[Sir, all the survivors and bodies are accounted for. You may finish your procedures whenever you are ready.] The leader of the search teams informed Max a few minutes later.
[Thank you, search team. The Galen vessel will be underway in only a few minutes.]
Max turned to the survivors, who were all gathered in one cargo bay while the rest of the ship was nearly packed with bodies, and gave them a casual salute.
"It was a pleasure fighting against you today, but it would be better if we don't do that again. The battlefield is clear, and we will now send you on your way. Feel free to perform whichever funeral rites you wish, as once you leave this system, you are no longer our problem." He informed them.
[Nico, can you send this ship underway as soon as we are off? In the general direction that their other vessels fled, so they have a chance of finding out that we didn't slaughter them all or mutilate their corpses.] Max instructed his second in command as he walked back to Cleansing Light.
[On it, Boss. As soon as you and the others depart, I will send it away. It's going to be a bumpy ride, though, the Warp drives are running on backup everything, and their navigation system is totally shot.]
[They can fix their own ship. As long as the warp bubble is stable and they're leaving, it's fine.]
The Line Mecha left first, followed by Cleansing Light crawling out the door, and then the ship went to warp.
The amount of energy bleeding from the ship that was visible to Max's sensors made them look like a homing beacon in space, marking the way for anything that cared to follow them. But the Arisen and the Knife Ears already knew where he was, and they were supposed to be the two biggest threats in the region, so what did it matter if someone followed the path back to him instead of following it to the crippled ship?
As soon as they got the new Line Mecha distributed to the defence force here, there wouldn't be any issues defending against another Galen attack.
Before the cutter was even out of sensor range, one of the Galen's vessels had circled back and taken the crippled ship into its own warp bubble, pulling it away from the battlefield without any messages being sent to the Koleska or the humans.
"Well, that's our message delivered. As long as they talk to the survivors, that is. Now, let's get to finalizing any changes we need to make to the Line Mecha design for first-run production and send that Destroyer back to Uncle Lu." Max instructed.
The old man was going to love them for this. The Galen technology was completely different than what they were used to, and there was a good chance that he would be able to learn something new which could be used to improve the next generation of human vessels.
They might even have other useful technologies on board, which Max was sure Nico was searching for now, as she was still on board the Destroyer, despite the fact that it should be abandoned.
[Have you found what you needed?] Max messaged her.
[I've almost got it all. There was a lot of stuff in here and more trackers from more species than I would have suspected. I get the feeling that the Galen have pissed off half the Universe at this point, and they're living on the run. Just let me finish with this last tracker, and I'll have all the data transferred.] Nico replied.
Hopefully, she didn't miss anything. They were all alien programs, so there might be something that she wasn't familiar with, and it could potentially infect their own ship.
[You're not sending it to Light of Truth, are you?] Max asked.
[No, I made a whole box of data sticks when I saw what was in the computers here. I've gotten over fifty thousand terabytes of data so far. It's practically a library, just for me. Plus, it's almost all on the lost species of this region, the ones that the Arisen wiped out or the Darklings farmed into extinction.]
That really could be useful. Not so much for them personally, as the technology had already proven ineffective at deterring the Arisen, but as development material.
The humans were becoming an economic powerhouse in the Alliance based on the utility of their patents, so if Uncle Lu and his team could make a few dozen cool new things which were totally different from how the rest of the Alliance made them, it could be enough to propel the entire species into a life of luxury.
By Alliance standards, they were a small group, only one Galaxy, and they didn't even control it all or populate all the inhabitable planets they had found. The revenues that they would collect from a number of useful patents could renovate every planet that the species had and hire Alliance Contractors to do it.
[Alright, I'm done. I have battle logs as well. It looks like they probably won't give up on attacking us. They're a bit like those Holy Light zealots back home, too dumb to realize their zealotry is getting them killed.
They attacked us because they had data that the Darklings didn't attack us, so they decided that we were one of the Evil Species, as they call them, and wanted to wipe us out before we spread.]
Max resisted the urge to facepalm and took a few deep breaths before answering Nico.
[If they thought that we were an evil species, why were they so surprised when the Darklings showed up and started to capture them?] He asked.
[Well, from what I can see, the leader of the armada didn't tell any of his subordinates why they were here, only that we were an enemy of the noble species. They attacked because those were their orders, not because they had any idea what was likely to happen to them if they lost.]
Max shook his head at the stupidity of attacking blind without any sort of reconnaissance other than a few pilfered battle reports.
[And where is that leader now?] He asked.
[He should have been on this Destroyer somewhere. I've been searching for his hiding hole because he certainly wouldn't let himself be captured so easily, but I don't see anything. Not even with my sensors.]
[Just vent the atmosphere back into whatever storage they use for it. If any pockets remain, you'll find the hiding spot. Or the leader's storage will run out, and they'll suffocate. Both are fine by me.] Max suggested.
[Give me an hour and I'll have the ship fully searched.]
New n𝙤vel chapters are published on f(r)e𝒆webn(o)vel.com