After Trout had sent a memo informing the department heads of the ship that the Kaedekin were willing to accept visitors to Stargazer Fortress if they were wearing a space suit to isolate them from the environment… well, everyone had lobbying for why someone in their department should be allowed to go. Purely for fact-finding purposes, of course. It was a good sign of everyone’s enthusiasm, though he had to send a second memo telling each department head to pick candidates to send and why they were necessary.

  The next day, Trout informed the Kaedekin that they would be taking up their offer to visit Stargazer Fortress. The Kaedekin’s conditions were quite reasonable, given the circumstances, which was that whoever came to visit space station needed to be attired in an environment suit that was completely sealed and did not release any gas or other materials into the atmosphere, as well as being able to withstand the normal wear and tear of walking around and interacting in an gaseous environment without its seals becoming compromised. That meant that the kind of suits that relied on positive pressure to keep out any airborne contaminants were out, since that was exactly the kind of contamination the Kaedekin were trying to avoid.

  Unfortunately, the standard space suit wasn’t as self-contained as it could be. The suits would eject excess water vapor as part of its cooling system, which caused the Kaedekin concern. Since regulations prevented them from giving technical access to the space suit’s systems to the Kaedekin—they weren’t an allied military—the Kaedekin couldn’t ascertain to their own satisfaction whether the vented vapor could act as a carrier of any bacteria or viruses. Fortunately, according to the ship’s machine shop the modifications to contain the water vapor were relatively simple, though it would take a few days of testing to make sure they were working properly.

  “That sounds… acceptable,” Rain said thoughtfully a few days later, once the machine shop reported finishing their first modified suit. “Though I hope you understand that we’ll need to conduct out own tests on each modified suit to make sure they’re self-contained to our satisfaction. We can’t take chances with a possible vector of infection. There are little sisters in Stargazer that would be at risk.”

  By this point, Trout had learned a bit more of the Kaedekin’s linguistic idiosyncrasies, though he was still finding himself being confused and aghast. “Little sis—why are there children on Stargazer Fortress?” he said.

  “Well, ever since you arrived, every school in every city, town, and village has been arranging for field trips so little sisters can see the friendly aliens who aren’t invading. Of course, they can’t see you, but they can see those sensor drones your released. The windows on that side of the dome have been filled with telescopes for days.”

  While Trout could almost understand school sending their students on a field trip to a military base in peacetime, why would they—no, no, that was some analyst’s problem! “Wouldn’t it be safer to have them evacuated for the duration, then?”

  “Whether or not little sisters are present, it doesn’t really change the fact that there would still be a vector in infection if the suits aren’t properly self-contained,” Rain said. “Besides, why would we evacuate the little sisters? Not giving them a chance to meet any aliens would be a terrible way to end their field trip.”

  Trout pointedly didn’t verbalize that wasn’t exactly what his priorities would be if he were in her shoes. Instead, be made a note to re-emphasize to the machine shop the importance of the suit’s systems being completely self-contained.

  He tried to think of it was flattering: the Kaedekin wasn’t worried that they had any ill intentions that could endanger their children!

  …

  No, no, he still kind of judged them a little for being so carefree.

  Meanwhile, the recommendations from departments were coming in. Unfortunately, because of the necessity for a fully-enclosed suit none of the candidates could be pajhadin or tiwada, as the suit’s helmet would block the echolocation the former used to navigate and the latter used a completely different space suit system due to their semi-floral biology, and the machine shop still hadn’t figured out how to modify one of the suits without making it too heavy for a tiwada to wear.

  The alternative was having any pajhadin and tiwada candidates wear power armor as their suit, but that seemed needlessly provocative. As easygoing as they were, he doubted the Kaedekin would look kindly on having the fully armed and operational military equipment of a foreign, unaligned polity in the middle of their space station, especially when that station also contained children.

  Besides, the Kaedekin might think it was the precursor to that ‘alien invasion’ they were always worried about.

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  Near the end of the day’s shift, just as he was thinking about clocking out a bit early to get dinner, Trout finally got word that the maildrone was ready.

  At five hundred or so lightyears away from Earth, and about three hundred and fifty lightyears away from the nearest colonized planet—sorry, planet not colonized by the Kaedekin—the Venture was well beyond the intended range of standard mail drones, and even the intended range of the military maildrones they carried. Fortunately, the ship had machine shops and quantum engineers. The former had been hard at work making modifications to the ship’s maildrones while the latter worked on adjusting the quantum drive to be even more energy efficient as possible so it could retrace the Venture’s path back to the parts of the galaxy with the infrastructure. The work had been going on ever since the Kaedekin had made their existence known, and they had been amassing a large quantity of data to go into the maildrone’s memory banks in the meantime.

