As the crew began to disperse through the commercial district closest to the park, the visitors started to arrive, ready for a sneak peek of the new ship from the inside.

The outside of Absolution was impressive enough, but getting to see the interior, with kilometre-high ceilings and vast open spaces, was an entirely different matter. The apartments above the commercial district were off limits, only accessible with a resident access card, but they could see into some of the lower level units that had left their curtains open or which were currently unoccupied, with only the essential furnishings.

The feeling that they got was that of the Capital city on Rae 5, a mix of an urban party atmosphere and luxury usually associated with successful Reaver Companies and wealthy land-bound families.

It painted a very tempting picture of Terminus Trading Company to the guests, and even with so few shops open, there were still plenty of activities to do in the very limited area they could access.

The ship was nine hundred kilometres long. Short of taking a shuttle across its length, there was no way to see even a single percent of it in one night, but the core of the currently occupied area was enough for them, and Nico had made a limited three-dimensional simulation available.

She had left all the sensitive areas out of the map, but the parks and much of the primarily residential area were visible and could be explored by those who wanted to see more than just the city and the park.

The Commanders of the assembled Companies had come to see Max at Central Park, right next to the stage where he had addressed the crew a few hours ago, led by the Captains of the Black Dog Mercenary Company.

“Commander Keres Max. I must say, you have done very well for yourself. The rest of us are fighting for the resources to create a proper colony on a planet, and you built your own moon-sized ship.” The Mercenary laughed.

“We have some advantages since we are the ones testing all of the next-generation technology. Give it a decade or so, and anyone who can manage to obtain the crew could make one of their own.” Max countered, making the Mercenary laugh even harder.

“You have what, four million people here now, and it barely fills one sector on one floor when they’re not spread out to work. Even with all the resources that my mercenaries have accomplished, we couldn’t fill a ship like this if we wanted to.

The most recent releases for Cutters are very tempting, though. I believe they’re the ones you’re using on Terminus, though I suspect that a fresh generation of them has been made for this glorious Operations Center, as you called it.”

Max smiled back at the half-drunk and clearly overwhelmed Mercenary leader. “Those Cutters are available from the shipyards here in the Rae 5 system. If I’m not mistaken, they have all signed agreements to make royalty payments in exchange for the plans. Anything bigger is overkill on almost every mission, anyhow.

Not many planets are sending out a Destroyer full of Cargo at a time, and even fewer are having a problem big enough to need one to come loaded with Mecha to save them.”

A few more Reaver Captains had arrived to catch the last bit of the conversation and chuckled at that.

“Given this new tech, only a full-on Klem invasion would need more than one or two Cutters worth of forces to deal with. We have heard a lot about the battle against the Volga, though we were with the portion of the Company that stayed behind.

Most of the big bosses are still over there, sorting things out or moving trade goods to Alliance customers. Even after factoring in losses, the invasion has been a big win for most of us, just with the price of the trade contracts.

We’ve got loads of Alliance goods coming back as well, the sort of stuff that we don’t know how to make ourselves or just stuff that seemed kind of cool. Rae 5 Star System looks very different than it did before the Volga decided to play the fool.” A Reaver in a purple felt top hat informed the group.

“That’s true. The Replicators can work miracles for food production, but gathering so much raw material just to feed mass consumerism isn’t happening with most Commanders. Besides, what would they do with that much shiny junk once people got bored of it?” Another Commander joked.

“Absolution has a very good recycling system. Pretty much everything organic can be recycled into a new product with just a bit of extra energy consumed. I know not every ship has the sort of excess power supply that we do, but it’s an option.” Max suggested.

“You have been living in the future too long. According to the data specs of the Cutters available for purchase from the Moon Base factory, my current Cutter has eight percent of the total power supply. If I used Replicators for everything like you do here, I would have to drop out of warp at every meal.

The power usage is insane. It’s just that your ships have so much of it available from these fancy new Warp Drives that you don’t notice.” The first Commander pointed out.

His ship was an early Warp 4 generation Cutter, and it was the only ship in his Company’s fleet, so simply replacing it was out of the question, and even overhauling it was enough to nearly bankrupt them. So they had been paying the premium to use Portals whenever possible to speed up his deliveries.

Unless they were going to just straight up crash the economy and try to rebuild it from scratch, it would take generations to fully change over from old tech to new, and by then, there would be another new generation of equipment available, and who knew what sort of things humanity would have come up with in the intervening decades.

“I know it can be frustrating, being a generation behind when things are changing this fast, but keep an eye open for announcements from Absolution. After we have things up and running, I plan to make some very lucrative deals for the Reaver Trade Group members that do a lot of business with the Terminus Trading Company.

It’s no secret that we have all the best toys and that many of them are still very much experimental. Even Absolution is a prototype, and the final version that gets distributed to whoever can afford such a monster of a vessel will have millions of refinements, both large and small. But we also have a lot of techs that have been finalized, and I am prepared to offer it at a steep discount to our loyal contractors.”

The Commanders chuckled at Max’s sales pitch, but he had a point. Who would turn down his missions if they could get access to the latest generation of gear at a heavy discount as part of their payment?

The details weren’t clear, but they recognized a number of the Reavers who were wearing Absolution Staff uniforms, and as far as they knew, they were from the Crimson Fists, which everyone knew were having troubles, but not nearly as many knew had been disbanded and absorbed into the Terminus Trading Company.

From the visitors’ point of view, it looked like Max had just bought out an entire Reaver Company so he could have skilled staff for his new ship. It was tempting to the more cash-strapped Commanders, but it set a scary precedent. It wasn’t often that a Company had that sort of money floating around, and even rarer that they would try to buy out someone who wasn’t even a competitor.

But then, none of them were surprised that a Reaver party was as much for showing off as it was for recreation. If you couldn’t show off your power and toys, why even bother bringing strangers to the party? When you were behind, you threw parties for those you could trust and built up your network. You didn’t invite every Company Leader in half a Galaxy to come to see your new ship.

Max listened to all of the various theories about what the Terminus Trading Company was up to while he drank and chatted with the Commanders and even made a note of some of them. That many brilliant minds in one spot generated a lot of well-thought-out and detailed conspiracy theories and speculative conversations that he could use as inspiration for their actual future course of action.