For the next six hours, Max went through the various representatives that had been sent to meet with him. Very little of it was of any importance, and many of them were there mostly just to meet with him and get an impression of Terminus as a Company. Those ones were the easy ones.


    The annoying ones were those who were sent to suck up in order to try to get some sort of deal with the Humans. Almost all of their bosses underestimated the species, and the battle raging on the below had thrown their entire n into disarray, so they had no idea what they were actually supposed to be doing now that they got a chance to meet with Max.


    In a way, that was an improvement. It got them to speak, give him their business info, and then politely back away without wasting a lot of his time. There were so many people gathered that if he spent more than a few minutes with each, he would never get through them all in the course of one single morning.


    By the time the Envoys returned to the Café to meet Max after lunch, the Alliance Government ships had been joined by nearly a thousand corporate vessels in orbit around the. Max had subtly moved Absolution to keep her directly over top of Nico''s unit so that she couldn''t be as easily ambushed should some of thesepanies prove hostile.


    It certainly wouldn''t be the first time, but now that they had a World Ship on their side, it would take much more force for anyone to challenge them, assuming they were willing to risk the Central Government''s wrath to do so.


    The Envoys looked much better now, but it was clear that the assistants had taken the brunt of the excess iing messages once the Envoys took their break. They looked just as rough as the Envoys had earlier, so Max decided to change the order of operations.


    "How about instead of touring Absolution, we start with the important talks, and we can tour the first few areas of the World Ship on our way to dinnerter?" He suggested.


    "Oh, that is a wonderful idea. Please set up a notification that we are in a closed-door negotiation and then disable all outsidemunications once the meetings start. Operational security is of the utmost importance to these talks since they are about delicate military intelligence matters." The Giant Envoy decreed.


    "Then, follow me, and I will bring you to my new office aboard Absolution. You won''t get to see too much of the ship since Terminus is docked right under the center of the main inhabitance right now, but you will get to see a bit during the ride since the secured operations areas are on the second floor, located a thousand meters above the city, separated by a structural bulkhead." Max exined before passing around a set of drinks for everyone to finish on the way.


    "There will be food once we arrive since I''m assuming nobody has had time to eat with all the meetings. Give it ten minutes, and we will be at our destination. There are secure areas for the assistants as well since we don''t expect all negotiations to be finished within a single day."


    The assistants smiled at that. They correctly assumed that Max had prepared sleeping quarters for them in the secure area for the meeting, and they could rx as soon as the meeting started since the Envoys wouldn''t need them for this part of their business.


    It was all about how to deal with the Klem, and the information on their intelligence as a species, which they were still hoping that the Hunters had more data on since they had captured what was assumed to be the leader of that attacking fleet, which was the most coordinated Klem attack that existed in the human records.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Once they left Terminus, they entered one of the high-speed pods, abination of a gravity train car and a Gond, since it followed a single thread of overhead track, which served as a warning to flying species and vehicles to avoid the public transit routes. It was also sized for no more than two dozen people to upyfortably, though you could pack fifty inside if they were human-sized.


    For the first few seconds, the view outside was dark as they passed between levels and through the lower service areas of the ship, but then they passed out into the city from arge fountain lit with underwater strobe lights and spraying water up in a rhythmic pattern.


    "We thought that a regr passageway was too boring, so the transports to the service level all pass through here. I''m told that it can get quite crowded at times but that the decorative design of the pods makes them part of the disy instead of detracting from it.


    I haven''t personally had a chance to see it from the outside yet." Max exined.


    The pod raced over the city, and in only a few minutes, it began to spiral upward toward the next level, passing through the artificial clouds and past the holographic sky to reach the bulkhead between floors and enter the much more utilitarian areas of the ship.


    "We intend to upgrade this eventually, but for now, it''s just the basic structures, and they''repletely unupied since we are the only official political entities aboard the world ship at the moment."


    "I think you greatly underestimated the number of upants that is appropriate for a ship this size." The Valkiaughed.


    "The data said that two million should be enough core staff, but the ship feels incredibly empty with them all in one dense city in the middle. Only one floor is fullypleted with nts and buildings. This level of the ship is pretty much empty other than the shells of buildings in this immediate area.


    It was always going to be one of thest ones finished, but hundreds of kilometres of nothing at all still feel extremely strange, and we just don''t have a source for millions of new upants that wouldn''t cause mass unemployment and cultural chaos.


    Colony Ships among the Reavers usually grow over generations, so we will take in more people as it is convenient until we have the full ship utilized."


    The Valkia was trying very hard not tough at his estimation. It was like saying you would just pick up hitchhikers until you filled a country. Even if you discounted the industrial areas, Absolution had more usable space than an average continent on an M ss habitable.