Note: Chapters 1 to 6 are being posted together.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been appointed the administrator of what?” Ethan asked.
He nearly reached up and comically cleaned out his ear with a fingertip for effect. Except he didn’t know if the soldiers were the twitchy type and might assume he was reaching for a hidden micro-weapon. He’d heard stories of smugglers, privateers, and traders becoming a little too holey when they got smart with the clones at transit checkpoints or when a patrol ship boarded them for an inspection.
“The Folimai Rim. I’m hardly surprised a man of your… station hasn’t heard of it.” The Vaelix shot him a smile that oozed condescension. “It’s a sector of solar systems that the Union granted an exclusive license to over five Earth centuries ago. Around the time the Taer Empire broke apart in their little civil war.”
Red lights flashed across several helmets, and a smirk flitted across the Vaelix’s expression. Ethan guessed the soldiers were communicating electronically using their modules. One of the soldiers lowered her gun and stood up straight.
“Shut up,” the soldier barked, her voice modulated by the same filter as Ethan had heard before he answered the door. The light on her helmet glowed solid blue. “You’d think you never heard a Vaelix talk shit about us before. <Fucking> Baerin.”
Yeah, she was a Taer, alright. Baerin was their patron goddess, often depicted with six arms, enough tits to feed an army, and a snout actual Taer lacked. Almost every Taer warship possessed a shrine to her somewhere, and the statue there apparently depicted her with a gun in each hand. The Taer often used her name in much the same way humans used Christ or God.
“Sorry, Executor.” The officer nodded at the Vaelix.
“It’s fine. I’m quite used to the… rambunctiousness of soldiers. The Faecrim aren’t much different, as you’ve no doubt noticed on our trip here.” The fox Executor smiled at the wolf officer, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
A modulated grunt escaped the soldier before she stepped back into line with her subordinates.
Turning back to Ethan, the Vaelix’s tail swished happily behind herself. She clearly enjoyed annoying the wolves.
“As I was saying, you’ve been granted a great deal of wealth and power. This decision has taken the Union many cycles to make, so it’s important that we verify it has been made correctly.” She paused and pressed a finger against her throat. “Any possibility that a miscreant may have interfered with highly secretive Union processes must be excised. So?”
He grimaced. “Can I get changed? Or are you just amusing yourself before slapping me in chains?”
“Wow, do they do that here?” one of the soldiers asked. “The history vid I watched suggested—”
Red lights glowed on nearly every other soldier and she shut up, hunching her shoulders.
“They do not,” the Vaelix said flatly. “And you may get changed, Ethan.”
He took a step back inside, but the officer from earlier caught the door. The Vaelix stared at the officer.
“I’m in charge of the security detail, Executor,” the officer said, staring down at the much shorter fox. “If he’s in cahoots with a traitor inside the Union, who knows what he might pull. We need to watch him.”
“Keen to see his cock, Lieutenant?” The fox smirked.
Ethan wondered if the Taer officer sweated as she stared down her superior. While that fancy armor likely had minor psychic protection, it amounted to nothing against a Vaelix. He’d read that the most powerful fox psychics could destroy entire warships. Given the Taer and Vaelix had fought a galactic war once, the wolfgirl knew the Vaelix’s strength all too well.
“Fine. Just make sure they don’t enjoy themselves. We’re here to interrogate him, not recreate some trashy romance vid.” The fox turned and stalked away, her tail lashing the ground.
A sigh escaped the officer. The lights of the entire squad turned solid red, no doubt as they tried to determine who got to watch Ethan get dressed. He waited in awkward silence for nearly thirty seconds.
Eventually, a pair of mismatched soldiers followed him inside his hotel room. One roughly his height, at just six feet, and another nearly eight feet.
They scanned the room, helmets still on. The tall one fixed her gaze on him. The ceramic visor of her helmet lifted, revealing her face. Cybernetic red eyes stared at him and thick tresses of black hair were bundled up inside her armor.
“How do you pilot your ship with only a single prosthetic and two underpowered modules?” she asked, her voice unmodulated.
“The same way clones fire their guns despite barely knowing which end is the dangerous one,” he said.
The wolves snickered. The helmeted one gave off a sound like static.
“I take it none of your squad are clones,” he said.
“A couple are,” she replied. “But they’re old clones. Not just lab rats with some implanted skills and reliant on their modules and cybernetics.”
