Deep within the gleaming, sterile corridors of the Interstellar Peace Corporation's Strategic Investnt Departnt, a sharp, customized ringtone shattered the quiet of an executive office.
Topaz paused, her pen hovering over a stack of risk assessnt reports. She glanced at the caller ID on her communicator, her crimson eyes narrowing at the screen.
Unknown Number.
A faint crease ford between her brows. Topaz maintained two distinct lines of communication. One was her heavily encrypted work number, plastered across business cards and handed out to planetary governors, business partners, and colleagues. The other was her private, personal line—a number reserved for a circle of friends so small it could barely be called a circle.
She tapped the screen, bringing the device to her ear. "Hello..."
She let the word hang in the air, deliberately leaving the silence open. She wasn't about to offer her na first. If this turned out to be so bold spamr or a telemarketer, her cybersecurity team was going to experience a very long, very unpleasant performance review. The sheer fact that an untracked signal had bypassed the IPC's firewall to reach her private device was already a massive security breach.
"Hello... is this Little Jelena?"
A low, relaxed male voice drifted through the speaker, accompanied by a soft, teasing chuckle.
Topaz's breath hitched. Her spine stiffened against the plush leather of her office chair. "Who are you?"
The na 'Little Jelena' wasn't a nickna tossed around the corporate water cooler. It was a ghost from a past she rarely revisited.
Her real na was Jelena. She hailed from a barren, resource-starved frontier world on the edge of the galaxy. She still rembered the taste of the ash-choked air, the way the toxic haze blotted out the sun, forcing every living soul to wear heavy respirators just to draw a breath. That was her reality until the Corporation descended, folding her dying ho into their managent system. They rolled out a complete environntal restoration plan, and within two short years, the dead world breathed again.
In exchange, the natives signed their lives away, becoming lifelong employees of the IPC.
A young Jelena had joined the Strategic Investnt Departnt with a burning resolve to bring that sa salvation to other dood worlds. She started at the bottom in Market Group 166. Through a mix of sheer talent, relentless grit, and a bit of luck, she caught the eye of her group leader, Francisco Debski. When Francisco retired, he passed her na up the ladder to Jade.
From there, her ascent was teoric. She took over the group's leadership, climbed to the rank of director, and eventually earned her seat among the elite Ten Stonehearts, shedding 'Jelena' to beco Topaz.
Along the way, she had crossed paths with a Warp Trotter. Using a handful of rare, glittering treasures, she had coaxed the little creature onto her ecological ship. After devouring the loot, Numby's latent abilities had skyrocketed. The Trotter wasn't just a pet; it was a living radar for wealth, capable of handling complex administrative tasks, and even held an official IPC staff badge.
The people alive today who knew her as 'Little Jelena' could be counted on a single hand. Yet, she had absolutely no mory of the voice currently echoing in her ear.
"No need to guess so hard. I know you, though you don't know yet," the man said, his amusent clear even through the digital distortion. "My na is Leon. Currently riding the rails as a Trailblazer."
Topaz's eyes widened a fraction, her corporate instincts instantly overriding her shock. "Leon? The Trailblazer?" She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the mahogany desk. "I know exactly who you are. You're hardly 'naless' these days."
Leon's digital footprint had exploded across the cosmic network recently. The gas he developed were pulling in astronomical traffic, generating the kind of attention that made IPC executives salivate. The Strategic Investnt Departnt had flagged his profile weeks ago, drafting multiple collaboration proposals.
As for a hostile takeover or a forced buyout? The Interstellar Peace Corporation were masters of reading the room. When dealing with soone wielding significant personal influence and backed by a powerful faction, the Corporation always preferred to wear its friendliest, most generous mask.
"I wonder what business Mr. Leon has, reaching out to directly?" Topaz asked, smoothing out her tone into a perfectly polite, professional cadence.
"I've got a rather lucrative investnt opportunity on my hands," Leon replied breezily. "I was hoping Director Topaz might be willing to help evaluate it."
"An investnt?" She tapped a manicured nail against her desk. "Please, go on."
"Jarilo-VI. Have you heard of this planet?"
"Jarilo-VI..." Topaz repeated the na, her mind drawing a blank. "Please hold for a mont while I pull up the archives."
Her fingers danced across her holographic keyboard. The IPC's database was a repository of nearly every speck of dust in the cosmos. Within seconds, a dense file materialized on her screen. Her eyes scanned the glowing text, taking in the grim details.
It was a dead world. Out of contact for over seven centuries. More, it sat on the Corporation's ledgers as an ancient, festering bad debt.
The financial black hole originated from a massive loan Jarilo-VI had taken out during the early days of the IPC's 'Preservation' developnt initiative. The planet had been on a steady upward trajectory until a Stellaron triggered a cataclysmic event known as the Eternal Freeze. The global civilization was wiped off the map, leaving behind a single, shivering bastion of humanity: the city of Belobog.
