Chương 48: 030 – The Tour

As they walked the halls of Stargazer Fortress, Loren couldn't help noticing something. Every Kaedekin she saw was armed. Every. Single. One. Even the children. There were swords hanging from people's waists and backs, and some she only called swords because 'little girl-sized metal plank with edges and a point' was too long. There were pistols of a variety of designs hanging from underarm holsters, thigh holsters, belt holsters and calf holsters, and rifles being carried on shoulder straps.

There were long staffs and polearms made of metal or some kind of local wood that had been polished to an almost metallic sheen, axes, maces, hammers, whips, strange things she couldn't name… No one among the Kaedekin commented on it, each weapon being carried as casually as a fashion accessory, like an umbrella or a coat. Loren saw there were racks next to benches where people placed weapons they were carrying on their backs before sitting down.

People hung their swords on hooks on the wall next to tables while they ate, or racks built into the sides of their chairs. Those little features seemed as ubiquitous as induction strips, security cameras or trash cans. Actually, there didn't seem to be any trash cans in sight either… The captain's worries about making their hosts nervous because they were accompanied by armed power armor suddenly felt very silly, even if most of the weapons in sight probably wouldn't even dent the armor's plating…

though that wasn't counting whatever offensive capabilities the Kaedekin's magic had. Even just the 'force fields' could generate sharp edges, according to the video of Rain expositing about it…

It was hard to tell subtle body language through the heavy suits they were wearing—the need to balance the suit's backpack limited the kinds of unconscious motions one can do—but everyone not taller than two meters seemed tense, their helmets turning to look at the Kaedekin around them, their gazes seeming to linger on those with obvious guns, before snapping back to Rain.

The rakido and pajhadin seemed much less concerned, but Loren remembered hearing that their cultures had a strong martial tradition and weapons were more common on their worlds and colonies. As to the tiwada and Changers… well, piloting an armor didn't really allow for much expression. Paladin Rain didn't seem to notice as she continued leading them on the tour of Stargazer Fortress.

"Stargazer Fortress isn't as important as it used to be, since it's no longer the only fortress in orbit around Surcease," she said cheerfully.

"However, as the oldest space station, it's still the primary organizational hub for non-Ranger space service traffic. Most space service ships heading out to mine the moons and asteroids, or transporting foodstuffs from Nightmare are coordinated through Stargazer's traffic control systems."

"Is that why we haven't seen any other Rangers so far?" someone asked. The HUD identified them as Reimi. Rain turned to them, a confused look on her face.

"What do you mean? There are Rangers all over the place," she said, gesturing at the crowd.

"Are they off duty?" Commander Bronze said.

"I don't see any uniforms."

"Why would we wear uniforms? If we did that, no one would be able to tell each other apart," Rain said, gesturing down at her clothes, then towards Seraphine. The green-haired Kaedekin obligingly spread her arms and twisted from side to side to let people see her clothes.

"Then how can you tell if someone is a Ranger or not?" Bronze asked.

"By their insignia, of course," Rain said as if it was the simplest thing in the world. She pointed at the red button on her collar, the color standing out against her white shirt even in the gloom caused by the lights directly above the group being deactivated.

"Active rangers wear their rank buttons and arm bands. Reservists don't." There was a pause as everyone waited.

"That's it?" Bronze said eventually.

"Yup! That's it," Rain said cheerfully.

"That's your only rank insignia?" Bronze said.

"A red button and an armband?"

"It's all we need," Rain said.

"The colors and insignia are bright enough to be immediately identifiable and simple enough to attach to anyone's clothes, no matter what they are." Bronze's mouth opened and closed, and Loren could guess he was thinking of all the ancient, repealed, reused, ignored, reused again treaty agreements Earth had made over the centuries defining who exactly constituted as 'military', many of which revolved around having an identifiable uniform.

Of course, the concept broke down once actual warfare began and people started using 'anonymous', 'untraceable', 'deniable' special forces.

"I see…" he said instead. Loren looked at the other Kaedekin around them with fresh eyes, and soon began spotting the red buttons and armbands. The red ones stood out, but it was soon obvious that black collar buttons vastly outnumbered them. The armband themselves came in five different colors, with red being the rarest and blue being the most common. Although… She looked toward her new friend. While Seraphine was wearing a pink armband, there was a visible lack of button on her collar.

Loren hesitated, then shrugged.

"Seraphine?" she asked. The green-haired Kaedekin perked up immediately.

"What is it, Loren? How can I help you?"

"You have an armband, but no button," Loren said, mostly for the benefit of the people around her.

"What does that mean?"

"Oh, it means I'm only a reservist," Seraphine said cheerfully.

"Reserves don't get ranks pips. I'm here because I've been helping with the research to develop vaccines for the diseases that the Confederacy have provided. Usually, I'd be in the labs, but today Rain asked me to assist in decontaminating all of you and to act as the first response in case one of you tears your suit or comes down with something. That's what the pink armband means, by the way. Pink marks out medics, nurses, and doctors."

