Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

Once Max's meetings with the Envoys were finished, he rejoined the other two at the viewscreen to watch the perpetual light show in the atmosphere of the planet below them. It looked like the world was celebrating something, though there weren't actually any life forms in the incredibly toxic acid that made up the majority of the planet's atmosphere.

"This is a really pretty spot. I didn't even know that such places could exist, but here, there is a whole planet full of fireworks for no reason other than that the planet got hit by an asteroid in the past that introduced an imbalance in its composition. Even though I'm going to have to write a report on this later, I don't regret stopping to see it at all." Annabelle informed him as he entered the room.

"Well, at least you understand that you aren't getting off without writing up a report. It looks like you've taken a lot of notes for it as well, so I will be expecting a good one." Max agreed.

The group watched in silence for another half hour while Max snacked on the various treats that Nico had set out on a coffee table for them, and then he finally got the motivation to get back on track.

"Say goodbye to the planet of fireworks. We're off to a black-market trading station to look for signs of the Klem pods and to make a bit of a name for the humans within this region of the Alliance." Max reminded them.

Well, mostly, he reminded Annabelle since Nico was already getting the preparations for the next leg of their journey calculated and prepared.

This leg of the journey would be much more heavily populated, with busy shipping lanes, regular interstellar travellers, and a number of portal locations, so they would have to drop their speed to avoid attracting attention. Warp ten or higher pleasure yachts and government vessels weren't exactly unheard of, but they weren't available to the sort of people who would come visit a sketchy space station known for its trade in questionable goods.

Max had considered just making the journey at high speed and dropping it for the very last leg into the station once he was close to their sensor range, but there was so much traffic that the chances of someone who had scanned them along the way stopping in and saying something was too high for comfort.

So, instead, they would be going at a comfortable warp eight. It was fast for a civilian vessel, but not insanely so, and it would only attract a little envy from those who saw the pristine vessel that they appeared to be.

"Do we have the containment shielding for the Antimatter weapons ready? This should be the first test for it, and I would like to see if an Alliance space station can see through it to detect the heaviest weapons on board." Max asked Nico as the ship began to leave its layover point.

"They should be up and running soon. I got some good data from the Blarg ships, and I think a small tweak is in order so that we fully fool the station. If it works correctly, then we should be able to hide most of the ship's primary energy weapons from their scans as well. The Orbital Lance is easily disguised as a Gravity Beam, but it isn't going to be easy to convince anyone that the Ion Cannons are anything but an offensive weapon."

Max chuckled. Their ship was armed to the teeth. There was no way that they could hide it all. But they wanted to look more like cautious travellers and not a military attack vessel. A handful of Ion Cannons shouldn't be too much of a distraction, as they were a shorter-range weapon usually dedicated to defensive actions when deployed on space vessels.

It was the Thunder Gun, currently disguised as a sensor array, and the Antimatter Torpedoes, that would cause the greatest concern, as either of them would be capable of taking out a Cutter in only a few shots.

This leg was only a few hours at warp eight, so they didn't lose a huge amount of time, but Nico still had to send out over fifty routing messages to avoid near misses with other vessels in the region. The freighters were notorious for not filing their flight plans and simply following their customary routes, so anyone who wasn't a local had to guess where they were and where they were headed at any given point in time.

It was a great relief when they reached the portion of space controlled by the space station and were guided into its docking pattern to await an airlock.

[Terminus Trading Company Private Vessel Santa Maria, you are clear to dock at hangar seven for internal parking] The staff informed them after nearly an hour of holding in position.

"You named the ship after your mother?" Max asked and got a wink from Nico in return.

"Did you want to explain to her why we still didn't have a ship or even a Mecha named after her?"

No, he did not.

"At least it's a good name, easy to pronounce." He told her with a smile that made Annabelle give them both a confused look.

She didn't know much about Nico's mom, only that she presumably did have one, so the inside joke about the lively and overbearing Reaver made no sense to her.

Nico moved the ship into position and entered the hangar, which was suspiciously clear of all other vessels, despite the busy nature of the station.

Max listened closely to the thoughts of the nearby security staff to see what was going on and make sure that they weren't going to be ambushed or robbed while they were there. The first minute or so was all business, just making sure they were docked and that the ship's hull was properly cleared of contaminants, followed by a quick inspection of the ship's equipment to make sure it wasn't a hazard to the station.

None of that was surprising, but what followed was. They had suffered a Klem attack on the station after a vessel with contraband biomass had dripped on the exterior of the station and small but vicious bugs had burrowed inside.

They definitely had the information that he needed, and he just had to convince them that Santa Maria was no more than a slightly over geared company vessel.