By the end of the day, all of the soldiers had been relocated to their new dorms, and the Battalion Kitchens had been moved from the Dutchman to various spots inside the Terminus, except for Fifth Battalion, who remained aboard for fast-action responses.
With that out of the way, it also gave time for some of the men to go to the Station to unwind. With strict warnings not to blow their own cover and not to get too out of hand. They didn’t want to give their Trading Company a bad name for being drunk and disorderly after all.
It was the strangest shore leave that any of them ever had, they were so free to do anything as Reavers, but still under strict observation as soldiers, and the contrast was a bit unnerving. The Station had a lot of fun to be found though. All sorts of games, gambling, even live shows and a very high-tech holographic movie which put the audience inside the scene, looking from various angles at the action all around them.
That last one was a hit with everyone, even the couples that had formed among the crew were up for it since different times of day played different movies. The late-night one was a horror flick, but the afternoon one was a romance that was supposed to feel incredibly real, according to the Pilots that went to see it.
Max skipped on both of them and spent his time on the station hustling games of three-dimensional Pool. Nobody expected the Reaver to have a System interface, so they bet before their brains caught up to their mouth, and Max cleaned them out, collecting some gray market credits that could be used in a variety of nations.
Those would come in handy later, so he had pocket money and didn’t need to work small amounts of cash into every deal for the crew. He would still need to do it every time they were going to stay somewhere for a while and disembark, but when they only needed to send a single team for a few hours to accomplish a mission, they could use this stockpile of money to get through without alerting anyone to their use of Kepler Credits.
With the new suites, the crew wasn’t even complaining when it was time to leave the Station and head back out into space again. The front edge of the Klem Pods was getting close, and the Admiral assured them that the Planetary authority had sent repeated messages to Sector Command, requesting an interception and emergency rescue team once the trajectory was determined to match the ones that Max had sold to them.
They were definitely going to get hit by one of the smaller branches, but with their limited military force, it could be enough to wipe out their whole population if they weren’t lucky with the Mining Mecha.
“Has there been any response from Sector Command?” Max asked Nico, who shrugged her shoulders in response.
“They keep scrambling their codes and keywords, so I am not totally sure, I have missed too many messages to piece everything together, but it looks like they are planning to let the planets get hit and then swoop in with the Tapani as heroes and clean up the Klem, turning the civilians’ loyalty away from the Emperor,” Nico informed him.
As far as rebellion plans go, it was a pretty solid one. Rebelling without giving the citizenry a very good reason always ended in assassinations and failure.
“Do you think that they will call on us?” Max asked.
“Doubtful. The Tapani have sent a strike Cruiser to the area. It should deflect a portion of the wave into the star, and make it easier to clean up the rest. Low-effort hero points and an easy-to-make propaganda film to send out just as the other planets are about to get hit, painting them as rescuers on their way to save the day.”
Max asked the Generals and got basically the same answer. The Tapani and the Sector Fleet would play hero, but only after letting the planets take a little damage so that nobody would doubt their heroic intervention was anything less than noble.
The best plan that they had, for now, was to record what they could, stay out of sight, and wait to see if anyone really did need the help of a Mercenary Mecha force to deal with an infestation.
General Ming had sent regular updates to Imperial Command, now that they were close enough to a Kepler-inhabited planet for him to have an encrypted relay station in range, so they were assured that the Emperor at least knew what was going on here, even if he didn’t have a chance to respond right away, since the front lines had turned against him.
Kepler Terminus wasn’t one of the planets that were in the path of the Klem, but from what Max could see in the enemy movements, it was some sort of central hub, likely due to its high population and infrastructure.
Their sensors were picking up a lot of traffic in and out of the system, all military, and almost all parts of the Sector Fleet that they already knew had turned and allied with the Tapani. The thought that Kepler Terminus, home of the original accident that caused the System, would go rebel was insane, but Max was watching the evidence build up in real-time.
[Tarith Echo Seven to Terminus Trading Company. We request your presence at the Cargo station of the Kepler Terminus System. Any Reavers in the area, please relay.]
The Admiral was the first to get the message and passed it to Nico, who informed them that Echo Seven was the Cargo Station itself, or at least their family’s operation on the station. They knew that Terminus Trading Company was part of the Family Operations, so they would expect them to reply and react right away if it was important enough to send them a direct open message.
[Terminus Trading Company to Tarith Echo Seven. Excellent timing, we were just on our way to you. Expect our arrival within the week.] The Admiral sent back, being deliberately vague so that anyone who was hostile and listening wouldn’t know exactly when to set a trap for them.
Terminus changed course, picking up speed, and Max was headed home for the first time since he left on an emergency patrol with General Tennant.