The Commander of the lead ship out of the Destroyer pair contacted Max as soon as the battle was over.
[Commander Keres, do you require our presence for the immediate future?] The Commander asked, with a polite tone to his voice.
[I believe we will. If you can start producing a number of Terraforming Drones, I believe that the Koleska will appreciate it, as I haven't seen signs of their ability to mitigate this level of planetary destruction.
I will take care of the negotiations and the rest, but having you two stationed here for at least the rest of the day will help set their minds at ease.]
[Understood. We will call for additional forces to the Anomaly and remain here on Station until we are relieved.]
The man was entirely too serious. But it was a Cygnus military ship, so Max should have expected that to some extent. Unlike the General and Uncle Lu's laissez-faire attitude to military discipline, the experience that most other Command Officers had as they went through the ranks was a very different one.
So, they became the strict and professional military officers that the military needed them to be, while Max became a Reaver Commander at an age when most of them had never been on a Capital Class ship before.
Nico brought Santa Maria to pick them both up, and Max could sense her determination to ensure that Shattered Pride had some form of Warp travel capability before the next fight. That was not a feature possible for a Super Heavy Mecha when it was designed, but since then, she had mastered the art to an extent where even torpedos could generate an unstable but functional Warp Field.
That ability would have prevented her from taking a lot of damage in the first attack, where she was too slow to dodge the entire beam. She had gotten far enough to survive, but the ship wasn't targeting her. If it had been, she would probably be space dust right now, and it annoyed her more than she was willing to admit, even to herself.
Commander Yuri didn't wait on niceties or the little details and flew his War Machine directly to Santa Maria to talk to Max after the battle, with the hope that he would be able to fit the machine inside.
[Come on in, Commander. We saw you coming, and we have made space in the hangar for you.] Nico informed him as Max crouched Cleansing Light against the wall to perform his post-battle diagnostics.
Shattered, Pride was laid out on a repair rack, but that still left enough room for the twenty-metre-tall Mecha that Commander Yuri was piloting to walk in the bay door and park. After all, they needed the floor space for Cleansing Light to lay flat should she require extensive limb repairs.
Commander Yuri jumped out as soon as he was securely parked, and his frantic thoughts were enough to tell Max that today's battle was more than the Koleska could deal with on their own, even before they settled enough for him to form a coherent train of thought on the matter.
"I suspect that you require additional assistance. I have already asked the Destroyer Class vessels to prepare some Terraforming Drones for the planet. They will be able to stabilize the atmosphere in a matter of days and should be able to bring the surface of the continent back to fully habitable within weeks.
The planet doesn't need a huge amount of work, just repair from the attack. Unfortunately, we won't be able to help with the loss of life, but if you wish, we can have them construct a monument to the tragedy." Max informed him before the Koleska leader could speak.
Yuri smoothed the intricately decorated red cloth hanging from his shoulders and clasped his hands together in front of him. That was a gesture that Max hadn't seen from them before, and the Commander's thoughts identified it as a begging gesture, not a form of prayer.
"Anything you can do to save my homeworld, I will repay your people tenfold if necessary. Our Terraforming technology is amazing, but it was never intended to be an emergency repair device for already inhabited planets. We use a full planetary array with our Template Constructors to fully reform a planet. It's the only way we can do it, and the whole planet would need to be abandoned, like the other in the system, and we no longer have anywhere to move so many people."
Two abandoned planets in one solar system would not only look bad on their record, it would leave only the moon and the Station inhabited, which would likely be enough for the Koleska to abandon the whole system as a loss to the Arisen Army.
For Commander Yuri, who was from the planet below them, that would be a tragedy as great as the loss of life.
He was the Commander in charge of Defence. How could he accept his homeworld being declared uninhabitable under his watch?
"I assure you that we can stabilize the atmosphere, but there will be large areas without any homes on them, where the Volcanoes have destroyed everything, and some areas like the Capital, which we will have to rebuild from scratch if you want them back.
Is there a blueprint or a technical map that we could use to recreate the city?" Max asked.
Yuri shook his head.
"The Capital was built manually before the time of the Template Constructors and only renovated afterward. There is no template for it, only the data files for the city streets and some records of government buildings renovations."
Max looked at Nico, who was deep in thought about the upgrades and repairs needed for her Mecha and sighed.
"The people of the Capital are gone. Do you think that planetary Command will want a whole new Captial built there?" Max asked.
Yuri nodded. "It is how we are. We don't just want it. We will need it. None of the other cities on the continent are capable of taking up the role, even if they survived. Do you have numbers on the survival? I would need to return to the Station to get ours."
That caught Nico's attention, and she brought them up on a screen along the wall next to the Koleska Commander.
"Forty-two percent casualties for the continent as a whole, one hundred percent in the Capital region, and an average of seventeen percent loss of infrastructure in the other cities. The population density of the Capital and the loss of a few towns built along the volcanic mountains skewed the overall numbers. Most of the Continent will remain habitable once the air is clear." She informed them.
It was blunt and perfunctory, but it was just what the Commander needed to help wrap his mind around the data.
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