Working out the final details was going to take quite a bit of time, possibly all day, but Max had no shortage of other messages and information to sort through, courtesy of both the Reavers and the Alliance's sensors.
They had managed to gather a bit of sensor data that indicated a split in the trajectories of the Cathedral ships. With that, they had enough to track them somewhat accurately, and now they were closing in on an exact match to their most probable destinations.
According to the data, a full half of the fleet was going for the home Galaxy of the humans, while the rest had fanned out to attack the Alliance. The news confused the Government and then enraged them. They had a thousand times the numbers that the humans did, so how dare the enemy not take them seriously?
Max made sure that everyone with a military force of any sort in the Galaxy had the information, as the Cathedral ships had sent enough of the fleet to them to threaten hundreds of planets at a time.
The arrival time seemed to be on schedule, with just over four days remaining, but that was the closest that they could get to saying that they had good news today.
They did have a lot of new ships in production, but getting them done and staffed in four days was a real rush, and they didn't know which star systems would be targeted first. If they concentrated on the wrong areas, there was a chance that the enemy would set up another of those barriers that blocked portals, and then they would be left slowly racing to the rescue of the beleaguered colonies.
Absolution was getting ready to move to gather more resources, and the Envoys were hoping that they could get approval before then so that they could have everyone together in person to finalize the deal.
Max and Nico were enough for a minimum. Still, it would make the politicians happier if they had more of the Reaver leadership available, and none of them were going to be willing to be away from their crews for a signing ceremony at this point.
[Absolution is opening a portal to the resource-gathering site now.] Felicity announced throughout the ship, warning everyone that they would be moving and not to plan to head out anytime soon.
If anyone was away from the ship right now, it was their tough luck; they had days' worth of warning that this was an emergency scenario and sudden movement would be inevitable. But the AI had been keeping track, and everyone that was likely to want to be back on the ship was already here, and that was her cue to start the transfer process.
A massive portal opened in the Rae 5 system, and the Envoys breathed a sigh of relief. Hundreds of other vessels were headed to the same place to strip it of a portion of its asteroid field in the name of building new war machines. With that many people around, they could at least show the Alliance Government that the Reavers were all on board with the plan.
That would make for a good photo shoot as well, with the Reavers all doing their best to produce equipment for the defensive effort all over an uninhabited star system. Absolution had the sensor capability to project a full holographic scene for the viewers in the Alliance, and there were enough artists on board that they wouldn't have any trouble getting it edited to make everything look good for the more nervous citizens.
Felicity waited until everyone who needed materials had already moved, including a handful of space stations that would put any Colony ship to shame with their size. It was a full-scale industrial colonization, and the number of Mecha and Vessels that they would be able to turn out in the region would make for an excellent propaganda video.
She had determined that was one of the most important parts of being able to maintain morale during a crisis, and Felicity wouldn't let such a good chance slip through her hands.
Felicity wasn't the only one with that idea. All over what used to be Kepler space and the recently expanded Cygnus territories, the news was already spreading.
[The Cathedral Ships dare to attack our Galaxy? Do they seriously think that any species in this universe is better at war than we are? War is in our blood. War is our culture and our heritage. We have perfected the arts and sciences of killing while they hid away in their protected layer of space like cowards.] The Cygnus news was telling their citizens.
Most of them laughed at the thought. They had met the people of the Alliance and seen the videos of the battles in Koleska space. Indeed, they had never seen a force that could take the humans one-on-one.
These were unlikely to be fair fights, but the propaganda videos did their jobs, and the morale of the citizens was high. The retired soldiers made sure their information was in the system so that they could be called on for planetary defence, and the more heavily armed planets started passing out equipment in advance in case the enemy made it past their defensive lines.
While the thought of troops in the streets frightened those in the Alliance, it reassured those in Cygnus. Those were their neighbours, their friends and family. Give them more guns and keep the Mecha on standby. They would show these aliens that they had messed with the wrong species.
Felicity considered doing the same thing, but the residents of Absolution were already in high spirits with their efforts to build more equipment, so she decided to hold off until it became an urgent matter.
[Attention crew and residents of Absolution, we have arrived at our destination, and the ship docks will be assembled over the next few hours. Please limit power usage during this time to increase the available capacity for urgent projects.]
That was enough to get everyone in the right frame of mind, and Felicity got to work running the ship's construction arrays to build the first batch of ten Destroyer-sized dry docks. They were the most impressive looking, and the Alliance should be messaging soon with their agreement, expecting to see the humans doing their best.
