Chương 17: 009 – Interlude: Rain

It was a perfectly ordinary day in Stargazer Fortress. The Dancer was shining, there were no birds singing because there were no birds and letting chickens roam around was very unsanitary, and sisters were as usual enjoying the novelty of the view of a starry night through Stargazer's dome.

Starlight Park was full of its usual occupants, a mix of off-duty Rangers, space service members resting while their ships unloaded raw materials and supplies to the station, engineers and weapons magitechnicians having lunch after being dragged out of their labs by concerned sisters to keep them from living there, members of the newly established Explorer's Initiative, and the station's usual visitors.

There were groups of little sisters up for a field trip to see the stars and put the astronomy concepts they were being taught into context, various robotic chassis housing lone buddies, friends meeting up before they went back down to Surcease-side, or simply small groups of sisters coming up to look at the stars or taking a break from whatever business that had at the station.

Rain sat at one of the tables set up along the edge of the dome, the windows allowing a view of both the stars above and the darkness of the planet below as she finished her lunch. Technically, there wasn't really much to see. Yamiryuusei's shroud rose higher than the clouds, so even those weren't visible. But the window was just the right spot to see Surcease's silhouette against the stars, while the edge of the atmosphere scattered just enough light from the Dancer to give the darkness a border.

It was definitely a nice view, and really nice to enjoy with friends. Normally, Rain would be enjoying it with some, but she had stepped aside to conduct her twice-weekly call to Lorelei. Her best friend had finally finished her training as a teacher, and had been absolutely bewildered at how difficult dealing with large numbers of little sisters was.

Despite the lack of fighting outside of CQC practice and everyone being polite and well-behaved, properly answering each little sister's questions and concerns pushed her to her limits." —and everyone's looking forward to the field trip to the steel refinery," Lorelei was saying. She sounded so tired, her voice coming from a little plasma ball hovering above where Princess was strapped to Rain's forearm."

The arrangements are being made, but every day it seems like there's something that someone has overlooked, and I'm afraid that when the day comes we'll find that we missed a detail that will ruin the trip for the little sisters. Are you sure I can't convince you to be a teacher?"

"Not this year," Rain said, because outright saying 'oh, poot no' would have been impolite.

"I won the tournament this year, so if this is the year of first contact, I get to be the girl with the picnic basket who greets everyone."

"Ugh, don't remind me. Once the little sisters learned that's how the space service decides who gets to be first contact representative, they all wanted to solve classroom decisions with a massive rock-paper-scissors tournament."

"In their defense, those spinning arrows are always cursed," Rain said." They're impartial. And low-effort, which is very important. And everyone is always equally satisfied with the results."

"Didn't Jane cry that one time?"" As I said, everyone is equally satisfied. That the level of satisfaction is non-existent is not relevant." Rain sighed fondly. Becoming a teacher had not made Lorelei any more accommodating.

"That's one way to look at it, I suppose. How's your latest book coming along?" A sound of mingled frustration and satisfaction came over the line." It's… developing, but slowly. Harvesting remembered stories from Kaede's memories requires a different process than simply transcribing the memories themselves.

We have to reconstruct them from memories of Kaede reading Outguard after-action reports, memories of the members of the Outguard relating incidents she was absent from, and sometimes even just short memories of news reports and social media posts that were just in the backgrounds of memories that she wasn't even paying attention to.

The reconstructions are more fictionalizations than actual memories, so we're not sure how useful it would be as an educational tool. And there are concerns it could lead little sisters to supervillainy. The crime statistics are becoming very distressing. There are now eleven sisters who have been officially classified as criminally insane supervillains. Such activities are at the highest it's been in all of history." That was new.

"Eleven? Last I heard there were only nine. Who are the new ones?"" One doesn't have a name yet, either announced or designated, but they've raised much concern. Some sister has been going around to the schools during recess and giving candy to little sisters, as well as offering to let them sleep on the mattress in the back of her van." Lorelei's tones were grim, and at hearing the description Rain found herself recalling certain warnings that Kaede had received when she'd been younger.

"And yes, we all got flashbacks too when we heard it. According to reports that were passed through the Training branch, the teachers first realized something was wrong when some students were late to arrive to class after recess. This has us all very concerned, Rain.

Kaede's memories were lacking in detail as to why exactly offering candy and having mattresses in the back of their vans was criminal behavior, but if this sort of tardiness is what results, then this could cause a serious disruption of the little sisters' education."

