“Yup, definitely venecite,” another of the Kaedekin said, nodding in a way that Vocthuu recognized as ‘trust me, I know what I’m talking about’. It was one of the few gestures that the humans, rakido and her people had in common. “Nice colors on this one. Was it harvested like this or are these samples water-processed?”

  “Why would you need to water-process natural venecite?” another asked.

  “You didn’t grow up near water, did you? Near the Unseen Sea we used to need to water process all the time since the venecite would form with particulate matter inside it like salt and sand. Rikku used to pour it all into candle molds to give them funny shapes.”

  “Ooh, I need to try that when we get home, I have these molds I use for dice…”

  Either the Kaedekin were ignoring the very awkward silence—by human standards—that had fallen, or they genuinely did not recognize it as such, which would be another mark on the tally. They were also not trying to touch the sample that had been placed before them, content to look at it and perhaps crouch down to perceive its different angles.

  The poor lieutenant who’d set down the little piece of nightstone cough awkwardly. “You’ve, uh, seen it before?”

  “Of course,” one of the Kaedekin said cheerfully. “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “It’s… not exactly common. We still don’t know exactly what geological factors cause it to form.”

  Had the lieutenant not heard the rumors that the planet below was full of fields of nightstone?

  “Oh, that’s easy,” one of the Kaedekin said. “You just need—” She cut off abruptly, head tilting down towards a device at her wrist. “Oh, sorry, we’ve derailing things from the matter at hand, weren’t we? Our apologies.”

  The way every engineer and officer—even the captain—had leaned forward when the Kaedekin had started speaking and twitched when she apologized was going to be a story she’d be telling people for years. Not to humans, though. They wouldn’t understand, not yet.

  From the cast of the captain’s face, he was seriously considering asking the obvious question anyway, even if it might be considered rude. For that matter, the way that nearly every engineer had turned their faces towards the captain made it clear that they were very much hoping he would do so.

  Instead, the captain said, “Perhaps we can continue the subject at a later discussion, after the maildrone is launched? It sounds very interesting.”

  “I’ll add it to the list so we don’t forget,” Paladin Rain said, then tilted her head. “Actually, later would be the perfect time for that explanation of magic I spoke of a while back. It’s best done where the explanation can be a tactile experience.”

  Oh, this poor, innocent soul.

  There was something vaguely amusing about watching someone else be on the receiving end of a Kaedekin charm-and-confusion offensive.

  Most VIPs would have been very bored if asked to watch the engineers prepare a specially-modified maildrone for launch. They’d have given a polite smile at best, spoken some empty platitudes, and then not-so-subtly made their impatience known so they’d be whisked off somewhere with drinks and food one someone’s tab, where at least one person would have complained it was ‘low class’ and tried to get someone fired.

  Despite the fact all their helmets had opaque visors—now in metallic blue, pink and red as well as gold—from their body language alone it was clear that the Kaedekin were being very attentive to the proceedings, and very politely asking questions of any engineer who wasn’t occupied with more than waiting to be called to provide tools. They asked about the material the maildrone’s hull was made of, how well it withstood use, what kind of paint was used to coat the panels and prevent vacuum welding of components, and what kind of impacts from micrometeorites the drone was rated for. Knowledgeable, sensible questions from people who understood the kind of shit that equipment went through, and were showing a professional interest in how other people deal with those problems.

  From the way they responded, it was clear that the engineers were enjoying the attention and genuine interest. Some of the questions couldn’t be answered fully, like the fact the paint used on the maildrone had stealth properties, but impact ratings were innocent enough. The rating of the mail drone was well below the minimum rating required for piloted craft, after all. That fact that many of the technical questions were coming from the red-suited commanding officer—Trout was still hoping for an explanation of how Kaedekin chain of command worked in both this specific instance and in general—and if Trout hadn’t been informed otherwise he’d have thought they were a fresh space cadet just allowed to go out on the launch deck.

  Deep inside, Cadet Trout howled at the injustice of having to maintain his decorum. Captain Trout was not unsympathetic and more than a little jealous.

