"It probably would be best," she agreed. "Why don't I lay out the specifics and the situation the Startport is in now, so you have something to at least ask questions about? I took the liberty of preparing a presentation so that you have raw numbers to refer back to. Everything I'm about to say has been covered there."
Jessica stepped forward with folders for everyone.
"Yamaguchi Starport is approximately thirty-five billion tons of construction in the project was kicked off by the first Baron Yamaguchi in the year six twenty-two. Yes, almost 500 years ago. The same year as the princess's family founded their line with Arbellatra Alkhalikoi becoming Regent of the Imperium.
"As one might imagine, building such a megalithic structure was very cost intensive and even though the Yamaguchis were very wealthy and had an extremely healthy income stream, it was not something that could be built all at one time. If one were to purchase this starport today, they would pay almost 20 quadrillion credits. To use an exact figure, I estimate that the purchase price of this facility would come out to 19,145,626,246,854,000 credits if it were on the market at this very moment."
She paused for that to sink in. That is indeed a lot for money.
"Thankfully, the cost of constructing a facility like that is about fifty percent of the purchase price. As the Yamaguchis were a serious manufacturing organization, they had the infrastructure to begin the construction. Even so, that required a cash infusion every year for the last four hundred and eighty-three years of just under twenty trillion credits. This project could not have been completed if the early Yamaguchis had not been dedicated to its construction and invested a mind-boggling amount of money into seeing the project achieve success. They were visionaries and though some might question the wisdom of such a large construction program, I believe that this starport will show any doubters the error of their ways once it is in full operation."
Kira smiled. "I'm about to get into some dry figures, so forgive me if any of this puts any of you to sleep. If I don't lay the foundation, though, it will be impossible to build upon it. If you will refer to the documentation, you'll see the breakdown of the starport and how much of each section makes up what percentage of the tonnage."
Drives---------------------------------------------3,325,000,005------9.50%
Power Plant--------------------------------------1,064,791,935------3.04%
Fuel-----------------------------------------------9,483,479,194-----27.10%
Weapons---------------------------------------------10,000,000-------0.03%
Onboard Facilities--------------------------------------400,000-------0.00%
Medical Bays--------------------------------------------100,000--------0.00%
Residential Facilities---------------------------1,305,000,000--------3.73%
Commercial Facilities-----------------------------100,000,000--------0.29%
Docking Bays-------------------------------------4,680,000,000-------13.37%
Fuel Service Tanks---------------------------------------50,000--------0.00%
Shipyards-------------------------------------------265,223,000--------0.76%
Refinery---------------------------------------------336,538,462-------0.96%
Smelter-------------------------------------------2,670,480,770--------7.63%
Advanced Manufacturing Plants------------------769,098,456--------2.2%
Specialist Manufacturing Plants----------------1,281,830,750-------3.66%
Agricultural Plants----------------------------------100,961,540-------0.29%
Staterooms-----------------------------------------3,404,422,014------9.73%
Cargo------------------------------------------------6,202,722,972-----17.72%
"We also have 100,000 10,00-ton robotic boats that gather asteroids for refining but can also be used to scoop fuel or carry cargo. Some of these figures probably look confusing. I'll start off with the first item that I am quite confident will cause confusion. Perhaps you wonder why this facility is named Yamaguchi Starport. The reason is because the original designers and the Baron Yamaguchi at the time felt that it was preferable to have a mobile facility so that it could better take advantage of local conditions for mining and manufacturing. The line on that chart that refers to drives does not only refer to maneuver drives. This facility is jump capable. It can execute a jump three upon demand. We can also scoop our own fuel."
Ciencia held up a hand. "Hold up. You're telling me that this thirty-five-billion-ton facility is a jump-capable starship?"
Kira nodded. "It is. That's how the facility got here. It was not present in the Glisten system for the last five hundred years. It was constructed in an out-of-the-way system where no one paid any mind. It only came to anyone's attention when the starport jumped to Vincennes to begin the final buildout process. At that point, people lost their minds.
"When construction began, the Imperium had a maximum tech level of thirteen. The original designers concluded that it was almost certain that the technological base would improve by the time the starport was completed, so they began construction on the hull and portions of the starport that would not need to be upgraded. The very last things that needed to be done were installing the drives and moving the starport to the highest tech level world to get the best refining, smelting, and manufacturing equipment before going into operation. The money for that had mostly been set aside but the costs had inflated over the years and loans had to be taken out. Unfortunately, that's where the most recent Baron Yamaguchi ran into trouble. He borrowed money from people that he shouldn't have and got himself into a financial bind because they wanted the starport for themselves."
