The city was swept clear of the Volga defence forces for the next twenty hours. Everyone who was found to belong to the remains of a government agency or military force was brought to the yard of the Capital Building to wait and ensure that there were no ongoing hostilities in the city, and boredom set in for the Mecha forces in the Capital.
Max learned over the course of that day that the Volga, for all of the arrogance of their leaders, were strictly Caste based in nature and were mostly incapable of disobeying their superiors, much like many insect species.
That made their job easier, as the civilians recognized the humans as the leadership caste once the planets had fallen, and most of the requested personnel willingly turned themselves in, while the citizenry turned in those who tried to resist their nature or the right of the humans to rule over them.
From Max's count, there were fewer than ten thousand civilian casualties out of over a hundred million in the city, mostly those who were in buildings near the edge of the city which were demolished in the fighting.
With nothing to do but wait for others to make a decision, Max had a lot of time to think about what sort of evolutionary path and political leadership might have led to such an intriguing species. A strictly caste-based species normally wouldn't attempt to take over others, as they couldn't fit into the hierarchy, but the Volga did.
He had used his hacking skills and the assistance of a Volga Sergeant, who had asked him during the initial conflict about their likely future, to obtain most of the historical data that the species possessed, but he hadn't had time to make sense of it yet.
He had sent a copy to Mary Tarith, though she had the Alliance Envoys with her as advisors for the negotiation and likely wouldn't need it.
The city lights had gone from dim to bright again, marking morning for those in interior areas which didn't get much natural light when the final decree was passed down.
[As of this moment, the Command Caste of the Volga has surrendered to the Humans, represented by the Reaver Trade Group.
Governance of the Volga planets has been assigned to Alliance arbiters, which will govern and collect reparations on behalf of the Humans to prevent the genocide of the Volga people.
The Eternal Volga Empire is now part of the Reaver Trade Group in law and fact, and the Command Caste has agreed to give up their hereditary positions as the head of Volga society. Accordingly, they will not be returning to the Volga planets, and all correspondence for them may be directed to the Alliance arbiters who will make up the region's new government.
Please find attached the full details of the agreement.]
The document was over a thousand pages long and no doubt drafted by the Giants on the Alliance legal team to be foolproof and without loopholes to get out of their obligations, but Max had one serious question about how this agreement came to be. He had dealt with the Volga Politicians, and he couldn't see any way that they would have accepted these terms.
[How did you get them to agree to that? Did someone use a System Function to convince them that we were the superior ruling Caste of their species or something?] Max asked Mary Tarith.
[Of course not. I mean, we tried, but their minds couldn't accept it. When my husband activated the Talent to convince them that we were rightfully in charge so that we could smooth over the negotiations, they went insane and started attacking everyone.
Currently, there are only four surviving members of the Command Caste, and they have been relocated to an Alliance vessel for recovery from mental trauma.]
That was interesting news. Nobody ever talked about the sort of skills that Father Tarith had, and the man himself was basically a ghost, appearing and disappearing at random and without explanation. Mind control skills were fairly heavily regulated within Kepler back when it was a cohesive Empire, but the problem had always been proving that they had been used.
If he had a skill that convinced people that his words were the truth, coupled with whatever he used to hide his presence, it was no wonder that Mary Tarith had such an easy time convincing everyone to put her in charge of everything.
System Functions weren't infallible, though, and if she wasn't actually good at it, his suggestions wouldn't last long, and she would have been ousted from leadership long ago, but their combination of capabilities seemed to be unstoppable once they got going.
[All is well that ends well, I suppose. The Volga population here on the planet seems to be quite agreeable once you get past the racial superiority complex. Showing up in their front yard with a Titan Class Mecha did a pretty good job of that for us here in the Capital, so I don't think that we will have to be too hard on them. Just collect some taxes and see what sort of useful technology they have that isn't plagiarized Alliance tech.] Max agreed.
[About that. I don't think that we are going to get much usable tech from them. It's all plagiarized. Most of it is a direct ripoff of foreign patents, and the ones we interrogated knew virtually nothing about Volga development efforts other than the ships that they sent to analyze foreign tech.] Mary responded.
[I will ask around. The people here don't have much reason to lie to me.]
Max equipped his helmet and climbed out of Cleansing Light to talk to the surviving officers of the Capital defence force.
"Good morning, gentlemen. The Arbiters and the negotiation team in orbit had a few questions that the former leaders couldn't or wouldn't answer for us. We wanted to know about the research and development teams that the planet is most proud of, but we didn't understand their answers very well." Max greeted a group of Sergeants and junior officers at the edge of the prisoner camp.
"Oh, the ships. You should see them. They are quite impressive. State-of-the-art analysis technology and a cloaking field that not even the Alliance can easily see through." One of the officers answered.
"Yes, they are quite impressive. But what about here on the planet? What sort of unique advancements do you produce just from the Volga's ingenuity?" Max asked.
"We don't really do that here. The Volga assimilate. Like Jordie, we bring things that are the most useful into our fold and assign them their place." The officer answered, but his thoughts said that he wasn't entirely sure what Max meant by ingenuity.
"Jordie was assimilated?" Max asked, just as confused as the officer was.
"Yes. Most of our ancestors were, but Jordie is new. He was born as a Beila, but with the appropriate genetic treatment, he has become a wonderful Volga."
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