  Once the maildrone was ready—on schedule despite the questions—he invited the Kaedekin up to the launch deck’s control tower as the maildrone was prepared for launch. It wasn’t really a tower so much as a room built into the corner of the ceiling of the large deck, letting it command a respectable view of all activities, but the name had stuck from when ships had been ocean-going vessels.

  It was a routine launch. The maildrone was inserted into one of the airlock tubes used to launch individual boats when it was inefficient to cycle out all the air in the launch deck, and the electro-magnetic launchers imparted enough of a downward angle that it wouldn’t hit the other launch deck on the other side of the ship. Once cleared, the external thrusters that had been mounted to the outside of the maildrone lit up, accelerating the maildrone from the ship.

  “Once the mail drone’s is a sufficient safe distance away,” Trout explained, “it will orient towards its destination and activate it’s quantum drive.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “The quantum drive that’s powered by venecite?” Rain said.

  “If that’s what you call it around here, then yes.”

  The Kaedekin all nodded, looking almost synchronized as they did so. Did they practice that or was their group simply that close? Did being clones factor into it somehow?

  Once the external thrusters activated, there wasn’t really much to see. The drone would be out of camera range well before it got into the optimum position for a jump, so monitoring it would fall to instruments. While the Kaedekin still seemed interested despite that, it was best to get out of the control tower’s hair.

  “Will your people be tracking the maildrone?” Trout suggested as they walked back to the wardroom. While there wouldn’t be the traditional refreshments since the Kaedekin wouldn’t be able to remove their suits, they had no objection to conversation. Dr. Mussel and Dr. Namine were both already deep in conversation some kind of treatment for something. Given that he heard the words ‘dehydration’ and ‘painful rectum’ in the same conversation, he manfully tuned out the rest to give the women their privacy.

  “Oh, yes,” Rain said. “It shouldn’t be any trouble. We have good sensor ranges along the flight plan you provided us, and we can just launch something if we need to keep it in range. I’m afraid I must inform we will be scanning when the quantum drive activates and analyzing the data for it. There are a lot of people who have very professional bets to settle about how your FTL systems work.”

  There was a short snort of laughter from Bronze at the mention of ‘very professional bets’. Trout himself limited his reaction to a smile. “I understand completely, Paladin Rain. If I might change the subject, I was wondering if now would be a good time to ask you some of those questions from earlier?”

  “I don’t see why not. What do you want to know about?”

  Before they had to leave the system, Trout was going to try his luck by asking about something that would definitely be restricted information and see what happens. However, he wasn’t going to do so today. “Earlier, you mentioned that Knight Captain Margaret was your superior officer.” Rain nodded. “May I ask why she seems to be taking cues from you if you’re under her command? Or am I misunderstanding your command structure?” It might be possible that the Kaedekin had some sort of command structure where the commanding officer isn’t the one taking the lead, but Trout struggled to conceptualize how that would be structured to fit with what he’s been told about the Kaedekin.

  “Ah, well, it’s because of the situation,” Rain said, not seeming confused by the question. Trout had learned that meant nothing, as it didn’t necessarily mean she’d understood it the same way he had. “While she’s the Red of the First Contact Team, as First Contact Champion I am the primary contact with any non-Kaedekin intelligences. As this is a contact situation, my authority supersedes hers.”

  …. all right, he could almost understand that. He thought it would make more sense if their envoy wasn’t under a superior officer they whose authority they might need to override, but that was just him. “That seems… complicated,” he said politely.

  “Well, in fairness, this is the first time I’ve ever needed to use my authority for that purpose,” Rain said. “You’re our first First Contact.”

  “But surely you’ve prepared for hypothetical scenarios?”

