Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

In the offices on Absolution, Max was nearly finished with the necessary paperwork for the Council when the message from Nico came to the receptionist's desk downstairs, who passed a note to the Butler for Max to read.

It was a bit of a convoluted path, but handwritten notes couldn't be intercepted by digital surveillance should there be a bug in the room, and when they were tossed into the replicator for recycling, there would be no traces of them left over.

The Druid was very impressed with the arrangement, as the species was very fond of physical notes instead of digital everything, but the rest of the Envoys found it to be a bit tedious and were much more used to having connectivity within their meeting rooms.

Max could sense their unease, so he decided to give them a ray of hope.

"There are other meeting rooms which are fully connected and can send direct messages, but if we went to one of them, you would all be bombarded by corporate messages and a thousand anxious bureaucrats. This room is specifically for this meeting so that we aren't disturbed while we are working and so that your assistants can get a bit of sleep today.

They look like they need it as much as you did this morning, so we might as well finish up here, then we can move on to the public areas of Absolution, and you can get swarmed by busybodies while we hold our tour."

"You have a good point. The passages between Terminus and Absolution are wide open, so the moment that we are spotted back out in public, they will come swarming to our location, hoping to overhear even the smallest of tidbits, and some of the political visitors have a high enough position that even we would have to give them the time to ask a few questions since a tour of the city isn't a priority event."

That was about what he expected, so Max decided to check in on the Mecha battle below them before they headed out. The Corporate meetings had been bumped for the day, due to scheduling conflicts, at least in the official records, since writing down that you weren't in the mood for their petty nonsense today was frowned upon, according to the legal team.

"The documents have all been sent out, sir. Would you like me to lift the restrictions on the room?" The Butler asked as a secretary returned with the data tablets.

The Envoys checked the logs on the tablet closely when they got them back, as the Secretary had taken them outside to send the messages, but only one access was logged, and all it had done was to send the message as prepared in advance.

That was the nice thing about the Android staff. There was no real risk of insubordination or moles in the team, as the entire team would verify each other's status constantly, and if one were tampered with or operating outside of the approved spec, they would be put on the maintenance roster and removed from duty until they were fixed, with an identical unit taking over.

The more Max interacted with them, the more he realized that the plan to have every job share a unique appearance was genius. He could tell exactly what position they held simply by looking at them, and they didn't even need a uniform. It was like learning two hundred new staff instead of twenty thousand individuals.

"Thank you. If that is everything, I think we can head out." The Innu Envoy replied to the Butler, who remembered not to smile this time and gave a polite bow instead so that he didn't creep out the Dryad.

"I guess we should wake the assistants. They will need to know what we were up to and straighten themselves out before we head out." The Valkia Envoy agreed.

They needed more than a little bit of straightening out, Max realized. Though the meetings had taken over four hours, they were still mostly exhausted, the wings of the Valkia had feathers pointed in every possible direction, and one of the Innu assistants even had her head tentacles twisted together in a braid that she had to straighten by hand before she regained her balance.

Max had seen their thoughts many times before, but seeing their morning rituals in action, or at least the public parts of it, was an interesting experience, and the only ones that had it easy were the Giants.

Though the Envoy had well-styled hair, all of the assistants had either shaved their heads or cut their hair very short so that a splash of water and a quick comb was enough to straighten it out. Even the female assistants had hair not much longer than Max's and were ready for business in mere minutes, though their minds were groggy even while they lined up for the tour.

The shuttle pod was waiting for them when they left the building, ready to take them on a tour of the city, but Max had a better idea.

"Shuttle, take the scenic route over the city, then drop us in the entertainment district near Central Park." He instructed the vehicle's navigation system.

"Understood, Commander. Beginning the route now."

"This way, we can see the populated areas, as well as some of the fields and forests that have been prepared already, then we can stop in a busy shopping area so that all of the people who come to snoop and see if they can get your attention will be exposed to the sales pitches and unique entertainment offerings that Absolution has to offer," Max explained.

"About that water world, though. Do you think you could spare a floor for us aquatic sorts? I mean, you're barely using two of the twenty-some floors of this ship. There has to be space for the Innu to replicate their home world, right?" The Innu Envoy asked, remembering one of her major points at the very last moment.

"I will get Nico and her Research and Development team on it once the battle is over. They are moving to Absolution anyhow, so they can decorate the floor above the one we are on. I don't know how many Innu we will have on board, but I suspect that they will be pushing for the hiring of more Innu, Shin and Dryads anyhow, so we might as well prepare plenty of space for everyone to be comfortable." Max replied with a sense of impending headaches.

They had just finished a round of hiring, and if they did up a hundred thousand square kilometres of mostly aquatic space in the design that the Innu was thinking of, with small white sand beaches scattered through a shallow ocean, it was basically guaranteed that they would be getting millions more Innu in the near future.

This also meant that Max would have to deal with the staff requisition paperwork to get them all settled and employed. At least they wouldn't be short on IT staff. At least this time, he had much more staff to delegate the troublesome parts to instead of overworking the staff on Terminus.