PART 12: THE VENTURE CONSPIRACY
PART 12: THE VENTURE CONSPIRACY
The destruction of the Sterling family and the arrest of Julian Cross had stabilized the Kensington empire, but by the third month of the new era, a new threat began to materialize in the venture capital boardrooms of Silicon Valley.
Arya sat at her desk in the St. Regis command center, reviewing a series of hostile micro-acquisitions that had occurred over the last fourteen days. A private equity firm based in Palo Alto, named Apex Vanguard, had quietly purchased thirty-four percent of the small software companies that manufactured the physical microchips used in the Kensington encryption servers.
"They're trying to choke our supply chain," Marcus Vance said, projecting a corporate hierarchy chart onto the glass wall. "Apex Vanguard is managed by a man named Gregory Vance—Vance Sterling’s maternal uncle. He’s been operating in the West Coast tech sectors for twenty years, and he has a multi-billion-dollar war chest."
Arya’s eyes traced the connections on the wall. "He’s not trying to save his nephew, Marcus. He’s trying to execute a corporate squeeze. If Apex gains control of the chip manufacturers, they can artificially increase our manufacturing costs by four hundred percent, forcing us to renegotiate our global network contracts."
"We need to buy out the remaining chip manufacturers before Apex does," Marcus suggested. "But our liquid capital is tied up in the European server stabilization project. We need fifty million dollars within forty-eight hours, or Apex gains the majority vote at the manufacturing board meeting in San Francisco."
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Arya stood up, walking over to a small, secure safe in the corner of the room. She entered her biometric data, and the steel door clicked open, revealing an old, dusty leather binder. It was her father's original notebook from his time at MIT in the early nineties—containing three unpublished mathematical theorems on quantum data compression that had never been shared with the public.
"We don't need liquid capital from the banks, Marcus," Arya said, a brilliant, calculating smile breaking across her face. "We have the intellectual property that every single tech company in Silicon Valley would kill to possess. We’re not going to buy out the manufacturers. We’re going to make their chips obsolete before Gregory Vance even sits down at his board meeting."
