There was a version of preparing for a retrieval operation against the most militarily advanced clan on Vorga's floating islands that involved weapons, training, tactical rehearsal, and the steady building of combat confidence. Max did all of those things. He also did the thing that none of the Morag survivors had a framework for, which was to sit cross-legged on the floor of the concealment section and press his fingers against a jacket for forty seconds while the System did something to its structure that changed what the jacket fundamentally was.
He had accumulated 240 IP and the days of planning and intelligence gathering with the Morag survivors had given him time to accumulate without expenditure. 240 IP was not an unlimited resource but it was a meaningful one, and he intended to use it with the precision he applied to any resource that had a ceiling.
He started with the jacket.
The pool generated three options and the first one made the choice easy.
