"Sorry, we didn't notice you there. We're augmented humans, that much is not a problem for us. I apologize for frightening you." Nico explained, still in Max's arms.
"Oh, the ones here with Researcher Lu? We start work with him in two days, so we came sightseeing before we had to be at work on the moon." The small alien explained.
"Oh, what sort of work are you doing?" Max asked.
"Spatial Anomaly Analysis. It might sound rather dull, but these days it has become fairly important as a field, since it also involves the layers of space where some of the alien battles are taking place." The alien explained.
"That is an important topic. I'm Keres Max, Commander of the Terminus Trading Company, and this is Subcommander Nico Tarith, daughter of Mary Tarith." Max greeted the scientist.
"I am Andy Beta, of the Trill. You likely haven't heard of us, but we're well known for our logical deduction abilities, and I have high hopes that we can make a breakthrough in the field of spatial integration."
Nico smiled at him. "I think you should be able to. Why don't you and your friend take your transport over and come join us? The Innu are playing in the hot springs, and we always welcome more guests. We can probably even save you the hassle of finding a shuttle up to the station if you have all your goods with you."
"They were delivered already, and should be in our suite. This is my wife Andrea. It would be an honour to join you both."
Max waved to the other small alien, and looked up the records for the species so that he could learn a bit more about the Trill before working with them.
They were to geology what the Innu were to machinery. They were naturally in touch with it, and they could detect earthquakes coming before any known machine was capable of it. There was no record of how that would relate to spatial anomalies, but the idea that the two were interconnected wasn't that farfetched.
Max worried that they might not do well on in space, disconnected from any real planetary body, but they were going to the Moon Base, which was carved out of an actual moon and not artificially constructed in a similar size, so they should be fine. He knew that for Innu prisoners, isolating them from any form of technology was akin to putting them in a sensory deprivation torture chamber, so he wanted to look out for these odd creatures.
Like the Hunters, they covered their faces with a mask. But they weren't terrifying looking, at least not to Max. They simply had no facial features at all, and their mouth was under their chin, giving them a completely smooth face that he was told unnerved people.
They had eyes, but they were blended into the rest of their ebony black faces and nearly indistinguishable, making some species think that they were actually blind and psychic.
The two groups went their own ways, and Max found a good seat to watch the light play off the rock face as Nico relaxed on his lap.
"You know, I think that we should take a little trip ourselves. The design teams can do most of the work without us, and it is likely that I can locate a number of other ancient Human ruins with the information that the Darklings have given us. If we can find them we might find other humans, but more importantly, we might find relics from the beginning of the Eternal War, things like God Class Mecha." Nico suggested.
"Wouldn't it be better to use that data to make something new of our own, though? Last I checked, the end of the last conflict between the humans and the so-called Gods didn't end well for anyone, and our species was tossed across the universe.
I don't believe that we can afford for that to happen again."
Nico went quiet for a while, watching the dancing lights as she thought about what their best course of action should be. She knew that Max would be listening in, even if he wasn't actively talking in her mind, so she went through all the possible outcomes that she could and then decided that maybe he was right.
They should build the God Class Mecha first. At the very least, they should create something that was capable of at least dealing with the Greater Energy Beings one on one. Then they could go looking for ruins of the ancient Humans, which might have more data for them than the Darklings were willing and able to supply.
"Alright, you have a point. But where do we even start? We can't use a conventional alloy hull for a machine like that. I suppose we can use the monomolecular material that we use for the ships again, but eventually the Energy Beings will find a good way to deal with that, and they already have no problem breaching our shields." Nico sighed.
"After the last battle, we gathered enough data to create new shielding formations that should keep them out. The research teams have a few prototypes already designed, so that is one problem down. The Arisen are still using that same hull material, so there might not be something that is significantly better at dealing with the Energy Beings. Or at least nothing that they can replicate.
Most of what we need are the movement, weapons and shield systems to keep up in battle against them, since the hull material that we have seems to be the best that we can do." Max replied.
Nico smirked. "Just three things, right? It sounds so simple when we reduce it down to categories. How did the combined weapon design go? Can we at least use what you developed in a space battle?"
"In space, yes. On a planet, no. It will chain react every time it touches Nitrogen at the moment. We could change the gas that it's using to create the plasma, but that would just change what it was reactive with."
Nico spent a few more minutes in silence, wondering what they could do, then sat up straight.
"What if we don't create Plasma in the actual beam, and we just send the carrier signal that will create the chain reaction on contact? Like when you overheated something in the microwave before we had Replicators. Just boil and crisp them. If we could tune that to the energy or the solid mass of the Energy Beings, then we could use them as fuel for the reaction that would destroy themselves."
Making nukes out of their enemies' bodies? That was both amusing and horrific at the same time. On a planet, in a dense battle, it would be an extinction-level event, but on a more dispersed scale, where they weren't close enough to chain react with each other, or out in space where there was no planet to protect, it would be perfect.
"I will put it on tomorrow's build sheet, and we will see what we can come up with. The Innu are working on an idea as well, so maybe we can find two new ways to deal with them."
