Mary led them all to the nearest of the large dining rooms, where Dave, Mollie and Max's younger siblings were waiting along with a dozen of the children of the dignitaries that had come to greet them.
"So, you got roped into babysitting, did you?" Max laughed as he pulled his old friend into a hug.
"All the time. We got the outgoing children, so they just pull more and more little people to us. But these ones are a joy to be around, all well-behaved." Dave agreed.
Dave deftly caught a foam dart before it could hit one of the other guests, and the Envoys chuckled. His standards for well-behaved basically ended at not shouting, crying or bleeding. Beyond that, they were considered well-behaved until he had to fix something or clean up a mess.
The dignitaries had brought some of their nannies with them, and the black clad woman was quick to take the soft dart from Dave and start hustling the children to a side table where they could sit together and enjoy a meal that was better suited to their palate than whatever the adults were going to be eating.
Mary dragged her husband and Nico to seats on either side of her, making sure they didn't switch her carefully organized nameplates, and the dignitaries took their seats, leaving Max a few seats down between Uncle Lu and the Innu Envoy, both of whom were desperate for news of the recent developments that his team had made and weren't willing to wait until they were released to the lab the next day.
Across from him was Admiral Penner, the former Lord Commissar who was now in charge of Absolution's crew, and her guest for the evening, a middle-aged Valkia man who seemed to have some strong connections among the guests. From what Max could tell, he wasn't one of the politicians, just a billionaire CEO sort who she had taken a liking to.
"Alright, spill. We need the details. Did it work? Can you make another? How is the power output?" The Envoy asked, barely resisting the urge to shake the answers out of Max as he sipped on the wine in front of him.
"We did make it work, and we can make another. The currently certified stable power transfer rate is 100 petajoules constant output, but we can push that in an emergency. You will get full details of it soon. Well, Uncle Lu will, but I'm not sure if the Envoys get access." Max teased.
"That's why I'm asking today. They know how much we love technology, but I'm still cut out of the loop on new developments. Don't humans have rules against cruel and unusual punishments? This has to count." The Innu Envoy complained.
Max chuckled at her pouting face. "I'm fairly sure that nobody has ever successfully challenged information security rules based on an interpretation of inhumane punishment laws before. You might be the first, though."
"We can't even make you an employee because it would interfere with your position as an Envoy, and this is still an experimental power source, not patented or available to the public yet, so we really can't spread out the details." Uncle Lu apologized.
"Fine, I will wait until you file the paperwork to look over it." She pouted.
"Why don't we just have the Envoys sign a non-disclosure agreement again, and we can have them come watch as we test and refine? They're going to require a full review eventually anyhow, so you might as well just invite them in and let them see what's going on." Max suggested.
Uncle Lu looked quite hesitant to agree to that. "Maybe into limited areas, like the ones near patent processing. But it's easy for you to say, you're not going to be here."
"What do you mean, not here?" Max asked.
"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that part in advance. We have discovered a piece of ancient data that has twenty likely locations for human refugees after the time reset. It was recovered from a side reference in one of the data files that Ranarth provided. The locations are vague, but the Reaver Council wants someone to go look, and Mary has suggested that you take Terminus.
It's the largest extreme cruise ship in the entire Alliance, and the hunt for ancient ruins is a popular topic in a number of movies lately, so you can likely fill the ship with guests who are willing to watch you look for ancient ruins.
Even if you don't find anything, they'll be happy to tell people that they went to the edges of known space to search. It's a win for everyone, and it gets you and Nico away from the drudgery of development for a while.
We need to refine everything, and I need to rework a side project that I've been on now that I've got all this new data coming in from everywhere, so a few months or a year wouldn't hurt anything, as long as the Great Enemy doesn't attack again." Uncle Lu explained.
Max knew from his thoughts what he was after. The planets in that region had been scanned by the Alliance and didn't show any signs of life, so they might be failed Colonies, which might still contain human technology from millennia ago. If any of it worked, it might help guide them on a new path, and give them ideas on what worked best against the Energy Beings out of what the humans could make.
The Darklings and the Arisen didn't really record much about human technology because they were more focused on their own survival after the time reset. So, although the human species had centuries of experience fighting the Great Enemy, they had lost the knowledge of how to make it after it was no longer relevant to their daily lives.
There were many things like that in the universe. Deemed redundant or inefficient in their time, but when rediscovered and adapted to modern technologies, the basic principle turned out to be a winner.
"Alright, I will gather my crew and go on an extended treasure hunt. Absolution can stay here for a while, or wander off to do its thing once you've finished borrowing their research team." Max agreed.
"I don't think we will be done with the researchers for a while. They have too much inside knowledge of the initial development of the devices that we're refining in the various labs. So unless you're willing to leave them here when the World Ship departs, it will be waiting here for you." Uncle Lu laughed.
Unlike Terminus that was always moving, looking for good vacation spots, Absolution didn't actually have to be anywhere specific. It only moved about to make itself convenient for the largest of their customers. The Rae 5 System could use their own portal generators to accomplish the same outcome with just a little effort, or Absolution could establish a long-term portal if it moved further from the inhabited planet.
The only ones who would suffer would be their dear Envoys, who were about to be bombarded by Patent requests, and the subsequent challenges.
That was their job, though, so Max could only feel a little bit sorry for their plight. He knew that some of them would prefer to come to the very edges of the universe with him, but they were tasked to keep up trade relations with the Reavers, and in his absence, it was the Board of Directors on Absolution that were taking up that role, along with Mary Tarith, so they were somewhat stuck right where they were.
