After the analysts were given the raw footage of the most recent conversation with Rain, Trout found a suspicious lack of reports in his inbox for the rest of the day. While he was fine with that, he’d half-expected someone to just bang something out loudly proclaiming that clearly the Kaedekin were all lying, and obviously they were some kind of secret lost cult colony… which would actually make some amount of sense, but that was probably why no one was sending reports like that. Too easy, the fruit hanging too low.

  Which wasn’t to say no one wasn’t drafting a report like that, just that they hadn’t sent it in yet.

  However, the revelation that the Kaedekin were technically human even if they didn’t claim to be such seemed to have put a damper on the wild speculation of the previous days. They were known now, and so the analysts had a lens to look at all of Rain’s previous statements through, and from the times Trout had walked though their department, they were doing just that.

  Trout wondered how many of them were keeping an eye out for confirmation bias. Probably a good number of them, he was willing to admit. Still, he sent out a memo reminding them against it, just in case.

  With the new radio communications protocols established, the time Trout spent talking to Rain lessened substantially, though it was mostly by design. They had decided to arrange a more regular contact time per day, and limited it to an hour so they would be less likely to go on random tangents. The Kaedekin had graciously allowed it to be an Earth hour so that the Venture wouldn’t have to try and keep track of local time, and curiosity had led to the matter of timekeeping being the first thing they had discussed in that first hour.

  As it turned out, the Kaedekin were very familiar with the Earth-hour, because when they had first arrived on Surcease, they’d had clocks set to Earth’s sixty-second minute, 60-minute hour, twenty-four-hour day… clocks that admittedly quickly degenerated, because they were no longer being calibrated by the high-precision atomic clocks of the Earth they’d just left. In fact, they had used a calendar based on Earth’s for more than a century…

  “It’s one of the challenges of living on a planet where you can’t see through the atmosphere,” Rain said cheerfully. “The only way the sisters who first came here could tell if the Dancer was up was to scan the sky in infrared or ultra-violet, so for a while ‘Timekeeper’ was an official job where someone spent the day scanning the sky to tell if it was day or not. Of course, weather would complicate things, since thick cloud cover could block out the sun, so eventually they were in charge of keeping an eye on the weather too. Very important when power was too limited to use for dryers and everyone had their laundry out. It took several years for the sisters of the time to be able to put together a rudimentary calendar of the planet’s seasons, which they used for planning out the year’s farming, but in their day-to-day life, they still used the Earth hour and Earth day because without any other astrological bodies besides the Dancer to use as a reference point, they couldn’t really properly triangulate anything. At best, two people at different points on the planet actively in contact at the same time could measure the angle of the Dancer, but that’s not really all that useful for precise navigation, much less timekeeping. It was a stumbling block we were never really able to address, since at the time setting up sources of food that wasn’t full of heavy metal was more important. It was only once we finally managed to get up to space carrying more than one small air tank at a time and could start placing artificial satellites that we were finally able to start measuring the planet’s rotation…”

  The schizophrenic mix of technologies implied by her narrative made sense when looked at through the lens of them having a limited cache of advanced technology but had lacked infrastructure to build more, a situation that seemed to have been long since rectified. It was a Robinson Crusoe situation except with space-age technology, which arguably made it even harder. Robinson Crusoe had the advantage of having technology that was possible to replicate without advanced metallurgy and lasers, just rocks and sticks. Trout couldn’t even begin to fathom what kind of technology it would take to build a clock more complicated than a sundial, which had clearly not been an option for them…

  In return, he answered what questions he could. Rain didn’t ask if there were other intelligent peoples in the universe, though the fact that the Kaedekin knew that the Hegemony existed implied that they listened to very diverse sources. It was very likely that they already knew about the civilizations who were part of the Frontier Cooperative, such as the Primurfoh or the Tsokoiy.

