The House of the Reapr welcomes a new Novice and Operator Kevin Bly to its ranks. Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Stars.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
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POV: Mark Shephard
The silence in the office was suffocating, broken only by the ragged, wet sound of Victor Vance trying to pull oxygen through his fucked up mouth and the dull, distant hum of the atmospheric scrubbers. I didn't offer him a towel or anything to clean up with, simply turning my back on the bleeding Director of SIGS, walking over to the heavy reception desk that sat in the center of the room.
It looked like a massive slab of ancient, polished oak, but the heavy metallic clank of my custom K-272 rifle as I set it down on the surface gave away the illusion. It was solid metal, forged, and textured to look like wood.
With a mental command, the nanites cascaded. The thick, bulky black armor plates and synthetic fur melted down, flowing over my body like liquid obsidian. In seconds, the terrifying, military-grade exoskeleton shifted and rewove its atomic structure until I was dressed in a sharp, impeccably tailored black suit. It bore distinct, aristocratic features, a sharp, modern cut, high lapels, and subtle, dark red accents woven seamlessly into the midnight fabric.
Victor had come here wanting to play the corporate boardroom game, so I had to dress the part.
I leaned back against the edge of the desk, crossing my arms over my chest, letting the sheer, terrifying display of nanotechnology and the weight of the moment press down on the man sitting before me.
"You look like hell, Victor," I said, my voice completely devoid of sympathy.
Victor reached into the breast pocket of his ruined, bespoke suit with trembling fingers. He pulled out a pristine, silk handkerchief. He dabbed at the blood leaking from his split lip and the jagged gap in his gums where his molars used to be. He looked at the bright red stains blooming on the white silk, a flicker of profound disgust crossing his features, before he carefully folded it and tucked it away. He adjusted his collar, wincing as the movement pulled at his bruised, slowly swelling jaw.
"An occupational hazard, it seems," Victor rasped, his voice carrying a wet lisp from the missing teeth. "When one deals with... volatile entrepreneurs."
"I'm not just an entrepreneur, Victor," I chuckled, tapping a finger against my bicep. "I'm the guy who is currently holding one of the technological leashes of humanity. And you're the guy sitting in my chair, bleeding on my floor, after pretty much sending an army to my doorstep. So, let's dispense with the corporate posturing. You came here because you're bleeding market shares faster than you're bleeding on my floor right now. Let me hear your pitch."
Victor took a slow, painful breath, his chest heaving as he visibly forced the corporate shark back to the surface. He reached into his coat pocket, which caused me to tense slightly, my hand drifting inches from the rifle resting on the desk behind me, but he only withdrew a sleek, high-end datapad. He tapped the screen, the blue light illuminating his bruised face, before he looked back up at me.
"Your thermal dynamic vents," Victor began, his tone shifting into the polished, practiced cadence of a boardroom presentation, though the lisp ruined the intimidating effect he was striving for. "The ones you have been so brazenly selling on the public market. The ones dominating the independent contractor forums on GalNet. We didn't need intelligence reports to tell us what you were doing, Mr. Shephard. You've made a very loud, very public spectacle of yourself. A thermal dispersion rate that is fifty percent higher than the current military standard."
"Fifty-two point four percent, actually," I corrected while rolling my eyes. "But who's counting?"
"SIGS is counting, Mr. Shephard," Victor said, his eyes narrowing, the pain in his jaw forgotten for a moment in the face of sheer corporate anxiety. "Do you have any idea how much money Starship Inter-Galactic Solutions pours into thermal dynamic research annually? Trillions of credits. Heat is the ultimate enemy in the void. A warship can have the thickest tungsten-carbide armor in the galaxy, it can carry the heaviest engines ever forged, but if its fusion reactors overheat during a prolonged kinetic engagement, the ship cooks its own crew from the inside out."
Victor leaned forward, gripping the datapad tightly. "We don't build the hulls, Shephard. Aegis, Kodiak, Vector, and Helios do that. As our name states, we build the solutions. We build the secondary cooling matrices, the heavy-duty thermal regulators, and the proprietary coolant lines. We choke the market with our patents with a business model that solely relies on marginal, single-digit percentage increases in thermal efficiency to justify selling constant, multi-billion-credit upgrade packages to the IUC Navy to keep their ancient ships from melting."
