Chapter 760

Evenson arrived at the company to find the place in a state of organized chaos.

Or, more accurately, the chaos was being organized.

The Eredar Twins stood off to one side, watching the proceedings. In the middle of the room, the company’s chief scientist, Gnos, and his assistants were buried beneath mountains of documents. Gnos would occasionally pull out a page, study it with intense concentration, then toss it aside with an expression of mounting disgust.

These were the materials Evenson had unloaded after returning from his deal with the Collector. Naturally, he had brought everything straight to the company for Gnos and his team to analyze.

What else was he supposed to do with several cargo vehicles’ worth of alien technical documentation?

"You’re finally back?" Sacrolash said, shooting him an annoyed look. "Do you have any idea what kind of tedious, soul-crushing work you’ve left us with?"

Three enormous cargo loads of documents.

All of them were printed on paper.

None of them could be searched electronically, so every page had to be examined by hand. Worse, the documents seemed to have been collected directly from an interstellar recycling center. There was no organization, no classification, and certainly no discernible filing system. Everything had been piled together in a monumental mess.

Evenson scratched his head helplessly.

"There’s not much I could do about that. When two civilizations exchange knowledge, physical documentation is probably the safest option."

Advanced extraterrestrial civilizations certainly had portable storage devices and digital archives. The problem was compatibility.

Could Earth’s computer systems even read alien data?

Gamers had to worry about compatibility issues when running a game on different operating systems. Expecting an Earth computer to interface seamlessly with the data storage technology of an extraterrestrial civilization was a considerably bigger gamble.

For all he knew, their connectors weren’t even compatible. They might not have USB ports.

"Anyway, the language barrier isn’t causing any problems, is it?" Evenson asked the twins quietly.

Since the documents came from an alien civilization, the written language was obviously alien as well. He assumed deciphering it would be the team’s first major obstacle.

"No trouble at all," Alythess replied, tilting her head. "A simple Comprehend Languages spell takes care of it."

The Burning Legion frequently deployed infiltration teams before launching an invasion. Elite agents slipped into enemy territory, sabotaging defenses and undermining morale before the main force arrived.

Naturally, the Legion couldn’t afford to have its infiltrators spend years learning the local language before every deployment.

Invading another world was already complicated enough. Requiring every demon to master a new language every time the Legion expanded into another civilization would have been absurd.

A spell capable of instantly bridging the gap between unfamiliar languages was practically indispensable.

"Good. Then how’s the analysis going?" Evenson asked. "Found anything that’ll blow my mind yet?"

"We’ve found plenty that’ll make your stomach drop."

Gnos rose from the sea of paperwork, grabbed a thick stack of documents, and slapped them down in front of Evenson.

"Preliminary analysis of extravehicular activity procedures. Three-stage rocket construction and application."

He seized another handful of papers and thrust them toward Evenson’s face.

"What year did the Apollo program land a man on the Moon?"

"Uh... 1961," Evenson answered promptly.

He sounded confident, even if the answer wasn’t quite right.

"I KNOW THAT!" Gnos roared. "That’s the point! This is technology from nearly fifty years ago! And you call this advanced spaceflight technology? Did the Collector take you for the biggest fool in the galaxy?"

Evenson stared at him.

Then he snatched up a stack of documents and began flipping through them.

The words meant absolutely nothing to him.

The twins took pity on him and cast the translation spell.

Evenson tried reading the documents again.

He still couldn’t understand a thing.

The magic made the alien characters recognizable, but it couldn’t install a working knowledge of aerospace engineering into his head. He could read the words individually, yet their technical meaning remained beyond him.

Formal education hadn’t exactly been Evenson’s strong suit. A man whose studies had barely carried him through middle school before he became involved in secretive occult affairs wasn’t going to develop an intuitive grasp of advanced rocketry just because somebody enchanted a stack of papers.

Still, he understood the problem.

Some of the documents described technology that wasn’t particularly impressive by Earth’s standards. It wasn’t necessarily obsolete, but it was hardly cutting-edge, either.

Damn it.

He had to admit that part of the blame belonged to him. When negotiating with the Collector, he’d specifically requested relatively basic spaceflight technology. He hadn’t wanted anything too advanced.

But extravehicular activity and three-stage rockets?

That was practically the introductory Chapter of an aerospace textbook!

Not that his own technical knowledge would have helped him specify anything better.

"Well..." Evenson said awkwardly, noticing the strange smiles on the twins’ faces. "At least this proves aliens aren’t born knowing how to build advanced technology. Everyone starts somewhere. You have to take things one step at a time."

"How enlightening," Gnos replied, his face still set in a scowl. "Unless a civilization has been raised in some artificial paradise, whose technological development doesn’t progress step by step?"

"Cough."

Alythess cleared her throat softly.

Gnos’s expression transformed almost instantly.

"Of course, every great achievement begins with a solid foundation," he said warmly. The anger vanished from his face, replaced by the patient benevolence of a kindly grandfather. "And even the most experienced trader occasionally makes a poor bargain. Nobody can expect every transaction to be profitable."

