The Success of our return did not mean we could stick around. We needed to make preparations to leave and turn in our quests. It was a flurry of activity, and we only had thirty-two hours to get everything done. The headquarters would continue to have issues, but we could not look over them because we needed more credits. The funding would only last so long, and the first ships would be coming in a couple of weeks. It was about to blast off altogether, so I turned in the bounties at the office. However, to my surprise, I did not rank up.
My rewards were substantial for me because everyone was under my employ, but the fact that I had not done it solo made the credit diminish and sent it equally to the others, even if they were fresh.
—
Bounty: Jackson Jackson
Race: Human
Crimes: Criminal Conspiracy. Theft, dealing in dangerous goods.
Federation Bounty: 10000 Federation Credits
Wanted Dead or Alive
Note: He is known to have at least three unknown associates working with him.
——
—---
Bounty: Kar' in Tek
Race: Incubus
Crimes: Rape, Theft, Assualt, Criminal Conspiracy
Federation Bounty: 5500 Federation Credits
Note: Unknown reason for settling on Burvine, known to have at least two female associates doing anything he wishes.
——
——
Bounty: Hil'ry Clickton
Race: Elf
Crimes: Criminal Conspiracy
Federation Bounty: 12000 Federation Credits
Note: Known to have at least five associates assisting in the sale of minerals on the ground.
————
————
Bounty: Geevil Ballock
Race: Greenback Hobo Goblin
Crimes: Fraud, theft, bank fraud, bank robbery, Murder, Assault
Federation Bounty: 13050 Federation Credits
Note: A career criminal escaped jail in a massive jailbreak on Burvine when a section of the city was hit with a freak accident. Only twenty escaped, and it was from the lowest security section. Be warned; he has experience in combat.
——
I turned in the four main bounties, which were quite a nice amount of credits to start off the turning-in process. The bounty office asked about Needle, whom I brought with me, but I got her a deluxe collar and told them I was keeping her. They were not exactly happy about that, but there was nothing they could do about it since it was my bounty that I captured. With the bounties bringing in 40550 Federation credits, it was a nice start, and the raw materials were worth their weight in credits for us as well.
The first we took was Pink Rymine, which is highly volatile after being properly processed. It is also an uncommon raw material, a great contact explosive that explodes with serious force.
The second raw material was called Black Burping, which was not named after the bodily function but the two people who found the material originally. It was both their last names, which I thought was stupid, but it was what the game said about where the name came from. Either way, the material was a propellant that could be used in ammunition to send a bullet out quickly without smoke. It was not a common raw material, but it was not exactly uncommon. It also sold well because of how much was needed for weapon processing.
We sold 155 tons of Pink Rymine for 1555 credits per tonne, which was slightly over the average market price due to someone purchasing it in bulk. We also sold 100 tonnes of the raw material, as we did not have the space for all of it, bringing in another 155500 Federation credits.
With 428 tonnes of Black Burping, we needed to sell a large part of it, so we actually sold it all. We wanted the Processed Black Burping, so we found someone willing to trade and purchase it all. In return, we got 100 tonnes of processed Black Burping for a nice deal of 163 tonnes of Black Burping, and they purchased the rest for 1326 credits per tonne. This brought the total amount we made from selling the Black burping to 351390 Federation Credits, which was amazing.
Then we had the 156 liters of a flammable gas called B'ky's Gas, named after the person who discovered the material in the first place. This gas was not very useful to us. It was used in industrial settings as a processing agent and could be used in flame throwers as it burned hot with just a spark, while the gas did not allow backward momentum. It was an odd property which made it sought after for certain processes, but if you thought of the flow of gas like a river, if the river was stagnant, then flames could flow up the river, but as soon as there is a current, any at all, it would not follow up the river.
This made it ideal for anything that needed an open flame constantly, with a gas flow that was out in the open or had a real risk of flames going up the tubes. Other gases could do the same, but they did not match B'ky's Gas's safety, which increased its price a little. Better yet, THE STAKE WAS UNCLAIMED~! The Bounties found their own stake and did not register it. Now, our company had its first stake on Burvine to mine ourselves if we wished, with the equipment to do so already in our hands.
