"Huh?" The expression on Titanyana's face was one she had likely never made in her life. "W-what?"

The small woman with the cat-like ears was in disbelief. She had received rapid responses before, but never like this.

"W-what did you say?"

"We accept." Diana simply nodded in agreement as Donovan repeated their statement. There was no debating over the decision for them, it was exactly what they needed.

"B-b-b-b-b-but why? There are only two of you! And my people are so weak!"

Donovan clenched his fist to stop himself from pumping it in excitement. "The fact that there are two of us is a pretty big reason in and of itself, and we have ways to work around your people being 'weak'. Trust me when I tell you that there won't be any issues on that front. The biggest problem is going to be education."

"Agreed. There is only so much we can teach to so many, and time is of the essence here. Do you think Arc is going to be of much use in that regard?" Diana joined in on Donovan's personal brainstorming session, the speed at which they were making plans leaving Titanyana lost.

"Not until they learn the basics of English, which I suspect is going to be the biggest hurdle. Once we get that first batch of people that can speak it they can teach others though, and it will cascade from there."

"We just have to get the ball rolling huh? Still, we'll have to prioritize education for a good long while if they are going to be of particular use."

"I don't know about that. It might provide the most comfortable or desirable working conditions, but if we keep them to an assembly line while they learn they should only ever have to learn how to do one action."

"Wouldn't fully automated processes be more efficient?"

"Not if we want to provide income and a source of jobs for them, right? Though I suppose we are going to have to put a heavy emphasis on agriculture until we can dedicate the time and resources to build up a fertilizer and industrialized agriculture industry."

Chestnut cleared her throat, bringing their attention back to who was in the room. "Before continuing on your merry way, designing plans and optimizing your industry, I think you should at least listen to Titanyana there."

"Eh?" Titanyana had never been more on the back foot in her life. "Eh!?"

"That's a good idea. Donovan, we should let her ask some questions first so that we aren't getting ahead of ourselves."

"Hm." He nodded, his way of showing agreement in spite of the millions of ideas that were no doubt forming in his head. This was no doubt a miracle to Donovan, even more than it was to Diana, seeing as his potential industrial capacity just shot up from a measly 'few tens or hundreds of thousands' directly into the 'very near to the billions'. Population growth rates could only be manipulated so much, after all.

Full scale industrialization of the modern sort he was used to was still a far ways out, they just didn't have the infrastructure to build off of yet, but he now had the manpower to put him in reach. All he needed to do was get them from point A to point B. All of the sudden having 'a source of manpower to tentatively crew as many ships as you need for an extended period of time' was sounding a lot more juicy. If he could borrow some of the construction crews that the Holifanians had dispatched to their new home planet and have them build landing platforms on Nekh, then the option of using larger transports was available to him. The only question for now was transit time.

"You've heard us, Titanyana, what is it that you wish to ask of us?"

"H-huh?" Titanyana's heart was beating faster than ever before, her confusion now a bigger source of stress than the fear of losing her people.

"You still need to negotiate, child. You need to explain the situation to them in more detail and provide them with information they may be able to use to help you further."

"But how? What should I say?" Titanyana was stressing out now, her hands having pulled her tail to her chest. "I didn't think I'd get this far!"

Chestnut sighed, Titanyana's behavior and temperament promised to cause problems in the future. That didn't mean she would be impossible to work with, it would just be a bit harder to get key details from her. Diana seemed to have a good idea about how to hndle her though.

"That's fine. We are still don't have the means to help you, so we have plenty of time to go over details. For now, just give us a time-frame. How long do we have?" Diana remained calm, soothing her with words. If she wasn't bound by societal convention in these circumstances, she would have tried to give Titanyana a hug to help calm her down.

"Um, I was told five years."

Don's expression soured.

"Five years. . . Donovan, what do you think of that?" Diana was suspecting that some math was not adding up right in Donovan's head.

"It's-" He paused, thinking about his words and how they might affect Titanyana. "Well I'll just be honest here, that isn't anywhere close to enough time to save them all. Hell, we might not even be able to save a tenth of them with that amount of time."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Titanyana's eyes went wide, both in shock and dismay. She was surprised that saving even that many was an option for them, but crushed to learn that total salvation wasn't on the table. She knew it deep down, but a good number of her people were going to have to die.

"Really? Why?" Even Diana seemed confused.

Donovan put his hand on his chin, displeased that he was going to have to rethink his strategy. He had gotten his hopes up, only to have the ideal scenario restrained by the realities of a time limit. "Its simply a question of magnitude. For the purposes of explanation, I am going to assume that there are roughly one billion Nekh in need of saving and that, starting from this moment, we have exactly five years to evacuate all of them from the surface of the planet."

Diana put down her tea, now was the time to start paying attention and suggest alternatives.

"I will preface this by asking you a question, do you know what the difference between a million and a billion is in a practical sense?"

Titanyana shrugged, she could barely even imagine numbers that large.

"Three magnitudes of difference?" Diana was only spitballing here. She didn't know what Don was getting at, only wanting to get him moving along.