Evenson glanced between them.

He had a sneaking suspicion he had just witnessed something important, but he wisely decided not to investigate.

"A poor bargain?" He dropped into a sitting position on the floor and began arranging the documents beside him. "My greatest talent is turning a loss into a profit."

Once he had cleared a small space, he looked up at the twins.

"Natalia is working as your secretary now, right? Have her contact her father, the arms dealer."

Evenson’s mouth curled into a smile.

"There should be plenty of buyers for this stuff in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. Tell him not to accept less than a hundred million."

The documents might not represent particularly advanced technology when measured against the capabilities of Earth’s civilization as a whole. But Earth wasn’t a single, unified civilization. It was divided among hundreds of countries with vastly different levels of technological development.

What was outdated to one nation could be a revolutionary breakthrough to another.

There was money to be made here.

Nevertheless, money wasn’t the main reason Evenson had struck a deal with the Collector. The real prize was access to advanced technology, and the possibility that these documents might contain little of actual value left him uneasy.

"These aren’t all like this, are they?" he asked.

"They shouldn’t be."

Gnos rubbed his bald head and looked toward the enormous piles that remained untouched.

"Even if your luck is spectacularly bad, there’s no way every document in this mountain is useless. I’ve already found some material related to satellite launches. I can’t honestly claim it’s far ahead of Earth’s current capabilities, but the technology should reduce the cost considerably."

"Lower costs are a major improvement in their own right."

Evenson nodded.

Considering that he’d secured the entire collection in exchange for a single wild imp, even one worthwhile discovery would make the transaction profitable.

"All right. Get back to work. And keep your assistants under control."

He raised his voice deliberately so that everyone buried in the paperwork could hear him.

"If anyone dares to complain, I’ll send them to meet Moira personally."

The workers froze.

For one brief moment, the entire room fell silent.

Then everyone bent over their documents and began working with renewed urgency.

Evenson watched them for a moment before stepping aside with the twins.

"There’s something else I wanted to ask you. The fellow I did business with seems to have an impressive network of contacts. He claims he can connect us with some very capable extraterrestrial mercenaries."

He lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"Should we hire a few groups and bring them into that upcoming war? We wouldn’t even have to worry about the cost. If they all die, there won’t be anyone left to pay."

Sacrolash frowned thoughtfully. Alythess considered the proposal for a moment.

Then the twins shook their heads almost in unison.

"Better not," Sacrolash said. "Our plan can’t afford any serious mistakes. Bringing a bunch of undisciplined mercenaries into the operation could throw everything into disarray."

"That’s true."

Evenson nodded.

He hadn’t been particularly enthusiastic about hiring them in the first place, so he was perfectly happy to drop the idea.

Mercenaries whose loyalties began and ended with money were hardly the most reliable people to entrust with a critical operation. They also had a rather inconvenient habit of wanting to stay alive long enough to spend their earnings.

And with the Burning Legion’s combat strength being what it was, there was no telling what would happen when ordinary hired guns found themselves facing a force like that.

If the mercenaries panicked and fled in the middle of the fighting, the resulting disruption could compromise the entire plan.

The potential rewards weren’t worth the risk.

"Still..." Sacrolash said, her expression turning thoughtful again. "Are you certain this contact of yours really has access to so many capable extraterrestrial mercenaries?"

"I can’t say for sure. He certainly sounded confident when he told me about it."

"Then the connection might still be useful," Alythess said with a smile.

Evenson looked at her in confusion.

"How? We just agreed not to hire them."

"Just because we don’t need mercenaries doesn’t mean nobody else does."

A strange glint appeared in Alythess’s eyes.

"He’s in a position to connect mercenaries with people who need their services. If we maintain that relationship, we might be able to find a good market for our products."

"Our products?"

Evenson stared at her.

The twins exchanged a look.

"Come with us," Sacrolash said.

They led him to an elevator and stepped inside.

"We haven’t been sitting around doing nothing all this time," Alythess explained as the elevator began to descend. "With plenty of experimental materials and sufficient funding, Moira, Gnos, and their teams have developed quite a few useful things."

"Moira and Gnos have developed them," Evenson pointed out. "That makes it sound as though you’ve been doing a lot of sitting around."

Sacrolash shrugged.

"We’re in charge of the operation. Leadership is work, you know."

She sighed dramatically.

"And working three hours a day is exhausting!"

Evenson decided it was probably best not to ask how the twins spent the rest of their time.

The elevator finally came to a stop.

The doors slid open.

Sacrolash and Alythess stepped to opposite sides of the entrance and extended their hands in a synchronized gesture of presentation.

"Welcome to Restaurant B."

At that very moment, somewhere else in the building, a section of wall rippled.

Its surface blurred, as though the solid material had momentarily lost its cohesion.

Then a pale, indistinct figure began to seep through it.

The figure was almost translucent, more like a ghostly apparition than a living person. As it moved, its outline seemed to split and trail behind it, leaving a series of flickering afterimages in its wake.

Whatever it was, it had just entered the building without using a door.

And it was moving.

...