"And then I show up," I smiled, a humorless expression that didn't reach my eyes. "And I start selling a vent out of a rusted drydock that cures the disease instead of just treating the symptoms. A vent that effectively obsoletes your entire catalog of band-aid upgrades."
"Exactly," Victor said, his left eye twitching. "You haven't just disrupted a market, Shephard. You have threatened to capsize one of the largest military-industrial supply chains in the Union. Your little public stunt caught the eye of the top brass."
"You mean the contract I just signed?" I asked, the smugness radiating from my voice. "The one where the Navy ordered six thousand units of my vents to retrofit the active fleets?"
Victor swallowed hard. "Yes. That contract. If the Navy realizes they can permanently fix their existing fleets with a single, standalone vent rather than purchasing our bloated, proprietary cooling systems, SIGS stands to lose trillions in projected revenue over the next decade. The logistics alone will bankrupt our secondary foundries."
"Tragic," I deadpanned, examining the immaculate cuffs of my nanite-woven suit. "Truly, my heart bleeds for your shareholders. But you could have handled this differently, Victor. Alistar Thorne walked into this exact office a few months ago, stepped on my toes, talked down to me like I was a grease-monkey peasant, and offered me a measly fifty million credits for the patents."
Victor closed his eyes for a brief second, a flash of genuine irritation directed at the ghost of his former VP crossing his face. "Alistar Thorne was an arrogant fool who fundamentally misunderstood the value of your asset. And he paid the ultimate price for his lack of vision."
"He offered me pocket change for a technology that fundamentally breaks the thermal limits of standard void warfare," I continued, my voice growing colder. "And when I told him to shove that fifty million up his ass, what did your virtuous, righteous company do? You tried to burn it all down. And when they ended up as stains on my docks, you unlocked your corporate vault and sent four Simulacrums to butcher me and anyone standing near me."
"A grievous miscalculation of your capabilities," Victor admitted, looking nervously at the sleek black fabric I wore, knowing the monstrous armor was still hiding just beneath the surface. "A mistake that I am here, personally, to rectify."
"So rectify it," I said, crossing my arms again. "You didn't fly all the way from Celestine Prime to the industrial hellscape of Mechanicus just to cry about your stock portfolio and apologize for Thorne's incompetence. What's your real offer?"
"The real offer," Victor said, his eyes locking onto mine with the intense, unblinking focus of a predator recognizing another predator, "is a buyout. A golden parachute of unprecedented proportions. We want the proprietary patents to your thermal vents, the complete architectural schematics, and the metallurgical composition of the alloys you are utilizing to handle the thermal shear."
"And?" I prompted, knowing exactly how these corporate vultures operated. They never just wanted the product. They wanted the soul of the creator.
"And," Victor stated, his voice firming up, "we want you out of the sector. Entirely. My board of directors has authorized me to offer you a lump sum of twenty billion credits."
I raised an eyebrow. Twenty billion. It was a staggering amount of money. It was enough capital to buy a small, habitable planet outright, purchase a private fleet of luxury cruisers, or guarantee a lifetime of absolute, uninterrupted opulence on Celestine Prime.
"Twenty billion," I repeated slowly, letting the number hang heavy in the air.
"Wired directly to whatever bank you use the moment you sign the digital ledger," Victor confirmed. "In exchange, you sign over the patents, and you sign a comprehensive, galaxy-wide non-compete clause. You will be legally barred from innovating, designing, or manufacturing within the thermal dynamics sector. That includes cooling matrices, vent production, and any engine component solutions. You take the money, you retire as one of the wealthiest private citizens in the Union, and you let SIGS handle the mass production and distribution. You win, we win."
I stared at Victor. I looked at his expensive, blood-stained clothes, his calculating, desperate eyes, and the absolute certainty in his posture that he had just won the game. He thought I was just like him. He thought I was driven entirely by a bottom line, by the sheer accumulation of wealth. He thought he could buy me.
I pushed myself off the desk and began to slowly pace the room, my boots thudding rhythmically against the floorboards. I walked over to the reinforced glass window, looking out at the remains of the Vengeance resting in the drydock. The newly printed S-Alloy ribs gleamed under the amber industrial lights. It was a masterpiece of engineering. It was my masterpiece, born of sweat, blood, and a technology humanity couldn't even begin to fathom.
