547 547 We Need More Data
The live stream of the cloaking device in development was over by the time Max was free to join the technicians, but that didn’t slow down the to-do list for the day. Instead of hanging around with the technicians, he went to double-check that the area for the new school complex was clear and ready for development, with no hidden makeout or picnic spots tucked away in the disused areas of the ship.
Everyone needed a little bit of alone time now and then, and gossip spread faster than anything else among a unit, so couples that didn’t want everyone to know their business always needed a spot to meet somewhere on the ship.
Terminus had a lot of those sorts of spots, with so little of its space fully utilized, even after loading a full regiment of Mecha and a couple of thousand tourists on board.
He had just finished his walkthrough, and uploading the updated 3D imaging to Medusa, when he received a message from Admiral Drake, letting him know that they had a proper sensor view of the destination now and that they could start calculating the number of Terraforming pods that would be needed for a complete net to revitalize the planet, as well as how many asteroids would need to be transported over to its location to replace depleted resources.
They were doing this for the benefit of the Hunters who were already waiting there, but mostly for the Human refugees who would be calling the place home, so making sure that it was a proper planet and not a used-up and discarded relic of a long dead society was of the utmost importance.
At this point, they didn’t even know what sort of being had lived here, but the first sensor scans from the Hunters were coming in with excellent detail. There were entire ruined cities made of a combination of stone and primitive alloys, as well as decrepit facilities that looked to Max to have been decommissioned, not abandoned.
There was no rubble around them, so either it had been used elsewhere, or whoever had used it last took the good parts with them.
[The newest of the ruins appears to be just shy of one million years into decay after its abandonment, judging by the degradation of the alloys. We have also found buried facilities that do not contain any known material.
Our entire database, both of Alliance and non-Alliance sources, does not include this material. It’s not even an element. The entire structure is a single molecular bond of disrupted atoms.
Huntress Khan requests that this location is placed off limits for modification during the terraforming so that she might study it while the rest of the planet is prepared for habitation.]
The data portion of the message included by the Hunters made no sense to Max, so he forwarded it to the technicians and Nico while he examined the included diagram for himself.
His past life had knowledge of many things, but this was not one of them. He couldn’t even fathom how it could have been created until he recalled a nomadic species that his personal fleet had once encountered. Their ship had been made of something similar to this material, but they had refused communication and left the Galaxy when he tried to talk to them.
The unidentified ship repeated the process over and over in various Galaxies nearby until finally, they simply vanished, presumably finding the uninhabited area they were searching for.
He couldn’t tell if it would be considered durable, highly advanced, or simply confounding by their current standards. His fleet just didn’t learn enough about that ship before it disappeared. The example that they had found here was too precious to tamper with at this time.
More reports came in as the Hunters scanned the planet, and dozens more buildings, statues, and random items were made of the unknown substance. At least that meant there was enough now that the Hunters could experiment on it while keeping all of the other locations off-limits, so they didn’t cause an unexpected interaction with the Terraforming Machines.
He didn’t even realize how much time was passing until Nico came in with a fresh set of clothes in her arms and a tray of breakfast.
“You have a meeting with Medusa in two hours. She has no fewer than seven separate facilities designed, and she is very excited to tell you all about them. I ran into her and the kids on my tour past the breakfast buffet just now.
After that, we will be arriving at the designated planet, and you’ve got a meeting with Huntress Khan, who wants to talk to us both in person. She says that what she has to tell us can’t be relayed to the Alliance, so it will have to happen on her ship.
I’ve already started on the important things so that you can focus on school matters. Just a friendly reminder that the majority of Alliance schools have just let out for semester break, and this is the time to have them send applications if you want to open right away and not half a year from now.
p
They really should have stayed on Rae 5, and Max had even made arrangements for them to do exactly that at one point when the planet was being colonized. However, in the end, they were still aboard when Terminus left again, and he may have forgotten all about the matter until it was too late to turn around.
“Alright, I will get everything going on the school so that we can bring students aboard for the next semester since we will be here for a while anyhow.
You take care of the planet matters, and we will both go visit Huntress Khan this evening. Did you find out anything about that material?” Max asked.
“A thing or two. I know how it is formed since I managed to make it in my past life, but actually using it and shaping it is beyond anything I knew.” Nico replied, then replayed the memories for Max to look through.
She had been experimenting with ways of weaponizing the destabilization of space-time and had managed to make some fragments of that material that appeared to be one continuous atomic structure, but nothing that they had was able to shape it after it was formed.
Their disruptors tore it apart with ease, but it was mostly impervious to lasers, and Ion weapons seemed to actually grow it in the most unexpected ways. It could also be broken by hand if you knew the trick of coating your gloves in an energy barrier first.
Nothing about the material made sense, but that was only due to limited understanding, and it was possible that Huntress Khan had more information on the subject.
It might not be good news if the Alliance wasn’t allowed to learn of it, but it was news.
“Alright, back to work. We’ve got a lot to do.” Max sighed.
“Oh no, I didn’t walk all the way here to leave without my eye candy. Pants off, big boy. Get some clean clothes on.”