“The Empire doesn’t let clones just waltz into our special forces divisions,” the short one said, finally deciding to join in.
Both wolves preened when Ethan looked up at them in surprise, halfway through pulling his pants on. The tall one seemed especially proud.
“Uhhh, the Maelstrom?” he asked, blindly guessing one of the special forces units he knew of.
Her face suggested otherwise. Before he could start guessing blindly, the short wolfgirl put him out of his misery.
“We’re the Void Hounds. Been seconded to the Union for…” She tilted her head. “Four cycles now?”
“Six,” the tall one corrected. “We spent a couple in cryo-sleep after our Pathbuilder got disintegrated by some precursor deathbots. Took a couple of years for somebody to process the paperwork and send someone to save us after receiving our emergency beacon.”
“That sounds blazingly fast by Union standards,” Ethan said drily.
“Why do you think we entered cryosleep?” The tall one grimaced as she looked around. “You don’t look like some super-hacker to me. And this world is as much of a shithole as I heard it was. Like, fuck, you guys still use toilet paper. Haven’t you heard of the three seashells?”
“They tried that once. Thousands died when the peacekeepers put down the riot from orbit.”
The Taer shook their heads. Whether in disgust or shock, he didn’t care to understand.
He finally finished dressing. Not that he looked like much. Neither soldier appeared to pay him any attention, although he couldn’t tell how much they’d stared at his ass, junk, or bare chest earlier thanks to their helmets.
The tall one stopped him on the way to the door with a question, her eyes narrowing at him. “If you do get the Rim, what do you reckon you’ll do with it?”
“Uh…” He didn’t have the slightest clue. The idea that he might really be given multiple inhabited solar systems to rule hadn’t crossed his mind, as this appeared to be some sort of paperwork fuckup. “Create a gigantic harem full of hot women of every humanoid race?”
They both snorted.
“You’ll be a male overlord. The harem goes without saying, but come on, what would you actually do?” she asked.
“I mean, won’t he be busy dealing with fifty cycles of neglect?” the short one suggested. “I can’t even look up the Folimai Rim with my omnimodule. Pretty sure the Union suppressed its existence decades ago, once they started slow-rolling the decision to pick a successor—”
She stopped abruptly as both their helmets glowed red. The tall Taer flicked her visor down, obscuring her face once again.
The door opened and the Vaelix stepped inside.
“Oh, good. You’re not giving him a double <blowjob>,” she said, eyes scanning the room. “You were taking so long I worried what I’d see.”
“I took my time dressing,” Ethan lied.
Then again, with her psychic abilities, did she know everything they’d talked about?
“Of course.” The Vaelix curled a finger to gesture him to follow before vanishing.
Had her response been to his unspoken question, or what he’d said? He chose not to think too hard about that.
Neither soldier looked at him as they left. He grabbed his bag. Thankfully, he hadn’t unpacked last night.
The trip back up to Space Station Renewal passed quickly. They packed him into a large transport gunship capable of carrying a whole platoon, then flew into a special bay of the space elevator that skipped security. Once inside, they requisitioned an entire elevator car heading station-side. The masses of workers waiting for the few passenger cars scheduled between those dedicated to cargo needed to wait.
On the way up, Ethan got a glimpse of the ship the Vaelix and her kill team had arrived on.
A bubble-like vessel, far larger than Ethan’s mining ship but an order of magnitude smaller than the peacekeeper battlecruisers, docked some distance from the station by means of an extended space bridge. Point-defense turrets dotted its surface while numerous missile bays hid on the sides. A pair of relatively small forward-facing cannons would be menacing if they weren’t some of the smallest he’d seen on a ship.
It was closer to the size of a large naval ship on Earth than the titanic capital ships that controlled the void of the Milky Way. A cruiser of some variety. He knew little of naval warfare, beyond what he’d read in stories, but understood its main arsenal would be in the warheads tucked away inside those missile bays. Many would be fusion warheads, capable of crippling or outright destroying larger ships should they penetrate their shields.
“That’s a big if,” the Vaelix purred as she appeared next to him. She peered at the electronic panels displaying the external camera feed of the elevator. Her tail swished behind him, ruffling his clothes with the air it displaced. “The shields of capital ships are constructed to withstand multi-mile long particle accelerators launching projectiles at a non-insignificant percentage of the speed of light. The main guns of a battleship are already firing weapons with power on a nuclear scale. Missiles are merely more efficient.”
