《Aegis》Chapter 3: Financing and Profit Margins

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You stride along easily in the low gravity, heading for your suite of rooms and the communications relay that you have set up there. With a semi-definite timeframe on when your beloved Aegis will be ready to sail, it is time to go ahead and dig your Seneschal Zheeves out of the trading houses and get him started on moving aboard. The Enginseer is going to want to requisition more parts and whatnot, and the other officers and crew are going to need to be paid in a timely fashion, so getting your finances up and aboard will be quite handy.

Not to mention Zheeves will probably start to pester the Enginseer's ears off about converting one of the hold into a strongroom. The Aegis has twenty five of them all down her keel, each capable of holding about one ton of whatever, so losing one isn't too much of a hassle, so long as the conversion doesn't put you too much behind schedule.

Your musings wind down as you sit down at your private communications relay, sync up your combead, and punch in Zheeves' personal combination. The familiar dialing sequence plays before you hear Zheeves' combead ringing in its endless bleep-bloop-bleep-bloop tone.

"Zheeves of House Von Sebastion here. What’s your business today?"

"Zheeves, it's Tristan Von Sebastion. Paperwork is all filled and I've even got an Enginseer signed up. The Aegis is mine, and you can start moving aboard."

"Wonderful sir! I'll start doing so in the morning. Do we have a definite schedule for launch?"

"Jace Echo, the Enginseer, estimates two to three months before we leave dock, plus a shakedown cruise and probably gunnery trials, if I can get the paperwork for those completed."

"That quick? I assume that you need to start filling the other officers berths, plus crew, food, water, munitions, stores, and so on and so forth? I'll see what I can do about those."

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"Just draw up a general list Zheeves, I'm going to see if I can locate and recruit a Bosun to handle the crew side of things for me. After that is going to be negotiating with the Navigator's Guild for the services of a Navigator, and I'd like your input on that. Once we've that done, we can start thinking about a basic freight contract while I work on filling our other officers and requirements."

"So I'm to be your Executive Officer and Treasurer then sir? Quite a promotion from being a simple Seneschal."

"Remember the old saw about the faithful steward? Zheeves, you've earned it. Before I sign off though, what's the general state of our finances, scale of one to one hundred? One being 'we're screwed', of course."

"With all that you've plowed into getting the Aegis refitted sir? Around a twenty. If you can fill a few contracts though, that will rise."

"Youch! Alright, Tristan clear." With that you close the connection. The only question in your mind is where in the warp you are going to find a proper Bosun who isn't already serving aboard a naval ship?

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