Which meant we sold every single liter of the gas. This was not as much as we had hoped, but it sold for 148 federation credits a liter, which was ten credits over the average market price again. In the end, we received another 22776 federation credits from our bank account. Honestly, it is an astonishing find and money-making endeavor. I felt like we had hit the jackpot as the materials were different from the bounties. Those were incentives the planet had for those capturing the criminals, and not part of the bounties. So I got to keep that money while the credits for the bounties themselves were split in half and sent back because of the contract. This time, I was not even going to hold onto them, so I would not see money that was not mine.
So I made 20275 federation Credits on the bounties, 155500 federation credits on the Pink Rymine, 351390 Federation Credits on the Black Burping, and 22776 Federation credits on the B'ky's Gas. In total, 549941 federation credits. For the entire trip, without counting the guns and ammunition that we collected and the mining devices,
IT WAS A FUCKING JACKPOT, and Needle said that they were just about to start the operation of bringing everything up to sell. They had hired her for the job, and she was just about to take off when they stopped her, which she cursed herself for not coming prepared, like she should have done. The luck we got for hitting this place perfectly paid off DIVIDENDs.
The funny thing was that we would also make more credit than the people we took it from because we did not have to sell it on the black market, which meant no fencing or people taking a cut for middlemen to 'wash' the materials.
All of which, when I went to look at my federation credit account, it looked really, really pretty.
—--
Federation Credits 750491
—---
I smiled and remembered that I had purchased Enyo's minigun and gear before we hit the ground. So I was now almost a millionaire in my own right, but I knew that we were going to be spending money soon. Spending and spending and spending without making as much back. Unless I continued to make more bounty hunting.
We left the guns we collected with the headquarters for training and Enyo to use for making new Bounty hunters. I was taking Meemee with me off the planet as I wanted her for my crew full-time. She was a rockstar, and I was going to take Needle's advice. I could not just push forward blindly. I needed to come up with solutions for things like auto-turrets that can move, aim, and shoot before I could even react. That would kill me before I even knew what I was looking at. All of this left one last thing that I had to deal with before we could leave the damn planet.
The hostages.
Honestly, all of them were women, but one. The young man had been dressed up as a woman and was being used by the crew for those with certain proclivities. He was also the only human among them, and I could not help but feel sorry for him.
The two women that we first freed and were giving head to the criminals had been captured about a month ago and were in desperate need of health care as well. I talked to them to see if they would be useful or not, but they had been taken by the incubus and brought down to the planet after being kidnapped. They were just young women, and it was really sad to see. It was not like we had really treated them nicely either when we tied them up and abandoned them for hours till we came back and brought them up on the first shuttle ride while we figured things out. The Last three were the boy and two women who had been captured at separate times. One was what I could only call a failed bounty hunter who was part of a team of six that attempted to take a camp miles away. Since then, she had been traded among the bandits and was clearly traumatized by it. Then the other woman was a miner who got captured when they took a mining camp, and the same things as the other woman who were traded around the bandit camps. She did not look as broken, though, but she had a fire in her that looked like it could melt steel when I chatted with her. She went to the hospital for treatment, but I felt she would recover from the months of abuse.
The last hostage was the most surprising and interesting, which meant a lot to our company.
"Sorry for what happened to you. I am SleepyWonder, and I was hoping to chat," I told the woman as I walked into the room. I took a better look at the woman since I did not know when we were on the planet. The respirator was gone, and I could look at the light blue woman with her hair all over, making her look adorably fuzzy. She had circular ears with lots of fuzzy hair around them and along her four arms, with the bottom two sticking out horizontally from her sides. The tentacles looked to be fuzzy like everything else and were a couple of inches long, but there were dozens of them in total. She looked very alien, and her eyes were deep, deep teal with black vertical pupils with a purple that replaced the whites of her eyes, I knew. She looked at me and sighed.
"Thank you for saving me," she replied, but she sounded sore about it. "I am Har'lok De'ps'a, and I am a Depth dread. Please call me Har, though, as that is the name I got by."
A Depth Dread? It sounds like a deep-sea species, but I was going to skip past it at this point. "Sorry about tying you up, Har," I replied, "Combat zone with unknown variables makes us assholes by necessity. I am not going to leave someone I don't know behind me, even unarmed," I bluntly started, and she nodded.
"I appreciate that," Har said, her teeth sharp as she smiled—like shark teeth. She leaned back in the chair. "It was a stressful situation, and I did not deal with it well," she admitted. Honestly, still not really. But you wanted to talk to me?" She finished.
