Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 189: Market Share of the Slain

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Down on the iron-paved courtyard below Eadwig’s room lay the shattered body of a young boy; this boy was the legal Guildmaster of Nottingham, that is, until moments prior.

The maintenance contractors of the Governor’s Mansion quickly gathered around the corpse, their faces illuminated by the harsh gaslight.

Though they were aware that this boy was a mere figurehead for Director Ragnar, they could not calculate what market forces had led to his sudden plunge.

Quickly the Iron Guards formed a perimeter and began to secure the asset.

Ragnar, of course, was long out of sight; he had restructured the boy’s contract by defenestrating him, and in doing so, kept his own ledger clean.

Not a single soul had seen the Iron Father in the window with Eadwig, and only his most heavily vetted shift supervisors knew that he had conducted a performance review during the hour of the boy’s death.

Thus, while the guards secured the courtyard, Ragnar was sitting at his heavy mahogany desk, staring off into the smog-filled horizon.

He had experienced a momentary lapse in his usually cold, algorithmic judgment after hearing that Eadwig had destroyed Gyda’s perimeter security specifically to cause the CFO mental anguish.

He had initiated a hostile takeover of the boy’s life without filing the proper paperwork.

However, by now, Ragnar’s fiscal clarity had returned, and he realized his actions were not only off-book but also a massive liability.

With Eadwig’s death, he had to accelerate his IPO for the Midlands by several fiscal quarters.

The boy was supposed to suffer a gradual, documented decline in health that appeared to be natural exhaustion.

Yet now he lay depreciated on the stone floor of the company headquarters.

This would undoubtedly cause the Thanes of Mercia to view the Directorate with extreme market suspicion, and that was the best-case projection.

The moment Ragnar filed the public notice of Eadwig’s termination, he would potentially face an antitrust rebellion.

He could undoubtedly manage the conflict with his current Iron Legion, but the overhead of such a war would certainly delay his railway expansion by a large margin.

The Midlands still had yet to recover their production quotas from the war with the West Saxons, and now a few months later, they were once more on the brink of market volatility.

Though a strike by the regional management was a statistical certainty, he had yet to fully stockpile the munitions for a rapid, quarter-long campaign. Ragnar deeply pondered his next fiscal maneuver.

Considering only the personnel in the Governor’s Mansion knew of Eadwig’s liquidation, Ragnar would try to embargo the news for as long as he possibly could.

At most, he could buy himself a few weeks before the rumors crashed the stock.

How he utilized this brief grace period would be of critical importance in securing a monopoly over Mercia.

However, before he could issue any dividends, he needed a cover story for Eadwig’s sudden retirement.

While he was calculating the optimal PR strategy, Gyda arrived in his office; her posture was rigid, and her usually immaculate ledger was clutched tightly to her chest.

Despite the bloodstains still on her silk blouse, she had a calculating look on her face.

She knew that by now, the CEO should have audited the security logs to find the culprit behind the destruction of her assets, and thus she quickly asked him the thought on her mind.

"Did you run the audit?"

Ragnar, who until now was in deep thought reflecting on his depreciated assets and the future market shifts they had spurred, suddenly noticed his brilliant partner standing before him and nodded his head in silence.

Gyda bit her lip as she was afraid to ask the saboteur’s identity, but ultimately she felt she needed to know who was responsible for such an inefficient act if she were to balance her mental ledger; thus, she steeled her resolve and asked the question.

"Who breached the perimeter?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Ragnar sighed heavily, the gears in his leg brace clicking, before revealing the identity of the liability.

"Eadwig..."

Hearing this data, a look of profound disgust and cold corporate hatred combined itself upon Gyda’s sharp features before she finally snapped.

"That defective asset! Where is he now!?! I want to garnish his wages permanently!"

However, Ragnar’s following words zeroed out her balance sheet.

"Liquidated..."

A series of complex calculations overwhelmed the CFO at this moment; she had no standard operating procedure for this news.

On the one hand, she was glad that market justice had been dealt to the entitled brat for his highly inefficient actions.

However, she knew the legal liabilities such an action could incur; as such, she never actually projected executing him when she hypothesized that the young Figurehead was responsible.

