Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

The party ran until well after noon the next day before it finally wound down. Most of the staff went home early, but by the time dinner was starting to be served at the houses further from the chaos, there were hundreds of thousands of Reavers passed out anywhere that seemed remotely comfortable. Up against trees, on the grass of the parks, and on the floors and tables of the entertainment venues that had been opened the night before to get a head start on building their reputations as the place to be.

It would be a few more hours until many of them recovered enough to start getting mobile again, but the staff had gathered for their first day of official orientation. They had a lot of new technology to learn, as well as practices and procedures set by their leaders. Things were done differently on every planet, so when you had an eclectic group like this, you had to set a single standard.

That meant negotiations of a sort. The way that the leaders of the divisions were used to doing things wasn't always the best way, but some of the employees would have other, more efficient ideas, and the Reavers were always open to easier ways to get their jobs done.

The most surprising idea for the public services office, which took care of the paperwork for employees and residents, actually came from a collaboration between a Dryad and one of the Vampires that had snagged a position in middle management.

Their suggestion was that everyone would get a nanotech implant to verify their identity and current document status. That was normal for Kepler and for the Vampires, who had a more primitive version than the System, but many of the Reavers and Cygnus citizens couldn't use System-based features, so it hadn't been in the manager's initial plan.

It wouldn't give them a full-on System, but it would carry all of their identification and records inside their bodies so that they didn't need to produce anything at the offices and so that every clinic could get all their medical history in an instant.

For non-Kepler humans, that was usually what their identification card was for. But it could get lost, stolen or even duplicated. This method was much more secure and would help prevent infiltration. It would also eliminate those embarrassing moments when you accidentally lock yourself out of your house, workplace, or vehicle.

The nanotech implants replaced regular keys, and the ship was already set up for them. It was a measure set up by Nico and was also used on Terminus so that they could keep secure areas secure. Guests got a more traditional card or download to their communications device to serve as a key to their rooms.

Implementation was easy. Everyone had to come by the office over the course of the next month to verify their data and finalize security clearances, so they could just implement it as they arrived and have residents save their identification cards as a backup.

Most departments came up with at least one small improvement to their procedures. The only one that Max noticed hadn't negotiated any new procedures was the bridge staff, who had Admiral Penner standing in the middle of their team, making notes of any suggestions that they had.

A few suggestions were made about rearranging the bridge for more functional positioning, but nobody dared to question her procedures.

Eventually, they would be less terrified of her, but for those who had served in an Infantry unit or had lived on a Reaver Ship their whole life, the Commissar was a terrifying existence, and they had grown up on the stories of other Commissars executing misbehaving children and soldiers on a whim.

It was just a story told to children, in the case of the Reavers, but looking at her didn't convince many people that she wouldn't execute them for acting out, even as grown adults.

Max listened in on their thoughts while she tried injecting a joke into the conversation so that her new crew would relax a little around her. It brought absolute silence to the room as soon as she spoke it, and Max could tell that more than one of the junior bridge staff had actually hidden, thinking that she meant it literally.

[Try joking about little things. Very little things. Joking about feeding them to your pet Klem only makes them think you actually have a pet Klem.] Max mentally reminded her.

[Then give me a better joke. I'm bad at jokes, always have been, and they look like they might wet themselves.] She thought.

[They're talking about scheduling now, so ask them to open this file on the projector. Reaver Code 3 Section 16, paragraph 400. The proper chastisement for tardiness.] Max suggested.

The paragraph read, "Being late for your shift is unacceptable without proper notification or during the previously listed exceptional situations. Should you be late for your shift, the member who covered for you may ask you to cover an equivalent amount of time for them at a later time. Should this inconvenience your superiors, they may ask you to cover the shift in the absent employees uniform and nameplate so they don't have to remember a new name."

The bridge staff was fairly evenly mixed between male and female staff members, with a few gender-neutral combat Cyborgs in the mix. Forcing those who missed their shift to wear someone else's uniform was a recipe for hilarity and disaster.

Who would cover for a late crew member was up to the Admiral or the Bridge Officer on duty, not the friends of the missing crewman, so it could be used as a reward or a punishment, depending on who was missing and who wanted time off later.

The Admiral had them open the relevant passage so that they could memorize it for future reference and then added her own version of a joke in her usual dry voice.

"I would like to add that should any of you fine folks show up late, you will be wearing the uniform of Navigator Johns, who is always happy to have a shift off."

Johns was one of the Combat Cyborgs, and his uniform consisted of a rank badge magnetically locked to his implanted armour.

It took a few seconds for the bridge staff to realize that she had actually made a joke, but the idea of having to work your shift naked except for your rank badge was too funny for them not to laugh. It was just what Admiral Penner needed to get the crew to start to lighten up around her.

It would likely be a pretty good deterrent to having the bridge staff show up late, as well.

"It's good to see you all beginning to relax. We have it easy for the next few days, except for the Communications Officers, who will have a lot of messages to pass through to operations, but that doesn't mean you can slack on attendance. If the ship needs to move or there is a combat situation, it will happen in a matter of seconds, so you need to be here and at your stations during your entire scheduled shift or have someone cover for you while you are on break.

It has been a pleasure to meet you all, and I look forward to getting to know you all better in the future." She finished.

"And feel free to show up a little late, ladies. You will look wonderful in my uniform." Johns added with a laugh, then ducked behind his console as a flurry of pens and a combat boot came flying at his head.

Max smiled as he saw the scene replay in their thoughts, happy to see that his crew was already getting along well enough to toss decorum aside. He never really trusted soldiers who were too by the book and uptight. The ones that knew you well enough to tell you to feth off were the ones who were the most likely to have your back when things went wrong.

He scanned the crew a little longer, not finding anything too wrong, and then moved his thoughts to the Mecha bays and strangely found them abandoned except for a few technicians.

He accessed the cameras, and the area was packed with activity, but it was almost all Androids, which were a rudimentary AI system and not sentient, nor would their programming allow them to become sentient. It seemed that the limits on their computing power were enough to cause his System to not recognize their actions as thought but as computer programs, the same way that Max couldn't sense the destinations of automated drones and such.

But when he focused on his combat-related functions, he could link through their sensors to the target, so he would still be able to provide them with firing solutions in combat, which was a relief. Their entire strategy to use Android Mecha Pilots relied on him being able to influence them with his System Functions in order to bring them up to a standard where they wouldn't take heavy casualties.

Only time would tell if that was going to give him a huge headache when that many Androids were in combat, spread all over space or the surface of a planet.