The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3693

Chapter 3693 Salvage Handling

After a long day, the Battle of Orange Tulip had fully come to an end at this point.

Under the rays of the orange dwarf star, the surviving alien vessels no longer posed a significant threat to the human attackers.

All forms of pakklaton opposition had been neutralized one way or another. The voribugs were all suppressed to a tolerable level and any explosive risk factors had fallen firmly under the control of the human boarding parties.

Different from last battles, the cleanup operation was a lot more complicated this time.

A lot of ships of the expeditionary fleet incurred serious hull damage to their bow sections.

While the space worthiness of the capital ships was still intact, the vessels still needed a lot of repair work in order to prevent subsequent enemies from exploiting the loopholes in their defensive coverage.

Another complication that the Golden Skull Alliance had to deal with was how to take advantage of the spoils they gained.

The pakklaton ships were not particularly high-end. They were built with serviceable bulk materials and did not contain anything special aside from their warp drives and various goods that they managed to take in when they started their flight.

"We managed to free up a lot of cargo space when we made a pit stop at Davute, but we'll fill all of our cargo holds if we attempt to stuff all of the valuable materials that we can salvage from the alien wrecks." Gavin's projection reported to Ves. "Even then, we'll be leaving a lot more materials behind. We'd be throwing away thousands of MTA credits worth of salvage."

Ves recalled the mountain of debt hanging over the Larkinson Clan. Even if he had to split the salvage with his alliance partners, he still didn't want to let go of a potential opportunity to earn a lot of money!

"I don't want to return to Davute right away after filling up our cargo holds. It seems wasteful to go back just a short time after we started a journey to the deep frontier. I don't want other scavengers to get their hands on all of this salvage for cheap. Do you have any suggestions on what we should do, Benny?"

"I was waiting for you to ask that question." The personal assistant smirked. "Compared to before, our situation has changed. Our circle of friends is no longer limited to the Glory Seekers and the Cross Clan. We have vastly expanded our business network after forming the Open Consortium. There are numerous consortium partner that we can call upon to dispatch a fleet to this star system and bring all of our plunder back to Davute."

Ves' eyes lit up! Gavin was right!

If the Larkinsons couldn't trust anyone, they would have little choice but to salvage the most valuable materials themselves while leaving much of the bulkier materials behind.

At best, they might contact a third party to sell the salvage at a steep discount, thereby missing out on a huge amount of profits!

However, if they could sell or entrust the salvage from the pakklaton refugee fleet to a consortium partner or two, they could form a win-win arrangement where the Golden Skull Alliance could earn a lot more money without doing anything by themselves!

"Contact Chairwoman Calsie of the Open Consortium. Work out a deal where our clan can maximize our profits. How much money do you think we can earn from this arrangement?"

"I can't say yet, boss. It depends on how many valuable exotics we choose to add to our reserves and how much the alien ships are actually worth. We haven't completed our surveys on them so we don't know what materials they contain and what other valuables they might have such as artworks, databases and so on. Furthermore, ships that are more intact and functional are substantially more valuable than broken pieces of wreckage."

"Can you give me an estimate? Just give me an idea."

"Hm, I estimate that our share of the profits should range from 6,000 to 14,000 MTA credits."

"That much?!"

Gavin smiled. "The pakklaton race might not be that impressive to us, but their refugee fleet is still formidable. Few other pioneering organizations would have been able to fight it head on and take it down without suffering too many losses. Don't forget that we beat pakklatons a lot easier than usual due to their voribug infestation. The damage they inflicted onto the alien ships has substantially reduced their value. The fact that they are still gnawing the ships from the inside will impose a lot of burdens on whoever takes over prizes, so we have to lower their value even further."

The maximum possible value of the alien refugee fleet would have been a lot higher if it was completely intact, but Ves did not mind that. The poor conditions of the pakklaton ships had made it much easier to defeat them all. The voribugs had truly helped the Golden Skull Alliance out this time.

Once they finished their discussion on how to handle the salvage, Gavin brought up a more delicate topic.

"You told our boarding troops to take prisoners whenever possible. They weren't always able to do that, but they managed to capture a lot of pakklaton prisoners, mostly civilians aboard the evacuation ship. How… how do you wish to handle them, boss?"

That was a good question. Though Ves did not wish to perpetrate a senseless slaughter, he could not easily dump a lot of pakklaton prisoners on a random ship and call it a day.

"How many did we capture?"

"Currently, our forces have captured a total of 43,643 juvenile and adult pakklatons. We also found egg chambers where the pakklatons have stored 112,340 of their eggs." _{ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com}

Another set of massive numbers! This time, the figures were far more serious. Ves could not easily dispose of these prisoners after he had ordered his men to take them prisoner.

"Eggs, benny?"

"Apparently, the eggs are stored in a way that stretches out their incubation time to an extreme degree, which effectively prolongs the hatching by many years. Chicks won't come out of the eggs unless we want to, so we don't have to worry about feeding an extra hundred-thousand mouths."

"Are they edible?" Ves casually asked.

Gavin violently coughed. "The pakklatons are sentient aliens! They are not chickens, and their eggs are not like the ones you eat for breakfast. Eating them is almost like cannibalism!"

"Whoa there. Geez. If I knew you would react so strongly to it, I wouldn't have asked this question. Never mind, then."

Ves wasn't really being serious anyway. There was no logical reason for him to eat pakklatons when ordinary poultry could also do the job.

The other Larkinsons might not agree, though. He was not blind to the fact that the Swordmaidens and many other clansmen did not view eating sentient alien flesh as taboo.

"Put the aliens aside for now." Ves dismissively waved his hand. "I'm not sure the Blinding Banshee is large enough to hold them all and I'm sure we need to make a lot of special accommodations to hold them for more than a week. We also need to figure out what to do with them after this. We can't just give them back their freedom nor execute them out of hand."

Ketis had made the issue of dealing with the survivors a lot more complicated than normal. He already foresaw plenty of future headaches.

His talk with Gavin ended shortly afterwards. The situation was still changing and the Golden Skull Alliance still needed to tally all of the loot. Everyone would have a much better idea on what to do with their spoils once they knew exactly what they got out of this battle.

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