Colonel Cortez was happy to help and well aware of what went on at the Broken Blaster. It seemed to be the ship's premier hookup spot, and if you didn't have any luck with the ladies, there were a few regular patrons who would help you out for a bit of compensation.

According to the burly Colonel, Princess was the true Princess of the bar, and the price for her services was much higher than most would pay, so it was surprising that Max had seen her busy with anything but serving tables.

These were things that Max likely should know about his ship, but as with any Military Regiment, there were some things that the men would prefer not to tell the Commander about in case he disapproved. They weren't in the military anymore, not really, but the mentality and structure remained.

The Admiral turned Terminus the moment that they dropped out of warp so that those looking at the sky through the terrarium could see the nebula's gas clouds and their rainbow of flickering lights and let the ship hover there for a while before announcing their arrival at the moon base.

[The First Tour of the day will begin in 60 minutes. All of those who are signed up for the first tour, please gather at the main gates in preparation for your shoreside excursion.]

The station couldn't accommodate Terminus, as the ship was considerably larger than it was, so they would be sending the guests in waves aboard a Cutter.

Every hour a group would go, and the tours would last three hours in total, letting them rotate through the guests smoothly without crowding any particular area.

Max supervised the loading and departure of the first group and then sounded the next announcement.

[Second Tour Group, your ship will be leaving in sixty minutes. Please be ready at the main gates before that time.]

He was planning to go down with the third group so that he could get feedback when the first group returned from their tour and so that he could see the mines for himself, and not just in the VR tour that the Mercenaries had sent to let the tour guides become familiar with the location in advance.historical

If you followed the arrows and the guide rail, it was basically impossible to get lost, and the side tunnels had energy barriers erected at their entrances so that nobody wandered off where they shouldn't be and got lost, plus all the guests were wearing locator beacons, just to be safe.

Max thought that should be enough precautions to ensure that the tours went smoothly, but the guides were also armed, carrying their augmentic armor and heavy weapons in the flat space of their new watches.

The second wave made it away safely, and the third began to gather even before the announcement was made. So far, nobody had missed their flight, and the tour guides had only reported minor issues keeping the groups together and well-behaved.

As Max had suspected, some of the guests were quite eager to snag a souvenir from the walls, which meant moving to the far side of some of the caves where the deposits hadn't been totally cleared out, but they were all safely returned to the group with their treasures intact.

The gemstones were considered semi-precious to humans and could be synthetically created when they were wanted, but something to remember a vacation by was a tradition among many species, and a novelty shop trinket wouldn't always do.

The flight down looped around Terminus and then closer to the Nebula so that the guests could spend time admiring the view through the simulated viewports in the hold, and then landed beside the other two Cutters, taking the last of the parking spots outside the base.

The automated pressure tubes were working, and they attached smoothly to the man door of the ship, letting the guests walk out into the station under the stern gaze of the tour guides who were telling them not to run.

The first group had just reached the surface when they arrived, and was enjoying a light meal in the station, looking up at the nebula, so Max moved over to make sure everything had gone smoothly.

"All you need to make sure of is that none of the guests breaks an ankle trying to move through the caverns to snag a gemstone out of the walls in the open caverns. Quite a few snuck away during the tour, and we just told them it was a one-item-per-person limit to keep them in line." The soldier leading the tour group informed him.

"Not a bad call. That also keeps them from cleaning out the caverns in case we want to return here for tours in the future." Max agreed.

"No worry about that. Most of the deposits are far too large to be taken away by hand, so the whole cavern glitters in the light. You'll see when your group goes down. It's pretty impressive as a tour. Even the pillars left by the mining machines are nearly decorative because of the moon's composition."

"I'm glad it went well for you. I think your time is almost up though, so I will let you go and rejoin the third group through the tunnels."

Max jogged off to catch up to his tour group, nearly getting reprimanded by the guide, until they realized that it was him and not a lost tourist. The thought that their Commander might get lost even with a map was laughable. They were only worried about the tour group because they were so easily distracted by the shiny things.

Max wondered for a moment how hard it would be to catch Nico or the Tech Nomads if they were left unattended down here. It was just pretty rocks to Max, but he was certain that those innovation-minded nerds would go off on a tangent somewhere, looking for a rare mineral.

The very bottom of the mine was the highlight of the tour. An unknown heat source had fused pure carbon into a clear diamond over three hundred meters around. It looked like a giant lake at the bottom of the mine and was the secret treasure of the Stardusters Mercenary Company.

Diamonds didn't hold the value that they used to now that they could be easily synthesized, but they were incredibly useful and still valued for jewelry, which made this final deposit worth enough for the company to purchase a new vessel should they lose everything at some point in the future.

The mine really was their last line of defense, and Max would have been shocked to have been allowed here if he hadn't known that the Terminus Trading Company was so wealthy that they had no need of such simple things as an enormous diamond.

"Everyone follow us back to the surface for a light snack and a viewing of the nebula. Not through a viewport, the top panels of the station are clear, and we can view the lights directly while we eat." the tour guide instructed, rounding everyone up and marking the last stage of the shore excursion.