Most of the crowd looked shocked to hear that Nico was a Mecha Pilot, but some of them had done enough research to at least know her basic background, as it was known to the Alliance. They had seen Shattered Pride in combat a number of times since the first guests arrived aboard Terminus, so the Mecha itself was no secret to them, nor was the Pilot. It was just that few had connected the leader of the design team to the pilot of the Super Heavy Mecha with the Demonic visage.

The rest of the test, including dinner and drinks made by the onboard Replicators, went swimmingly, and the fifty Noble Guests returned back to Terminus slightly tipsy and in a great mood.

None of them were in the market for a Cutter Class yacht, but Max had received multiple requests for smaller versions of the ship.

They all retired to their cabins for the evening, and the very next morning, Max started to get departure notices from some of the companies who had come to supervise their production. The design team had proven themselves so capable that the concept of keeping a team on hand was becoming more like sending them on vacation. Few of the companies still viewed the chances that they would be able to block the Terminus Trading Company's development and patents as a realistic option, so only a few who were working on similar modular designs left teams behind to ensure that the humans' development didn't overlap with their unpatented prototypes.

Eight hundred fewer guests made the ship feel a bit empty again, but that didn't last long. As soon as they were gone, more ships started to arrive, drawn in by the promise of product testing streams and the ever-present chance that the humans would end up in a mechanized fistfight with something.

There were a wide variety of species on the ship from all over the Alliance, but there was no denying that the Terminus Trading Company was the Innu's new hottest vacation spot. Half of the ship was full of Innu tourists, and the staff had dedicated multiple meeting rooms for their impromptu technology brainstorming sessions so that they stopped sitting down in circles in the middle of the hallways to discuss ideas inspired by something that they had seen.

Max was spending a quiet morning in his office, catching up on all of the daily updates and requests from the crew, when a message came in from Rae 5 Command, requesting their presence to negotiate a deal with a planet well beyond the extent of what was generally considered human territory.

It was outward of the Klem territories and almost all the way to the Narsian region, but so far out that, like the Death Wind Territory, there weren't many inhabited planets around them.

If some far-flung human colony wanted in on the trade deal, Max didn't see any good reason to refuse them, especially if they were somewhere so dangerous. All danger was an opportunity for weapons dealers, no matter the century.

[Terminus Staff and Guests. Following the acquisition of the current supply of raw materials, we will begin a portal transition to meet with a potential ally of the Company. Please be aware of the impending movement and plan accordingly.]

They gathered a few holds full of raw materials from the asteroids, enough to make a dozen more cutters, fully loaded with Mecha, just in case the locals at the new destination had something interesting to trade and prepared to portal to the designated safe location.

Max watched the monitors as the ship slowly slid through the portal and arrived at the other side, but something was definitely off in this star system. There was an inhabited planet, and the sensors showed that they had billions of residents on a feral world, many times the surface area of Kepler Terminus but with an impressive rotational speed that brought the effective gravity down to roughly double that of the human standard at the equator, but over triple a the rotational poles.

The most notable part was that Max didn't see more than a few fortress cities among the jungles, and only a few outposts among the frigid polar regions, with nothing at all in orbit and no sign of advanced vehicles on the surface.

[Canis Colony, this is Commander Keres of the Terminus Trading Company on behalf of the Reaver Trade Group. Please respond.] Max tried.

[Welcome to Canis, Terminus Trading Company. We have located you. If you have the capability, please send a smaller vessel to the surface for negotiations, as we have no space capable vessels.]

How in the world did they contact the Reavers from halfway across the Galaxy before they rediscovered space flight? Better yet, who gave them the communication codes?

"First Battalion, prepare to descend for negotiations," Max called over the crew area intercoms and then returned to messaging the colony.

[We will send a Cutter, only a few hundred meters in length, to the surface to meet with you. Which Fortress City would you like to hold the meetings at?]

[Central Command is in the plains, at these coordinates. We will signal you with a beacon.] The Colony representative responded.

The beacon turned out to be a Cygnus Expansion Era transponder, over three thousand years old, but somehow still functional or rebuilt using the same frequencies and codes as the original.

Max loaded everyone up, including Shattered Pride, inside the Cutter and then returned to Cleansing Light to fly to the surface himself.

[Canis Colony, one Cutter, and one Titan Class Mecha are incoming in three minutes, please prepare for our arrival.] Max informed them and then ordered the launch, following it down so that he could take his time and get a better reading on this planet to see what it might have to offer.

The answer seemed to be monsters. As tall as a Crusader Class Mecha, with some being significantly larger, and hides as tough as military alloys were everywhere. Even under the polar ice caps, the Mecha detected monsters, including a form of squid over a kilometer long.

He wasn't sure how humans had survived on this planet, but he admired their tenacity already, and he hadn't even met them yet.