  The questions Rain asked were… well, uncomfortably close to home as she asked what exactly had happened at certain well-publicized battles against the Hegemony, as well as some definitely not-publicized battles, though only as far as Trout was comfortable with. Apparently the Kaedekin were trying to reconstruct the course of the recent war, and Trout acknowledged that public access channels were hardly the best way to do that. While he wasn’t familiar with many—he’d been too busy with his own duties—there were a few he’d heard about from classmates stationed in other ships, so he’d been able to share a few anecdotes. Those that he’d been personally involved with… well, he avoided mentioning them.

  Fortunately, Rain didn’t push, and seemed to accept most of his rather bland—in his opinion, anyway—answers to her questions. Some of it was trying to make sense of competing accounts of a battle, and Trout had to wonder what she meant by ‘competing accounts’. It was only later, after they had finished the conversation and agreed on a tentative subject for tomorrow’s discussion, that Trout realized Rain might have been referring to the Hegemony’s account of events.

  It was another thing to send to the analysts. The Hegemony’s encryptions had been very difficult to break, compounded by both their excellent radio discipline and how often then had changed their ciphers. If the Kaedekin had a way of breaking through that…

  Well. Wouldn’t that be something?

  “Huh. That’s a lot of samples.”

  It was more than a week after Rain had first set foot on the Venture’s hull, and the infectious disease lab had finally finished putting together the bacterial and viral cultures that the Kaedekin had requested. To their credit, the lab hadn’t allowed the information that the Kaedekin were probably human bias them, continuing to compile as many samples of everything that had hitched a ride on everyone on the ship. Human or not, the threat of a virgin field epidemic was real.

  This had resulted in over seventy cultures, all of which were now sitting on the table of the quarantine room, each in a rectangular container that was about the size of a personal tablet, though many times thicker. A different quarantine room than usual, as the one Rain had been welcomed to before had been a bit too small to fit all the samples. Trout had to admit that his own imagination had been rather insufficient in imagining the volume of space seventy bacterial and viral culture containers could take up. “Will that be a problem?”

  “Oh no, just surprised,” Rain said. “We didn’t know how big your sample containers were, so we brought a bigger ship. The others are waiting inside to help me if it was needed, and…” Her opaque visor looked over the samples again. “I believe I need it. Permission for my fellow Rangers to come aboard?”

  He couldn’t help it, there was just something so heartwarming about someone who was both so polite and took navy traditions so seriously, even if they weren’t her own. Especially since they weren’t her own. “How much assistance would you require?”

  “Oh, just four people. Namine and Hale can help me get these all onto the ship.”

  “…then why do you need permission for four people?”

  “Well, Keystone and Abyssal Glass will be coming with them also, and I didn’t want you to think we were trying sneak anyone onto your ship.”

  From context, Trout was able to figure out the latter two were probably buddies. The names fit the convention according to the reports he had read from those who had conversed with the artificial intelligences once communications had been opened. Apparently, there were many in the Kaedekin’s bio-medical establishment, which actually made a lot of sense given how medicine tended to advance. “I see no reason to object to their presence, Paladin Rain. Permission granted.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Thank you!”

  This time the room actually detected a transmission from Rain as she contacted her compatriots. How she managed to penetrate the metal of the ship’s armor belt, Trout had no idea, but it was another thing for the analysts to chew on.

  The response was quick as two figures stepped out of the ship that had conveyed Rain to the Venture and had crossed the hundred meters separating the two vessels with a casualness that made the movement look easy instead of what it was actually was, which was terrifying and vertigo-inducing. They didn’t even use any maneuvering thrusters, they just literally kicked off the hull of their ship like they were diving into a swimming pool. At the last second, they somehow did a forward flip that had their feet pointing at the Venture’s hull and just took the shock of landing on their knees as they landed in a crouch. Trout could practically hear his old training officers screaming at the move.

  The footage went into the pile for the analysts.

  The two—or was it four—new Kaedekin were wearing the same kind of space suit as Rain, although instead of yellow, the colors were blue and pink. With the benefit of the discussion he’d had with Rain about the Rangers, Trout knew that pink was meant to designate medics, while blue denoted technicians and engineers. Yellow was for demolitionists and bomb techs. It seemed very ill-advised to him to have specialists so brightly marked like that, but who was he to tell them how they should dress their forces?

