Chương 67: 044 – Primary Evidence

You said your people have recently come into contact with humans again,"Rirris said, bringing Tiikasia back to the present." Will that be a problem?" Water From The Sky tilted their head to the side." Why would it?" Rirris antennae flicked in mild confusion." Didn't they originally create your people?"" Crea—Oh! No, you're mistaken. We don't have anything to do with the humans beyond having met them recently and being friends with them.."" I thought your creators used human DNA, and I assume was also human.""

Well, yes, but they're not humans from here,"Water From The Sky said, making a gesture that seemed to be trying to indicate their immediate area." Ah… not to be rude, but… how much experience does your civilization have with the Void?"

Rirris flicked one of her antennae towards Tiikasia, and he clicked his claws in an affirmative." As a whole? Very little beyond using it as a means of traversing interstellar distances. The energy cost is prohibitive outside of certain circumstances, the location is dangerous, and the side effects of entry on the environment can be unpredictable." Water From The Sky nodded." Given that you're here as explorers to learn wonders and secrets, I don't think that means no one is studying the Void."

The sound of a human laugh emerged from Rirris, " Well, that's true… but it's considered very dangerous. Only certain people can even choose to do it, because trying to use a… well, we call it a Dive Array in freespeech… to enter the Void is possible, but it's not possible to leave using one. To leave the Void requires more…

specialization that means it can only really work with very small groups."" Yeah, using magic to get in and out of the Void is hard, or so I'm told." Water From The Sky said, nodding. … Rirris and Tiikasia both looked at each other, clearly having the same thought: this was the final proof that the Kaydekeen weren't human, even if it was only psychologically, because they weren't denying or trying to rationalize away the existence of magic.

Tiikasia hadn't realized that had been part of his thoughts until that moment, but then he didn't have magic of his own. Rirris, though… she was both a Dragonshaper and had spent time among humans, pretending to be one of them, being one of them. It had probably never left her mind." Oh good, your people are sane,"Rirris sighed in relief, even as her wings extending back behind her and even unfurling enough to touch the floor."

When you said you'd been cloned from humans, I was afraid your people also had the humans' strange delusion that causes them to deny the fact magic exists."" EH?! Wait, what? What do you mean humans deny magic exists?"" I mean exactly what I said. Every time you show humans any kind of magic, they immediately start rationalizing it as not being magic."

"But… but… they use magic on their ship!" Water From The Sky exclaimed.

"Yes," Rirris agreed.

"Their artificial gravity is powered by magic! I mean, they're clearly using gravity essence magitech they got from the Changers!"

"They are? Well, that's nice to know."

"Their FTL drive is powered by magic! They showed us how they need to load it with venecite for fuel!"

"I do not know what venecite is, but I'm assuming it's your name for Void dust and 'Quantum Energy Crystals'."

"Quantum ener— wait, is that what 'QEC' means? But… that's not what 'quantum' means!

'Quantum energy' would be a unit of measure, not a type of energy—!"

"I agree." Rirris tone was filled with the satisfaction of seeing someone in aggravated about something that also frustrated her. It had not surprised him when she had once told him the humans had a specific word for enjoying someone else's suffering. It should have, but it hadn't. And Water From The Sky was still aggravated. They had stood up and started a walking around their seat, their hands on their helmet.

He hoped it wouldn't reflect badly on them that they've driven the Kaydekeen's envoy to a scholarly rage.

"— ow can they use all that and still deny the existence of magic? Just doing basic chemistry experiments on venecite would tell anyone it's not normal! It dissolves in water without increasing water's volume, for crying out loud!"" Very convenient to store all your Void dust in a vat of water so storage areas are empty for food." Rirris, your agreeing with them doesn't seem to be calming them down. Perhaps you should stop." Just…! Just… WHY?!""

Everyone who's ever met them has asked that question and come to no satisfactory answer,"Rirris said." I personally think it's a mental conditioning integrated into the education of their debt-slave population to make it difficult to effectively plan a violent revolution that takes into account their magicshapers' capabilities." Water From The Sky tilted their head, then nodded." Yes, that sounds like something human governments would do." Tiikasia made note of that.

Water From The Sky was familiar enough with human governments to assess they would condone this practice.

"Did you not think that the humans were very friendly?" he asked." Very friendly, the humans may be, even if their leaders are evil greatly,"Water From The Sky said in freespeech." It to be the nature of humans is led by their worst, and their best to become their worst if they to be raised to lead.

