Inside the base on Mercury, Stark looked at the holographic map, marking different spacecraft in different colors. Pointing to several ships at the edge, he said, "These look like chemically fueled spacecraft. They happen to be compatible with humanity's current level of technology..."
"Divine Spear Bureau will select five after preliminary inspections. Russia gets five too. Europe wants seven in total? No, five at most. Africa, Australia, the Middle East..."
"Set aside another two for joint research. Nick! Nick! Remember to arrange security personnel. Don't let them start fighting..."
Seeing that many spacecraft had already been marked with colors, Stark took two steps back. What appeared before him were even more ships that had yet to be marked.
He braced both hands against the lab bench in front of him and looked at those unassigned spacecraft, feeling the pleasant agony of having too much to choose from.
In the past, there had been too many people and too few ships—or rather, no ships at all. Humanity's current civilization could not study those few Kree escort vessels. Even if scientists could board them for inspection, inspection was all they could do. They could not remove even a single component.
Later, they acquired Chitauri ships and Dark Elf ships, which eased the shortage considerably, but there were still too many mouths and too little porridge.
These past few days, fierce arguments had erupted in the United Nations conference room. At first, they had tried to reason with one another. Later, they discovered that physical persuasion was more practical. Congress now required anyone it sent to the United Nations to have combat training; otherwise, it was hard to gain an advantage.
And ever since Loki expanded her scam operation to the entire universe, humanity had acquired quite a few low- and mid-tier spacecraft.