Well, that answered his earlier question. She was definitely reading his idle thoughts.
“Hence the usual complement of missile destroyers,” he said. “I’ve always wondered why the battleships are out here alone.”
“They have point-defense systems.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And it’s doubtful anyone would attempt to wipe out humanity given what you have to… offer.” Her eyes flickered to his crotch. “The hard part for any great power would be surviving the wrath of everyone else should they step out of line. There are few things we all agree enough on to lend military power to the Union for, but preventing uplifting is one of them.”
He nodded.
The Union acted more like the former United Nations, if significantly more trigger-happy. Each great interstellar power did its own thing, including waging war, and yielded to the Union only on specific matters. Or not at all, when it really wanted its way. The Union’s power came from the ability of its members to utilize their military might through it, without directly declaring war.
“So if the Great Taer Empire decided to claim all of humanity’s men for its own tomorrow—” he began to say.
Almost every helmeted Taer soldier looked over at him. Red lights blinked on their helmets.
“There wouldn’t be a Taer Empire anymore.” The Vaelix smiled slyly. “It would be quite the coup for their long-term rivals, the Federated Taer Dominion. The Union may not enforce peace, but it does ensure some degree of civility. Each race gets a chance to stand on its own feet before it chooses to service others.”
Ethan wondered whether humanity would get much of a choice once it finally caught up in a century or two. While it was far from the only race that paled in comparison to the great interstellar races, the gap between humans and those that ruled most of the inhabited Milky Way was vast.
The youngest great race were the Yinil, a race of black-skinned horned humanoids relatively close to Earth. They’d sought the stars a mere century ago yet numbered among the Union’s five major powers, while less ambitious races flailed about in the shadows of races like the Taer.
While the Yinil had proven it wasn’t impossible to play catchup, odds were humanity would join the score of other races in accomplishing little. They’d paid one hell of a price to compete with older races like the Vaelix.
Lati’s extensive cybernetic implants made her an exemplar of her race. The Yinil worshipped technology to make up for the millennia between them and the races before them. Their psychics literally bound themselves to their ships, becoming one with the vessels, and the bodies of even ordinary Yinil showed extensive signs of cybernetic modification.
If that was the cost necessary to play ball with the big boys of the galaxy, Ethan wasn’t sure it was worth it. But it wasn’t his choice to make. Humanity as a whole would make that call one day in the future, much like the Yinil had.
Today, he needed to worry about the interrogations the Vaelix would put him through.
A different team of armored Union soldiers met them aboard the station. Not a single ordinary Union employee was in sight. They’d cleared them all out, and the concourse sat empty. Soldiers in identical armor and of eerily similar heights stood at all entrances and overlooks. They carried non-lethal weapons like the long-range taser from yesterday.
Unlike the Taer, these women only wore visors. Their horse ears poked up freely, and their long, fine tails swayed behind them.
They were Faecrim. The Vaelix’s lackies and one of the most controversial races in the Milky Way.
“Wow. Not only a crack team of Taer special forces, but a battalion of clones,” Ethan said. “When I did gather such a dangerous reputation?”
“They come with the ship,” the Vaelix said. “Follow.”
She walked ahead without even a glance at the clone soldiers arrayed before her. The Taer followed her, and Ethan joined them.
Every Faecrim soldier appeared identical, albeit with somewhat different hair and tail colors. The visors made it harder to tell, but when dozens of women stood beside each other with the same height and build, it was hard to hide the fact they were palette-swapped clones.
They all stood exactly five feet tall, with legs that made up most of their height. Faecrim were humanoid aliens, but with a different body ratio to humans. Thin, small chests, scrawny arms, and narrow faces, but huge, muscled legs. He’d learned first-hand their legs were rock-solid. If one of the clones kicked him, they’d splatter his ribs across the space station. And that was before their cybernetics kicked in.
They led him into a part of the station he rarely went to. It was set aside for security. Presumably to interrogate arrivals from ships. The room they led him into lacked a window, but he noticed a door to a smaller room close to it. They would monitor him from there. A pair of Faecrim stood outside the door, while the Taer peeled away.
Finally, he was alone. The Vaelix vanished.
