Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

Max began preparing to have a massive influx of visitors just after everyone started to get settled in, but that wasn't something that he hadn't had practice with before.

The staff of Terminus had gone through this multiple times before, and the entire city that General Tennant had settled had suffered the same fate, so he knew that he could at least host a party, even if most of the ship wasn't entirely online and ready for regular business yet.

It would help the crew bond, so he began to make plans for a multiple-day event, having his crew party the night before the christening and then continue it through the day with the visitors present.

That should give them an idea of who was local and who wasn't, as well as provide them with a chance to interact with the Reavers at large. They were guaranteed to see a lot of them in the future, given the size of the ship and the facilities that it boasted.

Anything short of a Colony Ship could be built or rebuilt inside the hangars of Absolution, and with a bit of effort, they could find a way to get a Colony Ship inside as well, so any Reaver in their vicinity was likely to drop in for some repairs and upgrades, as well as a chance to visit the city center of the ship to pick up some supplies.

That wasn't as necessary as it used to be, but not everyone's Replicator and Material Printer systems had the same items programmed into them. The ones that the Reavers sold only contained a small sample of the possible permutations, leaving it up to the purchaser to obtain the design plans for everything else.

That way, artisans could still sell their goods, and it wouldn't encourage ships to isolate themselves from the world. Many centuries in the past that had become a huge problem in some Reaver Families and among the Death Wind Mercenaries. Too small of a gene pool and an unwillingness to interact with others had spelled their doom over the course of a few generations.

It also kept interplanetary trade going since the ability to code new items into the Replicators by simply scanning them wasn't a standard feature but an additional function that was only on the units that Nico had developed specifically for their use.

Keeping the Galactic Economy functioning was a delicate balancing act, one that Max was beginning to see had many more layers than just simple conveniences like the Replicators. The planets had been relying on each other for generations, so if they broke those bonds now, the resulting chaos would make the civil war seem mild in comparison.

Most planets couldn't sustain themselves anymore. They relied on others for something that they lacked, so if the few that could sustain themselves cut everyone else off, a lot of people would die, and the nations would break down all over again.

That was why Cygnus was distributing an even more limited older version of the Replicators and Materials Printers than their military was using. It made luxuries possible while still making foreign specialties unobtainable without trade.

Max prepared to send out the last message of the morning so that he could relax for a bit and head down to the Mecha trainers and the gym, getting back on his training regimen.

[All guests and Personnel aboard Terminus. In forty-two hours' time, we will be docking with Absolution for the ceremonial First Deployment Party. Please be advised that the bays of Terminus will be opened once we are docked, and the staff of Absolution will be available to guide guests who wish to visit the new vessel.]

The cheering in the minds of the cruise ship guests nearly gave Max a migraine, but it was good to see them so excited about a port of call. They hadn't gotten to take an off-ship excursion in a while, and that was one of the larger draws of being on a wandering Colony Ship.

He was just finishing a set of curls in the gravity-enhanced training room when his message alarm went off. Some VIP was requesting to visit Terminus directly, and the ship's communications officer had deemed it important enough to inform him or request his permission.

[Sir, Mary Tarith is on her way up from the surface. Your locator placed you in the gym, and I thought that you would like a heads-up before your mother-in-law showed up unannounced.]

The communications staff of Terminus were all great workers and deserved a raise, Max decided. Mary was a handful at the best of times, and being caught off guard only made it more difficult to ascertain what she was really up to.

Her mind was like Nico's in a way. What she was thinking on the surface had nothing to do with her ulterior motives and ultimate goals, and it always caught him off guard when she suddenly changed the topic to what she really wanted.

Max dialled the gravity settings back down from ten times standard to twice standard before he left so that whoever came in next had time to adapt and wasn't accidentally crushed by the gravity change, then went to shower before Mary's shuttle made it up to him.

He barely made it in time, but he was freshly changed and waiting at the hangar when she landed, using one of the new morphable hull shuttles that Nico had designed only a few weeks ago.

"I like the new ride. It looks like Nico keeps you right on top of the newest designs." Max greeted her with a smile.

"Not this time. I had to beg Uncle Lu for a new ride so that I could show off for the crowd at the planetary docks. This is one of his experimental models. He has been using the hull design that Nico sent him to develop new warp shield frequencies in an attempt to give us smooth velocities all the way from warp one to thirty. It would be an incredible feat if he can actually manage it, but making a single warp core capable of that much variability seems to be a daunting task." Mary replied with a shrug, indicating that she didn't understand the complexities of warp core design.

That made sense, his lab was inside the Moon Base over Rae 5, and Mary Tarith was serving as the head of the Reaver Council at the moment, so they had a lot of interaction. The old Comor Royal's ambition was quite impressive, though, even for a mad scientist.

If he could come up with a design capable of something that even the Alliance had given up on making practical, they could sell them all over the Universe. Assuming that the Alliance Government didn't come up with a big money offer to keep that particular technology off the open market.

Max knew that there were going to be at least a few such requests incoming over the next few days when he made the capabilities of the new weapons and shuttle designs public, and they had the chance to see the designs for themselves. He just had to wait for the legal team to go over the rules regarding the weapons' usage before he announced them to everyone and had to answer questions about antimatter munitions on a technical level.

"So, what brings you here so early? We've still got a whole day of staff transfers and bonding before the official ceremony." He asked Mary, who was setting a covered dish on a rolling cart from her shuttle.

"Cake, of course. I am not making enough for an entire city, but I thought that we could sit and chat for a while. I know you have a particular fondness for sweet chocolate cake, so I brought your favourite. It's a prime opportunity while my daughter is away to have some time to chat."

Those were dangerous words coming from her. Not because she was malicious but because she was, for lack of a better term, his mother-in-law, and she could want nearly anything.

While attempting to scour her mind for the true reason behind her visit and finding only the video of a pop tune playing in her mind, Max led her to his suite, with the cake-laden cart floating silently in between them through the empty halls near the Command Quarters. Mary Tarith was getting just as good as Nico at hiding her surface thoughts from him, and he was going to have to work on a way to get around that blocking technique more quickly before he got some annoying song stuck in his head.