With so many new vessels and so many losses among the Reaver Companies and national armies, the human military forces were in a state of complete disarray. Every unit was a hybrid made of the survivors of other units that had been targeted by the Great Enemy, while a majority of the long established Reaver Companies were no longer intact.
Most of them had some ships left, but with their hierarchy scrambled with the number of ships crippled, the chain of command was constantly arguing with each other and second guessing the decisions of the ship Commanders who had more senior Commanders among the troops sheltering with them.
Nobody did well with losing their ship, and while the organized military had rankings to keep things sorted, there was a lot of grey area with the Reavers when it came to honours, merits, and having lost your ship.
That sort of thing wasn't easy for a Reaver to come back from, and with the interventions and large-scale battles, it was much more common lately to have your ship crippled, but not lose the crew. So, there were countless Reavers waiting on major overhauls and looking for living quarters until they could be done.
It was an unprecedented state of affairs for the nomadic merchant culture, and dealing with it was giving Mary a headache.
Nico was back, only a planet away aboard her World Ship, yet here she was, sitting in her office doing paperwork and trying to settle challenges between the Reavers in orbit.
It wasn't a job that anyone wanted, and that was why she was stuck with it here in her office on Rae 5. The planet was not in much better shape than some of the space stations, but the moon had gotten it much worse, and while the primary research labs had held, there was a lot of work to do before it would be back up and running at its former capacity.
Even worse, until the moon base was settled, it was severely limiting the ability to transfer gear back and forth from the planet. They had been using it as a waypoint for shipments since they settled here, and now that they didn't have that, it was becoming a real issue just to keep the planet stocked.
They were going to have to assign another vessel to do the duty until the moon base was up and running, and that was where Mary saw her opportunity. The two largest and least occupied vessels in the entire star system were the world ships of the Terminus Trading Company, so requesting that they take over the movement of personnel and products to and from the planet would be not only the logical route, but the best way to keep Nico from running away again.
[Mary Tarith to the Terminus Trading Company, I have an official mission for you. With the moon base out of operation, we need your world ships to take over the transfers to and from the surface of the planet. I am requesting that your World Ships move to this new location, and a traffic controller team will be sent to assist your staff in marshalling the flow of vessels.]
That would also get them out of orbit around the planet. They were definitely in the way, but that was where the queue was formed, and there wasn't much to be done about it at this point without a new staging area,
[Understood, Leader Tarith. We will reassign staff to increase the flow of vessels through our docks.] Felicity answered.
That would make things more interesting. There were only so many variations when you were sending Mecha into combat, but when it was trade vessels, it could be anything. They would also want to visit the ship's amenities, which was good for business and kept the residents busy instead of letting them fall into a boring routine again after being on high alert for so long.
Of course, Nico realized right away what her mother was doing. But with Mary excited about a visit, that meant an increased chance that there would be celebratory cake. Plus, she had good news for Mary.
Her experiments with energy-based life, biomechanical life forms, and her own modified body structure had finally paid off. She had a theoretical method of reproduction for herself, and any other creatures like her that might happen to come after.
If she formed an egg of living metal and genetic material from a second source, then infused it with both nanobots and the energy that had been purified from the energy beings, her data said that she should be able to create an entirely new life form.
Biologically, that should create an actual child, mixed from two DNA sources, and not a clone of herself, which would be redundant, as they would end up sharing the same mind and skills.
Now that she had started working on it, the idea was growing on her. What exactly would a child raised by Nico Tarith from the day it hatched be like? Most likely, it would turn out to be a complete mess.
She had precisely zero parenting skills, motherly instinct, or desire to obtain either.
But the actual creation of the egg was a research project that she was unwilling to let go of. So, the next time that she saw Max, Nico decided that she would have to obtain a DNA sample to see if the egg would be viable,
Maybe she could upgrade it as well. Some built in lasers would be cool, but possibly impractical in the body of a toddler. It was such a pain to have the child's mind start at such a low level that she couldn't even weaponize it. Perhaps there was a way to put in an evolutionary trigger for genetic weapons.
If they only activated during puberty, that should be late enough that the child could be taught to control themselves in advance, the same as any Kepler child who was given a weapon during their first year of Academy training.
Back to the lab she went. She had a theory to test.