A plate of food lay atop the steel table. Bacon, eggs, hash browns, and some spinach. It looked surprisingly appetizing.
It was a very sterile room. No plants or decorations. Just chairs bolted to the floor, the table, and the food. Plus a jug of water. His cutlery was plastic. They’d even used a plain white plate made of some sort of acrylic to stop him from breaking it and creating a makeshift weapon.
Nobody entered after a few minutes, so he tried the food. Fake bacon, but it was the alien sort. Way better than the factory-produced garbage he’d eaten his whole life here. No luck with the eggs, though. While eggs were common to the galaxy, they varied too much in color and size. In Vaelix territory, they preferred fist-sized gray eggs that tasted mushroomy with an inky black yolk that was like drinking pure MSG.
The spinach and hash browns were spinach and hash browns. Humanity did not struggle to grow vegetables using hydroponics. The Union had also immediately replicated almost every single plant of interest on Earth, and various corporate versions had been patented and were available across the galaxy. The Faecrim had a taste for Earth-style oats, he’d noticed.
Eventually, the door whooshed open and an unfamiliar Faecrim stepped inside. She wore a standard Union uniform, was only a few inches taller than the clones, and possessed styled black hair with a large hair ornament he suspected hid something nasty.
Most importantly, she bore a stubby black horn maybe the length of his thumb, sticking out from her foreheads.
“How’s the clone business?” he asked them, taking a final bite of his hashbrown. “Living up to expectations? If you had any prior to becoming a clone.”
“Suspect is using joviality as a defense,” she noted. She didn’t pull out a device and presumably kept notes using the chip in her head. “Do you truly think I’m a clone? Do you think about what it may be like to be ever be a clone yourself? Clonism is a very harmful practice.”
“I think as much about clones as you do humans jacking it too much to Vaelix porn,” he said.
Her cheeks flushed, but she showed no other reaction. “Humanity does have one of the largest per capita consumption rates of Vaelix pornography in the galaxy,” she said. “And the production of sexual paraphernalia related to them has been noted in numerous reports. If I probed your records, how extensive would your consumption be?”
“Humans love a good fluffy tail,” he said, ignoring her question.
Although he seriously wondered if she could do that. Did the Union keep track of that sort of thing? Or was the Faecrim playing along with his shittalking?
After several long seconds of silence, she sighed. “You know I’m not a clone. Your history as a privateer would be impossible if you possess so little common knowledge. Call me Yany. Mistress Sailiferia requested that I undertake initial questioning before she conducted her own.”
Sailiferia. That was a mouthful.
“So she owns you?” he asked. “And, yes, I knew you weren’t a clone. You’re a psychic nullifiers, right? Not a good one, I bet. I’ve read that the size of a Faecrim’s horn dictates how strongly they nullify psychic abilities. If it gets too big, they can’t even use FTL.”
“Size matters far less than skill.” A small smile grace Yany’s face as she began moving behind him.
“Isn’t that my line?”
“Should I add that to the report?” she asked, but her tone remained serious despite her teasing words. “The Vaelix are strong enough Pathbuilders that I’ve never heard of one that can’t handle a Faecrim null in foldspace. Anything else is simply a fairytale in the Joint Protectorate.”
Ah, the Joint Protectorate. A rare term.
Almost everyone called it the Vaelix Empire, or just the Protectorate.
Because the Faecrim were little more than a slave race to the Vaelix. A race incapable of producing powerful psychics, and therefore incapable of FTL travel.
Instead, the Faecrim produced powerful nulls, who blocked psychic abilities.
On top of that, psychic abilities, including nullification, couldn’t be cloned. Hence why Ethan knew she was the real deal the moment she walked in. As every Vaelix possessed psychic abilities, they used the Faecrim as their muscle in what was officially known as the Grand Federated Protectorate of Joint Faecrim-Vaelix Supremacy.
That official name was one hell of a mouthful, which is why everyone just called it the Protectorate or the Vaelix Empire. Apparently, it sounded even more pompous in their native tongues. Human translations typically used Latin for Vaelix and Faecrim names as a way to get across their pomposity.
“So, is this question the sort I get from horny patrol officers?” he asked them. “Asking in case playing along gets me a free ride.”
