Aboard the Command Ship Celia's Love, in combat within the Anomaly Region in defence of the Koleska Empire, the communications crew were holding a silent celebration over the most recent update that they had received from the Android Fleets.

[One way incoming Communication with Terminus Trading Company Command Cutter established. Location unknown due to distance and signal interference. Drone Base W117 confirms the survival and mobility of Commanders Nico and Max.

A suspected ancient battle site has been located at their position, details unclear. Command Cutter not expected to return to the Anomaly Region in the immediate future.]

That small bit of news, from a Drone Mothership near the Rift, was all the news that they needed to inform the Reaver Council that the leaders of the Terminus Trading Company had not been lost in combat with the Great Enemy after the Antimatter bombing incident, where over a thousand portals had been forcibly closed before the region became too unstable for the enemy to attempt entry.

The two of them were propaganda darlings of the Human species, and a beacon of light for the Alliance species during these dark days as the attacks by the Great Enemy had begun to hit planets within their territory.

The situation there was much more dire than any of the Alliance species, other than the Innu, had predicted, and nearly a thousand star systems had been hit at once in the first wave. The branch of the fleet that had appeared to be heading for the humans was a diversion, and when they got close, they turned back toward the Alliance to attack from the flank.historical

The Reavers had responded immediately, opening portals near the affected systems and dumping the Android reinforced Reaver Companies through to do battle with the Great Enemy, while the Alliance military scrambled to respond.

The Innu had been right with them, sending all the ships that they had managed to create so far into battle against the first wave and earning themselves a heroic reputation among the Alliance species that had been hit.

The only sad note was that the pair who everyone believed had engineered this agreement and solution in the first place were missing. But now that they could broadcast the new messages, along with the verified timestamp, the Reavers and the Alliance could both spread the word that they had not been lost in combat, but had fought their way halfway across the universe.

In Mary's mind, it had never been in doubt that they would reappear. She knew in her heart that her son-in-law would not allow such a fate to befall her daughter. So, now that they had returned, or something close to it, she could start spreading heroic propaganda about their battles and survival.

Nobody expected all the communications to be made public, so even if she told the people a glorious story about how they had ended up in another layer and defeated a Greater Energy Being to secure the area, they would accept the propaganda with open hearts.

Little did Mary know, that wasn't far from the truth.

Multiple Greater Energy Beings had been destroyed during that battle, and one had arisen as a Demigod after feasting on the energy of her fallen peers, but Max and Nico had been involved in at least one of the defeats, even if they could only be credited with the assist.

There were already a huge variety of heroic war videos going around from the brutal first wave battles against the Great Enemy, but some with a bit more hope would be needed to keep morale up among the forces soon.

The losses hadn't been too heavy, thanks to the mass deployment of drones and Android Mecha, but even then, dozens of vessels had been lost on the first day, and more were recorded as lost every day.

The Alliance military was in a far worse state, though. They had lost thousands of vessels on the first day of combat before many of the planets had actually taken the situation seriously and sent reinforcements to their neighbours. It was the sort of tragedy that would be memorialized for millennia as an Alliance holiday, assuming that there was an Alliance after the war.lights

Mary was placing the final touches on a propaganda video to announce the triumphant return of her daughter when a piece of news came in from Absolution. They had been stationed at the mass production point since before the battles in the Alliance had started, so at first, Mary was going to put it off as a regular update, but something about the timing of this one seemed strange.

The message was from her husband, and like nothing that she had ever expected to read.

[Mary, I had the research team going through Nico's notes last night, looking for plans related to the next generation Mecha that she had been working on. We have found something unexpected. It appears that two new Titan Class units were made by Uncle Lu, as we were informed, but they weren't left as delivered. We have found a whole collection of Nico's denied weapon designs, and some of them are 'unique'. I've sent them to both you and Lu, as a last resort.]

Mary opened the data file and laughed in relief as she read the first weapon plan's description.

It was designed for the Drone Deployment Class World Ships, the mightiest of vessels in the Reaver fleets, and the sheer destructive power of it was so ridiculously off the scale that only Nico would have considered actually using it.

Externally, it was nothing more than a large Warp Torpedo, but it was designed to emit a dual pulse. First the modified Disruptor, intended to set off a nuclear chain reaction on the target, and secondly an antimatter explosion, which would be intensified by the unstable matter in the first explosion.

The output of the weapon was enough to destroy stars in a single shot, or any known class of vessel, as long as the shielding could be breached for the torpedo to reach the target.

But, as a Nico designed weapon, the launcher was intended to fire five hundred of them at the same time. One World Ship with a weapon like that backing up their main weapons array could devastate any battlefield.

Mary threw it into the VR simulator in her office, and then sighed as she saw the results. Now she understood why Max had rejected the weapon, you couldn't actually use it because the variable frequency pulse would cause every form of matter and antimatter to react, and the resultant chain reaction would inevitably engulf the entire star system before it ran out of fuel.

Forget planet killing, it was a star killing weapon, but as she closed it, she saw a small note left by her daughter.

[Mother, check my birthday.]

Mary flipped through the files until she found one numbered to match Nico's birthdate, on the Kepler calendar.

Inside was a brilliant innovation. She had created a neural capture device that would completely clone not only the mind and memories of the occupant, but it would even clone a sample of the nanobots, so that an entire person, right down to their system upgrades, could be activated inside the computer of a world ship or restored from a new generation replicator if they were lost in battle.

Morally, it was questionable. Legally, it was problematic, emotionally, it was either a necromantic curse or the greatest gift that anyone could give the Reavers. A chance at immortality, revived from their last backup point if they were killed. Sure, it wasn't really the same person, but in a way, it was, and their experience wouldn't be lost with their death.