historical

It took the group over an hour to make it to the bottom floor of the shopping mall and out to the street with all the curious onlookers and not-so-subtle attempts to draw them into a business conversation, and by then, the Assistants really were starting to get exhausted and hungry again.

The street out front was a pedestrian-only route through the shopping and entertainment district, and the crowd had packed the streets to welcome them and shout questions about the situation in the Alliance with the sudden appearance of the Klem inside their borders.

"I can assure you that a potential solution has already been found, and it has been sent to the Council for final approval. We are hoping to have an answer before we finish dinner, so if you would like to spend a few hours enjoying the amenities here aboard Absolution, we will inform everyone as soon as we get an update." Max assured the crowd.

That calmed them for a few minutes, so Max led the group into the restaurant's private room to sit down for dinner while they waited for messages from both the Council and the Mecha Force on the surface below them.

The first to notify them was Nico, on behalf of the Android Army.

[Commander, the surface has been verified one hundred percent clear of Klem life. The damage to the surface is extensive but repairable, and the planet's surface and atmosphere are still within the categorization of Habitable that the Reavers requested of us.

With your permission, we will begin extraction in thirty minutes.]

"Good news, everyone. The battle is finished. Once they have returned to the ship, we just have to wait for the response from the Council, so we know what they plan to do about the Klem in their territory, and then we can start making plans for our next mission." Max informed the room.

"Excellent. That means that the data analysis will have begun already, and they gave us an estimate of one hour after the battle finished to have their edited numbers submitted. We can't share the Alliance's actual military strength with you, but I am sure that you have gathered from the corporations that have approached you that our individual military strength has lagged behind the rest of our development due to a lack of necessity." The Valkia Envoy sighed.

"That's right. They never come across anyone who can threaten them, so they haven't created new weapons in ages, only new shields so that they could travel in greater comfort."

Their shield technology wasn't for defence but for comfort. That actually made sense, Absolution did the same thing and used their conventional shielding to smooth out turbulence in their warp travel, but Max had assumed that the Alliance had developed theirs to deal with higher technology threats.

They were far from as stagnant and backward as the Kepler Empire had become, but the glacial pace of their society had been evident for a while, with patent protection holding for generations and keeping everyone using the same essential technologies that they had been for centuries since nobody had created anything innovative enough to get around the rigid bureaucracy.

[Go ahead and extract as soon as everyone is staged. Good work this time. Your Androids were incredible, and the Pilots who ran the intelligence drones this time agree.] Max informed Nico and got a short video of Shattered Pride doing a happy dance on the corpse of the single largest Klem that he had ever seen.

She didn't describe it, so it could have been some super Behemoth, or they had found a Klem Queen on the planet. If it was a leadership caste above the Behemoths, it would be incredible for their data discovery, possibly as valuable as whatever the Hunters had gathered from the infested ship during the orbital wave.

The staff brought them out an array of dishes, set to be shared so that the entire table could sample all of their unique creations, and the room fell silent, with even the assistants ignoring their messages for a while to eat.

The Council's response came between the main course and dessert. They didn't send it directly to Max, but from the look on the faces of the Envoys, the answer wasn't what they were expecting.

"It looks like we're not done with our mission at all. The entire government entourage has been assigned to follow Absolution around while we finish the next mission, assuming that you take it on personally." The Valkyrie informed him as he read through the message.

They had all received different directions, and Max couldn't be sure what the actual message was going to be, but each of them was a separate request for assistance from Terminus Trading Company.

It was only when the Dryad Envoy got a message from her leadership that the situation became clear. The Alliance Government couldn't stand to outright ask the humans to deal with the mess from their Galaxy that had spread to the Alliance systems, but they weren't willing to send their forces to fight an unfamiliar hostile species without any training, and they were estimating eleven years to develop and implement a program of training for their intergalactic peacekeepers.

"I know it's rude to read people's minds, but I'm literally incapable of stopping it. Isn't a decade too long to prepare to face a threat?" Max asked.

The Giant Envoy shook his head. "No, that's pretty standard. Not for the people in this room, but for the others, they want a complete study, testing, simulations, and verification, all done separately for every measure that is going to change from standard procedures.

Since we don't use Mecha of the same designs that you do, that means that everything would have to change, even if we directly ported your procedures, resulting in a net time savings of under six months."

"So, if I'm correct, your requests will add up to having Terminus go to the source of the problem and clean it out?" Max asked, making sure he hadn't missed a critical thought.

"Oh, and helping us, including the escort that is going to be following you, in finding out who brought them to us. They have a list of suspects here, and they're all equally bad options, from insurgents, a new cult, or a foreign force, to the Narsians throwing Klem through a portal to get rid of them. Frankly speaking, they have no idea what caused the issue, and they just want it to go away before the protests get any worse." The Innu Envoy agreed as she finally finished reading her messages.