Chapter 1049: How Valuable Is The Bug To You?

I had him wait and called up Vier to let her know about the terms that had been offered.

At first, I intended to just get her to talk to that guy through me as the mouthpiece but she wanted to negotiate directly with the guy so I connected the call and let her speak to him directly.

"I have heard that you are offering my Captain a lifetime premium membership to GenoTrend Corporation, is that right?"

The guy in the lab coat narrowed his eyes at her slightly, "Yes. I believe that is more than generous for what we are asking your team to do."

"I hardly think that is generous in any sense of the word. Your premium membership only allows your clients to access the prototype gene mods and place orders for custom made gene mods. You charge a hundred million Credits for a lifetime version of this membership but the issue is that we aren’t even customers of your company’s to begin with. We are Mercs who have little use for Vanity Gene mods and you are simply using that membership as a lure to get us to spend money with you. In other words, this is more of a benefit for your company than it is for us."

The guy in the lab coat pursed his lips, his gaze hardening slightly.

That was all I needed to see to know that Vier hit the nail right on the head. He really was just trying to get more customers instead of trying to reward us...

I mean... Sure, giving us a membership worth a hundred million Credits might be a big deal... Only if we were actively already purchasing from them and wanted even more from them to begin with... While I think Mara could definitely benefit from that, it’s overall not really a plus for us since we wouldn’t really use that anyway.

And... It’s not like we can’t afford a hundred million Credits at this point...

It’s quite scary to think that our net worth is currently in the billions right now... I’m honestly glad I’ve handed over everything related to money over to Vier so I don’t need to have my sense of value destroyed anymore than it already has...

I just need to focus on trying to earn more Credits and believing that we are still in the millions range for our net worth instead of the billions, otherwise I would start thinking things like ’a hundred million Credits for that lifetime membership? That sounds pretty cheap’.

Yeah... I want to go back to the time where I was thinking a few million Credits was an astronomical sum... I think I was a little less crazy back then.

The guy in the lab coat finally spoke again, "What are you suggesting then?"

"That’s simple. You have an escaped experiment currently somewhere in the nest who more than likely has already made the rest of the nest mutate. And at this point, it might not even be in the nest anymore so there’s no guarantee that there would be any success to this expedition of yours but you still want our protection in looking for it, yes? And in the event that we do come across it, you would want us to capture it for you."

The guy in the lab coat clucked his tongue before nodding, "As much as I hate to admit it, you are right."

"Then I expect some real, physical compensation for it. I want your Premium Distributor license. And I want it tied to our Mercenary Company, not just my Captain."

The guy in the lab coat furrowed his brows, "Absolutely not! You are not even affiliated with us! You know very well what the rules are in regards to our distribution of our Gene mods! They can only be handled by the people related to the upper management of GenoTrend!"

"Then find a way to make an exception. You guys wouldn’t even lose out much since we have our own market that we can peddle to, it won’t intersect with yours. You don’t even need to announce it publicly as long as we get access to your stocks."

"This bug is not important enough for us to promise such a thing. Denied!"

"Then I guess you can find someone else to guide you through the tunnels then. There is nothing else left to say here."

I honestly have no idea what Vier had just asked from them and I turned to look at Mara.

She then tapped her head and I realised she wanted to speak to me telepathically so I sucked in a breath and forced myself to relax, focusing on lowering the mental defenses I had in my mind and trusting Renata to deal with any Psionic energy that might leak out of me.

’GenoTrend has distributor licenses that they give out for Gene Splicers that are selling their mods. However, they retain exclusivity on some of their mods that people can only get through their own Gene Splice Clinics that they run personally instead of letting distributors sell them, so they always have a monopoly on the most popular mods that they make and the newest ones they create.’

’Don’t you make your own Gene mods too?’ I asked through our mental link.

’Yes, but most of them are based on an existing Gene mod. It’s pretty difficult to just make a new gene mod from scratch and also really expensive. Not to mention it’s also pretty unsafe. Like I told you before, we call it Gene Splicing partly because we splice different Gene mods together to create a new mod according to what the customer is looking for, which means we splice together already made gene mods together and edit them instead of creating them from scratch. Companies like GenoTrend are the ones that are doing the full creation of a new Gene mod. We just splice together different gene mods to get the results we want.’

’Right... So... Why does Vier want that license?’

’The thing is... In theory, that license is only meant for people related to the owners of that company to create their own Gene Splice Clinics to distribute their gene mods to other places around the galaxy. But in reality, they do still sell it to outsiders since they know they can’t exactly keep it completely exclusive as it would limit their marketing capabilities. They just make it such that it’s really exclusive and difficult to obtain, especially for people who aren’t a Vixlope. That way they can use that license to get benefits out of the people that license with them, like demanding a fifty percent cut of their profits or something.’

’That sounds... Really predatory?’

’It is designed to be that way. There’s a reason why they are the top in the Vanity Gene mods market. Vier is trying to get that from them without any leash attached so that we can get access to their premium stock that they usually keep out of reach from everyone else. She’s basically trying to go for their most valuable bargaining chip as her first move.’

’Do you think they will accept that?’

’I don’t know... But we lose nothing if they reject it and we gain everything if they accept. They can try to bargain but I don’t think Vier will budge on this.’

’Is that bug really that valuable to them?’

’I don’t know that either, but it looks like to them that it’s pretty valuable. Or at least they think it’s quite valuable. From my own knowledge of how gene mods work... And what we understand from these bugs... I think they might have found some genetic materials from the bugs that might allow them to evolve gene mods or something. Or maybe even add some kind of adaptability strain into the mods that might allow gene mods to work better together. Hmm... I really should also do my own experiments too. Do you think we can catch a live bug so I can do some research on them on the ship, Captain?’

I grimaced at the thought of there being a bug on the ship.

’I think I’ve seen enough movies to know what happens when you bring some alien creature on your ship to experiment on and then it ends up breaking out of containment and starts capturing the crew and laying eggs everywhere...’ I commented through my mind.

’Captain... You are wearing an alien creature as your suit right now... And you have her serving as maids on the ship... She’s probably more integrated into the ship than you think as well... I’m pretty sure if the bug escapes from containment, it’s only because she allowed it to, not because it managed to do so on its own.’

’Fair enough... Ask the other girls then. If they don’t mind, then only do the experiments in the Drow of Dawn, not in the Iridescence.’

’Of course, Captain.’

I turned my attention back to the guy in the lab coat who finally let out a deep sigh and muttered, "This is not my place to decide... Let me make some calls please."

Vier sniffed at him, "You might as well just connect me to your boss. That will save us some time."

"... Very well..."

Huh... So this bug is really that important to them?