She shook her head. "I'm not going to get into whether he did the right thing or not. He wasn't a bad man, just one who didn't make the best business decisions. When he was arrested for treason, the duchess put everything under seal so that the creditors could not seize the starport. I believe that she already intended at that time to take possession once the trial was complete. That's another matter entirely and I'm not going to get into it, but it did give us the time to pay off the debts that had accrued, including a very large loan made by the duchess that she no doubt intended to leverage into her new possession of the facility. She was the final one paid off and I made that payment in person on holiday of this year. So, Yamaguchi Starport has been debt-free for twenty-six days.
"You might ask how a manufacturing facility that isn't even operational yet could be earning money. We were allowed to deploy our robotic mining drones to bring raw materials back for the refinery and smelter. The output of that has been sold to pay the bills for the last almost 5 years that the facility has been under oversight. There was a large amount of debt because of the way the loans had been set up and the way in which they had to be paid off. Needless to say, we paid quite a bit more than what we received even over the short timeframe that we had the loans. My personal opinion is that the loans were structured in a way that was morally criminal though the lenders did not violate the letter of the law. Even so, what's done is done and that is finished."
She gestured around her. "We've been gearing up to start running the manufacturing portion of this starport at one percent to start working the bugs out of the system. The starport will also start constructing ships at the same time. You might note that we have a rather large amount of capacity so I don't expect that we will fill our bays anytime soon, if ever. Frankly, the starport has so much capacity in shipbuilding and manufacturing, that we may never hit one hundred percent because the surrounding sector can't support paying that amount of money."
"How much does the refining and smelting operation generate?" Ciencia asked.
"Just over 259 trillion credits."
Ciencia whistled. "That is a lot of money to generate in a year. What are the expenses?"
"I'm afraid you're misunderstanding. That's per month. 3.375 quadrillion credits in income per year for just the raw materials. Now, admittedly some of those will be funneled into the manufacturing process and shipbuilding so the number for raw materials will go down as the manufacturing comes online. Our monthly expenses total up to just over six trillion credits a month. We have almost 1.2 billion sophants aboard, most of them are crew, workers, and their families. Our arrival increased the population in this system by 15%. It costs a lot to keep the lights on. The Imperial tax is ten percent of our income, and that also has to be set aside. The bank account has a balance right now of 162,266,570,071,205 credits and the starport is operating in the black."
The princess sat there with her mouth open, seemingly at a loss for words.
Aster leaned forward. "Let's say you did manage to get to one hundred percent manufacturing capability and were building ships with your entire shipyard. How much income would that generate? Let's see, it says you have two hundred and sixty-five million tons of capacity. That seems like an awful lot. What's the capacity here at Glisten without this starport?"
"8.8 million tons. The Spinward Marches has four systems that can build tech level 15 ships, not counting the starport. Altogether, they total up to roughly 40 million tons. And by the way, this starport can create ships that are tech level 16. Manufactured goods at that tech level as well. Vincennes, the only tech level 16 competitor, has a capacity of 12,000,000 tons. We crush that with our 265 million tons of capacity. I'd estimate that Glisten will find itself being raised to tech level 16 before the decade is out as technological fallout brings other companies into line.
"If this starport were manufacturing goods at capacity, we would be generating roughly 97 quadrillion credits a month. As I said, this sector could not support that level of additional commerce--I don't think the Third Imperium as a whole could--so until we can raise the productivity of the rest of the worlds we wish to trade with, we won't have a market for everything that we could produce. The original baron did not think small, and as much as I would have wished he'd created something a little bit more manageable, we have what we have. Frankly, we're aiming to get one percent of capacity online and will probably struggle to sell everything that we create with that. We still have to build ships to take our goods to market because we will be producing so much that it will have to be shipped elsewhere. We've got the building capacity for that, but the design of ship that we have will take about eighteen months to produce, so we're not going anywhere fast."
There was a profound silence when she finished and then Ciencia started laughing. "How do you people keep falling into these kinds of situations? You will be literally printing money. I wonder how peeved my father is going to be that I gave it away? Not that he'll do anything but grumble.
"No wonder the duchess wanted to steal this place and convinced the admiral to help her. I think the people that are going to be arrested for this will have to end up being charged with treason because this is a serious violation of the Imperial trade agreements by trying to subvert something so productive. While I'll have to see the evidence, it certainly seems appropriate that the duchess's title be suspended until my father can make a decision on what happens next. That's going to leave a political power vacuum here at Glisten that I'll unfortunately have to fill. I'll come up with something."
