Two hours later, Lieutenant Willis of the Golden Legion's Seventeenth City Guard found himself standing outside a parked Cutter Class space vessel. It was smoothly curved in a style that he didn't recognize from any of his training videos, and it was surrounded by hundreds of the crab robots, as well as dozens of giant humanoid robots.
They must have noticed his team by now, but none of them had made any hostile moves, and he had come to the conclusion that they were waiting for him to introduce himself. In a formal setting, it would be proper for the lower ranked to introduce themselves to the higher ranked, so perhaps their Commander was looking at the situation on an individual level and not taking him as a representative of his people.
He had never been trained in politics, he was a law enforcement officer. If they had littered, vandalized buildings or robbed someone, he would have all the answers, but today he was fresh out of ideas, and in way over his head.
"What do we do, Lieutenant? They let the cats in without any problems, and they even greeted them. Maybe they're not hostile." One of his patrolmen asked.
"Do you want to be the one to risk his neck finding out, Constable?" Lieutenant Willis whispered back.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds, then one of the Golden Legion guards stood up and began to walk toward the ship.
"We won't know unless we try. Just remember that if this works, it was my idea." He reminded the others.
The Lieutenant chuckled to himself. The man going forward was an aging mall security officer. He'd seen nearly everything at this point in his career, and it appeared that the concept of being torn apart by a species of giant robots was much less frightening to him.
When he reached the outer perimeter of giant robots, one of them raised its hand and began to speak.
"Access to this area is restricted, please state your name and purpose." The twenty-five-metre tall robot in front of him announced.
"My name is Gregory, Head of Security at Parkland Shopping Centre. I would like to talk to your boss, if they're available." The security guard announced in a firm voice.
"Understood. The Commanders are both available at this time, please proceed inside."
Gregory turned back to his companions, shrugged his shoulders, then walked inside the ship, where Max and Nico were waiting for him, along with one young local man, and countless cats.
So many cats.
[Send him away, he kicks us out of the mall.] One of the cats typed on the tablet set on the table in the middle of the room.
"You steal from the food stalls, of course I kick you out of the mall." Gregory complained through the speaker on his golden helmet.
[He's a bully.] The cat insisted.
Max reached down and petted the irate feline's head. "He's not going to kick you out of here, so you can relax. Welcome, representative of the Golden Legion, to Santa Maria, the Command Cutter for the Terminus Trading Company, a human militant group and manufacturing corporation."
Gregory stiffened at the word human. "Did I hear that correctly? You are human? You look like the images, but I heard that you were extinct."
Max smiled back at him. "I can assure you that the rumours of our extinction are greatly exaggerated. We were forced to relocate in the past, but the species survived quite well."
"That is wonderful news. I had heard that your species was instrumental in allowing our guardians to set up this safe space for us in the time of our ancestors. I know that it has been many millennia since then, but the Golden Legion were taught to honour their past so that it would not repeat in the future." Gregory explained.
Max looked over at the younger man who had come to them first, and he nodded eagerly. "Yeah, I heard something about that in school."
Gregory shook his head, and clasped his hands behind his back in a military resting pose to stop himself from slapping the idiot. Everything that he had said were basic requirements that every elementary school student should have memorized. They even had pictures of the friendly species up on the walls of every government building, including the mall and the barracks.
Max looked back to Gregory. "It's alright, I understand that not everything works out the way that you might have hoped. How about we have a nice conversation over a cup of coffee while your friends sit in the rain outside?"
Gregory frowned. "It's not raining."
Nico chuckled. "Not water, it isn't. But give it thirty seconds."
Gregory assumed that he had misread the weather on their way here, but then thirty seconds later the Thunder Guns began to fire, and the sound of artillery exploding against the Cutter's shielding shook the air.
"I must go save my men." The guard insisted.
"They're fine. They're inside our shield range, I let you all in at the start to see what you would do. The drones will take care of this attack in the next few minutes, and then it will be quiet again." Nico explained.
Max closed the door to keep the sound of artillery from deafening their guests with more sensitive hearing, and the cats returned to crawling all over the ship's crew.
"If you say so, I will trust your judgment. You clearly lured us here the same as you did the cats, so might I ask if there was some particular purpose, or was it just to learn the things that your first guest forgot?" Gregory asked.
"A bit of both, but it's more important that we start working on some sort of formal arrangement. As you can see, we've ordered our drones not to attack you, and your people haven't attacked us, so we have a good working relationship. It's just our tradition to make sure that everyone understands." Max replied.
"And the giants outside?"
The crew all laughed at his question.
"They're part of our team, and they're not gigantic, the Mecha are. It's a piece of equipment, like a tank or a mobile artillery battery." Nico explained.
"That's equipment? By the Legion, that is impressive. But I don't have the authority to make a deal, just the balls to be the first one to step across the line. We will have to at least bring in the Lieutenant with his good radio for this."
