Chương 82: 054 – Nice Boat

Loren had thought that the captain was going to refuse the Kaedekin's invitation to the quantum engineers to visit the 'College of Flames'. Just the fact that the invitation had been phrased as an obviously super suspicious message had all of them being interviewed. Fortunately, all of them could genuinely claim they didn't know what the Kaedekin meant beyond the literal word of the message.

Between the still-suspicious circumstances and the fact there was a shinky ship in the system, she would have been willing to bet that the risk of something happening to one of the very few people on the ship capable of repairing and maintaining the quantum drive, the quantum reactor, the quantum thermograph, the quantum transceiver, and—as far as every knew—the gravity plates and the Alcubierre drive wouldn't be something they'd chance.

This sort of thinking is probably why she wasn't in a more managerial position, because the captain had apparently thought accepting the invitation was a great idea. She also would have thought that accepting the invitation would have involved only quantum engineers. In hindsight, that was silly of her.

Which was how Loren found herself part of a group being briefed by the captain, the chief engineer, the chief quantum engineer, and several other people she couldn't identify immediately, but were wearing enough rank markings on their uniforms to utterly ruin her day in the short term. At least Chief Silverberg had given her a brief nod of acknowledgement when she'd come in, which had been reassuring. The things the skipper was saying were not.

"Recently, the Kaedekin extended a second invitation towards us," the Captain said as Loren tried not to feel out of place.

"We have been invited to visit what I have been informed is one of their centers of higher learning, and an active research and development facility. Given the context of the invitation, we believe it to be one of the Kaedekin's quantum engineering schools." There was some side-eye from a couple of the regular engineers also there for the briefing, but Loren was used to ignoring those whenever her alleged profession was mentioned. It was just a fact of the engineering department.

"After deliberation, we have chosen to accept their invitation despite the current situation," the Captain continued.

"As this will be the first time that members of the Confederacy will be setting foot on the Kaedekin homeworld, we have asked the Kadekin to allow a larger party than initially proposed so that each Confederacy member species will be present for this historic occasion." Loren managed not to wince at that last, and only closed her eyes to wish she was somewhere else for a few breaths before opening them again.

She wasn't in charge of this, so the inevitable political shitshow that decision would cause was none of her business.

"As with the previous excursion into Kaedekin territory, we will be both showing the flag and doing reasonable reconnaissance," Commander Bronze said.

"Everyone going there will be on their best behavior, following all the rules and not going anywhere that they don't have permission to go. So far, we've managed to maintain a friendly relationship with the Kaedekin, and we're going to continue doing so. With that being said, recent experiences in Stargazer Fortress have shown that the Kaedekin can be rather permissive about what they consider appropriate to show people. We've already managed to gather a lot of intelligence simply by asking nicely for it.

If that pattern holds, we should be able to learn more. We just need to know what to ask for. A file has been sent to your onboard accounts, listing the sorts of intelligence we'd like you all to look into."

"However, you are not to prioritize intelligence over maintaining an amicable relationship with the Kaedekin," the Captain interjected.

"As long as the Kaedekin are willing to talk to us, any intelligence can be gathered at a later time, or exchanged as part of future negotiations. With a shinky warship in the system, we can't afford to not have the Kaedekin on our side when the shinkies find out about us, and doing anything to offend them might cause them to reconsider associating with us."

After the briefing, Loren was able to access the file sent to her, and it was very clear that everyone was being asked to learn what they could about the Kaedekin's quantum engineering, with a particular emphasis on their supposed forcefield technology. That was certain to be hilarious, given that it was just the Kaedekin's magic at work, but there were always people trying to find ways to make 'quantum engineering' more widely available to those who weren't quantum engineers.

The navy tended to be full of those people, because they didn't like the fact that they couldn't just train their own quantum engineers in-house and had to 'lease' them from one of the corporations who make their quantum-based equipment. Curiously, some of the questions asked about venecite. Not how they were made but where they were commonly found. Loren made a note to report that home as soon as she could it always boded ill when the normies thought they knew how crystalized magic worked.

Inevitably, it tended to result in one of the relatively few crystallization points in human hands getting ruined for decades by whatever 'productivity enhancement' had been ill-conceived and put into practice. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. It was unfortunate that this was becoming an intelligence circus, because Loren thought she'd probably enjoy getting to see how Kaedekin Pyrotheurgists organized themselves.

The experience would likely be very bittersweet, but she'd been looking forward to seeing what sorts of spells they had. With the normies around though— The Kaedekin had some nice boats. Loren was fairly certain she wasn't the only one admiring the shape of the Kaedekin boat as it smoothly slid into the fighter cove in the middle of the Venture, then turned in place to face the open space doors of the flight deck.

