Chương 71: 047 – Intelligence

Trout ordered the rest of the ship to stand down to a lower alert level. While the fighters and drones were still ready to deploy—there were shinkies in the system, after all—most crewmen were able to relax and get back to their usual duties and schedule. With that shift, there was finally time for the expedition team to write their reports and be debriefed.

Even so, the reports didn't start crossing Trout's desk—metaphorically, as he remained on the bridge, watching as their sensors tracked the shinkies and completely failed to find any Kaedekin traffic between Surcease and Nightmare despite already knowing there was supposed to be at least one ship—until the morning two days after the expedition. As had been hoped, the expedition had been an intelligence treasure trove.

As had been feared and he had personally expected, much of it was either very disquieting, terrifying, or bewildering. The transparent steel made him envious, since if there was one thing about spacer life, it was not having enough windows because they'd compromise the structural integrity of the ship. The weapons provoked only slight less but more practical envy.

Shinky plasma weapons were devastating, able to melt through a ship's armor belt in time, knock out systems near the point of impact, and hit with kinetic force that could do its own secondary damage. Already, the ship's engineers and analysts were trying to work out how the Kaedekin's plasma cannons worked, going through the four different recordings that they had. Unfortunately, none of the recordings showed the weapon in action, and they only had a partial list of what the Kaedekin called certain components.

More interesting was something that the Kaedekin referred to only as 'emitters'. These were not laser emitters—which for some reason were actually gun-shaped, with long barrels and gimbals not dissimilar to the 'hybrid cannons'—but something else, and the smart scrypt was on these being part of the oversized, ship-based versions of their forcefield technology. The fact that they were also railguns and coil guns had been met with the equivalent of a brief silence and a metaphorical shrug.

Both of the latter were old technology, so no one seemed to find them very exciting save for how they had been integrated into a plasma weapon system. They also had at least thirteen demonstrations of Kaedekin using handheld plasma weapons in pistol, rifle, underslung secondary weapon, and some kind of sword/gun combined weapon monstrosity that admittedly tickled his inner-child's interest even if it probably wasn't practical, although there was unfortunately no footage of the internals of any of the weapons.

Still, it showed such weapons were possible, and knowing that it could be done would go a long way towards being able to make their own version of them. On the topic of weapons, the fact that all Kaedekin went around armed had been met with surprise by everyone who'd met them previously. While their military being armed seemed only prudent, having everyone be similarly equipped seemed a recipe for disaster…

until the rakido, pajhadin and Changer officers had pointed out their cultures had non-military or law-enforcement personnel be similarly armed—with equally 'archaic' weapons, because long sharp objects was technology that everyone ended up discovering at some point—and they did quite fine as societies. Though even they had to admit that they generally didn't allow the juveniles of their species to be similarly armed.

Not that the number of weapons the people aboard Stargazer Fortress had was in any way immediately relevant. After all, they had absolutely no intention—and more relevantly, no orders —to do anything that would make the number of armed personnel in Stargazer Fortress to be significant or relevant. Trout even believed it.

Although all Kaedekin being armed was quickly overshadowed by the revelation that all Kaedekin seemed to be equipped with their force field technology, which was somehow even more ubiquitous than the weapons. Personnel transport, personal transport, cargo transport, disposable cups of all things… the Kaedekin seemed to have fully integrated forcefields into their everyday life, although given how convenient it seemed to be, Trout could hardly blame them.

Just imagining being able to fly up a stairwell instead of physically climbing stairs or waiting for a crowded elevator… It sounded like a logistical nightmare, but the Kaedekin were obviously making it work somehow. There were other matters that were logistically interesting, such as the fact that the space station's air all came from onboard photosynthesis setups instead of using electrolysis to crack water for oxygen, and how a significant amount of the station's food was actually grown on-site.

While they freely admitted that they couldn't feed the Stargazer's usual population with station-grown food alone, it would be sufficient to feed the station's full military complement so they could continue fighting in the event of an invasion even when cut off from the planet.

And given all the landing bays that the utility boat had seen on their approach to the station—all behind forcefields to keep the air in, yet could adapt to approaching spacecraft to let them through without compromising atmosphere—and the fact that the bays seemed to use active gravity control to simplifying ship landing, evacuating all non-combat personnel could probably be done very quickly. More interesting was what they hadn't been shown.

One of the intelligence officers had tried to go back down to the landing bays to try to get a look at the Kaedekin space craft, and their guide had agreed… which showed the arrangement of the landing bay the utility boat had been guided to hadn't been an outlier. The Kaedekin apparently liked to set up social and dining areas to overlook the station's landing bays, which sounded like a safety risk in the event of an accident, or emergency.