“No. Mistress Sailiferia would jettison me out the airlock,” Yany added. She tilted her head. “You are more insouciant than I expected given the gravity of this affair. You understand how serious the accusations are, yes? If you are found guilty then your fate will be brutal.”
“Define brutal. The Union tends to just shoot people,” he said skeptically.
“I am told that you will be handed over to the Taer Void Hounds to do as they wish.”
He paled, then tried to recover his composure.
Because as friendly as the Taer duo had been in his hotel room, he held no illusions as to what would happen if that punishment came to pass. The Taer pirate he’d killed during the failed deal a week ago had been far from the only wolfgirl who wanted to ride him until he dried up.
Even so, he tried to shrug it off. “I’ve been interrogated like this over all sorts of random shit. My paperwork didn’t translate properly, so I’m pulled aside while re-entering Dominio. Or a Taer patrol ship realizes I’m a human and a horny wolfgirl boards me, hoping for a quickie.” He leaned forward. “So, what is this actually about?”
Yany stared at him for far too long. He met her gaze, but she gave nothing away.
Then she smiled again. She lacked the practice her boss had, as this actually reached her eyes.
“Mistress Sailiferia will likely be another hour or three. I’m afraid you’re constrained to this room, but I can provide snacks, entertainment, drinks…” She waved a hand, then paused. “No other people, however. Or sexual paraphernalia. Nothing from your vessel, either. It has been thoroughly searched, but the risk that you have secreted something there is too high.”
“Worried I have a hidden blow-up doll of a Vaelix?” he asked, feeling his confidence return.
He appeared to be in the clear. They’d been testing him to be sure he hadn’t somehow deceived their boss. The double-whammy of a psychic and a null, in case he had his own psychic tricks or one assisting him. He suspected every electronic record he’d ever made in the galaxy had been combed over, thrice, to see what he’d been up to.
Yany continued to smile at him but said nothing.
“Coffee would be nice,” he said. “A game? Flat games are still popular on Earth and with the Yinil. I meant to pick up ‘Corrupted Priestess of the Tech-Egg’ for a friend while out here.” Lati had wanted to grab it while in Yinil space, before the job had gone wrong.
“I’ll see if any Yinil gaming devices have been confiscated recently.” Yany nodded at him before leaving.
His coffee arrived fifteen minutes later, but no dice with the game. A shame. He’d apologize to Lati when he met her next.
His analytics module told him it was nearly lunch time when the Vaelix entered the room. She waited for the door to close, then tilted her head.
He felt something thrum.
“Don’t worry. I had Yany disable the monitoring devices in the room, as well as everything electronic next-door,” the Vaelix, Sailiferia, said. “You’ll feel an odd sensation in a moment. I’m blanketing the room in a shield to keep any potential psychics on the station in the dark.”
As she predicted, a strange fuzziness filled his mind, and he pressed his hands to his temples. He’d encountered precious few psychics in his life. Psychics lived blessed lives, separate from the unwashed masses like him. Here on Earth, the best psychics could do little more than read surface thoughts or perhaps bend a spoon. The Union funded research projects to improve humanity’s lot, but they’d amounted to nothing so far.
“Drink something.” The fox already stood on his side of the table and pulled the jug of water closer. “It will make the sensation pass faster.”
Her voice was oddly gentle, and the feeling of her tail rubbing against his back like bliss. He nearly drank directly from the jug, but managed to pour a glass and took several large gulps. His senses returned and he no longer felt like a vice was crushing his mind.
“You’ll get used to the feeling with experience. Being inside the same ship as the Pathbuilder when entering foldspace has a similar effect,” Sailifieria said. She frowned at him. “Call me Sai. My full name is Sailiferia of the Sixteenth Era, but it’s such a mouthful. I prefer that those who know me… personally call me Sai.”
“Personally,” he repeated.
Ethan finally looked over at the fox, and only now noticed she sat close enough that he could lean over and touch her without even trying. Her massive fluffy white tail wrapped around him, and he resisted the urge to look down at her abundant cleavage. She’d unzipped the top of her bodysuit.
“Well, if you accept my offer, it will be quite a personal relationship,” Sai said, with a hint of amusement. “You can look all you like. For all the awe you hold a Vaelix like me in, I’ve never known a man personally. Our race is small in number as is, and that means we have even fewer men. A lowly public servant like myself—even an executor who oversees the Union’s military operations—could never hope to lay hands on a male outside of… questionable circumstances.”