"Definitely a serious problem," Rain agreed.

"And the other one?"" Oh, they're calling themselves the Snow Queen. They go around leaving snowgirls in the middle of public walkways."

"What's villainous about snowgirls?" Rain asked, confused." Snowgirls, plural. They left fifty snowgirls on a public overpass, forcing people to either weave around them or fly… and it was a no-flying zone." Oh. How devious, tricking sisters to break the rules!

"Yup, that's definitely criminally insane behavior."" I know, right? Thankfully, they're not anywhere near Quiet Rise—" Rain looked up abruptly as an alert began to sound over the public address speakers, red lights flickering on as a result.

"Sorry bestie, but it looks like we're getting an alert. I'll call you back later, all right?"" …fine. Go deal with your alert. Call me when you're done."

"Will do, bestie!" They ended the call, even as she and Princess synchronized as smoothly as two people holding hands and wrapped venn around Rain's body, lifting up against the station's artificial gravity. All across Starlight Park, people were moving.

Little sisters and visitors were making way for Rangers even as they took quick headcounts to make sure all their companions were accounted for, Rangers taking flight and moving towards the stairwells all over the dome that led under the armor layer beneath their feet into the station proper." Extradancer incursion detected," Ensis—technically Reserve Ranger Paladin Captain Ensis—announced, the station's primary integrated-buddy's voice smooth and comforting." This is not a drill. Extradancer incursion detected.

This is not a drill. First contact scenario imminent." This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Rain was suddenly very aware of the gazes of the sisters around her, even as Princess informed her they were receiving a transmission from Knight Captain Margaret.

She flew on instinct and practice and definitely assistance from Princess as shock was quickly followed by excitement, sisters getting out of her way and clearing a path for her towards the nearest stairwell. It was happening. It was finally happening! The aliens were here! Now was the day they would find out if they needed to repel their first extrasurceasetrial invasion… or if they would finally make new friends!

Everything they knew about aliens coming to a new world pointed towards the former, which was why everyone was going to battle stations and every facility in the system should be receiving the order to go dark and implement the stealth countermeasures they had. But they were Kaedekin, and while Kaede had been a superhero, she had also been a Magical Girl. Magical Girls believed in hopes and dreams, in protecting people's smiles and fighting for love and justice.

Kaede had harbored the dream that one day Earth would meet aliens who came in peace. Rain and Princess would be the first to meet them, to find out whether they would accept the hand of peace or start shooting to kill. That was the plan! The plan was falling apart. Good news, they had managed to identify who their visitors were.

The ship had that brutalist-toroid shape humans preferred to use for their military vessels, but the fact the ship activated some form of real-space subliminal drive was a strong indication that it was from the new multi-species confederacy that the humans were a part of. That meant they knew what welcome they had to give and what to fill the picnic basket with besides the cell and viral culture samples.

The bad news was that instead of heading for Nightmare, as they had expected, the ship was heading straight for Surcease. While surprising, it wasn't unaccounted for. However, the bad news had also included the fact that the ship had activated a subluminal drive that was now allowing it to move at a decent fraction of the speed of light, meaning that instead of the having several days to prepare, they had about three hours.

That was more than enough to get Stargazer Fortress and the other stations around Surcease orbit to get under rudimentary stealth, while the First Contact team Rain was a part of had to figure out another approach vector.

"Unfortunately, we can't send Rain on a fighter or FR ship to intercept it," Yuki said. She was the pilot and astrogator of the First Contact team, and was in charge of physically getting Rain and Princess to where they could meet with the aliens.

"While its drive is active, the alien ship is moving too fast to intercept unless we match their speed, and we can't do that while maintaining stealth. Same for trying to meet it head on, even with Eve assisting me with maximum sensory acceleration. Everything's moving too fast, and the drive system they're using just complicated this.

Eve just told me the science division is reasonably sure they're using a pajhadin Alcubierre drive, so it's not even safe to approach the ship while it's up, since we're not really sure what happens to a mass that's in an active ship's path." The educated guess was merely being displaced to the back of the ship, but best not to take chances.

"So we'll need to wait until they drop back to normal speed," Margaret said thoughtfully. She was the Red Ranger in charge of the First Contact team, and had been for several years now.

"From what we understand, their Alcubierre drive does not impart any momentum to the ship once it's deactivated. Their standard star-to-star leyline teleport also seems to have their ships arrive completely stationary in relation to the star system's primary.

