With the pleasant part of their conversation out of the way, the Innu official sighed and turned back to his yacht, then looked into the ship, presumably having already accessed the security cameras.
Max checked Nico's thoughts and found that she had shown the man how to navigate the system, and where to find his daughter and her friends so that he could see that they were safe.
The Innu's natural ability and Nico's Innate Talent were very similar in function as far as Max could tell, though their minds worked in very different ways. They simply resonated with all sorts of energy fields and naturally inserted themselves into them in order to communicate with a wide variety of technologies as naturally as breathing.
That included the Nanotechnology of the Kepler Pilots, though the AI did keep the Innu from seeing most of what they were doing, taking the intrusion as a personal challenge at first, since the System wasn't used to random people simply popping into its data flow to see what was going on.
"I should talk with my children. I don't know if you are aware, but your galaxy is marked as off limits, an S Ranked hazard, threatening all forms of life. They should not be here at all, much less in my Yacht. The only vessels that come here are authorized exploration fleets, like Noctem, as well as some government investigators and others who wish to determine if the status of this galaxy is still deserved.
There are species in the northern arms of the Galaxy who have nearly earned their place among the Universe with their peaceful ways, but their technology is so severely lacking that none of the administrators will grant permission to do more than trade basic trinkets with them, and authorize a few planets to be terraformed in uninhabited regions so that they can feel included while they develop.
Given another few millennia, they should be ready, assuming that they can keep improving their technology, while Humans are on a different path. You are advancing technology at an incredible pace but in all the wrong ways.
Your capabilities for war are even greater than your ability to terraform and survive on hostile planets, to the point that you can actually use weapons of war as part of your attempts to terraform the worlds that you arrive at.
Nobody knows what to make of it, so they simply placed your whole galaxy off-limits until they can decide." The Innu explained.
"And how large of a process is that? Would it be hard to convince them that we are worthy once we can get our species settled down and end the wars?" Max asked, making the guards laugh.
"Nothing is simple with the administrators once they have made a decision. You would need unanimous consent from all thirteen thousand and some species involved to totally remove your designation as a hazardous species, though you could much more easily receive dispensation for small groups among the species to be declared safe for civilized interaction.
I believe that the Valkia have already applied for conditional interaction status for Terminus, based on their interactions with you, but that only means that it is safe for people to come to this specific ship, and not just any random human, even though you met the technological threshold to be able to traverse galaxies on your own." The guard who always remained to his boss's left explained.
"Unfortunately, I think things will get much worse before they get better for humanity as a whole." Max sighed.
"That was our assessment as well, but never fear, the alliances won't hold it against you once you have moved past your own age of strife. Look at the Valkia, they killed every other sentient species in their galaxy before they decided that it was time for them to end the cycle of violence and pursue more peaceful pastimes." The Guard on the right agreed.
That was a relief. The Valkia seemed well respected, and Max was pretty sure that they wouldn't have to kill everything that they met in order to end the wars. The northern part of the Galaxy was already getting close to peaceful, and they had humans among them.
So really, it was just down to politics. End the messy politics and stabilize the galaxy and humanity might have a chance to be seen as properly civilized.
That probably wasn't actually possible even if Max was given ten lifetimes to work with.
"Why don't we lead you to your offspring, and then to a nice soundproof room so that you can have a fine discussion about the technicalities of borrowing a yacht to go to a restricted zone for vacation?" Nico suggested.
The guards burst into involuntary laughter, while the boss looked even more annoyed, but he nodded in agreement.
"I don't suppose that you have a confinement facility here do you?" He muttered as they walked the corridors.
"We do, though it is probably best if you deal with them yourself if you are wishing to charge them for the theft," Max suggested.
"Oh, not like that. It is standard practice with Innu parents. Put the misbehaving child in the corner of a shielded room with the lights off, where they can't see or interact with anything. A time out, for our species." The guard on the left explained.
"Sensory Deprivation is deemed a form of torture by humans, so I'm not sure that we have that sort of a facility, though I suppose we could come up with something similar." Max agreed, thinking of options while they walked.
"I've got an idea. It wouldn't take much to make our Immersive Virtual Reality work with the Innu. We could put them in a simulation that encompassed their whole mind. It would be useful both for punishment and for learning if we ran a simulation on it. We use it to train pilots and other skilled trades among the humans." Nico suggested.
"Yes, eternal homework. That is perfect." The Innu father laughed, looking way more eager than Max expected to implement this punishment.
He had a point though, homework as punishment for going on an unauthorized trip was oddly fitting.
