needs to be fixed.—.

As a result, Benezia's VI flyer brought us to the top floor of a huge building, a real skyscraper. So high that its upper floors were literally above the clouds, and the thin air would make it difficult to breathe if the mass fields did not retain oxygen in the room, creating a completely comfortable living environment.

However, such placement created an incredible view, as if you were on top of the world, and the sophisticated asari architecture, large aquariums built into the walls with schools of colorful fish swimming in them and a variety of flowers and ornamental plants organically integrated into the interior created a feeling of comfort and luxury . Honestly, I wouldn't mind living here.

-Here I am. How long have you been waiting?" Benezia's voice rang out, tearing me out of my contemplative state. —I decided to dress in more comfortable clothes.—.

Taking his eyes off the appearance of the home and without hesitation examining the appearance of the asari, he hastened to give his assessment, "You look wonderful, Beni." Every minute of waiting was worth it to enjoy this view, which only made the matron smile contentedly.

Although I would argue about "comfortable clothes," I have to admit that in an extremely open red and yellow translucent dress made of material reminiscent of asari silk, she really looked extremely impressive.

"Then let's drink to our long and fruitful cooperation," the asari picked up a glass of light alcoholic drink from the fur that approached us.

"Let's have a drink," Benezia nodded and took the second glass from the droid, which then drove off, and took a sip of the wonderful drink, merrily hissing on his tongue.

 ***

Once again, having relinquished all the responsibilities for organizing the business to my business partner, and Benezia, after purchasing the shares, became my business partner and is already setting up production in Tessia, I returned to my research station.

While new biosynthetic hybrids are being formed and irradiated with a weak dose of radiation to form new genetic mutations and solutions, and hundreds of VIs are conducting constant stimulation in search of the genetic chain closest to my needs, I again fell into engineering.

This time I was faced with a task, or rather, I set it for myself, to find a celestial body large enough and rich in resources, far enough from the inhabited territory of our galaxy to create my own shipyards. Still, somewhere out there, in deep space, huge synthetics are waiting in the wings, whose technologies exceed those of any currently existing ones. And no matter how much I would like to regain my organic body, even the most perfect organic will not be able to stop an entire fleet of huge ships exceeding in size and firepower any modern dreadnought. But a similar fleet can. So I need a fleet. A huge fleet equipped with the most advanced technologies. But first, it needs to be built, and to build it we need shipyards, which also have yet to be built, because neither the turians, nor the asari, and especially the salarians will not provide me with their shipyards. And to build your own shipyards you need resources or a system rich in resources, although for the very minimum of what I have in mind, a planetoid rich in resources will be enough. And of course, element zero is required in huge quantities, in addition to light and heavy metals and alloys.

And with finding all this stuff, my round, six-meter friend will help me - a rounded droid controlled by the most complex VI programs, equipped with the most modern geological sensors, in addition to other basic sensors, a universal installation for liquefying gas and automatically replenishing fuel reserves for repulsor engines in the planet's atmosphere and an extremely powerful mass effect core with an autonomous operating time of at least five thousand years.

This baby and his yet uncreated brothers must fly through unexplored regions and look for systems suitable for me, which I will later use to create shipyards.

 "So, all systems are functioning properly, the sensors are normal, the VI systems do not conflict...," he announced to himself the results of the initial diagnostics. - Well, baby, let's test you in action?

To my question, the geologist-researcher of synthetic origin expectedly remained silent, well, we didn't expect an answer from him; instead, I just gave him the command to load onto Michelangelo in order to take the droid to one uninhabited system in the Termina systems and test its work in the field.

It didn't take much time to get to a rather resource-poor star system in the Attic traverse near the outer space of the Batarian Hegemony, and while the geologist drone examined the first of the three planetoids, simultaneously drawing up a map, I took advantage of the relative proximity to the relay and decided to delve into the extranet in search of interesting information.

-Drells huh? Interesting...—I noticed an interesting article from a year ago about the ethics of Hanar interference in the development of Drell society.

In general, the hanars found the drells several decades ago on their overpopulated and resource-poor planet Rahan, but I didn't remember about them, because the hanar society is quite closed and news from them comes very rarely, and I did not study them purposefully. However, the hanar are aquatic aliens, intelligent jellyfish, usually pink in color, whose body looks like a bloated scallop from which six thin tentacles grow.

 On land, the hanar are unable to move themselves, and therefore rely on technology that allows them to levitate, and their communication occurs in the form of bioluminescent radiation. And although their tentacles have a fairly strong grip, and the poison they produce is quite dangerous, the genetic material of these jellyfish is absolutely not interesting to me.