"Can I tell you something in confidence for a moment?" I asked, keeping my back to him, my voice dropping into a quiet, almost distant register.
Victor hesitated, clearly thrown off by the sudden shift in my tone. The aggressive, violent man who had just knocked his teeth out was gone, replaced by something much quieter, much more dangerously reflective.
"I... suppose so, Mr. Shephard," Victor replied cautiously, shifting his weight in the uncomfortable metal chair.
"I just want to explain...." I murmured, my voice echoing slightly against the thick glass of the window. "Explain the circumstances I find myself in."
I looked at my own reflection in the glass. I saw the sharp black suit, the dark red accents, the face of a man who didn't belong here. A different face from the one I had worn for over 60 years in two lives, 30 in each.
"What and who I really am," I continued, feeling the heavy, synthetic weight of the nanites clinging to my skin, a constant, physical reminder of the alien biology humming beneath my flesh.
"I'm a prisoner, Victor," I said softly, the truth of it aching in my chest. "A man without a clear path. Sometimes I find myself looking around at this station, at this galaxy, at the ships flying through the void, and thinking... 'What is this place?'"
Victor shifted uncomfortably behind me. "Mr. Shephard, I don't see how your existential misgivings have any bearing on a twenty-billion-credit-"
"Part of me thought it would be perfect," I cut him off, my voice rising slightly, tinged with a desperate, raw emotion that I rarely let bubble to the surface. It was the trauma of waking up in a broken body on a broken ship, lightyears away from the Earth I knew. "When I first opened my eyes in this universe... I wanted it to be perfect. I begged whatever god was listening, please let it be perfect."
I turned around fully, facing the Director of SIGS. The confusion on his face was palpable. He was a ruthless and calculating man, one that I was pretty sure had absolutely no framework to process the philosophical breakdown of a man who had been ripped from his own dimension and dropped into a bloody, grinding, hyper-capitalist war machine of a reality. Or better said, had awakened the past memories of a life where this would be a dream, not knowing just how good I had it.
"If it's beautiful, do I actually see beauty?" I asked, walking slowly toward him, my eyes wide, searching his bruised face for an answer I knew he couldn't possibly possess. "If I believe it's enough, is it actually enough?"
"Mr. Shephard, are you feeling well?" Victor asked, his voice pitching up in genuine alarm. His hand drifted nervously toward the armrest, his eyes darting frantically toward the ceiling, praying the turrets wouldn't drop back down. He looked at me like I was a madman. And maybe, with the shit I've done in this universe, I was.
"Am I actually living in another world?" I whispered, low enough that he wouldn't be able to hear it. I stopped just out of arm's reach, staring down at him, the weight of my isolation bearing down on my shoulders. "Is this a figment of my imagination? Something I created to cope with the pain?"
Victor swallowed hard, pressing himself flat against the back of the chair. "I assure you, Shephard, this is quite real. The blood in my mouth from your hand is quite real."
"Exactly!" I snapped, the sudden volume of my voice making him flinch violently, pulling his hands up to protect his face.
The philosophical haze instantly evaporated, burned away by a searing, white-hot clarity.
"But then every encounter I've had with you corporate bastards brings me back to reality!" I roared, taking a step forward and leaning down, bracing both my hands on the arms of his chair, trapping him against the metal backing. "Yes, it's all true, and it isn't fucking perfect because you fuckers ruin it all!"
"Shephard, please-" Victor stammered, his eyes wide with terror.
"You think you can buy me out?" I snarled, the anger returning, burning in my throat. "You think you can waltz in here, drop twenty billion credits in my bank account, and force me to sit in a gilded cage while you slap the SIGS logo on my work? You want to bar me from the sector? You want to bar me from innovating in a field that I am currently dragging out of the dark ages with my bare hands?"
"It is standard corporate procedure!" Victor argued, shrinking back into the chair, trying desperately to maintain eye contact and project some semblance of authority. "We cannot purchase a patent of this magnitude if the original creator is going to immediately pivot, utilize the capital we gave him, and build a competing, superior product! The non-compete is non-negotiable!"