“Does this count as that?” he asked.
Her expression darkened and she looked away. Regret flashed across her face.
Something was wrong. Ethan sobered up from his lust, and forced himself to straighten.
“What’s this all about?” he asked.
“One job.” Sai pressed her fingers to the bridge of her perfect nose. “I had one job. Keep it together while you stared at my tits. Well, I suppose I can use my backup plan.”
“I take it the interrogation has begun.” Ethan kept his voice neutral, suppressing his anger and terror.
Anger, because she’d been manipulating him. Hell, she might have injected fake emotions into his mind earlier.
Terror, because she could crush him like an ant in an instant.
“I won’t kill you,” Sai said, her voice soothing as she tried to calm him. “Or hurt you. You’re too useful to me to hurt, whatever Yany told you. I’ve spent years trying to set this up. Throwing it all away because you get a bit lippy? I’m six of your Earth centuries old, you know. We all make mistakes. Especially when dealing with something new, like a male I’ll get the chance to work with for a very long time.”
Six centuries old. The slow realization that the woman in front of him predated not only the Taer civil war, but also the battlecruisers floating around the Sol system, and arguably the modern English language, slowly set in.
“Oh, yes. I forget how young you humans are.” She shook her head. “What’s your braindeath lifespan? 100 cycles? Funny that it’s such a round number, yet so short.”
“We don’t die of brain death at 100 cycles,” Ethan objected.
That corresponded to approximately 70 Earth years, as a standard Galactic cycle was a fair bit shorter.
“It’s not literal brain death.” She rolled her eyes, and her tail lashed the air. “It’s when your race begins to atrophy. Limbs and other organs are replaceable, but the brain is the true mark of an advanced civilization. Circumventing the braindeath lifespan is the true measure of a society’s advancement. Until you surpass it, you’re little more than savages by interstellar standards, liable to obliterate yourselves with nuclear fire. The sixteenth era of the Vaelix only began once we managed it twelve Earth centuries ago.”
He shuffled uncomfortably. “Does this have a point? Or are you just flexing on me to scare me?”
“No. I’m reminding you that I’m not a woman to act pointlessly or rashly.” She stroked his cheek, but her blue eyes remained cold. Those golden slits stared into him. “You can go well beyond the braindeath limit, just like me, if you play it smart. You understand what you stand to gain, don’t you?”
“The, uh, Forgetti Rim? An entire piece of the galaxy.”
Her hand froze. She stared at him for several long seconds.
Then her head reeled back and she barked with laughter. “The <Forgetti> Rim.” She snickered. “It took a moment for my hardware to translate the meaning of that. Your language is so needlessly complex, yet I do love the many intricacies it can produce. A cute name, even if it obscures the fact you forgot its true name. It’s the Folimai Rim, dear Ethan.”
“I doubt I’m that dear to you,” he said.
“Oh no, you are dear to me.” She smiled. “After all, how do you think you became the successor to the Rim in the first place? The Union has sat on the decision to appoint a successor for 50 cycles. Only a select few individuals could influence it. And now, a human privateer has been chosen?” She slapped her face with a mock look of shock. “What a surprise.”
He glared at her. “So somebody did hack the Union. You.”
“What’s the English term for this?” She paused, no doubt searching for the right translation. “No shit? Let me be up-front, Ethan. You have a choice. Accept what I’m offering you. A slice of the galaxy, with you as its ruler. Or I can write you off as a failure, say that you worked with someone to alter the decision, and hand you over to the Void Hounds. You think any of them have ridden an actual male before?” She sneered at him, her friendly façade vanishing.
Both fire and utter coldness ran through his veins. They matched the choices ahead of him. He let them combine and turn into an odd calm, so that he didn’t do anything too stupid.
This might be the opportunity he’d dreamed of. The chance to grasp a star with his bare hands and achieve something otherwise impossible.
“There have to be strings attached,” he said.
“Perhaps.” She placed a finger under his chin and rubbed it along his skin. “The Rim is under corporate control, but that also means it’s free of Union influence. You’re not the only interested party. But it would be yours by right if you accept. All you need to do is understand you’d owe me, personally. Not the Union. Not the Office of Interstellar Cooperative Management. Me, Sailiferia of the Sixteenth Era. A small price for your own corporate empire, no?”