Due to my lack of interest in the hanar, I missed the appearance of the drell on the world stage. Drells, unlike the hanar, are humanoid reptiles that prefer warm and dry places, so the hanar's interest in the drells is understandable; they need agents to contact other races.

Drells are generally very similar in appearance to humans and asari: two arms, two legs, five-fingered limbs, two eyes, no humps, spines or chitin covering their skin. Although the differences are also very noticeable: instead of skin, drells have outer cover presented in the form of scales of very bright colors, be it green, blue or orange, the eyes have two pairs of eyelids, fancy ridges are located on the head, and in the pharynx there is a special hyoid bone that allows them to reproduce sounds beyond the audibility range of many races, such as asari or batarians. Also, this bone and neck structure allows drells to inflate their throats like some lizards.

 Drells are interesting in their structure, their muscles are denser, making them more flexible and stronger than the same turians or batarians, which makes them very similar to quarians. In a sense, the muscles of quarians are also very dense, and they themselves are fast, flexible, strong and at the same time very compact, unlike the same krogans. And the memory of drells is phenomenal and they can remember any moment of their past at will, including sound, taste, temperature, sensations and all other small details. A very interesting feature, indeed.

And what's interesting is that drells are one of the few xenos whose structure is most similar to humans. The other two races, the Asari and the Batarians, whose genetic code I used as the basis for creating an organic body for myself, led me to a dead end. I mean, if the genetic code of the batarians predominates, the results are disgusting freaks, and if the asari are exclusively girls, and even modeling their own genetic chain did not give the desired results, simply because this chain is not ready yet. Perhaps the drell will provide the breakthrough I need so badly? Well, or they just turn out to have interesting genes, who knows?

Although I was deep in thought, I did not forget to monitor my surroundings, and therefore I did not miss the signal about the end of work from the geologist drone and checked the data received from it with the data available on this system. Yes, good, quite accurate, although it is possible to achieve greater accuracy of georeconnaissance with appropriate calibration, but in general the sample is ready.

—Excellent my round friend, we have a lot of work ahead.—.

***

As a result, I riveted three hundred geological drones and transported them to yet unexplored regions of the galaxy. Of course, not all of them will survive or be able to find a suitable star system, but if they find at least one and return to me with this information, then the resources and time spent on their creation will already pay off.

Well, I, on my old cruiser Machiavelli, having previously captured a transport ship, went to Rakhana for samples of a species that I had not yet studied.

Rahana is a very arid planet, poor in resources be it metal, fertile land or water. The only resource that is abundant on Rahan is the drells themselves. There are about eleven billion of them on the depleted planet, and there is not enough food and water for everyone. So it's not surprising that real anarchy has formed on this planet: there are no real states, the drells have split into gangs and kill each other for a sip of water or a handful of food, some gangs (quite rare, but still) practice cannibalism, about maintaining some kind of order and there is no question of law at all. But the drells cannot leave this hellish place, because they have not yet reached the technology of interstellar travel and are unlikely to reach it.

However, even in this world, which has fallen into chaos and anarchy, there are islands of civilization... its most vile side. One of the largest gangs, the Desert Sea gang, located on the territory of a once large metropolis, apparently has money and modern technology. And they got all this thanks to trade in the most common resource on the planet - their fellow humans.

And now the turian slave trader, from whose toolkit I learned the general layout, was landing on a special landing pad with a request to purchase another five thousand drell.

 Well, in general, it's true, contacting via the extranet on such an issue is very, very dangerous - it's easy to get evidence of the slave trade, especially when you take slaves from systems controlled by the Citadel. So it's easier to send a representative to negotiate face to face. But understanding does not mean they will approve, and therefore, from orbit, pointing the main caliber at the military equipment available in the slave traders' camp, I pressed the trigger and unleashed hell on them. Orbital bombardment was banned by the Citadel for a reason, but I'm an outlaw and I don't give a damn about it, but the pirates will no longer be able to complain, there will be no one to complain to.

After firing through the main concentrations of equipment and armed formations, I finally landed my droids and while they, according to the established pattern, drove the survivors into one heap, I planted my birds on the most level surface.

"Abomination." He looked around at the crowd of drells, clearly worn out by life, among whom not a single slave was found. —Five hundred for ships, the rest for expenses.—.

And without listening to the panicked screams of the crowd, a moment later, muffled by the sounds of gunfire, he headed back. I just landed and I can't stand this desert ball steeped in barbarism. How low can you stoop to sell your own people? But the hanars flew in to help them, to get them out of the dying world, but very few decided to do this, the rest preferred to stay to die on this desert planet. Well, no, no, did you want to die on your planet? Well then die.