The Mech Touch novel Chapter 274

The entire convoy went up in arms about the sudden discovery.

Cargo ships and carriers converted from cargo ships generally didn’t possess great sensors. If they all detected strong readings of exotics at a distance of five light-hours, then the planet up ahead must be riddled with highly active exotic substances.

So high, in fact, that it must be worth as much as the gross domestic product of an average third-rate state like the Bright Republic.

Commander Leife, the woman in charge of the convoy, convened a hasty conference among the ship captains and senior mercenary officers.

She gazed at the eyes of Captain Spencer before glancing at the various projections of the other men and women. Almost every ship belonged to a different owner, complicating her efforts to rein in their impulses.

She reserved the most wary looks to the other two mercenary commanders in the convoy. Both of them rode in medium-sized carriers that would be able to overwhelm the Calcardon if they teamed up against the Barbed Lynxes.

"First things first. You all shut off your quantum entanglement nodes, right? It’s not enough to flip a switch. I hope you all disconnected the hardware from the rest of your ships."

All of the captains nodded seriously. They all knew that as soon as they discovered something valuable, the first thing they had to do was to prevent it from spreading all over the galactic net.

Turning off their quantum entanglement nodes had been their first or second actions upon receiving word of the momentous discovery.

"Alright folks, we all know why we’re here. Let’s talk about the Glowing Planet."

They called it the Glowing Planet, for its very visible luminescence that lit up the planet like a star. At this distance, it could be spotted from the naked eye, which was very rare for a rogue planet drifting in the middle of interstellar space with no nearby star to reflect its surface.

It was as if a juicy pheasant decided to put on a coat of bright lights to make it more attractive to another predators that wanted a taste of its flesh.

Captain Spencer began to summarize the estimates the entire convoy had made so far. "The Glowing Planet is about the size of a small planet or a large moon. We’re not quite sure if it started off as the former or the latter before it got pushed out of its star system. Whatever the case, the trauma of the event has warped the planet to the point of tearing up its entire shape."

A projection appeared of the Glowing Planet in question. The planet took on a slight egg-like shape as if it had been stretched by a pair of god-sized hands. The stretching caused the entire crust of the planet to crack, which inadvertently revealed rich deposits of exotics.

A mercenary officer rudely interrupted the briefing. "Let’s skip all of the nerdy stuff and get to the real question that matters. How valuable are those deposits?"

"Not as much as you’d think." Captain Spencer cautioned. "The planet likely originated from the galactic heartland instead of the galactic center, so it mostly contains junk exotics."

Everyone’s faces started to fall. So-called junk exotics referred to valuable materials that ranked at the bottom of the hierarchy of exotic materials. While they held significant value in even smaller quantities, they couldn’t be relied on to construct a quality mech without pairing them up with other, more valuable exotics.

That said, the planet still represented a floating mound of cash in space. Captain Spencer passed around a list of exotics they detected so far. "There isn’t anything exciting in this list, but what’s notable is that all of these exotics are getting harder to import from the other Star Sectors. This means that the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony will be sending out a massive fleet to secure the Glowing Planet as soon as they hear about its existence."

That sent much of the people present in a tizzy. The two dominant second-rate states of the Komodo Star Sector often took what it wanted by force.

Commander Leife already made her decision. "Considering the spotty history of those two states, I suggest we don’t sell the coordinates of the planet to either of them. The planet is valuable, yes, but not so much that they will feel obliged to thank us for the tip."

None of them objected to her decision. The Hexadric Hegemony was famously hostile to outsiders while the Coalition was too fractured to present a united front. Some of the more despotic partners might even decide to kill them all off in order to keep the coordinates under wraps.

"Who can we turn to then to sell the coordinates of the Glowing Planet?"

The question resulted in a brief tug-of-war as the captains and mercenary officers proposed various possible powers. Complicating the matter was that nearly every ship in the convoy came from different states. This allowed them to cross various borders without problem, but it also complicated the decision on who to approach.

Commander Leife personally preferred to sell the coordinates to the Bright Republic, but another captain who hailed from the Vesia Kingdom insisted on approaching them instead. Various rivalries came to the fore as each captain wanted to take this opportunity to earn kudos from their home states.

"This is getting nowhere." Captain Spencer slammed the table with his fist. "I don’t think we’ll be able to sell it to a single state without pissing someone off. Who can tell if any disgruntled captain won’t go behind our backs and reconnect their quantum entanglement nodes again?"

"Then who should we sell it then?"

"Maybe someone neutral, like the MTA or CFA. They maintain a standard policy concerning these kinds of discoveries. They always keep their word."

"Yeah, but the rewards they hand out amount to nothing more than a pittance!"

Spencer nodded in a grave manner. "It’s just a flat finder’s fee instead of a percentage of the gains."

Nobody could hide the greed in their eyes. Who hadn’t heard of stories where entire crews grew rich overnight by discovering a lucky find and negotiating a share of the profits of the resulting venture?

It was one of the stories that always perpetuated into legends. Every space farer hoped to stumble onto a find like the Glowing Planet.

Some of the more conservative captains expressed support at the idea of approaching the MTA or CFA, but others who wanted a bigger payout clung on to alternatives. The entire discussion reached a deadlock, with no possible compromise in sight.