Before Max left the hangar, he sent a message to the Enovys with the technical details of the new weapons, in case they hadn't already gotten a copy of them, as well as the humans' regulations on their use against populated planets.

There weren't actually any rules against using them on ships, but Max realized that the Alliance would certainly have something to say about that since they used a large number of vessels with populations in the millions, which a single antimatter missile could theoretically destroy.

This was far from the first time that he had been required to attend the "Humans did WHAT?" conversations, but they were never a lot of fun, and it was mostly technical matters that he really wasn't experienced in, so he was basically reading them to his audience as he learned them.

The Envoys were used to it as well since they knew absolutely nothing about Human Technological development other than what they had learned from meeting with Max, but they, too, were required to be here.

[Tell the Envoys that I will meet them at the Coffee Shop on Terminus, and I will escort them about Absolution from there. I have been in Combat all day, and this isn't happening without coffee.] Max informed the communications officers who would be in charge of passing the message.

[It is currently half past midnight ship time.] The messenger reminded him.

[Oh, thank feth. Send the message now and tell them that I will meet them in seven hours.]

That was enough time to get some sleep but not enough time that the other Alliance vessels in the system would start throwing a fit about him delaying.

It was common for ships to set their onboard time by the Capital of the planet that they were from or a unified time with their force so that all vessels that met would be on the same schedule, but Max had no idea what time the Alliance Government observers were on.

While he took the high-speed transport pod across the ship from his hangar to Terminus, opting to see a bit of Absolution on the way instead of using a precision portal, Max noticed that the sensors were detecting more and more ships in the system.

Not just Alliance Government ships, there were Shin, Dryad, Vampire, and dozens of others he didn't recognize, but they were all Capital Class ships, meaning Cruisers or larger, which were intended to represent their faction in negotiations or conflicts.

Tomorrow was going to be a huge mess, no matter how the battle on the planet went, and Max had a sneaking suspicion that there was some legal loophole that was going to be used to give him even more of a headache.

If it was as simple as demanding a sample to make sure that it didn't violate copyright, he could refer it back to the Envoys for closed-door investigations and avoid revealing anything to the public, but when was life ever that easy?

They had seen them fired, so they had at least a little bit of data on them, and there was no telling how well their scans had managed to penetrate the shielded outer shell of the weapons.

Max fell asleep in his room aboard Terminus and woke with a start when the alarm went off, warning him that he had thirty minutes until he had to meet the Envoys. Just enough time to shower, get dressed and jog across the ship to meet at the coffee shop.

From the look of them, he was the only one who got any sleep last night. They all looked worn out, and except the Innu Envoy, who was on her second triple shot Raspberry Latte of the morning, their minds were dragging just as badly.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, my apologies for the delay. You know how it is with Combat. I was in no shape to be holding any sort of meeting last night." Max greeted them.

The Valkia Envoy waved off his concern. "That's fine. It gave us time to meet up with all of the concerned parties and catch up on the situation. This time, it's not entirely the humans' new technology that has everyone's panties in a twist.

From what we can tell, an unknown malicious actor has managed to pull a Klem-infested world into the middle of Alliance Territory. Or perhaps they intercepted a wave and seeded it without us noticing.

But the fact remains that there are now six Klem-infested worlds in Alliance Territory, and nobody is quite sure how to respond. Everyone is sending people here to see how you deal with them and make their own judgements on the species since they don't accept the Hunters' determination of Game Species as a proper categorization.

But while they argue politics, the Klem that have appeared in the Alliance are spreading rapidly and onto populated worlds.

Most of our worlds don't keep a standing army, so once the pods got past the defensive measures, which didn't fire because they weren't a recognized threat, they have been free to spread among a civilian population."

"Have you at least sent forces to prevent the spread?" Max asked, then sat down with his coffee to try to process the news.

He nearly choked when he realized that he had gotten the wrong beverage and handed the latte back to a very disgruntled-looking Innu, who was glaring at the black coffee in her hands.

With her fruity latte back, she was much more talkative. "We did. And for now, they have them contained, but even invasive species are entitled to consideration before extermination until a classification is made in the official records.

When we added the data about the humans and your galaxy, we didn't expect that it would become a problem within the Alliance in a matter of months, so it's all still sitting in a bureaucratic queue waiting for official researchers to verify our data.

Given average processing times, that should take less than a decade, but with Klem in the Alliance's core, we don't really have that long to get things sorted out."