Chương 81: 053 – Meeting Of Departments

As soon as Tiikasia was able to politely disengage from the conversation with the Kaydekeen—fortunately, the circumstances involved gave him a ready excuse, as the Kaydekeen seemed familiar with the sorts of complications that can arise after an inoculation—and despite his condition had to call a meeting. Know that there were actual humans in the star system was cause for great concern.

Knowing they'd known about your presence before you'd known about theirs was the kind of waking nightmare that he'd thought would stop haunting him since the war ended. Despite the immediacy, it still took time to call a meeting of all department heads, especially if you're trying not to panic the crew. He had time to rest, rehydrate, and come to the meeting feeling even worse but telling himself he could still handle it.

Half a paize later found him in a conference room with all the ship's department heads, everyone but Rirris looking worried about why they'd been summoned with unseemly haste. The head of the science department, who knew why they'd been summoned, looked very worried, but that wasn't immediately distinguishable.

"Thank you all for coming on such short notice," Tiikasia said once the recorder was activated to take the minutes of the meeting.

"There's no way to say this delicately, so I won't bother: there's a human ship in the star system. Specifically, a Confederacy ship." He had made sure to get that information from Rain.

"Frass," Ahgido said immediately. Everyone immediately turned towards Dipa. It took a moment for the Chief Defender of the Defense Department to reply, cutting off mid-curse.

"We have more than enough water to fuel the plasma cannons, and we've had them warmed up ever since the Kaydekeen made contact, but we'll need to few paize to get the heat-exchange system in the hull up and running to full combat readiness. The water we have running through the hull now is enough for collecting stellar radiation to turn into power, but insufficient for defending against human weapons." Unlike Rirris, the other Kivhar's voice was rhythmic and melodious. Kivhar voices usually were.

"We also have a standard complement of missiles, but most of them are in storage, and beyond the initial check when they came aboard, we haven't looked at them since. If I begin as soon as we finish, we should have basic readiness in six suwamo and full readiness a day later. We currently have only eight fighters ready to launch, which have been rotating between our pilots, with another sixteen in storage.

Our swarm complement is down to pre-war levels, with only thirty-six pilots on the ship, and most of them soft-shelled yahs who haven't flown anything more strenuous than a scanning run. If it does come to swarming, I don't like their chances of surviving out there." Tiikasia nodded and turned towards Ahgido next.

"Chief Warrior?"

"All warriors are in good health and will be ready to repel any boarding attempts," Ahgido said.

"However, our count of complete vacuum armors comes to about forty-two, with about thirty-five more in need of repairs to be spaceworthy, and about three storerooms worth of armor scrap we're keeping for raw materials and replacements parts." There was a wave of alarmed antennae waving.

"Why haven't we gotten any replacement armor?" Uisad said, the Chief Shaper of the Shaping Department verbalizing what everyone was thinking.

"We did," Ahgido said with dark humor.

"Otherwise we would have only had twelve vacuum armors."

"…Ugh. Stupid budget cuts," Uisado keened briefly, and Tiikasia could only quietly click his claws in agreement.

"Shaping Department is as ready as we'll ever be, Ohmadia. Current count is thirty-six watershapers, fifteen dragonshapers, and nine Symbols."

"Should you really be counting that one?" Dhakaroda said. The Chief Administrator was a larger man than Tiikasia, his exoskeleton thicker and bulkier.

"You worry about your accountants, Dhaka," Uisado said.

"Let me worry about my possibly suicidal depressive. As for the other eight, they won't need suits, so we have that flexibility on our side. However, ever since the humans formed the Confederacy, it's been well-publicized that they've been trying to integrate the other members of their alliance into their military. We need to prepare for the possibility of shapers among the non-humans."

"Besides Symbolism, how much do we know about their shaping? Would we be capable of countering or mitigating it?" Tiikasia asked.

"We have actionable amounts of intelligence for the other member species of the Confederacy," Uisado said.

"The only ones we don't really have much information on are the humans themselves, beyond the fact their shapers don't seem to have souls. However, from gathered intelligence, human shapers are unlikely to be encountered unless we directly challenge them. As I understand the numbers, we'd need a much bigger force if we wanted to try and take over the human ship's propulsion systems, and that's where the human shapers are most likely to be.

Ahgido and I have already devised countermeasures according to what intelligence we have. Unfortunately, we have no way to test the measures beforehand."

"We had best hope it will be unnecessary," Tiikasia said. No one in the room looked like they thought it would be.

"Zendho, how ready is the rest of the ship for battle?"

"No issues with the engines, and the hull has technically been fully repaired, but there are still points on it where the metal suffered fatigue and deformation that were never really replaced, just patched over," the Chief Engineer said.

"The pipes for the heat-exchange system should hold, since they're all new from the hull repairs, but I'm concerned about where they join with the older parts of the system. If they start overheating from the humans' lasers or we get hit by a missile at the wrong spot, weak joins and fractures that weren't detected might tear open. Tsiesda and I been having our people looking for them since the hull repairs, but there are tains of pipes on this ship.

They were declared structurally sound when we left the repair dock, but we've all heard of the leaks, and even with the tools we have, the easiest way to find them is following the hot water when they're already leaking." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"What do you need to make sure everything is battle ready?" Tiikasia asked.