"Yes, I am starting up a bounty commission, and I thought I would ask you why you were down there and see if it might assist me in any way in the future. I am not going to bullshit either, I am looking for a profit, and a person who got caught by bandits in such a remote area sounds like there might be a reason they were there in the first place." I told her bluntly, and she looked at me in shock.
"W- Wow, that was blunt, and you are right. I was there for a reason," Har looked away, and I noticed that she was not nearly in as dire straits as the other hostages, and she tapped her chair, "I am a survivor; I look for stakes, and I came there looking to see if there were any new raw material stakes I could find in the area, not where you found me but a little down the beach to the south of the land bridge. There are not any stakes in the area, and I got myself a scanner of sorts that is very new and expensive and may still be on the planet if you have not found it. But if it can detect a hundred meters or even fifty meters deeper, it can find many resources that no others have found yet. But I got caught by an overhead Heavy Air lorry and captured, which they were just 'softening me up' when you arrived."
"Oh? Interesting. So, do you want to work with me?" I asked, "Or should I say my company?" I asked bluntly, "We will be running training bounties down on Burvine, and you can take that time to have them escort you through some areas. It will allow them to train on unique missions, and you get to go to areas you might not think you would get to check." I told her, and her eyes narrowed.
"So, what do you get in return?"
"Eighty percent of the stake profits," I told her bluntly, and Har winced.
"Too much."
"Then ninety percent," I replied bluntly, and she looked at me in shock.
"That is not how you negotiate!" She exclaimed. I stared at her before chuckling.
"And you are not negotiating. You made no fucking counteroffer and only complained. So ninety-five percent," I told her, and Har got up.
"You're insulting me~!" She exclaimed, "Make me a proper offer~!"
"Nope, tell me what you want, and we can work from there," I finished. Har glared at me as she stood towering before me.
"Fifty percent and a house," Har snapped.
"Ninety percent and a house to sleep in and an office to work from so that we can properly mine these stakes in the future," I replied.
"That is too much; I am risking my life here!" She yelled.
"So are we," I said, "Now, I am going to tell you something: I do not care too much about getting into mining on this bandit-infested planet. It will cost me a lot of manpower, which I really don't have much of. It will cost me resources and capital I don't have. I am making this offer because I am slightly interested in getting the raw materials and making a manufacturing base here with a vertical supply line without middlemen to eat all the profits. But we can make a profit without this risky endeavor. Do you understand what I am saying?" I finished.
"That you are not married to the idea of hiring me, and this is a passing interest," Har said, sounding really annoyed.
"Exactly; I will also warn you," I continued, "You do not know who you are talking to and what we might do. So show some fucking respect to the person who saved your life and negotiate with me in good faith or reject me. Stop the bullshit," I finished, and I leaned back in my chair in the remarkably bare area.
"I can't promise results," Har said.
"Did I say I expect results?" I bluntly said, "You will have one year to find something to justify why we will employ you, but we will give you a place to sleep, food, water, and a small salary for entertainment. That is coupled with eighty-five percent for our company, based on whatever you find while with our company. If you find no stakes in that time, we will terminate your contract, and you will be free." I sighed and looked at her, "What do you say?" I asked.
"I- Um," She could tell I was no longer beating around the bush. "Sixty-five for you-" I got up and started to head away, cutting her off ."EIGHTY ~! I will do it for twenty percent of those terms, but I want to add that you have to buy me a new sensor or find my old one."
"Deal, and if I learn that you are faking readings till the contract ends," I smiled as I held her hand. She shivered and nodded.
"I will do my very best!"
--------------------
Hey Everyone,
So, a short announcement, first of all, next month I will be gone for half the month on a much-needed vacation. I will be posting a chapter at the start of the month, then I will be off for much of it. This is something to help me avoid burning out as I work a full-time job and write.
So for September, I will post one chapter when I go and one when I come back, and I will start going back to my one a week for most of my stories in October. Just wanted to give you all a heads up, so you know why I am not posting in September.
If you want to check out the Discord, here is the link.
https://discord.gg/7gckg3VxyY
Also, I have two new stories on Amazon.
I Sissfied my step Bro book 3
The Demon Queens Handler
You can also support me at my Patreon if you want to read ahead for as little as 1.50$ CND
www.Patreon.com/madjic