"Of course, we have more Rum. Don't forget that we have replicators here. I will get you a bottle right away to split with your team." Nico informed Lord Joseph.
"You won't be joining us?" He asked, wondering if she was still planning to take her Command Mecha to attack the disabled ship.
"I will, but I am a full conversion Cyborg. I can't get drunk." Nico explained, and all the Klux officers did a double take.
It was clear that she had mechanical eyes, but they had thought that was the extent of her modifications. Her non-Newtonian shell closely mimicked human flesh, and she was getting very good at an aloof version of normal facial features, so they hadn't noticed that she had been fully converted.
"Well, that was unexpected. I can see how Rum would lose its appeal if you could only drink it for the taste. Especially the cheap stuff that most merchants live off of." Lord Joseph agreed.
"I can also get you an assortment of other liquors if you would like. Terminus has it good, not having to worry about running out of the good Rum." Nico offered.
"In that case, can you get us a bottle of brandy? We make a version on Klux, and I would like to see how the Replicators version stacks up against it." The Agriculture Minister requested.
Their local version of the liquor was made from Ice Berries, and it had a minty cold aftertaste, which was completely different from a regular Brandy, despite appropriating the name due to the similarities in composition. Drinking the generic version from the Replicator could be a very enlightening experience for them, Max thought.
[Incoming Projectile Imminent. Size, 17 tonnes, velocity, 240kph.] The automated defense warning was announced while Nico brought back a large bottle of replicated Brandy.
She set the bottle on the table and turned to watch Max, who was viewing the Holy Truth boarding attempt, only to find him staring slack-jawed at the hologram in front of him.
"Did they actually get through? I can send some forces to clean them up." Nico offered, scrolling through the data feeds with her mind to see where reinforcements were needed.
Max brought the screen up over his shoulder level so that everyone behind him could see what he was looking at. Hundreds of small back objects had bounced off the Shielding around Terminus and were slowly floating away from the ship as the thruster packs they were wearing struggled to slow their velocity.
"The shuttle just turned around and released them without even checking if we had our shields up. I mean, they should have known the answer was yes since we blocked the first attack with them, but they didn't even try." Max stammered, overcome by the sheer idiocy of the events taking place.
"Oh, free shuttle. Bonus points for me." Nico cheered, and Max watched as the Gravity Beam grabbed hold of the small vessel that was frantically powering up and down their engines, trying to break free from the overwhelming force.
[Holy Truth Shuttle. Please reduce power to your thrusters. I do not wish to see any harm come to my new shuttle.] Nico announced over all channels short-range broadcast.
Most of the Klux dignitaries looked at her in confusion, wondering if she really assumed that they would follow her orders after she blatantly told them she was stealing their shuttle, but only a few seconds later, the engines powered down, and the small ship was safely brought into the bay next to them.
"One moment, gentlemen, I need to go see a guy about a thing. I will be right back." She explained as she walked through the open door separating the two bays and began to bang on the rear hatch door of the newly arrived shuttle.
"Don't make me come in there and get you, or I'm bringing an ass whooping with me," Nico shouted at them while Max facepalmed at her unique negotiating style.
Surprisingly, the hatch opened, and two pilots stepped out with their hands in the air. "We surrender. Please don't shoot. On behalf of the seventeenth breaching squadron, we surrender ourselves to your custody. Please save our disciples from the vacuum."
When they saw Nico and realized that they were twice her size, they looked a bit startled, but they immediately scanned the room and realized that they were surrounded by Mecha with no way out and a disabled shuttle.
"Our shuttle suddenly shut down, and we couldn't even rescue our team from space. Please, save them. They don't deserve to die like that." The second pilot begged, dropping to his knees and kowtowing before Nico.
"Fine. I will collect the ants. Inform them that if they resist, I am throwing them right back out of the bay door." Nico informed the pleading pilots and then watched as the Gravity Beam she was controlling brought the rest of the team safely through the barrier.
Once they were inside, the breaching team began to form up for an attack, but the Pilots immediately began shouting at them in their local dialect, a language that wasn't recorded in the computer translation files that Max had obtained from the Kepler military, and wasn't one that he had heard before.
With only a little convincing, the team threw down their weapons and removed their helmets, leaving them vulnerable if Nico really did follow through and throw them back into space for misbehavior.
"We have a lot of questions for you today, and since I am in a good mood, we will start with a simple question and no pain. Why are there no Mecha and no actual soldiers on either of the ships you sent here to Klux?"
The question startled Max and made him focus on trying to read their minds. Much of it had to be done through imagery since he didn't understand the language they were thinking in or speaking to each other, a deliberate defense against Kepler's Mental Interrogation, but he got the basics fairly quickly.
Cygnus was ahead of schedule. Their system was already under attack, and these two vessels had been in dry dock when the news came that Klux was signing a treaty with the Reavers. The Holy Truth Central Command believed that Cygnus would just punish them for their failure and then leave, so they mustered as many spare desk jockeys and retired naval staff as they could to intimidate the Klux into not signing an agreement.
"I request terms of surrender." The pilot announced resolutely, not answering Nico's question.
By rights, they could surrender their vessel to the Reavers if they were the ranking officer, or his representative, and it would end the hostilities, but it would not give them safe passage back to their country. They would remain prisoners of the Reavers and would face charges for any crimes they had committed under Reaver law.
In this case, that would be one shot fired against a Reaver vessel with no physical damage or loss of life. Even a harsh judge would only give the crew a few years of hard labor at the worst and triple that for the officers.
"Is that so? Alright, I will send drones to communicate with your bridge staff and see if they agree with your request." Nico informed the Pilot with a smile.
This might just be the easiest acquisition of two Cruisers in history.
