The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4085

Chapter 4085 A New Business Arrangement

"Here."

"Pardon?" Gloriana looked up from her design terminal.

"You wanted to incorporate TESMAS into the C-Man, right?" Ves spoke and tapped the data pad that he had placed onto her desk. "Here you go. Our clan has just concluded a new partnership and business deal with Melmen Advanced Systems. It took a few days to hash out our differences, but there are enough reasons for Professor Neihy Almar to concede to some of our demands and sign a mutually-beneficial agreement."

His wife grew puzzled. She picked up the secure data pad and skimmed through the lengthy contract.

She quickly read through the most important terms and became increasingly more impressed and astounded by the extent of the new agreement!

Gloriana never expected Ves to cooperate so deeply and extensively with Professor Almar and her development company!

A few minutes passed by as she took in as much as she could from the contract. She eventually placed it on her desk and directed a questioning look at her husband.

"Explain."

"What do I need to explain? I think it is quite clear what has happened if you think about what we have put into the contract."

"I'm not that stupid, Ves. I just want to hear the full story."

He shrugged and sat down next to his wife. "It's quite simple. When you initially made contact with Professor Almar, the relationship between the two of you was quite shallow. The developer treated you like a client while you treated Almar as a vendor."

"That's true." Gloriana said. "I see nothing wrong with this approach."

"Something went wrong from the moment Professor Almar demanded 5 kilograms of phasewater as payment for her services! You can outfit an entire fleet with superdrives with this amount! The value of 5 kilograms of phasewater absolutely exceeds the value of getting a single development company to provide a first-generation smart armor system that requires us sacrifice another 5 kilograms of phasewater!"

"So you decided to act like a cheapskate and tried to bargain down this service fee?"

Ves slapped his palm against the desk. "I tried to get my money's worth, that is what I have done! I took a more sensible course of action and brought up this matter to Minister Shederin Purnesse. Together, we analyzed the situation and researched the provider. We came up with several new ideas that we thought were worth pursuing. Once we came up with a negotiating strategy, we opened up a dialogue with Melmen Advanced Systems."

"What did you try to achieve through this dialogue?"

"We tried to come up with a more reasonable bargain." Ves told her. "The negotiations that Minister Shederin and I conducted with Professor Almar and her R&D company enabled us to find out what we wanted and what we had to offer to each other. Our goal throughout these talks was to seek out ways to lower our concessions and obtain more value out of a potential deal. Did you know what we found out during our mutual exploration sessions?"

Gloriana looked curious.

He grinned. "We found out that our clan can offer more than phasewater to Melmen Advanced Systems. Do you remember the Phase King? I retrieved his damaged spirituality a while ago and only recently turned him into a design spirit. While I am not completely sure what he can do in this new form, let me say that he has an insane affinity with phasewater. He is over a million years old and he has spent much of that time learning how to make better use of this substance. The insights he possesses along with the techniques he has developed may be of great value even if much of his applications require access to fish-whale organs."

"Is that why this contract contains terms related to conducting shared research on phasewater and its applications?"

"Yes. Did you think it was a joke? It's not. Alongside the Phase King, our clan managed to plunder a lot of phasewater and fish-whale organs from Purgatory. These are extremely valuable alien assets but the problem is that we don't know what to do with them. Our exobiologists are completely stumped because none of our researchers possess a deep understanding of phasewater."

"Don't you have the Phase King for that?"

"The Phase King isn't a human researcher." Ves replied. "We can ask him to explain how phasewater works and how to make use of the valuable exotic, but that doesn't help us develop any solid and reliable applications that we can use alongside other human tech. For better or worse, we need the services of highly knowledgeable and competent researchers and developers who systematically understand phasewater. Professor Almar and her R&D teams are exactly who need to convert our spoils from the Purgatory Campaign into powerful and useful applications for the Larkinson Army."

"So by using the Phase King and the fish-whale organs as bargaining chips, you managed to convince Professor Almar to get the Larkinson Clan involved in her high-level research projects?"

"Yup."

His wife fell speechless for a moment.

This was a brilliant arrangement! Both sides got what they needed from each other. The Larkinsons not only became involved in advanced research related to phasewater, but also gained priority access to any of the products that Melmen Advanced Systems managed to develop.

On the other hand, Professor Almar obtained access to a lot of unique and interesting phasewater-related assets. Whether it was the Phase King, the fish-whale organs or the data that the Larkinson Clan managed to retrieve from the ancient phase whale pocket space, all of this provided the senior professor with a competitive advantage over her rivals that was hard to beat!

"If you think about the value of what we can offer to Professor Almar, we should gain far more than what I've already mentioned." Ves stated. "This is why we demanded equity from her. If she wants access to our unique fish-whale loot, then she needs to give us a share of the profits that she can generate with our assistance. After all, our clan can easily offer a similar deal to another R&D company that is working with phasewater."

"Is this why Melmen Advanced Systems has obtained exclusive access to our fish-whale assets?"

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