"Standard corporate procedure doesn't apply to me, Victor," I said, pushing myself off the chair and standing tall, looking down at him with absolute contempt. "I am not a corporate entity. I am not a subsidiary you can absorb. I am the man who is going to fix the Navy you've been choking to death for decades, the one who will rise from nothing. And I am not signing a non-fucking-compete."
Victor's face fell. The color drained entirely from what little of his skin wasn't already purple and bruised.
"Shephard, be reasonable," Victor pleaded, the corporate mask shattering. "With twenty billion credits, you could build your own small orbital station. You could buy a fleet. You could-"
"I don't want a fucking orbital station," I said coldly, turning and walking back to the metal desk. "I just want to build ships. I want to build engines. I want to innovate. To take the rusted, failing fleet of the IUC Navy and turn it into a weapon that actually works against the Volnar Intergalactic Coalition because of what they did to me! And I'll be danmed if I let SIGS, or you, or your board of directors tell me what I can and cannot fucking touch."
Victor let out a heavy sigh. He gingerly touched his swollen jaw, grimacing in pain.
"Then we are at an impasse," Victor said, his tone thick with bitter disappointment. "My board will not authorize the purchase of your patents without the non-compete clause firmly in place. It leaves us entirely too vulnerable to future disruption. If we buy your vent, what's stopping you from designing a new engine manifold tomorrow that renders our entire catalog obsolete?"
"You're already vulnerable," I scoffed, leaning against the desk and crossing my arms. "Because if you walk out that door without a deal today, Victor, I am going to fulfill many more contracts with the Navy. Then I'm going to expand my foundries. Then I'll outfit the entire 7th Fleet. Then the 4th Fleet. Then the 10th fleet, the 11th, and every other fucking fleet. I've already got a contract with GalNet to provide them with a certain number of units. What do you think will happen when I finally expand? Where do you think I'll be in five years? SIGS will be begging the Navy for scrap-metal contracts just to keep your lights on."
Victor's eyes darkened. He knew I was right. The sheer performance metrics of my designs were undeniable, and the Navy contract was the proof of concept that would shatter his monopoly. If I retained sole manufacturing rights, SIGS's market share in thermal dynamic solutions would bleed out entirely. They would be ruined.
"So," I continued, letting a long moment of silence pass before I opened my mouth to speak again. "Let's compromise... I am going to offer you a deal, Victor. And it is the ONLY deal you are going to get."
Victor remained silent, his eyes locked on mine, waiting.
"I will not sign a non-compete," I stated firmly, my voice echoing in the quiet office. "I will not be barred from innovating in the thermal dynamics field, the engine sector, or ship design. I retain my absolute, unyielding freedom to build whatever the hell I want, wherever the hell I want, and whenever the hell I want to build it."
Victor opened his mouth to protest, to argue the impossibilities of such terms, but I held up a single finger to silence him instantly.
"However," I said, a slow smirk touching my lips. "I will sell you the proprietary patents to manufacture the thermal dynamic vents. A complete buyout of the design schematics for that specific piece of hardware. Just a simple transaction. A transfer of intellectual property. And because I am keeping my freedom to innovate..." I paused, letting him lean in. "...I'll let you have the patents for one-tenth of your original offer."
Victor blinked. "One... one-tenth?"
"Two billion credits," I said, nodding slowly. "You pay me two billion credits, and SIGS gets the legal right to manufacture and sell the Shephard Thermal Vent across the galaxy. You get to keep your market share, you get to plaster your logo on the side of it, and your shareholders throw a parade in your honor. I get a quick injection of capital, and I get to build a business that focuses on building ships without your hit squads or your Simulacrums breathing down my neck."
Victor sat in stunned silence. The corporate gears in his head were grinding, smoking as they frantically tried to find the trap. It was a fundamental law of business that no one walked away from eighteen billion credits without a catch.
"Two billion," Victor repeated, his voice barely above a whisper, staring at the floorboards. "For the complete patent rights to the vents. With no non-compete."
"That's what I said," I said, shrugging casually. "A simple transaction."
"Why?" Victor asked, his eyes narrowing in deep, paranoid suspicion. He looked up at me like I was holding a live grenade. "You could hold out. With the Navy contract secured, you could build the manufacturing infrastructure yourself and make ten times that amount in a decade. Why leave eighteen billion credits on the table?"