"You got an armband even though you're not a Ranger?" Loren said.

"Temporary armband," Seraphine said.

"It's not about whether you're a ranger or not, it's about what your relevant skillset is. The pink armband lets people know I can patch them up if they get injured." The further they went, the more it seemed like they were walking through a wealthy residential complex. Everywhere they went there were plants and even small, manicured trees with pale white leaves growing in planters, and benches for people to sit on. There were even benches big enough for the suited rakido!

There were also storefronts of unknown purpose that Kaedekin were going in and out of. Every so often they seemed to pass a small local restaurant or café. Only the details marred the illusion of this being some metropolitan area on Earth or one of the older colonies. The trees were alien, with bark that seemed to have a metallic sheen to it and thick, pale white leaves. Many of the people at the 'cafes' and 'restaurants' were eating and drinking from glowing, brightly-colored 'force field' plates and cups.

There were no ads of any sort, no banners advertising the latest megacorp standard phone with attached digital environment, no posters for the latest chips flavored like some kind of exotic alien dish, no quick animated videos for the nearest soapland that catered to your kinks. The restaurants barely had signage, with only names like 'Shirou's' or 'Jessie's' on small signs next to the door. Other places had only symbols whose meanings Loren didn't understand. This novel's true home is a different platform.

Support the author by finding it there. Honestly, it was the lack of ads that was the most disturbing. What sort of society could run without ads?

"This is one of the residential areas of the station," Rain said cheerfully, which was some explanation for the 'urban oasis' look of the place. However, the understanding was immediately kicked aside by dawning realization.

"Areas like these are where all stationed Star Rangers and members of the space service sleep when we're off-duty, when we're not having sleepovers at the office. People who are only passing through sleep in one of the hospitality areas." Loren knew she wasn't the only thinking 'how does she manage to make technically-illegal-but-unenforceable-forced-overtime sound cute?'.

"This isn't the only one, of course," Rain continued.

"They're distributed all over the station, and you're assigned a room that's in close proximity to your duties. Sorry it's a little boring, but it's the middle of the morning and there are people working in other areas, so we needed to route your tour through areas that avoid them. We wouldn't want them to get distracted, after all." She pointed at what Loren had assumed was a restaurant.

"Over there are public houses where sisters who like to cook make food that's not normally available in the station cafeterias. That over there—" she pointed at one of the stores marked only by a symbol, "is a makerlab, for when you need to building anything. Next to it is a foodbank, where you can choose ingredients if you're cooking for yourself or your sisters. That one's a supply depot, when you need things like bullets, soap, shampoo, hair dye, or any other general supplies."

Loren became very aware of all the guns around them again. How were bullets considered a general supply?

"What are the rooms like?" It was the voice of the suicidal analyst from earlier.

"Oh, do you want to see?" Rain said, tilting her head.

"Well, I guess it's okay. My room is near here. Would seeing that be fine?" The room was technically a one-person bedroom. It was also technically only a little bit smaller than the area in a stateroom that someone could claim and personalize as theirs.

That didn't change the fact that it was a rectangular room with a bunk bed that folded into the wall, a desk that flipped down opposite the bed, a rectangular bench seat that could flip down in front of the desk, a clothes cabinet that looked about as big as the one Loren had on the ship, some shelves built into bits of wall that didn't have anything moving on it, and almost nothing else.

The only decorations were several pictures that had been neatly adhered to the walls with small magnets, an obvious rack for a sword on the wall where it would be next to the bed and desk if either swung down, and what looked like a bowl on top of what might have been a stool but was functionally a bedside table. The floor was elevated about a step above the deck of the hallway, and made of panels of that local wood with the metallic sheen, this time a pale almost white color.

"Sorry it's a bit messy, I was in a hurry to get to the landing bay to meet you all this morning, so I didn't get a chance to clean up," Rain said, looking embarrassed as she flipped the desk back up after demonstrating it, careful not to step on the bowl. The wall panel the desk was on was then swung open, revealing…

a closet full of folded white shirts, yellow pants, yellow vests, three different kinds of yellow hats, and drawers that probably contained the kinds of clothes one didn't want showing people casua—Oh. No, Rain had pulled them out, and there were yellow-and-white striped underwear and socks in them.

Despite almost twenty-five people—with the rakido and pajhadin so big they couldn't actually enter the room, and the powered armor needing to tilt to try and angle their cameras into the space—having just entered one at a time to basically step inside, look at everything folded up against he walls, and then turn around again to leave and let the next person in, the whole thing looked neat enough to pass inspection, with possibly the only point against it being the bowl next to the bed and a hair brush on one of the shelves.

There was also a cloth on the floor that was either an anemic carpet or a towel with delusions of grandeur that Rain had done her best to straighten out, so it was probably meant to be stepped on.

"Wow. Even enlisted have more space than this on the Venture. This is it?" Either this suicidal analyst was the sort that became an analyst because he didn't have the skills to function around people, or Commander Bronze had assigned him—Loren finally looked up his name: Cooper—to ask all the awkward questions.

