Waiting at the moon base was no great loss to the residents of Terminus, and over the next few days, many of the guests chose to return to the moon base to explore the caves further or enjoy parts that they felt that they didn't spend enough time on the first time.
Now that it wasn't so crowded, they could see much more and truly take their time to enjoy, with the tour guides being quite relaxed on the schedule as long as they made it back to the ship on time.
The Mercenaries down on the planet were glad for the delay as well, as they ran into a few issues while integrating their power supply with the new replicators. They had adopted the planet's power supply from the alien vessel that they had recovered from the edge of deep space, and it ran at an extremely high frequency that wasn't compatible with most human technology.
Since they didn't have access to most human technology, it wasn't an issue in the past, but the design crew of Terminus did have to design and send them down a power transformer, along with a sample of the fast-growing algae that Terminus used for their own supplies.
Data indicated that they could grow it in one of the isolated reservoirs without too much risk of it spreading and continue to feed their population with minimal effort. What the team recommended was that they catch as many local fish as they could and stock the lake with them, as the fish would eat a portion of the algae, and they would provide most of the nutrients that were lacking in the natural water supply to keep the plant fertilized.
That seemed to be a win/win to the locals, as it was both food and food, now that they had the replicators, so they got the work underway the same day, while the Terminus Design team, accompanied by a number of Innu Guests who simply could not be chased away for any extended period of time, returned to the work of making a terraforming device that could alter atoms to provide missing elements for a planetary settlement.
The initial design was actually two machines working in tandem. One that altered an entire mass into a single element, and then a second one that combined a materials printer with their newest generation of live plant Replicators, which was mounted to a drone and would alter the surface of the planet one strip at a time, after the atmosphere was finished.
According to the Innu helpers, as well as the fans of the live stream, the idea was revolutionary, as they could precisely control the development of the world as it was terraformed instead of altering everything bit by bit until it was capable of sustaining life, and then seeding the entire world.
Max was glad that they liked it, but the most important part to him was the first device.
Once it was another generation along, it could be set to create alloys and other complex molecular structures, so they could start making new parts out of any raw material that they found, even the rocky leftovers after an asteroid was mined for its precious minerals.
The technology really was better suited to a World Ship, like the one that they had first met the Alliance members on, but the colony ship would suffice, even if it really had to devote a huge portion of its storage to the devices in order to successfully terraform a planet in a reasonable timeframe.
They could drop a single pair of drones off on a planet with full instructions and just come back every couple of centuries to see how they were doing, but if they wanted to get the timeframe down to under a decade, they would need roughly ten thousand pairs, as well as either a few large asteroids or a disposable small moon.
The fact that the Valkia lawyer had seen the videos of their work and didn't raise any objections, nor did any of the viewers, meant that they were on a unique path as far as the actual design went and that, finally, they could really start making some advancements without having to get their entire species out of the intergalactic version of the stone age first.
[How are the locals doing with the technology? Do they have the replicators fully online?] Max asked the bioengineering team who had been working with them to solve their crisis.
[Yes, sir. They have them all up and running on a full industrial scale, and the fish have been transferred to help keep the algae reservoir stocked. Within the month, they should be at sustainable production, but at the moment, they are able to provide full rations to the eight major cities from replicated materials.] The team leader responded.
[Excellent news. We will be moving out soon.]
Max searched the areas around them and found a star with no inhabited planets and no reports of Mercenary Bases hidden in it, thanks to the violent gravity shifts of its trinary star cluster.
[Admiral, once all hands are back aboard and accounted for, mark a sixty-minute delay and then set a course for the system marked on the map and find us an asteroid to pull into an empty cargo hold. I want to test out our new toys on the most worthless bit of rock that we can find.] Max informed the flight deck.
[On our way in four hours, Commander. A group just went to the base to run a tour ending in a romantic dinner under the light of the nebula.] The communications officer on duty informed him.
That wasn't a bad idea, and Max sent Nico an invitation to join him in one of the meeting rooms in the Cruise Ship area. The whole room could have a holographic projection placed upon it to look like anywhere that was in the programming, so a little dinner under the stars would be easy to achieve.
He just had to pick up some food on his way over.
