Max delegated the arrival procedures for aquatic species to the logistics team and double-checked the underwater cities for any possible flaws. Since they were filled with water, the pressure would change drastically between the surface and bottom floors, so there would have to be some consideration of that implemented into the docking procedures.

But other than that, it looked like all was well. Even the elevators had been appropriately slowed to allow bodies to adjust to the pressure changes as they ascended and descended.

It wasn’t a set of problems that he was very familiar with, but the ship’s computer kept him up to speed with the basics, and the designer’s notes filled in the rest.

They had already started building some of them, and it was only the last few, which were to be built in the deepest part of the ocean, where the floor had been lowered down into the level below them to allow for sufficient depth, where any issues were found.

The diving pods would need to change out their water to adapt to the change in saturated oxygen and other oddities of deep ocean life, but nobody had programmed that into their systems yet. Max forwarded that note to the research teams as a necessity before they could allow anyone down to the deepest cities and then flipped back to the elegant underwater spires that were taking shape all over the level.

They were being built with the monomolecular material that made up most of the ship, as it was much stronger than anything else that they had available and wouldn’t be affected by the pressure changes, so the construction was coming along quite smoothly.

The surface cities were completed already, and though they were much smaller than the capital city, as everyone was calling the single large city on the main level, they were still impressively equipped and would have every amenity that a visitor could want, but with a bias toward tourism, much like the smaller cities that were scheduled to be built in the forests of the main level.

Not everyone wanted a tropical vacation on the beach. Some species liked a temperate climate and lots of foliage.

From what Max could tell, they were looking to nearly double the population of their ship over the course of the next few weeks, and only about a quarter of the new arrivals would be humans pulled from the applications for off-world work that the Reavers were processing.

It was an initiative that the Cygnus Royal Family had been pushing for since they had taken over so many new worlds with such a wide variety of qualities of life and culture that it was becoming a nightmare for them to try to keep their new citizens from fleeing for more hospitable planets.

So, they had come up with the idea to match workers with places that needed them, saving them the fear and risk of just uprooting their families with no guarantees in order to get away from their home planet.

Absolution’s request for hundreds of thousands of low-experience workers with the flexibility to work with many species in retail and hospitality was perfect for the Cygnus program. In general, nobody wanted workers without skills, experience and training, or large amounts of higher education. But Terminus Trading Company wanted a lot of them.

They had no shortage of skilled tradesmen and investors applying to come from all over the Alliance, and they lacked the young workers to become the faces of their new companies while working their way up the ladder.

Unlike an established planet, there was an actual chance for growth here since there were no generation-long relationships formed and no entrenched nepotism. It had all the benefits of becoming a colonist without the ‘struggling to establish a colony’ part of the equation.

The only issue that Max had with the applications was gender bias. Unless he was starting a harem world, he needed to find some human men willing to work entry-level jobs. The problem was they didn’t exist in the system. They didn’t apply until they had some trade skills, which moved them to a different category of workers.

At the moment, he had a lot of men and families, so it wouldn’t be too bad, but after this round of recruitment, they were going to have to do some real deep thinking about how to expand.

That was an ongoing concern on this ship, and it would help if they stopped bringing in so many new people so fast, but there was just so much demand for expansion and so many new friends that it would defeat all of the hard work that they had put into public relations to not allow new residents right now.

With nearly a million new residents from the two planets that they had rescued and the Black Market, they now had a much more diverse population as well. The businesses opened by Black Market affiliated companies came from all over the Alliance, though Max noticed that almost all of the applications were again from what was referred to as the Curious Species.

While that wasn’t totally surprising, it did mean that the new arrivals all had a level of curiosity and ambition in common, and the security cameras showed that they were mostly working together fairly well.

He had identified a few areas where he would need to either change some permitting or send in additional security officers, though, as the residents were avoiding walking along the streets and only entered a business that they were there for and then left.

He didn’t need slums or bad neighbourhoods developing this quickly, so he sent the notifications out to everyone who might be relevant to the discussion, including the neighbourhood businesses. With a private reply option, he might be able to isolate the issue and see if there was something being snuck by their security that was already causing issues.

Nothing about the names and descriptions of the businesses stood out as questionable, but the lack of street traffic, despite being very close to residential areas, was highly suspect. Who took a transport pad two blocks from their house to go to the corner store? Certainly, not someone who felt safe travelling in the area.