While the status of a living biomechanical organism was causing an increasingly widespread clamour among legal experts across the Alliance, something much more mundane and unexpected had caused a much bigger sensation on the planet below them.
The first city had just been completed, marking the total terraforming of the continent it was on and the completion of the atmospheric restructuring of the planet itself.
Some of the other continents still had a long way to go in terms of mineral deposits, plant life and biodiversity, but the areas where the Terraforming devices had identified modified objects consistent with ruins had all been marked and isolated from terraforming efforts, other than to remove obvious toxins from the soil and air.
What caught the entire Alliance's attention was a small thing that the Humans present, including General Tennant, who had just arrived on the planet to christen the new city, now officially the City of Santa Maria.