  He did wonder how they were going to help without… well, any sort of cargo-moving equipment. They didn’t even have picnic baskets.

  “Captain Trout, this is Ranger Sorceress Doctor Namine and Ranger Paladin Captain Abyssal Glass,” Rain gestured towards the one in the pink space suit, who nodded and patted a device—presumably the buddy Abyssal Glass—hanging from her hip, “and Ranger Sorceresses Hale and Keystone.” The one in blue touched a wrist-mounted device. That was presumably Keystone, whose form was similar in to Princess’s.

  The two humanoid Kaedekin—and for the first time that word was actually appropriate instead of borderline racist—both nodded in greeting. “Captain,” they chorused, and Trout heard four separate voices.

  “It’s a pleasure to be aboard your ship,” one of them said, voice sounding exactly like Rain’s.

  “Hopefully, we will soon be able you and yours the same courtesy,” the other said, voice equally identical. It even held the same amount of cheerful enthusiasm! If they were all going to sound like that, Trout might have to build up a resistance.

  “The pleasure is mine,” Trout said. “I look forward to it.”

  Briefly, Doctor Namine glanced towards Rain. Rain glanced back, then seemed to remember something. “Ah, as to that Captain Trout, there was a suggestion proposed to the First Contact Team about how that might be done without having to vaccinate everyone aboard Stargazer Fortress… or for that matter the entire planet. I’ll explain while my colleagues wrap up the samples in preparation for transport.”

  Suiting actions to words, the two had turned away and began getting to work. The pair seemed to be using the two buddies with them as some sort of scanner, both doing some kind of cursory check on the samples, though Trout didn’t know what for. Perhaps checking for any contaminants on the outside? Still, he pulled away his attention, trusting some analyst to study the footage later. “What did you have in mind, Paladin Rain?”

  “Someone suggested that members of your crew might be able to visit Stargazer Fortress if they came wearing a space suit,” Rain said, gesturing at her own suit as an example. “It probably won’t be as fun, but a suit would be easier to sterilize so they don’t bring in anything that could make people sick, and with enough air tanks and water someone in a suit could stay for hours before needing to come back to the Venture to rest.”

  That had actually been suggested by someone at a recent staff meeting, but Trout had still been considering the proposal. However, since the Kaedekin themselves had brought it up… “That’s an interesting offer,” Trout said. “Let me discuss it with my officers and get back to you.” They were of course going to accept the offer. The delay would be for trying to decide who they’d be sending over. Though he supposed that it was far less likely someone would be able to cause the usual kinds of trouble when they were restricted to remaining in a space suit at all times… but as Captain, he knew better than to underestimate the ingenuity of his crew. If there was a way to cause trouble then someone would definitely be able to find it.

  “Of course,” Rain said. “There’s no rush. We can discuss the details once you’ve come to a decision. Now, if you’ll excuse me Captain, we have samples to move.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Until we spea—” Trout cut off as he looked at what the other two had actually been doing all this time. While he’d been aware they’d been making stacks of culture samples and wrapping them up into bundles, his brain hadn’t really noticed what his eyes were seeing, lulled into a sense of mundanity by the wrapping motions the two had been making. It was only now that he had realized they hadn’t been carrying anything to wrap the samples with.

  As Dr Namine made stacks of cultures, Paladin Hale was wrapping them up in some kind of bright orange plastic film… except the film wasn’t coming from a roll or dispenser, but rather from the blue spherical emitter on the corner of the rectangular body of the buddy in her hand. The orange wrapping flashed into existence around the stack, after which Hale stood the stack up on one end, and there was another flash as the bottom received its own orange covering. There were already several orange and pale rose stacks on the table.

  Rain turned to look at what had captured his attention. “Is something the matter, Captain Trout?”

  “Paladin Rain,” Trout said cautiously in that ‘this is someone else’s problem to analyze’ tone he’d become very familiar with over the past few days, “what is that? The… colored wrapping?”