Still, it had been a good venue to see the Kaedekin's ships, even if the only ships they'd seen were passenger mass-transports. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. They had been blocky and bright yellow, with large windows on all sides—even the rear where the thrusters were—that had probably been made of transparent steel.

Despite the color and the aesthetics, the vessel had been a rather basic 'brick with thrusters' design that humans had been building for centuries and every other intelligent species regarded with disdain, and which contributed greatly to humanity's reputation for being boring.

The Kaedekin had explained they were ground to orbit transports for bringing day visitors to and from Stargazer Fortress, as well as the other fortresses around Surcease orbit, so these were only 'lightly armed for defense in the event of a sudden invasion'. There was also an interplanetary model that they had been going to see, but the arrival of the shinkies had gotten in the way of that. The only description of it had been 'more heavily armed'.

And while the intelligence officer in question hadn't actually entered the location, on the way to the landing bays they had seen a sign over an entrance labeled 'Mecha Bay 7', which the visitors had not been admitted to because it was only for authorized personnel. The officer in question had accepted that, but had noted that children had been allowed entry into the location, which spoke of the Kaedekin having interesting ideas about who constituted authorized personnel.

There were actually several locations that the Kaedekin had not allowed access to, such as power generation areas, what they called the 'gravity generator', the station's central control center, waste processing, water purification, and the public library. Which showed that the Kaedekin did in fact have a concept of 'restricted areas' that occasionally coincided with everyone else's. And these were only the initial, raw written reports.

The analysis on them was only just getting started, along with all the video and audio footage, and sensor data. And then document the analysis process with more video and audio footage, because they'll probably need to explain the conclusions they reached to someone at some point, and it would be best if they were defensible.

Included with the intelligence reports were some preliminary sophontological analysis—based on information gathered before this visit—as well as a short report, practically a memo, from the Galactic Frontier Trading Company survey team. The only reason that Trout didn't save it all for the very last and even looked at the memo at all was because the file size implied it was very short. It was. Done as you asked.

Results tentative, but we found a correlation between QEC sites and geological patterns found to correspond with fault lines of tectonic plates and geoactive areas, as well as areas of high daytime temperature that are likely to be desert. Can't confirm latter because of shroud. Correlation is not causation, but I recall that a lot of QEC crystallization sites are in hot environments. Trout read the message and didn't do anything so guilty as delete it. Then he got back to work.

Falling Stillness probably should have been doing something more productive now that she was off duty, like eat, meditate, catch up on her reading, or actually do some essence research. That would have been the smart thing to do, and as a Cultivator of Essence, she was of course a very intelligent individual. However, she was off duty now, so to the depths with being smart, she wanted to grab a bunch of snacks, go to the dark room, and melt into a puddle to just digest and digest!

Maybe she'd try to talk to everyone into breaking the room's unwritten rules and watch one of the ship's movies. Something with funny dialogue where the plot wasn't really important so it wouldn't matter that Phingrui and Nhanhaja couldn't see it… When she opened the door, however, the smell of industrial solvent assaulted her skin, and she shifted her breathing to the skin on the other side of her body out of instinct.

Thankfully, smell was brief, so the room wasn't actually full of the stuff, but the lingering odor was still very unpleasant.

"Wha… did someone use this room for storage again?" Did they have to find a new dark room? From inside, someone said, "Either come in or get out, just close the damned door." Falling Stillness had been about to do the latter, but at the voice she paused. She knew that voice, tired and melancholy and cranky and sounding like it wanted to do violence but actually doing it was just too much trouble…

"Ash?" she said incredulously in English.

"Is that you?"

"Door," the voice repeated irritably.

"You're letting all the good smell out." The world seemed to slow around her, a self-perceived illusion as she drew on the essence spinning in her cores, accelerating the thoughts going through her mind as she compared the words with her memories. After she was sure that, yes, the voices matched, she slowly stepped inside the darkened gloom and pulled the door shut behind her with a pseudopod.

"You're not supposed to be here…" Falling Stillness said slowly. There was a flare of light, and a flame flickered in the darkness. It was a small flame, like one from those candles human annual survival celebration rituals still used, or were packed in their emergency survival kits, but unlike the carefully modulated red lighting near ground level it was omnidirectional. It cast light on the bulkheads, the bunks, the ceiling and the person already in the room.

Loren Ash sat on one of the seats around the square table just off from the room's center. In one hand was a glass made of actual glass, as opposed to the lightweight plastic tumblers and occasional stainless-steel ones common on the ship. Next to her was a massive bottle, made of near-opaque amber class, the same kind used for light-sensitive chemicals. Even the stopper on the battle was glass.

"I'm a wizard," Ash said, the last word said with an almost spiteful pride.

"Or are you going to say I'm just a quantum engineer?" Not waiting for a reply, the human brought the glass to her lips and took a slow, deliberate sip as she snapped her fingers, and the flame winked out.