For the next week, they worked tirelessly to get everything in order on the World Ship Creeping Darkness, while Nico and Max sent countless messages back home, organizing their troops into a more effective combat force, and ending dozens of ongoing battles.
While they were focused on the forces in combat, Sylvie was focused on the force that was being replenished in the ship. It seemed a bit odd that neither of the Commanders were stopping her, even if all the supplies were shelf stable.
There were millions of Mecha being created to fill the drop-ships, landers and forward insertion vessels, but there were only a thousand possible pilots on board, in the form of the Androids, which she had recently discovered were pleasantly intelligent, even if they weren't a true AI system.
But she couldn't rule out the Commanders having a plan to pick up a crew who might fit the Mecha, or adapt them for use by new Androids, so she just kept at her work.
"Commanders, the structure of the vessel, including all preventative maintenance and the Drive Optimization that Commander Max ordered, are now complete. The production of resources is ongoing, but the vessel is now ready for travel." Sylvie informed the team.
"That is excellent news. I see that you are equipped with both a portal generator and a layer transfer device, so we should be able to make good time home." Max replied.
"The Dimensional Transfer Generator? Yes, saying that it moves you between layers is accurate, but so much less interesting sounding." Sylvie agreed.
Nico snickered at her response, and prepared a new message for the fleet in the Anomaly Zone, informing them that they were on their way back.
"This portal generator is a bit of an odd one, what is the range limitation on it?" Max asked.
"Anywhere that we can get a solid dataset for. Unlike your folded space Portals, this is more of a wormhole generator. If we know where we're going, I can set a course there on the boundary between layers. As long as there isn't anything there blocking us, we can go directly to the war zone in under a week." Sylvie replied proudly.
"In the boundary between layers? What caused them to make that choice? Is there a speed advantage?" Max asked.
"Not really. We could just use an empty layer of space where there is no life, but the boundaries are nearly impossible to scan inside. So, we can only set our course and go, but the enemy also can't easily detect us while we are moving." Sylvie explained, while bringing up the surviving technical documents on the subject.
"Interesting. Alright, I get the basic theory. If you can plot a course to these coordinates, here is all the astronomical data for the region. Appearing in deep space away from anything else should be safe enough, even if the transport isn't as precise as intended." Max agreed.
Sylvie took that as a personal challenge, and frantically began to compute the optimal course, with an emphasis on ending exactly where she intended. The travel between layers had a habit of ending up off by a light year or more over extreme distances, due to compounded minor adjustment errors, but this time she was determined to get it exactly right.
The extra effort gave Nico and the Innu time to watch her work, while the others recorded her input to read later, as they couldn't keep up with the digital updates at regular reading speeds.
"I am ready to begin, Commander Max." Sylvie declared confidently.
"Then make it so. Let's get back to the others. But send a message first so they know that you will be out of contact for a week." He reminded her.
"You knew that I was in contact with the other AI ships?" She asked.
"Were you trying to hide it? Of course, I knew." Max laughed.
Nico logged every communication, and by the second message she had discovered that the extra noise was a message from Sylvie and not interference in the signal.
A portal formed in front of the world ship, a massive circle of distortion that they smoothly slid through without so much as a shudder of the hull or a flicker of the lights.
"Oh, I like this method. It's even smoother than the usual portals, I think that even the diminutive species could travel like this." One of the human team members noted.
"Diminutive species?" Sylvie asked.
"There are a number of intelligent species that weigh less than a kilogram, and they are very sensitive to pressure and energy changes. They normally can't travel in space over long distances, but with this method, it might be possible for them."
"Now that we're out of contact, let's get to work checking those Mecha. I know they're millennia out of date, but that doesn't mean they're ineffective. If they can handle combat without modification, I will see if we can enlist some of the larger species to pilot them." Max ordered.
"Oh, that's a good idea. The Giants and who else?" Sylvie asked.
"The Koleska are somewhat slender, but they are tall enough to meet the minimum guidelines for the Mecha. Then there are the Titans, who are roughly the same size as the Giants, or your original crew, though they have four arms.
There are a few other larger sized species as well, but those are the prime candidates, as they're all familiar with Mecha combat already." Max explained.
"We could vat grow a batch of Pilots like the Klee do. Just flash them with a neural imprint device, and they'll have all the essential memories to be competent combatants. Plus, without a lifetime of real memories, they get less irritable during long stretches in the cockpit." Sylvie suggested.
"Vat grown and conditioned biological pilots? How would that be an advantage over the Androids?" Nico asked.
"The advantages are threefold. First, they are fully sentient, so they can make more complex judgment calls outside their programming.
Secondly, they can be based on a specific person, so their mental and physical capacities can be optimized for their position. Such as using Commander Max as a template, and giving them all his intuitive tactical abilities as well as his powerful stature, but with their height adjusted to match the existing units.
Thirdly, biomatter is 90 percent more energy efficient to produce than the complex alloys of the androids, so they can be far more easily replaced."
The team members looked at her with hints of horror at her callous logic, but Nico was nodding in agreement.
"I seem to recall this being a thing. Yes, they should be good combatants, but the moral imperatives on bioengineering have shifted some over the years. Disposable life forms are much less common now, and even most food species have been greatly limited in numbers, and instead have the raw meat products produced for consumption instead of the whole animal." Nico explained.
The others assumed she meant recalled it from her reading, but really she meant in her past life. Both sides of the conflict had used the technology, and it was likely that the Great Enemy still did.