"It was still hard to interpret tone, but they seemed confident about what they said." Even if humans may change for the better, evil is eternal, and will always find a way. To lead is to be little evil, but little evil is still evil.

"They tilted their head." Wrong, we might be and if so we will be joyful, but humans will be humans. Ah, our condolences, we this conversation has wandered, to our first destination to return."" … Yes. We were talking about the Void, and how entry and exit is difficult,"Rirris replied, switching back to human speech for the benefit of their visitor." Which is somehow supposed to explain how you're not affiliated with the humans despite you seeming to know them very well." Water From The Sky nodded."

Well, it's because we—or rather, the Mass Production Models who first colonized our new home planet—were originally from another universe. So while our creator was human, she wasn't the same kind of human as the ones from this universe." Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit." … I'm sorry, what?" Rirris said." Well, like I said earlier, the fortress that the Mass Production Models were in was violently displaced. Your people should be familiar with Void layer mechanics.

Because it was in a layer, the sudden acceleration caused it to drop fully into the Void." They tilted their head to the side." Do you know what happens when a Voidwalker tries to leave the Void when they're a long way from where they entered it?"" The deeper into the layers a ship is travelling, the greater the resulting displacement when it finally emerges, and the faster a ship is moving, the more the layer structure will try to force them into a deeper layer and eventually the Void,"Rirris said slowly."

One of the reasons ships don't go too deep is because if a ship goes down deep enough, the displacement could cause them to end up in intergalactic space, or in another galaxy altogether.

"Her face plates shifted into a strange expression, and it took Tiikasia a moment to realize she was mimicking a human smile." The other is because it makes it even easier for the creatures down there to perceive and affect the ship. So if someone leaves the layers between the Void and reality and dropped fully into the Void itself, moving even a little bit could see them on the other side of the galaxy if they manage to leave from anywhere but at the exact spot they entered through."

Then her antennae flicked in confusion and thought, and her face plates relaxed from the unnatural configuration they'd taken." But you said your fortress was suddenly accelerated. Did your fortress have any means to stabilize itself?"

"Yes, but according to records from the time, everyone aboard was too busy getting thrown around, and then busy trying to keep the fortress from getting eaten by the Void kaiju," Water From The Sky said.

"There was also no one aboard actually capable of using magic to Voidwalk back to reality."

"But then… how did they manage to find a way to leave the Void?"

"The fortress was drawn to a natural Void Breach and was able to make it out of the Void by passing through." Water From The Sky tilted their head as Tiikasia barely managed to keep up with their conversation.

"Although it's possible it wasn't completely natural. The enemy force the Mass Production Models had been fighting were using magitech devices to artificially induce small Void breaches so that their personnel could move in and out of the layers on foot, and using a massive one to maintain their base's position in the layer.

It's possible the latter's detonation imparted some kind of energy to the fortress or created a wavefront that preceded that fortress that either caused it to be drawn to a Void breach, actually belatedly induced one, or simply widened one that already existed." Their shoulders moved up and down.

"Unfortunately, we don't have the proper equipment to run experiments to know for sure which, and it would be a bad idea to try."

"Y-yes, it would be," Rirris said. Her muscles had tensed again." If what you're saying is true… there have always been stories about magicshapers attempting to leave the Void only to come out on planets with star patterns that don't correspond to any known world, or have biospheres and simple-minded life that don't match that of the worlds in the positions indicated.

It's always been whispered that those were worlds in other universes, but they couldn't be proven because the magicshapers in question were almost never able to find the worlds again.""

You don't have to just take my word for it. We have records, some recovered sensor logs from the time, and even buddies from that period who are still alive and socializing.

"Water From The Sky made a gesture that involved curling in all four of their fingers against their palm and extending their thumb, presenting it so that the thumb was held up nearly vertical." You can examine all the primary evidence yourself." Rirris' wings twitched, though she managed to restrain them from reacting with more than that." We'd like that very much. I wouldn't want to reach any erroneous conclusions. Although… do you suppose I could bring some members of my department for assistance?"" Sure!

It shouldn't be a problem as long as they're properly immunized against native bacteria and viruses,"Water From The Sky said." You can also just visit in sealed suits, but that wouldn't be as fun. No one could be able to eat any food."

"Speaking of visiting," Tiikasia said, hoping he wasn't being too rude, but it was the only opening he had.