  “Of course. We’re fully prepared for if you had arrived with a moon-sized planet-destroying superweapon, nanobots, giant robot kaiju, nanobots, actual kaiju, nanobots, mind-controlling brain slugs, nanobots, a mobile Dyson-sphere to wrap around the Dancer, nanobots, ortillery using asteroids, nanobots, weaponry with warheads that generate artificial suns, nanobots, armies of ghosts, nanobots, hordes of zombies, and mind-controlling nanobots,” Rain said.

  Trout stared at her. “Nanobots?” he eventually said.

  Rain nodded firmly. “One can never be too prepared to deal with nanobots. Stupid nanobots…”

  He nodded slowly. “And… among those hypothetical scenarios, you’ve never prepared for the possibility you might need to override your superior officer?”

  “Well, the only scenario where I might need to override her authority would be a peaceful first contact, and the possibility was so unlikely we saw no point in making any more than the most basic preparations for it.”

  … that actually explains so much about his interactions with the Kaedekin.

  Though given their idea of ‘minimal preparations’ involved learning the primary languages of the members of the Confederacy, Trout wonders what they considered preparation for a moon-sized planet-destroying superweapon.

  They settled in the wardroom, Rain and the officers settling at the table while the junior officers and the other Kaedekin sat on the chairs on the other side of the room after Rain had asked if it was all right if the latter could make conversation with them. Already the the group was engrossed in a spirited conversation. Nemoy had left to attend to the ship, as had Hamm. Only Trout and Bronze remained, the latter with their tablet out and ready to take notes, probably already recording for later analysis. The doctors were still engrossed in their conversation, each with a tablet in hand… or a tablet and a buddy. Trout wasn’t actually sure how the buddies apparently being regarded ‘Kaedekin’ squared with them also being used as communications devices and tools.

  “While we have many questions,” Trout said, “I believe that you said there this would the perfect time to explain… magic, is what I think you said?”

  Rain nodded. “Yes. Now, as I originally said at the time, magic is the use of the power of the soul to perceive and act on the world. Our form of magic is called Thaumaturgy, which involves the manipulation of venn, magic materialized into pseudo-particles.”

  Bronze opened his mouth to speak, and only at the last moment remembered to raise his hand and wait for Rain’s nod. “Just to clarify, is magic act of the manipulation, or the material being manipulated?”

  “Yes,” Rain said, and paused just long enough to give Bronze time to frown. “It’s both, in the same way ‘paint’ can refer to the act of painting or the material used to paint with.”

  “Isn’t that confusing?” Bronze said.

  “Have you ever been confused by someone saying ‘I’m going to paint, I need paint’?”

  Bronze seemed to accept that, writing something in his tablet. “I see. Please continue.”

  Rain held up her index finger, pointed up. “There are five forms of venn. Vennglow, or venn materialized as photons of electromagnetic radiation,” a blue light began to glow from her fingertip, “vennplasma,” the steady glow of light became a flickering, electric arc, “vennfog,” the arcs seemed to coalesce into a blue mist, “vennfluid,” the mist became thicker, becoming a transparent blue syrup, “and vennplate.” The syrup became solid, and Rain actually grabbed the glass-like blue blob that resulted. She held it out to Trout and Bronze. “Hold out your hand.”

  Trout hesitantly did so and Rain put the blob in his grip. It felt like glass, cool and smooth yet surprisingly light.

  Then it seemed to writhe in his grip, and it was all he could do to keep from dropping it as the blob became goopy in his hand, the consistency going from thick clay to heavy syrup to light syrup to water to oil. Despite this, it didn’t drip through his fingers, instead flowing between them until it seemed to he had a thick, transparent film draped over his hand. Yet when he tried to gather it all up in his left, the film melded together, making its nature as a fluid obvious… and then it wasn’t a fluid, but instead a thick, opaque mist that lingered around his hand. Movement made him look up, and he saw that Rain was gesturing with her hand. The mist seemed to move with her gestures, rising up above his hand…where it coalesced into a glass-like blob again that dropped back into his palm. He caught it on instinct, and nearly dropped it in surprise. The blob was notably heavier in his grip.

  “As you can see,” Rain said, “it’s much easier to understand when you can touch it.”