  “Oh, that’s just vennplate. Well, high-viscosity vennfluid that’s been changed into vennplate to make sure there won’t be any shifting with the samples.”

  Vennfluid? “Is it some kind of polymer spray?” That sounded quite convenient, actually. Spray-on plastic wrap.

  “Ah, no. Vennfluid is the pseudo-liquid state of venn. Definitely not a polymer. It’s—” She cut off and glanced down at her wrist in the way Trout had begun to realize Princess was speaking to her. “Perhaps some other time, captain. I’m reminded that these cultures will need feeding, and we should get them to the lab we’ve prepared as soon as possible.”

  “My apologies for the distraction, Paladin Rain. I’ll pencil it into the list for future discussion. Until next time, then.”

  “Until next time,” Rain acknowledged.

  Trout cut off the call, but continued to watch through the room’s surveillance cameras. The three Rangers worked quickly, using this vennfluid to wrap up all the culture samples, and then grouping the stacks together to form large pallets that were still small enough to navigate the short hallway to the quarantine room’s airlock.

  Trout straightened in his chair when he saw that, rather than carrying the pallets by hand, Rain instead gestured with one arm, and some of the pallets lifted off the table and floor where they’d been arranged. The other two followed suit, and soon all the pallets where being lifted up by some unseen force. Rain casually operated the terminal next to the door leading to the outside airlock, and while Trout didn’t hear anything, he could guess that she was requesting the doors be opened for her and her party. Fortunately, no one in the monitoring room decided to use their initiative to try and detain the Kaedekin after their display, and after a short while the doors opened.

  He continued to watch as the small group transferred as many pallets of samples into the final airlock before cycling it open with one of them inside—Paladin Hale, in her blue suit—and exposing the samples to the vacuum of space. Now, while it had been some time since Trout had needed to be familiar with the day-to-day minutiae of laboratory equipment, he was fairly sure standard culture sample containers were not designed to be proof against the rigors of hard vacuum and stellar radiation. The Kaedekin didn’t seem worried, and soon pallets of samples were flying towards the arrow-shaped Kaedekin ship next to the Venture, just behind a self-propelled Hale.

  It was slightly harrowing to watch Hale somehow slow down the pallets before they slammed into the hull of their ship and set to float to one side while they proceeded to catch more, even as Rain and Namine cycled the airlock a few more times to get the rest of the samples out. Trout shook his head at the seeming disregard for the dangers of being in space with nothing more than a suit between you and agonizing death. Then again, these women were part of the branch of their military—sorry, defense forces—that specialized in being in space, so perhaps they had just logged in so many hours of spacewalk time they could afford to be cavalier?

  As the last of the pallets of culture samples went into the open rear doors of the ship—and he had to wonder who’d thought it was a good idea to put a rear entrance hatch between two thrusters—Trout cut the feed, staring up at the ceiling. There were… well, not a lot of possible explanations for the technology he’d just seen. And certainly some of them—like the idea that the Kaedekin had been using some kind of controllable membrane specifically developed for the handling of cargo—were far more plausible. And yet deep inside, young Cadet Trout couldn’t help but excitedly declare it was some kind of force field.

  The notion was ridiculous, of course. Yes, while there was always talk that quantum engineers were developing some kind of practical, ship-mountable energy shield that would protect against missiles, projectiles, artillery, and those plasma beam weapons the Hegemony liked so much, the technology was always still ‘ten years away’… and had been for the past forty years at least. Trout had even heard rumors of test prototypes for the technology, which were also very quickly never heard from again.

  But…

  Well, everything about the Kaedekin was ridiculous. Trout could very well believe they’d finally won the Holy Grail of weapons defense technology and were using it to simply carry around cargo.

  …

  Trout shook his head and got back to work, sending out a memo asking for applicants to the space-suited visit to Stargazer Fortress, or wherever it was they would eventually be visiting. Not everyone who went could be analysts, after all. There would need to be other specialists, such as engineers to try and make sense of the Kaedekin’s technology from up close.

  It wasn’t stealing if they just figured out how it worked, after all.