One of the assistants, who were discretely out of the way at the back of the room, stepped forward with a data tablet in his hands and placed it in front of Max with a bow.
"We took the liberty of preparing an arrangement in advance. This should be the details of the agreement to provide a batch of learning devices to our students, as well as the limitations on usage and the agreement to destroy the devices should the agreement end prematurely." The Education Minister eagerly explained as Nico went over the details of the agreement on the tablet.
Their data tablets were a bit odd, shaped to fit in the user's hand instead of being a flat rectangular object as most species preferred. They also responded to all touch since the Koleska's outer shell wasn't as adept at transferring an electrical charge as human skin was, so the usual touch screen technology wouldn't work for them.
That wasn't too unusual, though. The Alliance standard units were the same way, and some species had problems using the human ones and had to either use a glove or, in the case of the Shin, their leaves, to type on them.
"It all looks good. There are no obvious loopholes or doublespeak in it, and the terms are acceptable." Nico informed him after a few seconds.
"You can read it that fast?" The Minister asked, shocked at the speed that Nico came to her decision with.
"It's a particular talent of mine to rapidly access digital devices. I can read much faster using a data tablet than I can speak, so the mere fifty pages of the document were no struggle for me, even though they are in Koleska, and my grasp of the language isn't perfect yet, so I had to double-check a few passages." Nico responded.
"These two adapted to our language so fast that we never even learned the basics of their language. Even their representatives that arranged the first deal to help defend the Anomaly chose to use the written form of Koleska for the agreement, as they found it much easier to learn our language than we did to learn theirs." Commander Yuri informed the Minister with the buzzing of chitin plates that was the local equivalent of a smile.
"Such an interesting phenomenon. I had thought it was a result of their learning machines, but if none of them knew the language to begin with, that wouldn't be possible, would it?" The Education Minister asked.
"No, we had to learn it manually, but we will provide the data to the next group so that they will be ready when they arrive. They won't be able to make the chitin noises the way that Nico can, so their speech will seem emotionless, but they should be able to speak with you from the start.
Now, how many students do you have? I didn't read the agreement myself, so I don't know how many sets you need." Max replied.
"Four hundred in total is the graduating class. We could do them in batches since the process is so fast, so one hundred would be sufficient for the purpose, but four hundred would be optimal."
Nico nodded that he was telling the truth as written in the agreement, then tapped the device like she needed to access it to check something.
"The total materials needed will be five hundred kilograms of any form of dense metal. Our technology can work with a wide variety of materials to create what we need." Nico reminded them.
"Understood. It will be waiting at your vessel by the time that you return. We have recently harvested an asteroid that was rich in heavy metals, so there are plenty of them to spare here on the station. It is somewhat of a relief that your technology is compatible with our resource-gathering efforts. If we had needed to gather every material to manufacture the devices, I fear that it might have taken us weeks to make them all." The Education Minister chuckled.
"Do your devices not make raw materials as well? Ours is capable of transmutation for the purpose of providing materials to artisans who wish to create a unique piece by hand. It is a bit of a status symbol among our people to have a handcrafted item instead of a mass-produced one." Nico asked.
The Koleska looked confused. "Our Template Constructor only makes duplicates of items that already exist. They are a relic technology that we discovered, not one that we created ourselves. So we can create what is programmed into them, and we have limited abilities to add new items to the list, but that is the extent of it. We can't just change raw materials into other raw materials."
That explained a lot about their technology in combat. They were working with what was available to them, not tailoring their equipment to the enemy that they were facing. If there were options, they picked the best one, but they could only create certain things quickly, and the rest needed to be conventionally manufactured.
Max could sense Nico's mind wandering through the station's computer to get a closer look at the devices in question, in case it was something that she could learn from or trade information about, but Max was more interested in how fast he could get their soldiers up to survival level training, and how long they had before the next major attack in the region that they were assigned.
The deal that they had made with the human negotiators said that the defence force provided didn't need to leave this solar system since they were defending the Anomaly, not the entire Koleska empire, so there was a chance that they might get a longer break, but that also meant that the other regions would be taking all the attacks, and more of the graduates from here would need to be transferred out to replace their losses.
Nico had found the device, and she relayed the design to Max mentally with great amusement. It was a Template Constructor of a design that they had seen in the Alliance.
Well, in the Alliance Museum, obsolete and outdated by half a million years. It could only use certain heavy metals as a source, and it could only reproduce certain preprogrammed items made of a limited array of elements. It was only marginally better than the manufacturing techniques that humans were using before they got ahold of the Replicators, and in some ways, it was even more limited.
They would make a killing trading advanced tech to the Koleska, but it was better that they waited to see how things were going for the species so that the tech didn't end up in the hands of the Arisen, who didn't need any more advantages.
This content is taken from (f)reewe(b)novel.𝗰𝗼𝐦