It all happened just as Max had predicted. The news went public and every single Alliance data stream went insane with people either looking to be somewhere safe, hire security, buy weapons, or place the blame on someone else for the predicament that the Alliance as a whole was in.
They had seen the release of the numbers of the Cathedral Ships fleet, and it was enough to attack dozens or even a hundred fully defended star systems at a time. If they attacked the weakly defended planets of the Alliance, the resistance wouldn't even last long enough to hold out until reinforcements could get there without using a Portal.
It was no secret that the government would be slow to act, paralyzed by bureaucracy and layers of agreements on the movement of troops, so they didn't expect the cavalry to arrive in anything less than a whole day, and one after another, the star systems were realizing that they weren't going to be able to hold out that long.
The only ones that seemed to be relatively sure that they could manage it were the Valkia, who were fairly militant to begin with, the Innu, who were already submitting financing requests for the right to make huge fleets of Android led Mechanized forces, on payment terms of course, and strangely, the Dryads.
Max looked them up to see if they were just accepting of their fate, and found that the peaceful culture of plant lovers actually had some pretty impressive firepower in their arsenal. At some point, they must have been working on a "Peace Through Strength" basis.
That was a good sign that there might be a few more star systems that could dig old gear out of storage and press it back into service if things got ugly in the next week. From what Max could see in the reports and intercepted signals, that was just about guaranteed.
[How did we do? Did we get the forces in place in time? All the newly acquired factories now have a delegation at them. Some are just a cutter or a runabout, but they all have someone from the Reavers there.] Mary asked, just as the panic really began to set in.
[They made it before anyone started to suspect all newcomers. Currently, they're still panicking and trying to decide what to do. If we craft a proper press release, we can swing things in our favour with promises of immediately ramped up production and state-of-the-art military equipment going to government forces all over the Alliance, or directly to them if we don't get the contract.
Make it clear that we're producing the gear either way, and I'm certain that we can either shame or strong arm the government into giving us the contract, just so that we aren't sending an army into the hands of civilians.] Max replied.
[Good job. Have I told you that you're my favourite son-in-law?]
[Mary, I'm your only son-in-law.]
Max could sense her laughing at his response, despite the distance between them, and then she faded away again, using her System Talents to block him out of her thoughts once more.
The PR campaign that she launched was immediate, overwhelming, and brutally effective, assuring the citizenry that they had the capability to make thousands of Destroyer Class ships and hundreds of thousands of [Exoskeletal Military Armour Units] as the Alliance officially classified the Mecha.
There was no mention of Androids, but those generally weren't for sale to outsiders. The Innu were buying up a lot of them, but they had a special relationship with the Reavers, and if someone had tried to block them, the Tech Nomads would likely have purchased the licenses on their behalf and then had the Innu worlds build and staff their purchase, which was the same result, with a different name on the finance sheet.
The reports from the factories weren't any less insane. The Reavers had shown up with loads of Terraforming Arrays and had immediately begun refurbishing the facilities to create either Mecha or warships, sometimes both, depending on the facility itself.
Every Reaver dry dock was currently working at full capacity, with nonessential orders bumped down the list in favour of more heavily armed vessels.
Even Absolution was preparing to move to an abandoned Klem world for more raw materials once this next round of Cruisers was completed.
The vessels would be mostly bare, but fully armed, and they had the equipment to finish out their own armament once they had a crew, so there was no need to waste resources giving them the finishing touches before delivery.
The ships were going to be mostly empty for a while, there simply weren't any more Reavers to put on them, but there was talk of recruiting in the Alliance to fill spaces. Even if they hired gamers to run the Drone programs, it would help them avoid having the AI breached or countered by the Cathedral Ships.
They were insane, but not stupid, the inheritors of Nico's personal brand of insanity from her past life.
The more that Max thought about that, the more that he realized he knew how to fight them. They emulated the combat styles that Nico and him had used back then, though at a lower level, and that meant he already knew most of their tricks.
The relevant information had already been taught to the drone programs and the Androids, so during the first wave of battles, they should have the advantage, and then it would be a matter of adaptation, which side was faster to adjust and counter the other with new strategies.
It was going to be strange to be sending so many mechanized units out without any humans at all in them, but for the Reavers, there really wasn't a choice. They needed the firepower, and there was only one way to get it in the next week.
As night fell, Max and the Envoys were slumped in their chairs, exhausted in a way that not even coffee could cure.
"Let's get some rest and I will see you all in the morning. There are suites across the hall set up for this exact scenario." He offered.