Chestnut remained silent.

"Practically, they really aren't comparable. One million seconds, for example, is something like eleven days. Do you want to give a ballpark guess how long a billion seconds is?" Don looked up from his thinking to analyze Diana and Titanyana's reaction.

". . . Five years?" Math wasn't Diana's strong suit, so she just gave a random answer that sounded right. Titanyana just stared in a stupor.

"Thirty years, give or take. That means that if we started evacuating people from her planet right now at an average rate of one every second, it would take us around thirty years to get them all off planet. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how ridiculous of an ask that is?"

Diana frowned, which in turn caused Titanyana to panic a bit. All of the sudden that positive atmosphere was gone.

"In order to get them all to safety in the allotted time, we would need to evacuate an average of six people per second. That rate is only going to increase further the closer we get to the deadline. For example, if we started with one year left we would have to evacuate thirty every second. I'll be honest, starting from zero as we are right now a complete evacuation isn't possible."

It was a simple question in the field of logistics, a field which Donovan had been forced to study for an extensive period of time. In order to transport resource/person X from point A to point B, you first needed to have a method of transport, S. This transport will have a capacity, C, and a velocity, V. You can divided the distance from A to B, L, by velocity, V, to find the expected travel time of this transport from A to B. However, because the transport needs to travel back to point A to pick up another load of X, this travel time must be multiplied by 2 (in a simple system). Dividing capacity, C, by this time of travel, T, will give you the rate of transport, R.

This will give the following simplified equation:

R = C/T

Which uncompressed looks like this:

R = C*V/(2*L)

Increasing speed or capacity will increase the rate, while increasing the length of the journey will decrease the rate. In a vacuum, the most optimal way to go about this would be to increase capacity and volume in tandem in order to get the most out of a rate increase, however if you possess a method of reducing the voyage's length that should also be considered. Of course, there are factors besides the rate of transport that must be taken into account when moving people and goods that affect the design of the transport itself.

However the general idea of increasing capacity and speed still stands. If Donovan was going to save the most amount of people, he and Arc were going to have to make these transports both big and fast. This meant a reduction in armor, and probably crew compliment, however ships that were both 'big' and 'fast' were usually also very 'expensive' from a production standpoint. At the moment, Donovan had little clue how interstellar travel worked, so that remained an unknown quantity in both cost calculation and speed reduction.

"How many do you think we could get out?" Diana, aware that some sort of calculation was going on in his head but not privy as to what it was, probed for an answer.

"Total honesty, I don't know. I don't have any idea what the distance between our planets is going to be, how fast a ship I can design, or how many people I can fit in said ship without going over a key limit. Worst case scenario, probably a few hundred thousand, but if we are close enough then a few million minimum."

A few million out of a billion total was vague, but it also wasn't much, a reality which also soured Diana's spirits. Saving millions was a big deal, that much was not to be underestimated, but it was nowhere near the billion that was ideal. "So you are saying that we'll need to make some hard decisions."

Titanyana's legs were starting to shake.

"We'll have to prioritize the women and children, of course, but we should also give some consideration to young men and their elders."

"I didn't expect you would take the line of cultural preservation."

"I know you would protest if I didn't."

"Slow down you two." Chestnut put a stop to the runaway train that was Donovan and Diana. "You are losing her."

Titanyana didn't even have words to say to them. Once again, these two had demonstrated their superiority over her in the realm of administration. Not only had they immediately come to a decision and even a plan with which to execute it, but they were establishing expectations and trying to get the most out of what they had available. What had she done to save her people? Ask for help? Already these people who may as well be strangers to her kind had dropped everything and put in motion plans to save them.

How could she compare?

"Sorry, Titanyana."

"Sorry."

". . . no, I'm sorry for burdening you with this." Her ears were flat and her shoulders were sagging. The tension was gone, but her sorrow remained. She couldn't save everyone, she should have known that, her people probably knew that, yet she had held on to hope that maybe it was possible. Clearly some things just weren't possible. "What status will my people hold in your nation."

She really didn't have the power to negotiate here, the Nekh were at their mercy, but she wanted to know how much damage she could expect to their reputation.

"Hmm. I was thinking about 'citizenry', but that might not be an ideal arrangement for the moment. We want to preserve our own power after all. . ." Diana herself was thinking, the field of government being her jurisdiction between the two. "How about 'subjects with extended rights and privileges'?"

The ears perked up, something that drew the attention of Mercedes. That was an incredibly generous offer to someone who was fully willing to submit to slavery.

"Subjects? You'd treat us so kindly?"

"Well, I wanted to make you 'citizens', but we don't have a constitution or operable legal system, so properly naturalizing you isn't really a possibility for the time being."

The Arboreal Maiden shook her head quietly from the side, Diana did not recognize the magnanimity of her proposal. What she considered to be 'citizen' status didn't really exist in the wider world outside of the Sanctum and the Holifanian Theocracy, only subjects, servants, and slaves. What she had done was give the Nekh the desirable status of being the top social strata for all non-nobility races in their domain.