For seven hundred years, the compound interest on that initial loan had snowballed in the dark. The final number glowing on Topaz's screen was genuinely astronomical. Naturally, the planet's credit rating had flatlined to the absolute lowest tier. All associated assets were frozen, and a strict embargo prevented any IPC subsidiary from conducting trade with the dead world.
"Mr. Leon, I am looking at the debt records for Jarilo-VI right now." Topaz let out a slow, asured breath. "To be perfectly frank, this is the textbook definition of a bad debt. If this is the 'lucrative investnt' you were teasing, I'm afraid you've severely disappointed ."
"Do you really think so?" Leon's voice dripped with dry amusent.
'If she actually believed that,'Leon thought to himself, lounging comfortably aboard the Astral Express,'she wouldn't have personally led the Jarilo-VI debt collection in the original tiline... even taking a heavy demotion just to give them a fighting chance.'
"Of course," Topaz replied, her voice smooth and unyielding. "This is an investnt that might not even cover the cost of Numby's premium pig feed. Even with the Astral Express acting as a guarantor, I have to weigh the margins carefully."
In truth, staring at the bleak history of Jarilo-VI, a phantom ache tugged at her chest. It mirrored the tragic history of her own ho world too closely. She wasn't entirely unmoved. But business was business. Since Leon had brought this to her doorstep, she had an obligation to negotiate favorable terms for her team. She wasn't about to shoulder a galaxy-class financial risk out of pure charity.
"Is that so?" Leon's laughter echoed through the receiver, rich and entirely too knowing. "I'm just worried a certain soone is talking tough right now, while secretly preparing to tank a massive demotion just to save a dying planet. Isn't that right, my little tsundere Jelena?"
A furious flush of heat rushed straight to the tips of Topaz's ears. Her perfectly crafted corporate mask shattered. Her grip on the phone tightened until her knuckles turned white.
Just who the hell was this guy?! Why was he speaking to her like he had known her for decades? He had effortlessly pinpointed the exact reckless, bleeding-heart contingency plan she had just started formulating in the back of her mind.
And he had the absolute nerve to call her 'tsundere Little Jelena'.
Mortifying. It was utterly mortifying. She wanted the floor of her office to open up and swallow her whole.
Listening to the sudden, slightly ragged shift in her breathing over the line, Leon grinned. He knew Topaz was destined to visit Jarilo-VI to collect that ancient debt eventually. He figured he might as well speed up the tiline and bring her into the fold early.
If she hurried, she might arrive just in ti to witness the Amber Lord casting Its divine gaze upon Stelle and Caelus. If an IPC executive managed to capture Qlipoth's direct blessing on cara and send it back to headquarters, the board of directors would be kissing her boots. Nobody would ever dare utter the word 'demotion' around her again.
"Relax, you aren't going to take a loss on this one," Leon said, his tone shifting from teasing to absolute confidence. "Jarilo-VI and the Xianzhou Alliance are allies."
"Allies?" Topaz scoffed, her sharp business acun returning in a flash. "If that were true, Jarilo-VI wouldn't have been sitting in the dark for seven centuries."
It was a glaring logical hole. If this frozen rock truly held an alliance with the mighty Xianzhou, the fleet's Cloud Knights would have descended the mont the Antimatter Legion invaded. They would never have allowed an allied world to rot in the ice for hundreds of years.
Still, the gears in her head turned rapidly. The very fact that Leon was making this call ant the apocalyptic crisis on Jarilo-VI had already been handled.
"You're right to be skeptical," Leon conceded smoothly. "But hundreds of years ago, a man nad Igor and General Jing Yuan forged a deep, personal friendship. The issue was timing. When Jarilo-VI fell, the Xianzhou was locked in a brutal, all-consuming war against the Denizens of Abundance. They simply couldn't spare the forces to honor their promise of support."
"Igor?" Topaz's eyes darted across her screen, pulling up historical data. "The legendary boxer?" She had definitely seen that na in the archives. "So Jarilo-VI is his ho world."
The tension in her shoulders finally began to lt away. Viewed through this new lens, the astronomical debt wasn't a toxic asset at all. If handling this account could bridge a deeper, formalized cooperation between the IPC, the Astral Express, and the Xianzhou Alliance, it would transform into a golden goose. It was the kind of high-yield political and financial use that would make the other Stonehearts feral with envy. If word leaked, half the departnt would be scrambling to steal the project from her.
"If the Xianzhou Alliance is stepping up as a guarantor, why reach out to privately?" Topaz pressed, her tone sharp and calculating. She knew the ga well. The mont the Xianzhou's na was officially dropped, the IPC board would roll out the red carpet and bend over backward to accommodate them.
"Because it's always best to leave professional matters to the professionals," Leon laughed, the sound warm and easy. "Planetary reconstruction, thawing out a frozen biosphere, integrating a lost civilization back into the cosmic trade network... when it cos to massive, headache-inducing projects like that, we ultimately have to rely on the expertise of the IPC's finest infrastructure specialists. Or, as I like to call you guys, the galaxy's premier civil engineering bros."
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