The discussions with the ladies took another few hours, but the decisions made at this time would ensure the stability of the empire and its direction for the immediate future.
During this time, Andrew also asked Vulcan to make a voting program and send it to every ship and station in the territory.
The rules were simple, anyone could candidate for the position on the council, no matter their species, background, or station.
The candidate had one day to register and gain support of the voters, after that it would be all decided through the vote and the ten people with the largest numbers would get the seats at the council.
The same system worked for the Admiralty council; the difference was that only the navy personnel could register or vote.
And no matter what rank the elected representative had at the moment, if they won the elections, they would receive a provisional rank of a Vice Admiral for the duration of their service on the council.
However, Andrew made it clear that serving on any council was not only connected to the prestige and power, but also to responsibility and accountability for the elected members as well as the permanent ones, and no one was free from facing the consequences of their actions.
At the same time, the merchant modules were being produced and put together, forming a mini substation that was immediately docked to the shipyard.
It was not big, consisting of six modules, one of which was an advanced communications module, followed by a bedroom module, storage module, office module, Advanced solar power module, and cargo transfer module, which was not much different from a standard docking module.
Once it was all ready, Tanera entered her credentials into the console on the desk of her office module, and the whole installation powered up.
-Can we trade now?
Jalina, who was accompanying the elf, asked?
-Not yet, the application has not been accepted.
The merchant said, turning the screen towards her.
It displayed only one line of text.
" Application processing in progress".
This was not surprising since there were always thousands of applications to process at the guild.
Some from the battle-verse, but most from the new universes.
The elf could not disclose this information for now, but besides this one, there were nine more universes in different stages of development that would join the battle verse within the next two or three years, if they survived that is.
-It might take a few hours or even days before the application is processed.
The merchant explained,
Then, as if on demand, there was a ping from the console, and all the screens came to life, displaying a lot of trade information all at once.
Tanera took a look, and her screen displayed:
"Application accepted, access to the market granted."
The elf was shocked, as it wasn't even six hours since her brother sent the application.
She started checking her messages and found one appointing her as a resident merchant in the Lantian Star empire and wishing her good luck and many successful transactions.
Then a few more asked about her opinions on the empire's market and what kind of merchandise they wished to buy and sell.
For now, she simply replied, "investigation in progress", to buy herself some time as she had no idea what they could sell other than standard resources and maybe some weapons technology.
-Well, now we can trade.
She said, turning to Jalina with a smile.
-However, first, I need to know what you want to sell or buy
-I'm more interested in what we can buy.
Andrew came into the office at that moment.
-I'm afraid that you can't buy much with the budget at your disposal at the moment.
The merchant said, showing him his credit balance, which was below a million credits at the moment.
-That can be easily fixed. How much would we get for Helium 3?
The human asked.
-You want to sell fuel?
Tanera looked at him with surprise on her face.
-We have more than enough for our needs, and we are gathering more and more every day.
Andrew explained.
He omitted that there were more than three thousand collectors dispersed throughout the territory, collecting helium 3 from every star, and there were more being built all the time.
-How much do you want to sell?
-Let's say ten tons for starters.
-What?
Tanera stood from her chair, looking at him in disbelief.
-If it's too little, then how does a hundred tons sound?
Andrew asked, misreading her reaction.
-Stop that, ten tons is an enormous amount already.
She finally found her voice.
This was the first time she had heard of anyone willing to sell ten tons of helium 3 at once, not to mention that he even offered to sell ten times more if that was not enough.
-Do you remember the containers of helium 3 you found in the pirate ships?
She asked.
Andrew nodded.
-They were in these small containers, because this is how this resource is usually sold.
She explained.
-Take a look at this.
She said, displaying data on the terminal and turning it to him.
When the human took a look, he found that these were offers to buy helium 3, but the amounts were small.
The biggest offer was to buy a hundred liters, and they were offering two hundred silver credits for each container, meaning they would pay a thousand silver credits for the five containers they wanted to buy.
-Is this some kind of a joke?
Andrew asked, not believing what was right in front of him.
-No joke, this is simply the lowest level of the market; you don't have enough credibility to access the higher levels, and even there, selling ten tons of helium 3 would bring a lot of attention.
Tanera explained.
-So, how do I build my credibility?
Andrew asked curiously.
-I was supposed to explain this to you this evening, once I've set everything up, but since you're here, let's do it now.
-On the market, your credibility is everything; it's not that easy to build it up, but it's very easy to lose it.
Every time you trade on the market, you gain points, depending on the value of the items you sell or buy, the amount, and a few other factors.
These points are your credibility; the more of them you have, the more credible you are, and with time, you get access to higher levels, where you can buy or sell more merchandise and at higher levels as well.
The elf explained patiently.
-However, all it takes is one slip-up, and you can lose most, if not all, of your points and need to start from scratch again.
For instance, if you accept this offer and sell five containers of helium 3 to this buyer, you will gain ten credibility points for this transaction, but if tried and scam him, not only would you get no points, but there would be a warning issued about you that stays there for a month, and it's the only warning you would get, another scam and you would be permanently removed from the market, without a possibility of ever trading there again.
-I get it now, so how many points do I need to get access to the higher levels of the market?
The human asked.
-Minimum of 5000 points to get to the next level, and to get even higher, you will need a minimum of 100000 points.
The elf explained, shocking him.
-In addition to that, there are more credit values than just the standard and silver credits.
There are also gold credits, platinum credits, and crystal credits and star credits, each at a value of one million to one.
Tanera decided to tell him everything at once, to save time.
-You're telling me that the silver credits are just loose change on the higher levels?
Andrew asked, trying to process it all.
-More or less, however, there are not many who have star credits at their disposal, since one of these is enough to buy a small galaxy.
She dropped another bomb.
-Alright, I get it, so now tell me, what is the fastest way to earn these points?
And while you're at it, you can accept the transaction for the fuel. I'll have it ready for transport shortly.
She immediately accepted the offer and was notified that a merchant ship would arrive in three hours to pick up the merchandise.
-It's done, we have three hours to prepare the fuel for transport.
As for the points, the most awarded transactions are sadly the ones involving slavery, but even then, you will at most get two or three points more on every trade compared to trading for anything else, so I don't think it's worth it.
She said with a visible distaste for slavery.
-That might be true, but I still need a lot more personnel, and with any luck, we may be able to find some talents through this, and just to be clear, they won't remain a slave for long if I buy them.
Andrew said, after a moment, he took to think about this.
-For now, let's see what else is there to sell.
He added, seeing that Tanera was not convinced about his last statement.
When the merchant ship arrived to pick up the fuel, it also picked up a few more things that Andrew decided to sell.
Among these things were five boxes of MREs, which shocked Andrew when they found the request, since he never expected to meet a human on the market, or at least not that soon.
They also sold some medicine, meant for a Zatulian, the same species as Runir, and the last thing they sold was a hundred battle-droids, of the older type.
Andrew was not using them anymore, so after wiping their memory clean and resetting them to the default settings, he sold them without any problem.
These transactions brought him 1360 silver credits and 17 credibility points, which, according to Tanera, was a great haul for his first time.
The human wanted to spend more time browsing through the market, but he had other things to do and had already taken way too long with this.
Before he left, he instructed the merchant to look for suitable transactions regarding the fuel and some other things he could easily produce or deliver.
At the same Time, Jalina, who was still present, sent her, their full inventory of the materials from Earth that they had for sale.