Deep Space Epoch

As he was glancing through the latest news early in the morning, a screen for an incoming call opened up in the air in front of him.

"Answer," Everal calmly spoke.

The floating screen changed to a sound icon and followed Everal's sight as he turned around to look over the clouds outside the window of his office, a dreamy landscape of white clouds extending as far as the eye could see.

"Sir, there has just been a report issued of a hostile warship appearing on Lorres III. The man known as Ivan Storme was sighted departing the ship. Local authorities are en route while several Galactic Fleet battleships are also currently on their way to arrive at the scene."

Everal's brows furrowed before he replied, "That's quite far from here, at least two months travel through hyperspace. What is their goal?"

"It appears they are opening a bank account with the Pleiades Galactic Bank. Any other goals are currently unknown."

Everal was lost in thought for a while, fiddling with the various silver piercings on his long and pointed ears, but the caller remained patient on the other side of the call.

"Do we have any of our people in the area?"

"Sir, I believe we have a few businesses we have vested interests in based in the area."

"Good, have one of them print out a business card for me. Give it to this Ivan Storme and pass on the message that I have a strong interest in funding any ventures they may have."

"Sir! That is too risky! These people murder without a second thought!"

"Enough, Ronaldz, sometimes one must take risks in business to achieve the end goal. Even if we don't form a business transaction, I want to at least create a relationship between the two of us. You know the research results. What they have is the future, and I must take my fair share of it."

"…Understood, Sir."

Everal ended the call and using a modified state-of-the-art thought projector, controlled his computer on the office window to open up a secret file on Ivan and the other Celestials. In it had all kinds of research reports and pictures of them, along with various Vulpes facilities and other key infrastructure on the planet.

"It's a shame," Everal mumbled to himself, "any operatives I send undercover are unable to escort any of their four-dimensional material out of the planet. We understand roughly the process, but still lack all the required base materials."

*****

Ivan sat in the captain's chair as he commanded the Kraken to ascend from hyperspace directly into a spaceship dock on Lorres III. The dock was on the outside of the built-up area over a barren expanse of land scorched by eons of ships landing and taking off.

The various human specie saw the ship slowly fade into experience as it ascended to the surface of the universe and couldn't contain their shock. Some people whispered to one another while others recorded the scene with bionic eye cameras.

There were no doors on the outside of the ship when looking at it from the three-dimensional perspective, so Ivan and the other Celestials appeared to slowly appear into existence just beside the side of the ship. The most shocking sight was without a doubt Flintlock, Ivan and the others were used to it by the massive size of four-dimensional beasts, but the Four-Eyed Devil Lion was easily three times taller than a standard human and had a mass several fold that.

"Sirs and Madams, welcome to Lorres III," An automated robot with the appearance of a human torso but a hover ring system instead of legs floated over, obliviously greeting Ivan and the Celestials. "Our parking system is very comprehensive, and we offer many long term discounts. How long do you plan on parking here?"

"I don't feel like paying," Ivan said nonchalantly and ignored the robots, leading the Celestials and one beast away.

"Sirs and Madams, if you don't pay the appropriate parking fees, your ship will be impounded and subject to additional fees."

Flintlock had turned to a foul mood as soon as the Kraken ascended to the surface universe. This was due to the thinness of energy in subspace directly adjacent to the surface universe. The devil lion took a lot of initial acclimatizing on the Vulpes homeworld in order to adjust to the three-dimensional surface universe without suffocating. Even the Celestials felt like it was somewhat stuffy in the surface world, like being in a room of stagnant air.

"Sirs and Madams-" The floating robot tried to follow Ivan and them and pursue with collecting parking fees, but Flintlock glared at the annoying robot before bringing its paw down on it, complete destroying it. Enough force was put into the crush that not only it flattened like a pancake, but buried it two meters into the ground.

This action was caught by the cameras of other floating robots and an alarm immediately rang out. Ivan and the others didn't pay any attention and walked toward the city. The local police were very fast in their response and four hovercars blaring sirens flew above them and told them to halt and lie down with their hands above their head.

Several of the Celestial security guards took offense to this and Ivan could see them readying their weapons. He obviously didn't want to cause a large scene due to the purpose of his trip here. Refusing to pay a parking fee was a civil matter that the company in charge of collecting those fees would be unable to enforce due to lack of a party to open a civil debt case. Attacking and killing a police officer however would have much more serious consequences on his plan.

"Drop into hyperspace, we'll just lose them. Nobody is to attack or kill anyone today, especially public servants."

Ivan grabbed onto Flintlock's mane and pulled him deeper into hyperspace, leading the rest of the Celestials to disappear from the surface universe.

The local police hovercars hung in the air with their sirens blaring, but the actual officers were staring at the spot the group vanished with their jaws wide open.

"Porter, did ya' jus' see 'at?" One of the officers, with purple skin and thick braided hair, asked his partner in the hovercar with a strong accent.

"Yeah, mate, I saw 'at."

The police continued to loiter around the area after that. The manager of the spaceship dock also filed a report with the police over a destroyed robot and also put a parking fine on the spaceship, but with no information on the opposite party, those enforcement methods instantly hit a dead end.

The local authority did become excited that the spaceship had no registration code, and its construction did not comply with civil ship rules and regulations and tried to impound it, but no matter how much they tried, they couldn't budge it from where it was floating slightly above the ground.

*****

Meanwhile the authorities were trying to tow the Kraken in various ways, Ivan and the other Celestials reappeared in the city. Everyone looked around and were amazed by the view that was so different from what they were used to.

Buildings were built up like pillars of heaven, and even though they appeared old and somewhat dirty with colors of brown, gray and yellow, they had their own ascetic appeal. There were walkways everywhere, even between the buildings like some kind of complicated spider's web. Ivan's vision was good enough that he could see an old man twenty floors up on one building leaning against a railing smoking a cigarette which released a blue smoke.

Hovercars formed long lines of traffic through the skies between the buildings, their horns only adding to the scent of oil that seemed to have stained the entire area Ivan and the Celestials were.

"You may choose to return to the ship, but I know many of you want to explore or witness a Federation world," Ivan said calmly to everyone, "Everyone has free time for the next 31 hours, tomorrow evening however you will all have returned to the ship on time. Any unaccounted Celestials shall have their pay docked."

"Yes, President."

The group of Celestials broke up upon Ivan's order and went about their tasks, although Ivan had to make sure that he told them not to kill anyone or commit violence anyone else could witness. He normally wouldn't have to do this, but after becoming four-dimensional beings, the Celestials had all looked down upon three-dimensional beings.

Ivan led Valeria, Flintlock, and a few guards, adding up to a small group of ten as he connected his tablet to the planetary network and followed directions to a metal scrapyard to sell a pile of copper. He found an old warehouse in one of the skyscrapers, where a metal trader was extremely excited to take the large bag full of solid copper ingots Ivan had prepared. The price of which shot through the roof when the trader witnessed the solid ingots floating in the air, unaffected by gravity.

With a several tens of thousands of credits stored on several chips, Ivan smiled contently and headed straight for the bank.

Ivan wasn't concerned about releasing some four-dimensional metals into the three-dimensional surface world. It was impossible for someone to evolve into a four-dimensional being without four-dimensional biological matter as far as current knowledge went, while the metals had a very limited use. They were far stronger than their-dimensional counterparts so extremely difficult to work with and near impossible to smelt normally.