Max knew instantly that the technician had scored a critical hit. The only thing better in the Planetary Leader's mind than having a unique vessel for his wife was an entire line of Spaceships dedicated to her, so there was a chance that one day she would be relaxing poolside and see a vessel in her honor land nearby.
"I will prepare to sign the contract and transfer the necessary funds. Please understand that this amount of credits will take some time." He agreed, placing his thumb on the document as a tentative agreement.
Slowly, everyone filed out of the bay, satisfied that the show was over and unwilling to beg for a copy of the luxury shuttle when Lord Governor Moop was dropping half a trillion credits to have a custom Cutter designed for his wife to get to her vacation home.
Max retreated to the design room to see what they were planning, only to find the Technicians laughing so hard they were crying.
"What's the joke? I wasn't paying attention to your thoughts." Max asked.
"I just mentioned that since this is being designed and built on Terminus that we are entitled to a ten percent cut of the gross price for our efforts. Fifty Billion credits are more than our entire families will make in their entire life, and we will have his ship ready in a month if he doesn't object to too many of our designs."
She had a point. They were spending so much time renovating a nearly derelict ancient yacht for the stream, but here they were building a brand new Cutter for a Planetary Governor, with a profit large enough for them to buy every member of their team a brand new replacement for their vessel at full retail cost.
"Someone once told me that once you get enough of it, money doesn't matter anymore. I think that's the feeling that you're having now. So, what are you going with?" Max asked.
"Well, his species likes things that look like trees. They live in hollowed trees that they bioengineer back on their home planet. It's not the most conventional design sense, but I think that species like the Shin will love it when we are done.
We could even add dirt floors for the Shin, with a secondary containment barrier, so the dirt wouldn't be disturbed in the event of sudden impacts.
The Dryaa like nature, but they're clean freaks, so no dirt floors for the Lord Governor. Instead, we will have it in polished wood with a hardened enamel coating. The alliance doesn't use anything like it, but we found it all over human wood products."
Max watched as the screens all over the room went crazy as ten Innu and Nico all started making custom ship designs at the same time, modifying the hull to look like various trees and altering the interior to look like the interior of the plant.
"What about this one from our homeworld? It's actually a fern, not a tree, though." Max suggested, showing them a picture of a Kepler Palm tree.
"Not bad. The layered bark can be windows to look out of without disrupting the flow of the exterior." One of the Innu agreed, making a quick alteration to her design, while the others shook their heads, happy with what they had come up with.
The Lord Governor hadn't even made it to his room when the first designs came into his communicator, and he began to run so that he could examine the first drafts to see what they were after.
Six had aspects of trees, while the other four had the classically elegant lines of his planet's ocean-faring yachts.
He ended up picking one of the boat-like designs, but with a few alteration requests to make the interior more like the natural-themed ones they had designed, causing the race to design to begin all over again.
Max had forgotten how competitive both Nico and the Innu Nomads could get when it came to technology, and they were betting on whose design would win each round of the design phase.
Nico won the next round, and the Lord Governor declared it absolutely perfect in form, not wanting any more changes cosmetically.
Then they moved onto the furniture and flooring and lighting until it was morning, and they had gone through forty enthusiastic revisions with the Dryaa man, who was now sitting in their design lab to save the time of relaying his instructions.
"I knew that having the Innu design a custom Yacht would be a marvelous idea, but these human designs, how do you come up with them?" He asked, waving his hands as he watched the virtual walkthrough that they had prepared for him.
"Most of them are based on ancient human vessels and animals of some sort. Like that curved sink, it is the shape of a shellfish species on one of our worlds. Lovely, isn't it?" Nico asked.
"How long will it take now that we have a design finalized? It's only a little over six months to my anniversary." He asked.
"Honestly, since we designed it in-house with your help, we can directly port it to the constructor using existing Terminus Trading Company drive technology and software. We could make it this morning before the main tests are set to begin, and then we will just have to fine-tune, and flight test it before delivery." Nico explained.
"Fine tune? Didn't we already adjust the hull shape for smoother Warp Bubble activation?" he asked.
"We did, but that is theoretical. Sometimes manufacturing tolerances mean that it isn't as seamless as intended. Since the basic hull is based on a proven design, we can skip the destructive testing and move straight on to the tuning.
Max was startled to fully awake when he realized that everyone was looking at him for permission.
"Fine, I will cancel all tests and meetings scheduled for today. Finish your custom order, and keep it hush-hush. I don't want the others badgering us for custom runabouts on a single-day turnaround schedule." Max agreed.
"Excellent plan. We can pretend that it was one of the clients' private yachts. Nobody will know any better when we do the flight tests." Nico agreed.
"Good. Now, I am going to bed. Your enthusiasm is wearing me out." Max informed them after sending a message that the custom ship design process was taking up so much of the team's time that today's meetings and demonstrations were canceled.
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