"I know, it's a little small, but I didn't think I was really going to need much for the next year," Rain said.

"Besides, I just sleep in here. Most of the time I'm off duty I'm in the station, either cooking in the kitchen, watching a movie, or calling my crèche-sisters down in my home town. And it's not like my best friend is living with me up here, so this is really all the space I need." Loren was the last to step inside the tiny sleeping quarters, which was just barely bigger than it had looked from the outside. On the wall that contained the door, there were more shelves that couldn't be seen from outside.

These were more filled up, containing what looked like jars of candy, containers labeled things like 'flour', 'rice' and 'notrice', what looked like a stack of spare clips for the pistol at Rain's hip, and several other odds and ends that Loren couldn't quite place so simply. All in all, the room looked… well, it was slightly bigger than solitary confinement, although for some reason the door was an airlock.

And while the ceiling was a bit too low for her tastes, Rain and Kaedekin in general were rather short women—they were barely past one and a half meters tall—and seemed to find the height to be no problem.

"All right, that's what one of our rooms look like," Rain said as she closed the door to her room.

"There are actually bigger rooms for two or more people, but I moved here a few months ago so I could be closer to the First Contact Team's office. Otherwise I'd be rooming with my original team."

"There are bigger rooms?" Rain nodded.

"Yeah, but most of the people I know are at work right now, so I can't ask them if we can give their rooms a look. I'll remember it for next time you all visit. Shall we get moving? We still have the rest of the tour!" The rest of the tour involved a lot of walking, except when they needed to ascend to the next level. Kaedekin apparently didn't go for elevators, preferring wide, circular stairwells with at least two sets of stairs spiraling up and down on opposite ends of it. People mostly used it for going down.

This was because Kaedekin used the center of the stairwell to fly up. And it was definitely flight. Loren was sure the analysts would write up reports about 'force field-assisted mobility', but she knew flight when she saw it. She could fly—in a fashion, and with a bottle of something combustible in her—and so was a better authority on the subject then the ground-bound! The way the Kaedekin did it was frustratingly casual.

The glowing, colorful pseudo-matter that was the manifestation of their magic either wrapped around their bodies or manifested under a body part that would bear their full weight, and then lifted them up the stairwell until they reached the wide, perfectly-sized-for landing of the level they were aiming for, at which point they set down and continued walking the rest of the way. It was done with the well-practiced smoothness of getting out of a car. Loren had never felt more jealous in her life.

They'd ascended the stairwell on a blue 'force field' platform that Rain had constructed. The process had reminded Loren of someone using a program to build a 3D model using rudimentary geometric shapes. Rising and descending Kaedekin—those who seemed to be in too much of a hurry to use the stairs to head down like the majority were doing— moved smoothly around them, flying much faster than the platform.

"How are they doing that?" Cooper asked, watching a Kaedekin in a black dress with green trim ascend through the stairwell ahead of them while enveloped in a bright green glow.

"Oh, anyone can do it with enough practice," Rain said from where she stood in the middle of the platform, her attention a little absent. Loren had seen her pop something into her mouth before they'd started ascending. She wondered what substances the Kaedekin's magic had a relationship with. Rain glanced towards Seraphine.

"Well, nearly everyone."

"Some days, the gift of never becoming sick and living centuries doesn't feel as worth it as not having to climb so many stairs," Seraphine sighed. Loren could only nod in agreement.

"Yes, but how?" Cooper continued.

"I don't see them or you manipulating any controls. Is it all pre-planned? Just set up the route and let the station's internal traffic control take over?"

"Why would we need to manipulate controls?" Rain asked.

"I'm right here to control it."

"So it's some kind of neural interface?"

"I don't really need Princess' help to do something like this, though?" Oh, so the buddies had some sort of neural interface. Good to know. She'd have to remember that for later.

"Perhaps if you walked us through the step-by-step process of how you'd go about flying? To help us understand the methodology?" Cooper asked.

"Sure, I don't mind! First I pull magic out of my soul, through my skin, and materialize it into venn." Rain pointed down.

"In this case, vennplate. Once it's materialized into vennplate, I can control the vennplate's position relative to an inertial reference frame, in this case the station's gravity field. Right now, I'm moving the platform relative to the station to make us rise up. Simple, really." Loren nodded slowly. It sounded correct, although she'd never heard magic described so… casually.

Yes, technically drawing from the Flame within her was also 'pulling magic from her soul', but the Kaedekin made it sound as banal as 'pulling my socks from the drawer and putting them on'. There was a clear lack of… it wasn't reverence.

No wizard revered magic, unless you were one of the really old fashioned culty-religious types who thought magic was the fire the Titan Prometheus stole from Olympus or that it had come from the flaming sword of one of the angels who guarded the way to Eden that they'd given Adam and Eve because he had taken pity on them. She didn't have the words…

"And we're here!" Rain declared cheerfully.