As promised, Medusa had her affairs in order and was on her way into orbit to reach the arranged transport point within the next fifteen minutes. That sort of enthusiasm in a potential employee wasn’t something you could buy, though Max suspected it was almost entirely due to the presence of her nieces since her additional messages asked three times about how they were doing but didn’t mention her sister at all.

[Commander, we are ready to open the portal.] The traffic control officer reported.

[Perfect, bring her in and have the staff prepare to welcome any other guests that are arriving at the same time. I have seen in the messages we are due to get more than a few new guests from the surrounding systems.] Max replied.

The Cruise Ship was getting full already, but there were still rooms, and some guests would be leaving in the next few days, out of vacation time for the year, so they should be fine as long as they didn’t open too many more unscheduled portals, which many tourists viewed as free standby airfare. If they could get to it and book rooms before it closed, they could piggyback on the portal without having to pay the full energy expenditure to open one to Terminus.

“Everyone, head to your choice of restaurant for lunch. I do hope you two don’t mind watching the girls for me while I go gather Miss Medusa from the docks?” Max asked.

“Of course not. I don’t think we could pry them apart at this point, so there is no harm if you head out for a few minutes on official business.” The Professor agreed.

“In that case, we can order anything we like, right? I want crepes and waffles for lunch.” Sasha joked.

“What is a crepe?” One of the Innu girls asked, unaware of the existence of such a food.

“It’s whipped cream and fruit wrapped in a thin pancake. They’re amazing.” Sasha replied with a big smile.

“That does not sound like a proper lunch. But since it’s a special event, if you all finish your food, I will allow a sweet snack this afternoon.” Lucy sighed.

She could already tell that the human girls led a much less structured life than her own girls, whose life at home had every meal carefully planned for them by a professional nutritionist and their meal schedule set by a time management expert.

Both Max and her husband thought this was a great development since it forced her to lighten up, even a little bit, instead of being the ultimate helicopter parent and an obsessive micromanager. If the Academy was founded and they agreed to stay aboard Terminus with the Professor, the girls might even get to move into a dorm.

They would still have everything planned for them, but they would at least have the hope of making some choices for themselves once they came of age to start formal education.

Max jogged to the landing bays just as his new architect applicant and potential academy headmistress landed and noticed that she was not alone as he had assumed she would be with fifteen minutes’ notice.

There was a slightly younger adult Innu woman with her, as well as four small children.

Max thought for a moment about Innu culture to determine how he should address the group, then realized that it was likely her whole family, not an assistant. The Innu preferred designer children, using advanced genetic engineering, and four out of five of them were female.

One of the children was a boy, or at least, appeared to be one, thanks to the difference in body structure, though they were all wearing matching school uniforms, so they must have been hastily grabbed out of the middle of a lesson.

“Welcome Miss Medusa. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our proposal. This must be your lovely family, is it?” He welcomed them.

“Sort of, but not quite. This is my youngest sister and her children. They were visiting when the call came in, and I simply herded everyone into the ship with their luggage.” She explained.

“Well, we have plenty of room. Come with me, and I will lead you to where the rest of your family is having lunch with my little sisters. We can talk afterward.”

The excited anticipation from the two adults was almost reminiscent of Nico waiting for battle. They knew that it was going to be a big surprise since they hadn’t told Lucy that the rest of them were coming, and they were secretly taking great pleasure in the stress that they were going to cause her.

Their thoughts said that compared to her, the youngest sister was a borderline Tech Nomad, living a free and random lifestyle with her kids. Both sisters apparently made a habit of stressing Lucy’s need for an absolutely rigid structure and made a point of showing up together or five minutes early for appointments.

“How do three sisters end up so wildly different?” Max asked Medusa as they walked out of the bay together.

“Our mother is almost exactly like our sister. We all responded differently to her care. Lucy became her, I buried myself in academia, and Euri here went full rebellious daughter. She didn’t even pick a partner. She had her children designed completely custom from her own genetics.” She explained.

“Oh, this is going to be good then. The girls barely managed to convince your sister that she could be flexible with nutritional guidelines and allow a sweet dessert after lunch. Try not to stress her out too much, she is still a guest of the Terminus Trading Company, and her husband is working on a proposal to do a long-term study of humanity based here aboard the ship.”

“Trust me. It will be fine. What sort of space do you have for me to work with, so I can start making a design for the academy? I have dozens of education-friendly plans already made, but they are all designed for terrestrial use, not to be implemented inside a spaceship.”

“Here are the basic plans for the sector that you will be working with. You will have full access to only human technologies, but you will find that we can be quite versatile, and you can use solid holograms to design multi-use spaces if necessary.” Max offered.

“Carte blanche to design a full facility, as long as it fits in this space? Oh, this will be wonderful. Especially these huge open spaces, what is that, fifty meters tall, and with multiple layers of them stacked up?” She gushed, nearly walking into a wall in her distraction.

“Those are cargo bays at the moment, they all have exits to the outside, but you can feel free to block them if you wish, for safety’s sake. The design identifies the sections that can be safely modified and removed as well, so you can open up multiple floors in some regions instead of integrating them.”

Medusa shook her head. “That would be missing out on the best part of being aboard a Colony Ship. Building the facility as integral to the ship will remind the students where they are while I can use the outer levels to join them.”