312 312 Dancing Fools
The song changed to a fast and upbeat one, and Max took Isabella’s hand, letting her lead him to the middle of the dance floor.
The old woman was incredibly agile, and Max suspected that she had rather high-ranked system compatibility in her youth to still be able to move like that.
The dance would normally look rather erotic, the way the two dancers entwined bodies when their hands were locked, but the age difference made it more comical than anything, and the Reavers were all cheering him on by the time Max finished the dance, carrying Isabella back to her chair since the Elder was exhausted from the effort of such a physical dance.
“Who knew that a Regimental Commander actually knew how to have fun?” Mary Tarith laughed, clapping Max on the back and pulling him back to the dance floor while whispering the moves to another dance into his ear.
The ceremony was only over for five minutes before the crowd was doing shots straight from rum bottles and losing clothes for a less formal type of dancing. The men and women of the Regiment were being hauled to the dance floor, and chairs were being folded and tossed over the wall to make more room for more dancing.
The dinner was scheduled for three hours from now, and Max wasn’t entirely sure anyone would be in fit shape to actually eat at the rate that they were drinking. But they certainly intended to try. The word that quality steaks from Kepler Terminus had been procured for the dinner had already spread, and a lot of the Reavers had never tried them.
The food was served outside the compound, due to space constraints, and the wedding party began to spread out into the field around the venue, leaving only the close family and Senior officers inside to eat.
That was probably for the best, as Max could see personnel carts coming from the city loaded high with more liquor, so this party was not going to end any time soon.
“Now, where is the Young Lady of the Tarith Family? Nico, I believe her name was.” Isabella asked as she sat beside Max to wait for her children to bring her dinner.
“Look up and to your left. She volunteered to be the honor guard today, so that is her Piloting Enduring Rage.” Max explained.
“Hmm, that granddaughter of mine said that was your Mecha,” Isabella asked, a bit annoyed at the contradiction.
“It is. During regular operations, Nico is my Technician or copilot inside Enduring Rage. Though possibly not for much longer, as we are reorganizing to fill the vacancy that General Yaakov’s departure left.
After that, we will either be out of the Mecha, or we will have to build another to fill the spot if we want to keep it as a Command Mecha.” Max explained.
“Or you can let me make you something extra cool. We don’t have to worry about Imperial Command approving designs here.” Uncle Lu told him, coming over with a tray of plates and a bottle of strong brandy.
“What brought you here anyhow? Weren’t you in charge of Kepler’s new Mecha development?” Max asked.
“I was, but that project no longer exists. After the Lab was raided by the Rebels and I scrubbed all the data, the project was mothballed. They don’t plan to begin it again until after the Rebellion is dealt with, the risks were deemed too high to attempt to continue.
So I came here to have some fun. I couldn’t sit in the Lab, which is now a Museum, as the Curator for the rest of my life.
Here I can start over, assuming you can find me a secure Lab again and not one that will be compromised or raided.” Uncle Lu asked hopefully.
“There is a huge void in the middle of the Moon Base that isn’t being used for anything. It would make a rather nice development Lab, and the station moves so much material that nobody would ever notice your orders moving from the storage rooms to the Lab.” Mary Tarith suggested.
A floating city in the sky worked pretty well until the Rebels found out about it, but a Moon base with the firepower to defend against an attack fleet would be so ridiculously obvious that no sane man would ever think that they would actually put a super secret base there.
You didn’t put the super secret base in the ultra-obvious murder star, you hid it somewhere that it wouldn’t be noticed, like deep in the mountains. At least that is what common sense said.
“You can finally build the Samurai Pattern Line Mecha.” Max laughed.
“I’ve got a pattern made for a God Class Mecha. There hasn’t been a new one built in a thousand years, and each is unique, but Miss Nico sent me all the design specs for the Engines on Terminus, looking for advice on how to improve them, and it gave me an incredible idea.” Uncle Lu whispered, so only the four of them could hear.
That would be a shock to every system that they dealt with. Most small empires didn’t even have a weapon that deadly, so if the Reavers and their single-system nation did, it would totally break the balance between Empires in the region.
But in a good way for the Reavers. It would become too dangerous to attempt to attack them, even for Kepler.
“So what will we need?” Max asked.
“Well, two Pilots with a unique set of skills that complement each other when designing Mecha, to begin with, but after that, we will need time with Terminus to analyze the Warp Drive and come up with a much faster-moving version. Then we will need a collection of rare materials to actually do the construction.” Uncle Lu sighed.
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Mary Tarith shrugged.
“Right? It should be easy once we have everything that we need. The design is almost complete, except for the power plant and the outer shell. It’s a good thing that Terminus has huge cargo bays though.” Uncle Lu agreed.
“And why is that?” Isabella Tarith asked.
“Well, it is a God Class Mecha. Its main structure is seventy meters tall, and carries enough firepower to purge a planet.” Uncle Lu shrugged.
“Seventy Meters tall? And how did you plan to send it into combat? There’s a reason the ones that exist aren’t used much. You can target them from across a continent.” Mary Tarith pointed out.
“Well, I did consider camouflage. Like this one. See, when it crouches it looks like a Cathedral.” Uncle Lu said proudly.
“Vetoed. No enormous walking Cathedral. No matter how incredible the architecture is.” Max objected.
“Well, we can talk about that later.”