Without realizing it, Gyda became increasingly concerned about the upcoming board meeting and spat out the question on her mind.

"What did you do?"

Ragnar looked around his office for a few moments, checking the air vents to see if anyone was eavesdropping before he finally revealed what had transpired moments ago.

"The numbers... blurred. Initially, I intended to put him on probation, maybe even reassign him to the deepest coal seam for his actions.

However, when he told me that his strategic goal for the sabotage was for the sole purpose of causing you a deficit... my risk management protocols failed. The next thing I knew, Eadwig was falling out the window headfirst into the courtyard."

Seeing the rare, uncalculated expression on Ragnar’s face, Gyda quickly approached him and rounded the desk, placing a firm hand over his.

She understood that his partnership with her and his overwhelming desire to protect his executive board had caused him to ignore the bylaws and terminate the boy.

She, too, would likely execute a hostile buyout if their roles were reversed. Rather than allow Ragnar to suffer analysis paralysis and further stress about the overhead, Gyda shifted the topic to something more productive.

"What is the new timeline?"

With this said, Ragnar looked into his partner’s piercing eyes with a solemn expression before outlining the corporate strategy he had mapped out in his mind.

"We embargo the news of his death for as long as possible; during this quarter, we ramp up munitions production and have the Iron Legion fully mobilized to march on the other shires. I need you to deploy the Intelligence Department to audit the other Thanes, from Derby to the Welsh Marches. I need to know who will accept the merger and who will attempt a buyout.

As for his cause of death? We will file it as a tragic workplace accident. Without a third-party auditor, nobody will know what happened here on this day."

Gyda quickly nodded; she still had a rigid posture as she was still calculating the sunk cost of her loyal hounds, but she knew now was not the time for sentimentality; quotas needed to be met.

They were in a period of critical market volatility; one bad investment and their entire monopoly would face bankruptcy.

Thus she did not have the billable hours to mourn her assets. After running the projections for a few moments, the woman spoke her mind.

"I will compile the dossiers as quickly as possible. By the time the news is leaked to the market, we will know who our subsidiaries are and who are our competitors!"

Seeing the woman he so dearly valued put aside her personal deficit for the greater corporate good put a grim smile on Ragnar’s face as he squeezed her hand tightly.

"I promise when this merger is complete, I will authorize a period of paid leave where you can properly adjust your ledgers. I know how much you valued that security detail. I swear by the Brand, I will never allow a breach like this to happen again."

Though Ragnar could not easily read emotions, he could tell that the stress Gyda had worked so hard to compartmentalize was beginning to fracture her professional facade.

She quickly leaned against Ragnar, taking a deep, shuddering breath to stabilize her heart rate for the next few minutes.

Afterward, she adjusted her collar before thanking the CEO.

"Thank you, Director. I promise I will have a comprehensive risk assessment on your desk by the end of the week!"

Ragnar did not keep Gyda any longer; he, too, had many administrative matters to attend to in the upcoming days.

For starters, he needed to draft a series of official press releases regarding Eadwig’s tragic accident and his own assumption of the Title of Lord Protector of the Midlands.

Of course, he would only publish it after the Iron Legion was in position for the transition of power.

Thus Ragnar and Gyda quickly got to work on preparing for the upcoming market crash.

Though it was entirely possible that the other Thanes would respect his majority share and sign the non-compete clauses peacefully, Ragnar was not a CEO who believed such a thing was statistically likely.

To him, it was better to be fully capitalized for a trade war, even if it didn’t happen, than it was to hope for the best and leave his supply lines vulnerable.

Ragnar had an algorithmic projection in his head of how this civil war would play out, but he needed hard data.

Thus he had tasked Gyda to audit his competitors.

However, Ragnar was highly confident that Thane Leofric, who managed the southern rails, General Bjorn, who currently garrisoned Leicester, and Foreman Wulfstan, who under Ragnar’s direction had replaced his brother in the Nottingham mines, would be aligned with the Directorate.

As for the independent Guilds of Derby, Lincoln, and the Welsh borderlands?

Ragnar did not know how they would react to the Figurehead’s termination or who they would short-sell.

Thus he needed to prepare the foundries for the absolute certainty of an aggressive restructuring.