The next morning, Max woke up to absolute Chaos in the minds of the people aboard Absolution.
It was no secret that there were countless dignitaries gathering for a massive meeting about an overhaul of the military deployment and procurement issues that they had been facing, but he star-studded lineup that had actually come to the ship was beyond anyone's expectations.
Anyone who was anyone had made a point of arriving for the meeting. Not just major Reaver and other Political leaders, there were pop music idols, viral video stars, legendary podcasters, gamers and minor celebrities of all sorts.
That was before the real big guns began to arrive, with much less fanfare, but much more paparazzi coverage. The leaders of the Hunters, Valkia, and Shin arrived together with Myceloid Emperor Ahmed. Then, to everyone's surprise, even the Coven Leader of the Vampires came to the meeting in person.
He was the closest thing that any species had to an eternal leader, as he had held the office for nearly a thousand years already, and it was extremely rare that he would come out in public.
Then Prince Wushu and Lady Chen arrived together, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Max hadn't realized until now that they were actually quite famous in their own right, with an international podcast of Mecha design theories that featured a small Innu Tech Nomad group, and the adorable faces of two young Royals who were pushing technological advancements in the field of soldier and worker safety.
Max thought it was something like the appeal of cat videos. Cute things doing cute things. Even if it was viable technology that would save lives, the most important part was to get people to watch it, so they could integrate it into future designs and orders of their own.
In a time when planets were getting raided without notice, anyone who could manage it wanted some sort of defensive weaponry or shielding at their home and place of work. So, that was what the young royal couple focused on.
Not just new technologies and theories, but the most adorable practical tests of popular budget equipment, and some off label ideas for industrial gear that the military definitely wouldn't approve of.
That was the benefit of the civilian defence forces, though. Like the planetary guard, the rules were much more lax around what they could and couldn't do, and repurposing farm equipment and mining gear into weapons with a few tweaks might void the warranty, but it didn't affect the IP rights agreements that the militaries had to abide by.
The Reavers had made most of their gear open source for that reason, but the Alliance still clung desperately to the multi-generational conglomerates pushing outdated technology to keep their wealth up.
Since that was what was available, that was what the group reviewed.
The entire district around them was just insufferably hyper at the moment, so Max turned his attention to other areas of the world ship, where more sane minds should prevail. But today, they also let him down. The Illithid had sent in an Elder for the meeting, a famous researcher into mental powers who had made great breakthroughs in the advanced mental skills training field in his youth, and they were holding some sort of interlinked thought brainstorming session.
It wasn't emotional, but it was incredibly intense, and Max had no intention of getting in the middle of that.
There was one calm area in the storm of activity aboard the ship that morning, and that was the crew quarters. Everyone was doing their best to catch up on sleep before they were called in for additional guard duties, shifts at work and other entirely predictable side effects of a massive influx of dignitaries.
Since they knew that the upcoming days were going to be chaos, they were mentally preparing themselves right now, as Max was hoping to do. Of course, as Reavers, that mental preparation varied in form from extra sleep to stockpiling energy drinks and liquor before the influx of people caused power rationing, and they had to wait for the replicators to get to their spot in the queue to refill their drinks.
If it got really out of hand, the queue had been known to get up to five minutes long, which only sounded short when your beer wasn't empty.
Generals Yaakov and Tennant had just arrived, and were currently doing their best to find reasons not to go out into the public areas of the ship, where they would have to face the paparazzi and the reporters who were all eager to get an early scoop on the potential direction of the meetings.
[Generals, why don't you come and meet with me before you head out? I have a fresh bottle of Rum with me, and we can have a nice long talk until the reporters go away.] Max suggested, as an urgent text sent straight to their inbox.
[We will be there in five minutes, assuming that your Androids know the way.] General Tennant replied only seconds later.
The old Generals were both mostly retired now, and General Tennant working as a Judge for the Reavers part-time, but when it came to valuable insights about how to keep planets safe, they still have more knowledge than almost anyone else in the species.
After all, they had been there, in every sort of forsaken hellhole, and they had come up with ways to survive. The hope was that they could apply that on a larger scale and help everyone else do it as well.
But that would have to wait for later, there were too many reporters outside, with too many questions, and they were going to have a drink with the local Commander, as was customary when visiting friends and allies.
General Tennant smiled to himself at the thought that if he were a civilian, Max would only just be old enough to drink, if anyone was brave enough to ask him his real age. So much had changed since the two of them had met, and even their home nation was gone already, replaced and converted into part of the new factions among the politicians.
That settled it, he was getting nostalgic, the first sign that he really did need a drink.
