Eventually, they did get them to a storage bay so that Nico could begin the demonstrations, including fitting them all with individual suits of augmentic armor, “a small signing incentive,” as she put it, and theirs to keep.

Just like Max did when they were first testing it, the Canis team punched an armor plate with the augments off and then again with them enabled.

“Oh, this is good. But can we fix the helmet? It’s crushing my ears.” Rill complained.

“Sorry, they were made for my style of ears. Hand me the helmets for a second, and I will reconfigure them all.”

Nico made a pair of raised ridges on top so that the ears would be mostly flat to the head but not squished by the helmet and relocated the earbuds so that they would still be able to hear properly.

“How is that?”

“Perfect. And I can hear properly too. Are there speakers inside the helmet?” Rill asked.

“Yes, they also have radios built in, so you can communicate with each other over long distances without alerting anything around you. The power packs will last for over a month of continual use before needing to be recharged, but we will make sure that you have chargers if your current power supply isn’t compatible.

Over here, we have the Replicators, which made that barbecued brisket that I brought for lunch, and they’re easy to use. Just enter the menu option you want and hit start.” Nico explained.

“What else would it need to make?” One of the guards asked, confused about the nature of the machine.

“Ribs, fried wings, roasts, pulled pork, baked beans, cake, pie. You know, the essentials.”

“Cake? It makes Cake and meat?” The guard asked, with his ears perked straight up and his tail going mad behind him.

Rill looked at him and then at Nico’s smirk. “We are terrible at negotiations, aren’t we? We can smell and sense lies, so it’s not something that we think about much, but the tail is a dead giveaway when we are excited or in trouble.”

“That’s one of your more endearing traits and why we aren’t trying to make things difficult for you. An honest leader is a good thing, and if your tail tells on you every time you try to hide something, that’s even better for the people.” Max told her.

“Since you don’t want to make our life hard, what can you give us for access to our game species?” Rill asked.

“I will offer you one industrial Materials Printer for each major city, plus one Commercial Replicator for each city, plus two personal units for the leadership team to use themselves, plus additional payments for every beast hunted.”

The Canis thought about it for a while before they all decided that it was a good enough deal for them.

“There is one more thing. Many Reaver groups might want to hire soldiers from your planet since they are so strong. If you agree to that, we can work out details for Mercenary or Guard work off the planet so that nobody tries to cheat your people in the future.”

“Leaving Canis? I suppose a few youngsters might want to, but I am not sure they’ll find many takers once we have the brisket maker.” Ramba shrugged, looking at the Replicator.

“It makes cake too.” One of the guards reminded him.

“It can make basically any sort of food. You still have a Hunter on the planet, right? They are familiar with the technology, and they can show you many things to eat if you forget.” Max reminded them.

“Ignore the idiots. They would live off of a good brisket alone if their body didn’t need any extra nutrition.” Rill told him with a shake of her head.

“What is the purpose of the Materials Printers?” She asked.

“When it is given the basic materials, it can make almost anything that you are familiar with. These are one of the older pattern units, so you need the actual minerals for metallic objects, but for cloth and other organic materials, it can recombine them out of any form of plant life.” Max explained.

“Can it make me a new knife? This one has a cracked blade.” One of the guards asked.

“Put it on the tray there. It is a scanner to duplicate simple objects without needing to program a new file.” Nico explained.

The Materials Printer scanned the blade, and Nico made a few tweaks to remove the crack and the nicks in the blade and then went to the pile of ore to grab a few lumps of metal and a bundle of cloth.

She placed them on the ground in the feed area of the Materials Printer and then selected to make a dozen copies with simple leather sheathes, one for everyone in the entourage.

“Here you go. I don’t know how well you usually keep your blades, but this might be the sharpest one you’ve ever owned.” Nico informed him.

The man took his glove off and dragged the blade across the top of his hand, watching the hair fall to the ground.

One of the women picked up a blade and put on a small monocle, looking over the blade with the scanning device before putting it back in its holder.

“Monomolecular edge, with a strengthened molecular bond. That is stronger than anything that exists in nature.” She informed the leaders.

“Your technology can do things like that?” Rill asked in surprise, visibly warming up to all the new toys that they were being offered.

“Technically, that device is yours. We have already come to an agreement, even if we didn’t put it on paper yet.” Nico pointed out.

“I like it. But can it make guns?” The big woman asked.

“Laser rifles, Ion Cannons, Plasma Rifles, a variety of explosives, it all depends on what you can get for raw materials.”

“Hmm, we don’t mine much, but we do a little bit of it for our weapons. I will have to see what we have available. Can you program something simple?”

Nico pondered for a moment and then grabbed a large piece of wood and placed it on the feed side of the Printer.

“This is a combination unit, lousy for making food, but it can recombine organic matter when needed, like this fully organic polymer Laser Rifle, with Organically grown Crystals.”

Nico plugged it into a charging port for a moment and then tapped at her watch, bringing down a targeting dummy from the upper-level storage, delivered by drone.

“Give it a try. It’s only charged for a couple of shots so far, but it holds a hundred in total, and you can make it out of any organic matter.”

Rill picked up the weapon and aimed at the dummy, blasting it with three quick shots, all to the heart before the weapon was empty again.

“How reliable are they? Are they tough?”

“They’re reliable in the short term, not so much in the long term, but they’re cheap and easy to make. It is hard to make them fail without breaking them, but in the end, they’re just fancy plastic. If anything with claws gets at them, they’re done for. But if they do get broken, just put the pieces together as well as you can and add a bit more organic material in the printer to repair them.” Nico explained.

“If they’re beyond that point, just put the broken bits in the feeder, and you can use them as part of the materials for a new one,” Max added.

“I like it. The Perpetual Laser Rifle. Infinitely recyclable.” Rill laughed.

The design was also prone to overheating if you went crazy with the shooting, and the organic crystals degraded rapidly with use, but since they could also be conventionally made out of chemically altered plant oils, they were a staple among planetary guards even before the advent of the Replicators and Organic Materials Printers.