"Because I'm impatient, Victor," I lied, not revealing that I wanted a way out of this place to somewhere quieter where I could build up in peace. "I have two heavily damaged Corvettes sitting in my drydock right now that need to be completely rebuilt. I have overhead. I have to pay my engineer, my security detail, and my raw material suppliers. Building a mass-production facility to fulfill the demand of the entire galaxy takes time, bureaucracy, and capital I don't want to tie up. I like getting my hands dirty. I don't want to be a factory manager overseeing thousands of assembly drones. I want to be an architect, and two billion gives me the freedom to build without much to worry about."
Victor stared at me, his mind racing. I could practically see the risk-reward matrix forming behind his eyes. On one hand, allowing me to continue innovating was a massive, looming risk to SIGS' future. On the other hand, securing the thermal vent patents for a mere two billion credits was the steal of the century. It was the kind of legendary acquisition that would cement his legacy as Director forever, completely mitigating the disaster Thorne had created.
He looked up at me, his eyes searching my face for any sign of deception. "Two billion. For the patents. Nothing else."
"Nothing else," I confirmed.
Victor slowly stood up from the metal chair. He swayed slightly, his equilibrium still damaged from the backhand, but he managed to steady himself. He adjusted his heavy, fur-lined greatcoat, taking a deep, fortifying breath.
"I am... tempted by this offer, Mr. Shephard," Victor said, his voice slowly regaining a fraction of its former polished authority. "It is an incredibly unorthodox arrangement, but the financial implications for SIGS are undeniably attractive."
"Then we have a deal?" I asked, pushing myself off the desk.
Victor hesitated. The paranoia of a man who had survived at the top of a cutthroat corporate empire held him back.
"I do not make multi-billion-credit decisions while suffering from a severe concussion," Victor said carefully, his eyes darting to the floor where his teeth lay. "I need to consult with my chief metallurgical engineers to verify the integration of your schematics into our existing manufacturing pipeline. I need time to think it over."
"How much time?" I asked, my voice hardening slightly.
Victor looked me directly in the eye, summoning the last shreds of his corporate courage. "A week. I ask for one week to deliberate and run the projections."
I stared at him. I let the silence stretch for a long, uncomfortable moment, making him sweat for it, before I finally nodded.
"You've got a week," I agreed.
I stepped forward and extended my right hand. Victor looked at my hand, and slowly, gingerly, he reached out and took it. His palm was slick with nervous sweat, but we had an agreement.
"One week, Mr. Shephard," Victor said, his voice tight.
"Don't think about it too hard, Victor," I warned softly as I released his hand, stepping back. "After all, Aegis Aerospace and Kodiak Heavy Industries both have massive thermal dynamic divisions to supplement their hull construction. I'm sure they'd love to get a piece of the pie as well."
Victor's bruised face twitched. The threat was obvious, and it struck a deep nerve. He gave me a crooked, bloody smile, the anger clearly sizzling beneath his forced, calm facade.
"I won't," Victor said curtly.
He turned around and walked toward the door. As he approached, the heavy locking mechanisms on the door disengaged with a loud clack.
Victor didn't look back. The doors slid open, and he stepped out into the concourse where his heavily armed, thoroughly panicked guards were waiting in a defensive perimeter.
The doors slid shut behind him, sealing softly this time.
I stood alone in the office, the stark fluorescent lights humming quietly overhead. I let out a long, slow breath, rolling my shoulders. The adrenaline was finally beginning to bleed out of my system, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary exhaustion.
I turned around and leaned back against the edge of the reception desk, half-sitting on the polished metal. I rubbed my temples, feeling the beginnings of a massive headache forming behind my eyes.
"Well," Marcos's voice suddenly crackled through the terminal console built into the desk. "That was certainly an... intense negotiation, Bossman."
I snorted, pulling a clean rag from my pocket and wiping a smudge of Victor's blood off the desk. "He needed an attitude adjustment. You can't let these corporate types think they own the room, especially not that fucker."
"Indeed," Marcos replied, his tone shifting into one of profound, analytical confusion. "However, I must confess, Mark, I am struggling to comprehend your strategic objective here. Why would you ever make such a deal?"
I smiled, staring out the window at the skeletal frame of the Vengeance. "Because it's purely beneficial for me, Marcos. It's a win-win."