At what she would guestimate to be forty meters wide, ten meters thick and fifty long—though there was a good chance the actual numbers were bigger as she was still a bit far away—it was larger than the utility boat they'd used to visit Stargazer Fortress, but that was because twenty meters of that width consisted of wings, or at least wing-like protrusions sticking out from either side of the fuselage.

Given the overall aerodynamic shape of the boat, with its pointed spade-shaped nose jutting out from the rest of the vaguely hexagonal body behind it, it was quite likely the boat was meant for atmospheric flight, all in the bright pink that the Kaedekin seemed to favor as a default color. Despite its size and coloration, Loren couldn't help thinking of an atmospheric superiority fighter, possibly due to the similar ratios in its dimensions.

The boat smoothly spun in place, only the barest flicker of some kind of white ejecta showing before it stopped from another burst of light, before beginning to slowly approach the flight deck. The artificial gravity had been deactivated, but Loren doubted the Kaedekin needed the courtesy as the boat moved smoothly towards the area allotted for it to land, which was the space two down from where Loren and the rest of the excursion party were standing next to the pallet racks for of replacement air tanks.

Coming to a dead stop in mid-air—mid-vacuum? —the boat once more turned within its own radius to point its rear towards them. The little flashes of white flame from its maneuvering thrusters were more obvious now, though the bursts seemed much dimmer than they should be for a pure white flame— She paused, then deliberately reached out her awareness, towards the maneuvering jets, looking for something to claim and finding nothing. Whatever those white bursts were, they weren't actually combustion.

Was this what the Kaedekin meant by 'vennplasma'? Narrowing her eyes, she tried to get a better look at where the maneuvering jets were coming from, but while Flames weren't actually hurt by doing things like staring directly into the sun or other bright lights it didn't mean they could actually see any more than normies could. The Kaedekin boat began to move downwards as landing gear unfolded beneath it, struts coming out from behind sliding panels.

The struts' hydraulic elements actually compressed as the boat settled on the flight deck, and remained compressed for several seconds before the flight deck's tower sent a warning that the artificial gravity was coming online again.

Loren stumbled a little as weight returned to her body, and there was a brief moment of vertigo before the gravity plates beneath her stabilized, with more than a few of the people around her leaning against one of the power armors around them being piloted by either a Changer or tiwada. Those had been fitted with more sensors this time, though as far as she knew the weapons continued to not be loaded.

In front of them, the Kaedekin boat seemed to adjust quickly, deactivating whatever artificial gravity it had used to land. Almost as soon as it settled, the rear of the boat opened, two halves moving up and down. While the top part didn't rise very high, the lower part began to unfold, lengthening to create a shallow ramp leading into the boat's interior.

However, even before the ramp was fully extended, the humanoid shapes of Kaedekin in color-coded space suits were already crowding the incline, a few not even waiting for the ramp's end to fully settle before hopping down onto the deck. There were about a dozen of them, though there were likely more inside, and all of them immediately waved their hands in enthusiastic nonverbal greeting.

While there had been a mutually designated a radio frequency to communicate over, which had been decided before the Kaedekin had arrived, it had been to coordinate transferring the replacement tanks of air into their boat with the understanding it wasn't to be clogged with any casual communication.

It seemed their guests—who would soon become their hosts—had decided to not let that stop them from saying 'hi' to everyo— Several transparent shapes in a variety of colors began to glow over the Kaedekin's heads, ovals with little curving tails that pointed towards the Kaedekin they were directly above. Loren let out a laugh, and she was fairly sure she wasn't the only one, as the shapes resolved themselves into word balloons, all of them filled with three-dimensional letters spelling out variations on 'Hello!'

or 'Friend!' or 'Hello, friend!. The designated radio frequency remained very silent. A few of the Kaedekin seemed to gravitate towards certain people, and Loren was witness to the awkwardness of enthusiastically trying to hug someone while both people were wearing spacesuits.

Though to be fair, the Kaedekin suits actually seemed perfectly suited for hugging someone while wearing them, their wearers' arms and head having enough range of motion to actually do wrap around someone with no trou— She felt it before she saw it, the feeling some another Pyrotheurgist casting out their awareness and brushing against her soul.

She just had enough time to be startled before one of the Kaedekin approached her, arms spread wide before engulfing her in a hug that should couldn't actually feel through the thick material of her suit. The visor of the suit in front of her was tinted black, showing only the reflection of her own face through her helmet, as she felt someone's awareness gently brushing against her soul again. She had a pretty good idea of who this was.

After all, if someone could feel your soul, then you could feel theirs too, and she'd become very familiar with this feeling over an hour spent sitting on a bench and just talking.

"Hi, Seraphine," Loren said anyway, even though she wouldn't be heard.

"Nice to see you again."