"It is currently our intention to approach your world and establish a sustained orbit over it so that we may… well, at this point, sustain diplomatic contact. Will this be a problem?" In response, Water From The Sky reached towards their back and detached their board, turned their head towards Rirris, then presented the board towards her to peruse." Here. This circle path for you will be best, avoiding the… Word help? How do I say satellites in freespeech?" That last was in human speech.

"Satellites," Rirris provided.

"A nd I think you want to say orbital, not circle."" Our thanks! This orbital path for you will be best, avoiding the satellites in circle… orbiting? In orbiting over Nightmare?" Rirris turned the board to face him. It showed what he recognized as an equation in human speech.

"I can interpret this," she said.

"While I don't know what it's supposed to be avoiding, it looks like a stable, unpowered orbit around the planet." Tiikasia clicked his claws in acknowledgement.

"Is there anything we should know now?" he said.

"Or anything we should prepare?"" To leave your ship for this time is forbidden,"Water From The Sky said." Your forms will be weak to illness ours, as these ones will be to illness yours. Have you… uh, bodyfixer…"

"Doctor," Rirris offered." Our thanks! Have you doctor for illness to make…

"They turned to Rirris again and switched to human speech." How do you say 'prepare vaccines and antibodies to immunize you to our local diseases'?"" Perhaps you should speak to me and I'll translate for the Ohmadia? It's best not to have any accidental misunderstandings."" Are you sure? I wouldn't want to offend…"" It's no problem. Translating technical terms properly is why I'm here, after all."" All right, then!

We didn't have time to bring them because you caught us by surprise, but next time we come over we'll be bringing samples of common bacteria and viruses so that you can begin developing immunizations for them…" Two suwamo later, Tiikasia sat in the nucleus, watching though Ahgido's helmet camera as Water From The Sky drifted 'up' from the hull of the Dhekhajhyde.

Well, 'drift' was an understatement, since they had bent their legs to lower their body and then kicked off into the most violent jump he had ever seen, causing them to rocket upwards in a way any planetbound softshell would have envied. The Kaydekeen had declared that their air supply was running low and that they needed to leave to resupply and report back to their leaders, and so the meeting had ended amiably.

Still, it was mildly distressing to see someone—even someone human-shaped—simply leaping into the empty vacuum like that without any obvious means of controlled propulsion.

"Contact," Nakki Ylewes announced, and the view on the screen spilt. Both sides showed different angles of the same unfamiliar ship that had suddenly just appeared out of the blackness directly in Water From The Sky's path. The two different angles allowed him to watch as the Kaydekeen seemed to roll in place so that they landed feet-first on that ship's hull. It was a surprisingly small ship: judging from the size of the alien on its surface, the ship was the size of a family road vehicle…

or one of the human's missile drones, a part of him whispered demonically. He watched as the ship began to accelerate, becoming a white streak that quickly vanished from sight—"Sensors, how far away was that last contact?" he asked.

"Last contact had it only three tain away, Ohmadia," Ylewes said, her antennae still.

"Well within visual range. They must have redeployed their cloaking device. We also can't detect any residue trail from their propulsion system."

"What, nothing?" he said.

"Nothing. Rolling back the logs… the sensor is detecting some sort of plasma residue from their thruster, but it seems to cease to exist three to four tsiaku from the nozzle. Not disperse, just vanish."

"Well, I suppose that's another datapoint towards our visitor having magic, if the fact they had a localized gravity field on their feet wasn't enough," Rirris said, sounding amused. She'd changed her voice back to normal, because apparently talking so much had been taxing on her altered speech organs… vocal chords, she'd said they were called.

"I wonder what it is?"

"You can ask them when we see them next," Tiikasia said. They were probably returning to a nearby cloaked base or relay station, because that had been a small ship, and while it would be possible to install some form of faster-than-light shaping array on it, that would depend on how their civilization prioritized the use of Void dust… or venecite, in the local dialect of human speech.

"Though that might be some time. Still, we should put it to good use. Rirris, get your department's laboratories ready to start producing bacterial and viral cultures, then start going over the sensor data. Get everything you can extrapolate from it."

"Understood, Ohmadia," Rirris said. Turning to the panel of his own chair, Tiikasia began contacting the ship's medical department. He needed to inform Wozyogen Nera to start preparing bacterial and viral cultures for exchange…

"Wait, what localized gravity field?" The next arau, he found himself staring at what looked to be the same small Kaydekeen ship. Even as he watched, small figure in a yellow vacuum suit emerged from the ship, carrying a container…