Chương 39: 023 – Interlude: Rain S

"We talked to aliens! We talked to aliens! We talked to aliens!" Yuki and Margaret both sang, holding hands as they jumped around in a circle in celebration.

"They talked to aliens! They talked to aliens! They talked to aliens!" Hale, Namine and Cloud cheered, throwing vennplate confetti into the air as the two continued to cheer.

"I talked to my first hunter!" Rain cheered alone.

"Yay!" everyone chorused, adding her to the congratulations. It had been a good day. Rain had finally been able to see more of the ship than simply the quarantine room she'd been restricted to, and in a couple of days they would be returning again to participate in the final suit integrity tests that would be performed. Not all of them, unfortunately, but she had gotten permission for Hale and Namine to attend, and she'd see about finding good reasons for the others to go as well.

Through her synchronization with Princess, she could feel that her buddy was happy as well, the six buddies of the First Contact Team exchanging pings with the rest of Stargazer's buddy network. Since their helmet cam footage and sensor scan data had already been uploaded to the public network archives, that was just the buddies telling all their friends the news. Rain was just glad everyone was happy.

While all who attended the First Contact Tournament did so because they wanted to be the one to talk to friendly aliens, someone who joined the First Contact Team did so because they really wanted to be friends with them, and Rain was glad she'd found a pretext to give them a chance to make that dream come true.

The rest of the team had managed to get some names of junior officers while she and Captain Trout had been discussing preparations, giving them a means to continue deepening their friendships through the radio. Soon everyone on the Venture would be their friends!

"We need to celebrate! A proper celebration! I'll cook!" Maragret declared.

"Ooh, we can make it a sleepover! We can all get sleeping bags and sleep here in the office!"

"Yay! Margaret's cooking!"

"Lechon!"

"Ramen!"

"Lechon ramen!"

"You all already sleep here for the night shift," the red's buddy Bastion pointed out.

"Yes, but that's not a proper sleepover!" Rain raised a hand "I'll still need to have a little sleep though. I'm contacting them again tomorrow, remember?"

"You'll be fine," Yuki said.

"If you're still asleep, Princess can do it."

"I can't ask her to do that!" Rain said, appalled." I do not mind,"Princess said." Acting as proxy for First Contact Champion is no trouble."" Point of order," Bastion said." First in line to act as proxy is the second-place holder of the First Contact Tournament."" Counterpoint,"Princess replied." It is second-place holder Athanasia's week off. Third-place holder Mikage is currently stationed in Nightmare orbit."

"As the one with the shiniest red button, I feel like I should point out we're all on duty tomorrow?" Margaret said.

"So just normal sleeping tonight, no sleepover." Everyone let out a sigh of disappointment.

"Now," the red continued, "what do you want me to cook?"

"Lechon ramen!"

"Tonkatsu!"

"Pizza!" Once what Margaret would cook was decided upon, everyone got back to work. Hale, Keystone and Margaret began going over the helmet scan data, setting a program to begin reconstructing as much of the internal layout of the ship as possible from the scanner readings.

They already had a pretty good scan of the outside of the ship, but the thick armor all around it made seeing deep inside the vessel problematic, and the scanners on just Rain's helmet hadn't been able to get much because the quarantine room she'd usually been in was heavily armored and insulated. This had limited the scanner's range to a less than a dozen meters, with the last three meters or so having a lot of scanning errors.

The hallways of the ship beyond the quarantine room were much easier to scan through, allowing the networked scanners on the ears of their suit's helmets to scan the inside of the ship. To prevent the scans from being detected, they were at low power, so they only had a range of a little more than a hundred meters, but that still allowed them to scan from the outer armor belt all the way to the launch bay's heavy armored external doors.

It was only a fraction of the whole ship, but as it was more than they'd had that morning, no one was complaining. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Namine and Abyssal Glass sat down to go over their scan data as well. The scanners on the pink suits and the notebook chassis the buddy had were dedicated medical scanners, with shorter range but much greater precision, and optimized for chemical analysis and microscopic details.

Exactly the kind of scanners for scanning a living being and seeing their biochemical processes at the cellular-organelle level. It was the best means they had of getting detailed physiological data non-intrusively, allowing them to tell if the crew of the Venture were actually vampires or killer robots, as well as spotting any pesky nanobots, especially pesky nanobots lodged in the brain matter of their new alien friends, possibly controlling them and subverting their free will. Stupid nanobots.

Cloud and Quick Arts had started writing down their impressions of the Confederacy's interpersonal dynamics, the two sophontologists trying to objectively identify which parts were normal interaction and which parts were specifically military behavior, and doing their best not to be influenced by how human militaries were depicted in fiction.

The former kept making the constipated face she did when she was trying to parse through Kaede's legacy as she tried to recall the brief times the progenitor had encountered military personnel. That left Yuki and Willow Wisp to monitor the Venture itself as Rain went down to the food bank to pick up ingredients for their celebratory dinner.

