The Martial Unity

That day, a shockwave spread throughout the entire mining industry, one that brought a lot of relief and ecstasy to its highest leaders. The discovery of a new infected world meant that they would finally have the opportunity to mine esoteric ore, which would keep their mining capital busy.

After all, the equipment and technology needed to mine esoteric substance was very different from the kind of equipment that was used to mine regular matter. The mining technology for esoteric matter was composed of esoteric matter. It was expensive, scarce, and was only profitable if used to mine esoteric matter due to the tremendous amount of capital expenditure that went to acquiring and operating such technology.

That meant that in order for the mining industry to remain profitable, they needed a steady supply of infected worlds that they could mine for esoteric matter. It was one of the reasons that the industry to find infected worlds was as large as it was.

The mining industry had been terribly disappointed when the Gaian Alliance had prohibited any party from entering the Strehegeld Star System where the remains of Planet Amadeus III were. It had been an opportunity to extract some highly precious esoteric matter, and that had been lost.

Nobody had known when they would run into another infected world. Which was why when EsoQuest Solutions began contacting commercial mining giants, state mining enterprises, and even highly powerful and wealthy individuals who sought infected worlds, it immediately caused ripples that were not gone unnoticed.

The email that EsoQuest Solutions had sent to all of them merely comprised proof that the information they were selling was real. When each of the recipients tested the infection hash with algorithms that could verify whether the geological sample could genuinely be that of an infected world, they found that it was authentic.

On top of that, they could search it against a database of infected hashes from previous infected worlds to make sure that someone wasn’t merely reusing data from an old infected world.

All of this confirmed what the message in the email said. A new infected world had been found, and EsoQuest Solutions was willing to share its location in return for a rather hefty price.

”A hundred million alliance credits for the location of an infected world…” Miss Mearsheim’s expression stiffened. ”Tsk, they’re pushing it.”

What was even more surprising was that the company didn’t even care to try and set up a meeting to discuss the specifics or to establish a rapport. That was extremely unusual in the virus hunting industry. After all, the virus hunting industry tended to serve the mining industry, in a sense. The pathwalkers, the parties, and the companies all constantly competed for attention and favor from mining giants like her own company.

Normally, if a company had actually managed to discover an infected world, they would seek to use it to establish a relationship; they would usually begin by trying to set up an appointment with her.

Yet, just from the fact that they sent a very dry email, she could gather that the CEO of this company was very uninterested in getting to know her.

What was especially surprising was that the email contained a link to a payment page that would automatically transmit all the information, including the coordinates of the infected world in question, once the money was wire transferred.

In other words, this company wanted to conduct the transaction without ever meeting with Miss Mearsheim, the CEO of Terrestrike.

That was extremely unusual.

CLACK

She turned towards the opening door of her office, where a strapping, suited young man walked through. He wore a badge that spelled out his position as Director of Market Research.

”You’re here, Seltis,” Miss Mearsheim leaned forward with a serious expression. ”Now tell me everything you have managed to find out about this ’EsoQuest Solutions.’”

The man took a seat opposite her. ”I just sent you a report with the information I gathered in the past hour for you to peruse. But the bottom line is that this is a brand-new company that was created three months ago.”

Miss Mearsheim frowned at that, accessing the report with her neural inlay. ”Three months ago? Is it legit? Are you sure it’s not a shell?”

”Nope, it’s legit,” Seltis replied with a tone of surprise. ”It has a headquarters in the Panama Continent in Gaia Prime, a website, a general manager that responds to calls, and a swath of employees, even real R&D that was recently constructed. Everything about it is legit.”

”And who is the CEO?” she raised an eyebrow.

”A woman named Neera, according to our contacts in the Interstellar Commerce Administration,” the man remarked. ”She’s a martialus who was from the Kandrian Empire. Used to be the general manager of a pathwalker party that got decimated in the field before eventually becoming the CEO of the company.”

Miss Mearsheim narrowed her eyes. ”Given her skillset, I can’t imagine she started her own enterprise like this. So most likely she was scouted to serve as a manager and keep things running. But she’s not the true founder or the power behind this company, what have you learned about major shareholders?”

”My contacts weren’t able to find that out,” he replied. ”They’re a private company, so they weren’t required to disclose it.”

”What about financial information brokers? Merent or even the Shadow Coin Corp?”

”None of them know either. I wasn’t able to find any whispers on the street of any major financial firm, institution, or fund that was even considering purchasing private equity from the company. Nothing on any of the major investors or pioneers or innovators in the industry having to do anything with EsoQuest Solutions. It seems to have risen independent of the industry, leaving no engagements or interactions for us to pick up on.”

”…So there are no publicly available sources telling us who the major shareholders of the company are, but it pops up out of nowhere three months ago, and now suddenly is able to sell us information about an infected world?” Her eyes sharpened. ”This smells like a plant.”

In other words, she suspected that there was a major player with great influence that wanted to indulge in an enterprise without it being tied to their brand. Otherwise, the history of this company felt far too inorganic to make sense.

”I thought so too,” the man nodded. ”But I’m unable to find out exactly what power is behind this company. The fact that they chose to establish their headquarters in the Panama Continent is potentially a clue. It might be one of the powerhouses of Panama. It might even be the Kandrian Empire.”