With their business done, Absolution opened another immense portal, leading the way for Terminus and the Alliance observation vessel to follow her through to Cygnus territory.

The shock and panic on the communications channels when Nico led the ship through first were more than worth the expended energy, in her opinion, and it would leave a lasting memory with the new workers.

These were more her sort of people as well. Rough and rowdy blue-collar workers, many of whom had spent the majority of their lives on ships and understood the Reaver code of conduct. They would make up the majority of the tradesmen in the first group, as Absolution was taking in nearly a million of them.

That was four times the workers, but still not as many total people as they had gained at their previous stop, but Max wasn’t concerned. It was a great spot to pick up people who understood the concept of hard work, and it would bring balance to the culture of the ship.

The living spaces would be interspersed with the first lot of workers so that they didn’t accidentally create a cultural divide by the planet of origin right from the start, but the real glue of the operation, the management team, wouldn’t be arriving until their next stop.

Max was taking Absolution to Rae 5 to show her off and pick up whatever excess ship staff and management candidates the Reavers had lying around. With them in charge, he could feel confident that the ship would slowly come around to the proper way of doing things, even if the sheer number of outside staff influenced the culture to some degree.

The expectation that they would be working on a Reaver Operations Center, under Reaver rules and Reaver culture, was explicitly clear in the hiring documents and the s, and at the second stop, it was a big selling point.

Even before they started getting all the cool toys, many of the workers here dreamed of being Reavers and getting away from the sweatshops and the orbital mines.

Unlike the family atmosphere of the first stop, there were very few belongings containers at this stop. They had packed light, putting everything into military standard storage cubes for ease of movement.

They were much more aware of what a new generation Reaver Ship should be capable of, as the Cygnus Government had been on an intensive propaganda campaign touting the benefits of all the new technologies that were spreading through their territory.

So, they left behind everything that reminded them of crowded hab blocks and crummy jobs and brought only their most treasured memories when they came to Absolution.

It made for a quick stop, with everyone shuttled over in under six hours and settled into their new homes by the end of the day.

The pace of the recruitment left everything inside the ship in chaos, though. None of the businesses were open yet. There was no functioning crew or staff, and it wouldn’t be for another day.

That was when they arrived at Rae 5, and the staff of Terminus finished with the hiring process so that those who had been deemed essential to operations would be moving over.

The entire infantry force, save for a small contingent that was working as security in the Cruise Ship section, would be moving to new homes aboard Absolution to serve the same law enforcement job they were doing now, but with actual work to do, now that they had ten times as many people to deal with.

The crew they picked from among the Reavers would be piloting specialists and such for the actual navigation and operation of the new vessel, as well as the managers for all of the facilities and departments which didn’t have their positions filled by transfers from Terminus.

The Colony ship would feel a bit empty for a while, with so many former infantrymen gone, but the Academy was expanding its grounds some, and Max had already made plans to expand the Cruise Ship area, so there wouldn’t be very much wasted space inside the ship by the time that everything was settled.

It wasn’t like they were using the infantry in the first place, and having them on Absolution would make it easier to whip them back into shape.

None of them, Max included, had seen real combat in a long time, and everyone was starting to get lazy and soft, a state that Max was intent on remedying. His first goal was to get a new combat training regimen going for all of the Pilots within the Terminus Trading Company. It was better to have them at the top of their game now than rusty once they actually saw combat.

Max was certain that if he was still fighting constantly, there was no way that the Volga Titan Class Mecha would have escaped from him, and he was projecting that feeling of softness onto his subordinates.

It wasn’t the wrong call, most of them had been slacking off, and only a few still worked as hard as they used to in order to keep their edge. That would all change in the near future, though, and Max’s plan would make basic training look like the daycare that it really was.

But first, he needed the rest of his new crew.

[As soon as we are done, we will be departing for Rae 5 to make the last recruitment stop for Absolution. Everyone, please enjoy your journey and prepare for a big announcement once we have the new staff settled into their routines.] Max informed the guests and staff of Terminus.

He could sense the anticipation as everyone wondered what was in store for the adventure ship, which had just crossed most of a Galaxy over the course of a week, picking up staff and viewing local documentaries detailing the history of the planets and regions that they had stopped at.

Before long, the final portal of their recruitment tour had been opened, and the Reavers very first World Ship entered orbit around the Reaver homeworld for the first time.

They were greeted with huge fanfare, even more elaborate than a Reaver Wedding, with ships throwing out brightly coloured flares all over the star system, celebrations everywhere, and even a planetary holiday to commemorate the event.

[Greetings to the Terminus Trading Company and your intrepid ship designers. Congratulations on the launch of your very first World Ship. As is the Reaver Custom, since you are here with so many other Companies, we will hold an official commissioning party for the vessel.

I hope that your hastily assembled staff is ready for what is coming because I don’t think that there is a single person in this star system that doesn’t want to come aboard, even if it is just to say that they were aboard a World Ship that Reavers made.] Mary Tarith greeted them before Max could even put Terminus into a proper orbit.

[Will there be cake? I feel like this occasion deserves a cake, don’t you?] Max asked, making the older woman laugh.

Max was the host, after all. It was customary for him to be the one providing all of the refreshments and entertainment for the guests, not the other way around. But Mary Tarith had a soft spot for her daughter’s chosen partner, and she would bring him one of her special recipe cakes as a housewarming gift during the celebration of the first mission for Absolution.