Chapter 900 900 Studies
Once the cake course was finished and the room started to talk again, Max was surrounded by various Reavers who had plans for how they should expand the influence of the humans through the Alliance.
"Now that we have so many different products to sell, I think that we should limit the number of companies who subcontract for us to make more of our products ourselves. We are primarily a delivery-based culture, so if we make more of the finished products ourselves it's like an in-house shipping agent. We can mark them up enough that we can make a proper profit, and we can meet more and more new species who appreciate our approach to development." One of the Tarith men was suggesting.
"We have already started to renovate our ships so that we can produce more on board. Most of the Reaver ships now have at least one Terraforming Module on board for making everything from living plants to small shuttles, but most of us aren't really equipped for making larger objects that some of the Colonies are requesting.
I know that Absolution has an order on the board for a hundred Cruiser Class luxury cruise ships. That's not something that most Reaver Companies can make on the spot, but when they need overhauls and don't have an Innu handy to do the work, we can bring them the parts and let their ship's engineers do the actual replacement.
The delivery fees are quite worthwhile since we can open our own Portals, so we can get quite the cut off the top. We just need some way to organize it all so that we don't end up stepping on each others' toes." Another of the men agreed.
Max didn't know that they were making a hundred cruise ships for someone, but with some of the orders that he had noticed, it wasn't completely unexpected.
He did have to wonder just how heavily armed the ships would be. All the designs that Absolution had on file were primarily military based, so even if they were retrofitted as cruise ships, they would likely still have much more firepower than the Alliance considered to be normal for a civilian vessel.
"I think that we can set something up. The demand keeps growing, so it's not going to put any of our current partners out if we start offering more direct delivery orders. For smaller items, we can assign them directly to a Company through the base on Rae 5. I will talk to Mary about setting up a load board so that whoever gets the delivery can stock up on raw materials and make the product they're delivering.
Just be sure to get the raw materials from systems that we don't care about. Either far flung Klem-controlled ones, or ones from uninhabited solar systems outside our territory." Max reminded them.
"Don't worry. We have a plan to get all the materials that we need, even for the Alliance's orders. There are entire dead Galaxies out there, with no signs of life. We can use them for resources since nobody is going to want to settle that far from civilization when there is no easy way back home without their own Portal generators." Luke Tarith explained to Max.
"That's not a bad one. If you grab the materials there, nobody will ask questions, the Alliance can't get on us about stripping systems from their materials, as we will have what we need to get out products to market. I think that it's a great idea. We can make humans famous all over the Alliance.
All that really need now are the instructions to make that Cake and we can really start to become legends among the species."
Mary Tarith laughed at that, but the Innu had been just as eager to get the cake as anyone else.
They weren't at this more intimate family gathering, but Max knew from Mary's thoughts that there would be more of the cake to go around at tonight's official birthday celebration. That one would have more of the senior staff, but not all of the Alliance and outside forces. She had made a number of large versions of it for that celebration, and they were currently in a mechanical lock box in her shuttle.
That was the only way to keep them safe from a prying Nico since any and all electronic locks would fall before her in a matter of seconds.
"Now, we've gotten through the most important parts of the day, but we still have one last tradition to follow." Dave announced as he got to his feet.
Everyone in the room began to sing the traditional Kepler Terminus birthday song, usually reserved for kids birthday parties, while Max and Nico laughed.
"Thank you all for coming today. I know there are plenty of forms of entertainment here, so let's get to it."
For Nico that meant going to find the Innu, so that she could work on the new theories that they were developing, but Max found himself quickly carried away to the Arcade with some of the other Commanders.
They had discovered a new Mecha strategy VR game. Not a fighting game, but a combat strategy one where you could develop your civilization through the centuries of Mecha, and pit your small but growing base against other players. It was both strategic and easy to play, while physicality didn't affect it at all.
The players watched the game from above like gods, and they could trash talk to each other as they sent their armies out to do battle.
That was an unusual way to use VR gaming, more like an immersive version of a tablet strategy game, but once Max was inside the simulation, it all felt quite familiar. Leading from the distance in his past life, in the God Machine Gloriana was quite normal.
The most powerful of Mecha stayed in the distance, since their weapons would destroy the entire system if they fought each other. That led to them being nothing but a deterrent for most of their career, with only a few isolated clashes against each other.
Even a single kill of another God Machine would make you a legend, and Max had killed dozens over the centuries. Seeing this now was nearly enough to pull him into a full reminiscence mode, and by the time he recovered, he was already over a minute behind on his development.
[I guess it's time to build a defensive strategy. They're definitely coming for me.] Max chuckled to himself as he arranged his resources and technology development for the task.
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