For the next few days Max answered a constant stream of messages from their Alliance observers, who seemed to be curious about all things human.

Their Commander wouldn’t give them clearance to come visit Terminus even after a few rooms opened up after the parents of the new students began to head home, but Nico did send them the replicator program for a variety of human foods that they could teach to their own computers so that they could form a proper opinion of human cuisine.

Max thought it was a bit ridiculous that they wouldn’t even send over a few members, but it was their security chief’s choice to keep themselves quarantined. They weren’t exactly hiding from anyone, but they could do their job from either ship, as long as Terminus kept sending them data.

It was hard to hate a person whose cooking you liked, and one thing that the Alliance sorts all had in common was a love for human cooking. So Nico was allowed to keep sending them any sort of data thta they were looking for, and even more irrelevant data, if she thought it would make them happy.

The steady progress of the terraforming continued day after day, until the planet was actually starting to look like what they had assumed its origninal appearance had been. Blue waters, lush green foliage, rich soil, replenished ore deposits and much more had gone into what they had originally planned as a very minor overhaul.

They couldn’t very well call it a day as soon as the bare minimum was done when they had so many people watching them, either with high hopes for their future, or looking for the smallest slip up to use against them in the future.

The leader of the Observation vessel was beginning to get smart to their tactics though and had instructed their staff not to take bribes from the humans, even if they were selling them as research materials.

The edict caused no end of confusion among the ranks. The humans provided them with a huge amount of data on many different topics. What would be considered a bribe, and what would be legitimate research material, provided as per the terms of their working agreement?

“This is getting ridiciulous. Half of my staff has developed a mild human fetish, and the rest are too busy sampling new foods to actually do their job and determine how far the humans are along the path to civilization.” The Commander bemoaned while his Illithid advisor was in a mental link with Max.

“You’re just looking too deeply into it. If you take a step back and look at the big picture, we are vetting more areas of society than we have for any species in the past. Not even the Hunters have been judged on their cuisine before, but the humans have been.

Admittedly, they aren’t at a level where they have interplanetary conflict among their species controlled, much less a firm grasp on a Galaxy, as many believe should be a prerequisite for admittance, but they are coming close to the level that the Hunters were at when they signed their first agreement with us.” The Illithid informed him, hiding his smile behind the emotionless mask of his environmental suit.

With no clear answer, the Commander turned his attention back on the archaeological digs that the humans and hunters were doing via drones while the planet was terraformed.

They were being careful not to damage the historical ruins, which was a good sign, but there was something unnatural about these ruins that set the Commander’s mind on edge. Like the Hunters, he had heard the legends of an ancient advanced species, predating their own by a million years or more, but unlike them , he thought it was a myth, and he hadn’t been made privy to the statues made of the strange material that they had found on the surface.”

“Commander, I have reason to believe that the humans have been hiding technological advances from the Alliance to make themselves look less dangerous and less evolved than they really are.” One of the researchers decleared, barging into his office with a file folder in his hands.

Just the fact that he had made a hard copy in case the digital copy was tampered with was enough to raise eyebrows among the many specialists in the room when he arrived, but the words coming out of his mouth were more like stating the obvious than a reason to party crash a high level meeting.

“Why don’t you try telling us something that we don’t already know?” One of the advisors suggested.

“Fine, how about this. They can perfectly replicate and detect Alliance cloaking technology, but they have chosen not to obtain licenses to use it, in favor of making their own? Or the fact that their new generation of Materials Modificiation devices are very close to the true subatomic manipulation level, where the only restrictions on their production wil be the number of atomic components available?” The scientist continued.

“Man, they went over that in a podcast like a week ago. You’ve got to do better than that if you are going to barge into a command meeting.”

“How can you all be so calm about a brutal species like the humans being so close to the technological level that could wipe out entire Star systems in a single days?” He asked.

“They can do that as well. We have confirmation from the Illithid and the Hunters that humans have weapons of war that can sterlize or destroy entire planets or destabilize stars. In fact we have some top secret footage of them breaking open a Class A Biohazardous planetoid with an excessive attack.” The Commander sighed, wondering if the level of secrets necessary to avoid causing a public panic was actually doing more harm to his work than good.

“If you want to spare yourself the trauma, I have seen it in the mind of the Illithid that travels with and observes them. That individual appears to be a defector, placing his loyalty with the humans and not the Alliance, but he was very forthcoming and helpful when asked about humanity, so the situation might be misunderstood.” The Illithid advisor informed him then ushered the gatecrasher out of the room.