If they activated their Alcubierre drive immediately after arrival, they would need to build up speed relative to the planet, so they'll likely move themselves in front of Surcease's orbital path before deactivating the drive so they have time to accelerate to match the planet's velocity." She tapped the table display showing the relative positions of Surcease, Stargazer Fortress, and the aliens' ship, being kept up to date by the station's scanners.

The marker representing the aliens' ship was the only one moving, getting closer and closer.

"Something supported by their current trajectory. That's our opening. They'll be moving towards Surcease and the station will be moving towards them."

"That's going to leave us very visible," Hale said. She was the First Contact team's science advisor, engineer and technician.

"We can launch from behind Stargazer's mass, but we'd need thrust to get around it, and again to reorient towards the ship. That takes time, and turning on thrust renders us very visible. We won't be able to get in close enough to surprise them."

"We could thrust with vennplates," Namine suggested.

"Just push towards the ship. The vennplates wouldn't be visible since it would need to be on the opposite side of the whatever we're sending Rain on from the alien ship, and we'd be able to maintain a stealth field too."

"If we're going to do that, we might as well just send me out in a space suit," Rain commented.

"Less mass to push, narrower profile, easier to keep hidden from any sensors they might have." Everyone paused, tilting their head thoughtfully. Margaret shook her head.

"No, no, she'd need more acceleration than that. Just having her step out an airlock and fly to the ship would take too long."

"What if we accelerated her?" Cloud suggested.

"If we build a giant railgun…"

"They might detect the magnetic field from that," Namine countered. Their long-range specialist wasn't deterred.

"An air cannon, then? We make tubes of vennplate, wrap Rain and the picnic basket in a sabot, and fill the back of the tube with solid venn that we convert to vennplasma…" Everyone tilted their head thoughtfully again.

"We'd need a very long tube," Hale said.

"Longer than we could just make ourselves."

"I'll start getting people," Margaret said. Getting launched from an airlock by a large pseudo-mass of expanding vennplasma had been an interesting experience that Rain resolved to never tell someone younger than thirteen. Lorelei and her fellow teachers wouldn't appreciate it if little sisters suddenly started trying to launch each other from vennplate cannons. She wore only a drydock suit, since it was the only space suit light enough to not look blatantly armored, though it meant her air was limited.

The suit was meant to be connected to a tool drone that carried both a larger air supply and any repair tools needed by a drydock worker. Unfortunately, she had to leave her sword behind. Bringing a sword wouldn't look very peaceful, and they were trying to make a good impression here.

The flight across relatively empty space would have been almost peaceful if she and Princess didn't have to maintain a hardened shell of vennplate to both accelerate them towards the alien ship and deflect away micrometeorites—unfortunately the Kaedekin had not been able to make their ascent into space completely clutter-free—behind a vennwave field to cloak them.

The stealth it provided was crude, and was essentially the same stealth measure Kaede had used when she needed to be sneaky at night, letting her blend into the darkness by absorbing any electromagnetic frequency that was directed towards her. It was basically the equivalent of holding up a black sheet while standing in front of black curtains. It would work… but only from a distance.

The Kaedekin used it for their space stations and other structures because it was simple enough to scale up massively, and Rain was using it because it was simple enough for her and Princess to maintain. Against the backdrop of Surcease and space, it worked as long as the aliens didn't notice they couldn't see stars or pick up any stellar radiation from the direction of a stealthed structure.

It would be completely obvious to anyone scanning for gravimetric fields generated by large masses, or anyone tracking the flows of stellar plasma, but it would be enough for the Kaedekin to be able to stage an ambush against any invading force relying on only basic EM frequency scanning for their sensors. On her space suit's visor, the helmet's onboard computer maintained the HUD, flickering lines indicating kilometer's passing by to give her a visual indicator of movement after Princess had set it to do so.

In front of them, the alien ship was a rapidly approaching gray mass. Rain decelerated, feeling the G-forces on her body even as Princess brought up a venngram, and the two of them implemented the gravity field Meiya had developed years ago to try and mitigate the feeling as they slowed down. Rain touched down lightly on the hull, and immediately activated the gravity field spell under her boots.

The spell created a small field of artificial gravity, but directed both up from the soles and down towards at the ground. While covering only a small area, it allowed her to stand on a surface and walk with an almost natural stride. That development alone had gotten Meiya so many thank you letters from members of the space service. Resisting the urge to take a deep breath—limited air, after all—Rain looked around, wondering how she could get the aliens' attention…