While the newly arrived Innu Nomads got changed to test out the Gravity Slides, Max headed back to his office to get everyone ready to work.

[Prepare to open a portal to the Galactic Core area. All hands to ready stations. We will be transferring again immediately after our arrival.] Max ordered, and the crew of Terminus began to double-check their equipment in case of attack.

The portal slowly opened in front of Terminus as Max watched the power draw on their systems increase to eighty percent. It seemed that the technicians were correct, and they had modified the portal enough that they could make jumps within the Galaxy with a large enough portal to move Terminus through without any issues.

The enormous Colony Ship glided through the open portal to the vast void of the Galactic Core, where the presence of an incredibly powerful black hole at the center had prevented any stars from forming. This was the perfect place to be if you wanted to avoid being tracked back to your source planet. Even the signature of the previous portal was being dispersed by the faint draw of the Black Hole, rendering the signature incomprehensible.

Max made a note of this for the future, as eventually, someone else would learn to follow their portals to their source, and this would make an excellent staging point to avoid detection or pursuit.

He was under no illusions that the unity of humanity would be easy to achieve, and there were certain to be some factions that wanted to control everything by force, which would lead to violence on a rather large scale before everything was settled.

[Open the next portal. Let's see what we are going to be facing.] Max ordered, setting up all of the scans that he intended to run the moment that they arrived.

The nose of Terminus passed through the new portal, and Max began the scans. There were no Klem pods or other foreign objects in orbit, nor were there any space stations or human vessels.

That was concerning, as even the least inhabited of independent planets should have at least a small station or a transfer ship in orbit to meet trading vessels. But this planet had nothing at all.historical

Scanning the surface returned similarly strange results. The scanners detected intense concentrations of Klem biomass, as well as humans, but the planet itself didn't appear to have been razed for biomass the way that the Klem did to every other planet that they landed on.

The oceans showed heavy signs of non-Klem life forms, the forests were lush and green, and the humans were still wandering outside the cities. It didn't make any sense at all. Then the scans reached the far side of the planet, and things only got more confusing.

What was formerly a highly populated continent was now stripped bare, the cities ruined, and the scans showed Super Heavy Mecha-sized Klem every few dozen kilometers, but there were still signs of human life. There didn't appear to be any resistance effort remaining, and the signs were too much for a few survivors inside the cities, so Max changed the scans to see if the human population had moved underground.

The signs all seemed to be near the surface when viewed using triangulated coordinates, so Max just made a note and moved on to scan the rest of the planet.

It was the same thing, a lot of open violence but no large Klem presence and no stripped planet. It was as if the Klem had only invaded one continent and then decided not to move on.

Max began to scan for something that might be stopping the Klem from moving, but he wasn't finding anything at all. They had stopped of their own volition.

That meant he had to search for a Queen. Normally they wouldn't be spawned until a planet was completely in control of the Klem and linked to its neighbors, but he suspected that there was one here somewhere. He just needed to find it.

Repeated scans came up with nothing, but the levels of Klem biomass on the other continents were concerning due to the lack of actual Klem that he was seeing.

Terminus moved into orbit around the planet, expecting some reaction. If the message was bait to draw them here, there should be some hostile response. If it wasn't, then the human cities that were still mostly functional should send them some message, either to trade, ask for help, or tell them to go away.

But there was nothing at all. It was as if they no longer had the capacity to detect the Colony Ship in the sky, despite it being on the dark side of the planet and large enough that it would be visible to the naked eye, thanks to the light it reflected.

[What in the world is going on, Commander? I think we're all seeing the same scans, but it makes no sense at all.] Colonel Klinger asked over the intercom.

[Your guess is as good as mine. I am going to send a message to the surface and see what we get in response.] Max replied, wondering what they should send.

[Planetary Defense, this is the Colony Ship Terminus, home to the Terminus Trading Company of the Reaver Alliance. We have arrived in response to the request you sent. Please respond.] Max tried.

The radio was quiet for a few minutes until a faint signal reached their antenna.

[Terminus, flee. It is a trap. The Klem are hiding in the humans, stealing their minds and mutating their bodies. Save yourselves. It is too late for us.]

Max switched back to internal communications. [Did you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? Not only do we have humans to save, but we have also found the Klem doing something new and strange. Prepare to launch. We will start with the ruined continent, as I suspect that it is where this all started and the most likely location to find answers to the question we all have about possessed humans.]