"We've already been doing everything we could, Ohmadia," Chief Maintainer Tsiesda said.

"At this point, all we can do is wait for Defense to get the system up to combat ready, and then wait for all the leaks to show up to we can try to patch them." Tiikasia nodded and turned to Uisado.

"Chief Shaper, please assign every watershaper on non-essential duty to Maintenance and Engineering. We need them to find and control the leaks so they can be repaired."

"Understood, Ohmadia."

"Are we going to define inoculation production as non-essential?" Nera asked.

"Because we were depending on having a few more of the watershapers assisting with that." That have Tiikasia paused.

"Have the watershapers who are already infected carriers of the diseases we're making inoculations for remain with Medical," he decided.

"By the time they're decontaminated, the structural repairs should be mostly done already. Best keep them there for now. As for the rest, we need to make the ship more likely to survive encountering humans."

"What will we do with the Kaedekin's invitation?" Rirris asked. Her face and antennae were bland and expressionless.

"We did just get invited to visit their homeworld, after all. Suddenly turning down the very thing we asked for might seem a little rude." It was the last that stopped Tiikasia from saying they'd need to turn it down.

"What is she talking about, Ohmadia?" Nadzu asked. The Chief Supplier always seemed to have the slightly unfocused look of someone who was constantly checking some sort of mental supply log and wondering how whatever was happening around them would affect the numbers on it. Tiikasia just gestured at Rirris, both to save him the energy and because she probably wanted to.

"Recently, we spoke to the Kaydekeen and gained permission to conduct an initial examination of a phenomenon the layer tension scanner detected on the second planet of the system," Rirris said immediately, her worry being overcome by scholarly enthusiasm.

"It was fascinating, the—right, right, not important. Anyway, they gave us permission to visit their home world to take initial scans as soon as we work out the logistics needed to keep them from getting infected with our bacteria…"

"Why are you looking at me?" Zendho said.

"Not now Rirris," Tiikasia said." Ugh, fine…" Everyone twitched as she made the strange human-like sound.

"It was during this exchange that the Kaedekin informed us of the presence of Confederacy humans in the star system… because they had also been given permission by the Kaedekin to visit and the Kaedekin wanted to coordinate matters so they only needed to use one ship to convey both groups to their destination." Ahgido look leaned forward, gently resting both hands on the conference table as if afraid he wouldn't be able to control his arm spikes.

"Ohmadia, as Chief Warrior, I must insist on bringing up the possibility that these 'Kaydekeen' are lying to us and have been a part of the Confederacy whole time." Tiikasia would be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind. Just the very fact that the Kaydekeen were clearly humanoid had been concerning.

And so far, they still had absolutely no evidence beyond the Kaydekeen's word that they were, in fact, clones beyond the fact that all of the ones they had encountered appeared physically identical save for differing eyes colors and fur colors that Rirris claimed was cosmetic because human fur and eyes didn't naturally come in those shades. However…

"While several of the Kaydekeen's claims have remained unproven, if they are connected to the Confederacy, why would they intentionally inform us of their presence in the system?"

"And as to being part of the Confederacy, some of the things we told them about the humans clearly surprised them," Rirris added.

"They also clearly already know a lot more than the humans did. I mean, the humans consider the other Free Peoples to be the slave races of the Shinkamrai. If the humans are behind the Kaedekin, why do something so elaborate?" Everyone bared their teeth at those words, and Ahgido's forearm spikes did pop out on the table. Tiikasia was barely able to keep his sheathed.

"For the moment, we will put the matter of the invitation aside," he said.

"If the Kaydekeen inquire, we will simply tell them that a maintenance issue arose that required us to delay it. Once we have raised ship readiness to levels sufficient to surviving an attack by human warship, then we will reconsider the matter."

"Does that mean we're cutting off communications with them?" the Chief of Operations asked. Tiikasia hesitated only a little.

"No," he said.

"We will maintain diplomatic contact as we have before. Standard information security policies should be enough to keep anything that can be used against us from being exchanged. We will continue contact under the assumption that while the Kaydekeen are being sincere as to who they are, they also have no reason to not exchange anything we tell them with the Confederacy."

"Perhaps we could try asking them not to tell the Confederacy?" Rirris suggested. Tiikasia's antennae flicked sardonically.

"I doubt it would be that easy."" Oh, sure, I guess we can not tell the humans you know they're in the system too,"Rain said after had Rirris translated the request." May I ask why?" Rirris glanced at him for a reply, and it took Tiikasia a moment to recover from the ready acquiescence.

"We are concerned that there may be those among the humans who will see a lone Hegemony ship as a tempting target for retaliation," he said carefully. For a moment, Rain simply stared at them—at least, he thought that's what she was doing, since her eyes weren't moving—head tilting to the side before nodding once." Ah, yes, I understand. You don't want human military to know about you because they might do something stupid."

Rirris let out a brief laugh before turning away, her translation of the words filled with amusement.

"That's… essentially what our concern is, yes," Tiikasia said, because it was true enough." All right, then. But if they ask us whether you know that they're here, I'm not going to lie to them." That was… fair, he supposed.

"If that does happen, could you please inform us immediately?" Rain's ready agreement was… not exactly reassuring, but much better than nothing.