As a demolitionist, her technical skills would only be coming into play if they needed to blow up the alien ship from the inside, so unless she was talking to aliens she was usually the one doing errands for everyone else. Since she was just going to be walking and carrying things, it gave her and Princess plenty of time to reorganize the list of subjects they and the Trout wanted to speak to talk about as they headed down to the food bank to choose and bring back ingredients.

They will likely ask about venecite crystallization, her buddy said as they walked along the now-familiar pink hallways of Stargazer Fortress, passing by a mural someone had painted depicting several void kaiju in chibi form having a picnic. As the First Contact Team had historically not needed much in the way of physical equipment or space, they were situated at the edge of the living quarters, in a modified room that had once been three bedrooms before their walls had been removed.

All they really needed was the space, since they could access the station's sensors through the internal network.

"Why would they ask about that?" Raina asked, confused as she pulled the team's grocery trolley behind her.

"Shouldn't they know already? I mean, they obviously have wizards or magical girls on their Earth too." Now that they'd seen the mail drone, it was all but confirmed that the Confederacy used some kind of magic for their FTL. Captain Trout said they wanted to discuss it later, Princess said. Reminder: according to records, the conditions to naturally crystalize venecite was rare in the previous universe's Earth. Perhaps they believe we know how to correct that.

"Hmm…" Rain 'hmm'-ed thoughtfully.

"We probably shouldn't tell them. Venecite is easy to weaponize, and it's never a good idea to give human military access to anything." So many salvaged alien technologies that went out of control, created new supervillains, were created by supervillains who were recruited by military, nanobots… Stupid nanobots. Although surprisingly, it seemed that human weapons technology was actually far less advanced than Kaede had known.

The Venture seemed armed with only laser emitters, railgun turrets and missile tubes, all weapons that were throwbacks to the late 80's, the 90's at the latest. There were no indications of the various kinds of plasma weapons that were common in Kaede's time, either on the hull or among the power armor that had escorted them into the ship. It wouldn't disappoint the little sisters—they'd think any kind of alien power armor was cool, and Rain couldn't blame them—but it was certainly… indicative.

Noting, Princess said. Upload policy to general announcements?

"Hmm… let me write it down first, so I can see if it needs anything more," Rain said as she reached the foodbank. The room was a sterile pink, filled with neat shelves and shallow bins containing various ingredients. Exchanging nods with Marika, the supply officer usually in charge of keeping the foodbank stocked and rotating out the supplies to the cafeteria so they didn't go to waste, the demolitionist went to pick out the ingredients Margaret needed.

She picked up chicken eggs, entombing them in a block of vennplate to keep them from breaking, then went over to the flour dispenser and carefully poured the flour into a vennplate cylinder. Once she got the amount she needed, she sealed the container and fused it to the block that contained the eggs so Princess only needed to help her maintain one thing. The vat-grown cultured pork was next.

Rain would normally have just pulled out the nearest, top-most slab and been done with it, but because Margaret would be cooking she took a moment to get a slab that looked really fatty. It probably wasn't—the pork vats carefully controlled their cell cultures so that the nutrient fluid wouldn't go to waste—but looking tasty was an important part of food.

She packed the slab into a chunk of vennplate that would keep the slab cold, once more thanking Meiya for her research into artificially replicating variant forms of venn. By the time she finished, she had a solid block of vennplate on the trolley, the various ingredients she'd picked up packed inside it. Sure she could have just floated it behind her, but that seemed a needless waste of magic when she could just drag it along.

"I'm back," she announced herself to the rest of the team.

"Margaret, should I get the broth started?" Margaret looked up from the screen she'd been studying, where she seemed to have been in the middle of reconstructing the maildrone using the scan data they'd gotten earlier. It was still incomplete.

"No, I'll take care of it. Can you start rolling out the dough the way I'd showed you?"

"Sure, just give me a moment to wash my hands." The red nodded.

"Bastion, can you take care of the scan data?"" Got it. Go cook and make girl fuel." After putting Princess down on a charging cradle, Rain went to assist with cooking, cutting the cold slab of pork with the kitchen knife as Margaret started making the noodle dough. As tough as the cold cultured meat was, there were no bones or ligament and the knife was sharp, so the slab was cut down to size.

"Thank you," Margaret said as they worked.

"Oh, no problem," Rain said.

"You're already going to be doing most of the cooking, so this is the least I can do."

"I don't mean that. Thank you giving me a chance to talk to the aliens." Rain looked towards her in surprise, the knife pausing.

"There's nothing to thank me for, though? I mean, you'd have been able to talk to them anyway when they visited the station in a few more days. Which was your idea, remember."

"I know. But thanks to you, I got to talk to them even sooner. So, thank you." Rain opened her mouth, then changed what she was going to say.

"You're welcome." They went back to cooking as the rest of the office went back to their scans, preparing for the possibility that these aliens still intended to invade by pretending to be friendly and only wanting to trade. Kaede had been Japanese, after all. She'd learned all about Admiral Perry.