"You'll have to excuse me, but it does not appear that way," Marcos countered smoothly. "My projections indicate that if we retained exclusive manufacturing rights and fulfilled the contracts directly, the sheer volume of sales would generate upwards of fifty to sixty billion credits over the next five years. The amount of credits you could possibly gain from selling the vents yourself easily dwarfs the two billion you just settled for."
"You're not wrong," I admitted, crossing my arms. "But I need the cash now, Marcos. Not in five years. I have plans that need credits to be put in motion, and when Kaelen wakes up, I want to show him what I've built. That takes immediate liquid capital."
"Needing an immediate influx of cash should be no excuse for such a remarkably short-sighted deal," Marcos argued, sounding almost offended. "You surrendered a galactic monopoly for a fraction of its worth. It is highly illogical."
I let out a low, genuine smirk. "It's totally worth it, Marcos."
"Explain what you mean," Marcos demanded. "What variable am I missing?"
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, a grin spreading across my face. "I told Victor I was selling him the patents of how to make the vent. The architectural schematics. The thermodynamic flow charts. The alloy composition."
"Obviously," Marcos replied sarcastically. "That is the definition of a patent."
"Right," I agreed. "But notice what I didn't offer."
The console remained silent for a long moment as Marcos processed the conversation.
"I never offered to share how to modify or make the printers that are required to manufacture those vents," I said, the grin widening. "I'm giving them the blueprint to a house they don't have the tools to build."
"I see," Marcos said softly, the realization dawning in his digital mind.
"The standard human printers, the mass-stampers, and the heavy industrial foundries that SIGS uses are centuries behind Strathari tech," I explained, gesturing toward the drydock. "They layer molten metal. They stamp plates. They don't work on a molecular, atomic induction level like our nanoprinters do. With humanity's current technology, it would take them at least a century of reverse-engineering to replicate something close to the flawless, single-piece structural integrity of the vents I sold them."
"So you are selling them a theoretical masterpiece," Marcos stated, his tone shifting from confused to deeply amused.
"Yup," I laughed. "Oh, they'll try to build it. They'll take my schematics, throw them into their foundries, and try to cast the S-Alloy. And because my design is inherently brilliant, they might actually manage to increase the performance of their current vents by about ten percent. Which, to them, will still be a massive victory."
"But they will never achieve the fifty-two point four percent thermal dispersion rate you achieved," Marcos concluded. "Their manufacturing processes will introduce microscopic weld lines and structural imperfections that fundamentally limit the design's efficiency."
"That's a bingo," I said, standing up and stretching my back. "They won't be able to reach me. They'll have the patent, but they won't have the product to match it."
I walked over to the window, looking out at the drydock.
"And here is the beautiful part," I murmured, leaning my forehead against the cool glass. "Once they realize they can't manufacture the high-end, military-grade version of the vent themselves... they'll be desperate. I am willing to bet that they'll be wanting to negotiate a 'License-Back' deal for me to continue manufacturing them."
"They will falsely believe that with time and capital, their foundries can eventually easily outperform your small-scale operation," Marcos noted.
"Yup," I smiled. "Which they would be right about, if they were actually capable of creating a single vent with the same fifty percent performance increase. But they aren't. So, I get two billion credits upfront, I get to keep my absolute freedom to innovate in ship design without violating a non-compete, and in a few months or a year, SIGS will be paying me to manufacture the very vents they just bought the patents for."
"That is..." Marcos paused, processing the sheer, multi-layered audacity of the corporate sabotage I had just committed. "That is remarkably devious, Mark. Remind me never to play poker with you."
"I'm a starship engineer, Marcos," I said, turning away from the window and heading back toward the heavy personnel door that led to the drydock. With a thought, the black suit melted back into the goggles and overalls I had been wearing, though now they were pristine. "I just know how to find the stripped screw in the machine. Now, open the blast door for Kenjiro. We've got a coolant line to finish splicing."
"Right away, Mark. And shall I resume Protocol 'Garage Band'?"
"You read my mind," I grinned.
As I pushed the door open, stepping back out into the humid, grease-scented air of the drydock, the heavy, aggressive guitar riff of AC/DC's Back in Black blasted from the overhead speakers.
---
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