Novel Full 586 586 Timely Breakthrough
While the bay was being torn down, everyone aboard Terminus was in full work mode, including the design team members that hadn’t been chosen for the repair mission.
Other than herself, Nico had deliberately not chosen anyone who was a lead member on an active project so that the rest of their work could proceed on schedule, including their usual live stream, which was set to show the interior upgrades to the Tech Nomads yacht today.
They had spent all this time working on the perfect new interior layout and fully gutting the hull to prepare for the overhaul, and today was the day it was set to start coming back together.
The plans for their ship had taken dozens of unexpected turns since they first arrived with the hopes of earning enough money to make it somewhat liveable again with a reliable warp drive. Now, they could use ship resources to turn it into anything they wanted and take the cost of the materials they used out of the revenues from the live streams they did in the process.
They had even found what they hoped would be a working version of the new cloaking device currently in the patent registration process under Terminus Trading Company’s name. It wasn’t perfect or quite up to military grade as Max had asked them for. Still, this edition had the core functionality that they were basing the rest of their designs off of. Registering the patent now would prohibit any copycats from cutting ahead of them with a derivative.
The fact that they hadn’t made it public yet should help since there weren’t really any other Alliance scientists in the Galaxy other than the ship’s guests, but you could never be too careful when it came to the development of security features.
The cloaking device patents were marked as not for public viewing, which cost extra but was standard for things which might have military implications. It would alert the Alliance army when the patent was registered, but conveniently, there was a whole ship full of Alliance Envoys right here who could be sent over to see what they were doing and register any complaints that they might have about the design’s similarities to other hidden patents.
Not that they would likely do that, as it meant showing the Innu and the Humans aboard Terminus the actual design schematics for their military cloaking devices to determine the patent violation. However, there was still a chance that they might get lucky.
The live stream started, and the virtual simulation of the new interior was displayed to their millions of viewers, starting a running commentary on their personal tastes as they related to how each of the Tech Nomads had designed their new room.
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They had a good point, and the Tech Nomads had been overlooking the possibility in the excitement of getting their old home renovated. If they made themselves a whole new custom ship, they could raffle off the renovated one once they were finished.
Fans of the Tech Nomad feeds would buy nearly anything relating to them, so raffling off their old ship would be an easy win for the group. Trying to avoid the sketchy sorts of bidders who would want questionable modifications or personal garments left behind could be a bit more difficult though.
The hazards of becoming famous.
They were just about to finalize the design and have the modified Terraforming Array in the bay build their new interior when an interesting bit of data came through from the repair team working on the runabout. While inspecting the hull for damage, they inadvertently found the missing aspect of the cloaking device that was preventing their new design from being fully effective.
The field modulation interacted with certain alloys used in human ships and Mecha, which was the cause of the limited effectiveness they had managed so far. According to Nico’s system analysis, it could be overcome, but it would require a rather extensive testing round to find the right way to make the changes and hide the objects from optical scans.
That was incredible news, and it would keep them busy for weeks, or even months, so everyone exited the vessel, then they set the camera drones to hover in the set safe spots and began the work. The faster they could get through their live stream, the faster they could return to the work they wanted to do.
[Raffle? A raffle is a great idea. How about we start by having them vote for items to be added to the rooms?] The lead team member for the ship overhaul recommended to the others.
[I will start.] She added, then turned to the cameras.
“In honour of a new development that we have made here aboard Terminus, on a project we are working on in secret until it is complete enough to show to the public, we will be adding one item to each room of the ship, as voted by you.
Recommendations start now, until the end of the live stream, and you will have until the day after tomorrow to vote on the leading suggestions.” She announced to the viewers and watched as the comments section went insane.
That was her favourite part about having so many active viewers, as opposed to their small following before coming to Terminus. Everyone was so lively, and they had some great ideas.
Most of the suggestions were from viewers wishing to have something they liked added to their favourite Nomad’s room, but some were great ideas as well.
Of course, not all of the ideas were great. Individual Replicators at every seat of the table would be a logistical and power supply nightmare, and the existing replicator was built overhead. It could put the dishes directly on the table already.
The single best idea of the day came from a Myceloid student in the Capital Academy. An unlikely fan of an Innu Tech Stream, but her suggestion that the upper lounge deck be modified to include a human-style DJ booth gathered millions of votes in the first few minutes.