  And now the maildrone modifications had been finished.

  A part of Trout felt a little let down by this. Once the maildrone was received, it would be the end of operating on their own. They’d get new orders, and at least one of those orders was probably going to be a stupid order, and it would upend the easygoing, casual dynamic they had established with the Kaedekin.

  Granted, it wouldn’t happen right away. The drone would be in and out of jump for about two weeks since following the course the Venture had taken would be the safest route for it to take, its smaller size and mass allowing for greater acceleration, followed by an equal length of time for the new orders to go the same route back to the Venture, along with however long it took for the navy to actually decide what his new orders would be.

  …actually, they might be some time. With all the raw data they’d managed to acquire about the Kaedekin, the Navy would at least need to wait for someone to chew through that so they’d have some kind of more in-depth report to base their orders on. That might take a week… maybe two…

  Call it a month and a half at the longest before any orders came…

  Trout felt himself relax just a little bit as he came to his conclusion. A month and a half. Plenty of time to… well, enjoy what they had now before whatever orders he received probably ruined everything.

  The Kaedekin were informed before the Venture launched the maildrone, both so that they wouldn’t think the Venture was launching a weapon that needed to be shot down, and because it was only polite.

  In response, the Kaedekin had asked if they could send a ship to observe the launch. That seemed reasonable enough, and it seemed quite clear that the Kaedekin didn’t even understand enough of the Confederacy’ computer protocols to launch some kind of attempt to hack the maildrone’s data. He actually took it a step further and Invited the Kaedekin to come aboard to examine the maildrone before it was launched. After all, the Kaedekin had already invited them to visit their station, so it seemed only appropriate to reciprocate the offer, and Trout suspected that the Kaedekin would be far less likely to wander off and end up in a restricted area.

  “R-really?-!” Rain sounded like an excited schoolgirl when he’d finished making the offer. “Are you sure? W-we wouldn’t want to impose, we’ve seen documentaries about how busy a Confederacy ship can be…”

  “It’ll be no trouble,” Trout assured her. “We can accommodate a small group of you, perhaps ten or so people.”

  “… would twelve be too much?” was the hesitant inquiry, as if afraid they were asking for too much.

  “I don’t see why not,” he said. Then he paused. “How many of them will be buddies?”

  “Oh, about half,” Rain said immediately, and Trout gave himself a pat on the back for remembering.

  “Then there will definitely be no problem,” he said, “provided no one try to enter any unauthorized areas or access any systems.”

  “Of course not. That would be very rude, and it’s not like you’re an invading force.”

  Trout allowed himself a small smile. “So rudeness is acceptable when dealing with invaders?”

  “Well, invaders would have been rude first.”

  The launch was delayed until two days later, which allowed for more of the analysts’ reports to be finished and included in the maildrone’s databanks, as the Kaedekin’s visit was hastily planned. The shortest route from a quarantine room to the launch bays was plotted out, and a decontamination protocol was written up to ensure that any pathogens on the surface of the Kaedekin’s suits that somehow manage to survive both hard vacuum and stellar radiation wouldn’t be brought into the ship. Previous visits had already allowed them to scan the Kaedekin’s space suits, which had let them learn that they were completely closed systems, so there was no worry about their suits releasing anything into the Venture’s atmosphere.

  Not that they wouldn’t be continually scanning them anyway… just in case. After all, laxness is how people die… or at the very least get their security codes stolen.

  On the day scheduled for the visit and launch, the now-familiar small ship approached the Venture, matching their speed and keeping its distance before its rear hatch opened and six Kaedekin—well, six who needed suits—stepped onto the smaller ship’s hull. One by one, they jumped stomach-churning distance between ships, landing on the Venture’s hull.

  This time, rather than having Rain make her way to the quarantine room airlock on their own, a squad in power armor was waiting for them as an honor guard. Trout switched perspective to one of the squad’s cameras, noting the suit colors. There was only a single yellow, which was undoubtedly Rain. With her was a pink suit, three blue suits, and a red suit. That would be Rain’s commanding officer, if Trout remembered correctly. Once more, he questioned the advisability of having your officers be dressed in a bright, eye-catching color that would stand out in any environment that wasn’t the undeveloped dirt of Mars. Though… considering their technology, perhaps their officers normally spent their time invisible?

  Perhaps he’d ask later.

  Rain stepped forward and pulled a white panel off her back, and Trout couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the words written on it. Bawipu guranah weepuh ninibong! We come in peace. Permission to come aboard?

  Ah, so that’s how it was spelled.