Cloneborne 078 – Not One But Two (Patreon)

Tiikasia couldn’t help feeling like an invader as he stepped out of the ferry with the Symbols on either side of him, ready to throw themselves in the way of any attack while Ahgido and the other two warriors secured the bottom of the ferry’s ramp. All three warriors were armed with a pack-fed miniaturized plasma sprayer, their choice of personal melee weapon, four small sidearms each, and bandoliers full of grenades, penetration charges, and specialized explosives. Their loadout wasn’t helping with Tiikasia’s feelings, but they’d gotten permission from the Kaedekin. Ahgido had been briefly aghast at being told by Rain directly that they were free to bring any weapons they wanted as long as the safeties were full functional and the weapons wouldn’t discharge by accident.

The Ohmadia had literally seen the moment the Head of Security’s thought had gone from professional horror at the thought having someone running around with any weapon they could carry to near-demonic glee at realizing he was allowed to have any weapon he could carry. Tiikasia was pretty sure the fact they were so heavily armed was one of the reasons Ahgido hadn’t recommended he just stay on the ship so often this time.

Beyond the barrier keeping the landing bay’s atmosphere away from the ferry, Rain and the small group of Kaedekin arrayed behind her—likely a security detail—didn’t look alarmed at the sight of the large weapons, at least by his limited understanding of human and Kaedekin body language. No two of their harnesses looked the same, and the only elements they had in common were a small, hard to see object near the base of their necks, a band of colored material around their left arm, and a strange, vaguely cylindrical device they were all carrying in one hand, inside of with a small flame was burning. Admittedly, if it weren’t for the colorful harnesses he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. He’d never really needed to develop the skill of telling humans apart, a difficulty that would no doubt be exacerbated by the fact that they were clones and thus probably had very little in the way of biological differentiation that could be easily identified.

Glowing signs appeared above the Kaedekin, resolving into the textless, pictographic version of the instructions that they had provided. More glowing signs appeared on the ground, outlining a pathway through the vennfluid barrier. Rain stepped forward and unbuckled one of the weapons from her hip harness, sticking it through the barrier grip-first to show it was permeable. Another Kaedekin stepped forward, a recognizable metal conduction tool in their hand that they tapped onto the deck, and flame erupted from the bare deck. The burning area was wide and long enough to completely engulf Tiikasia or any other warrior in the group, and the flames rose up higher than his antennae.

Rain made a show of opening her mouth wide, puffing up her the sides of the lower part of her face, closed her eyes, and walking right into the fire.

“She’s holding her breath,” Rirris supplied helpfully. “I suppose even if this fire is safe for immersion, it’s probably not a good idea to breathe it in— Ulada? What is it?“

Tiikasia turned at that, and found the watershaper staring at the Kaedekin with the metal conductor. “I can’t feel that one’s soul,” he said, sounding disturbed. “There’s just… nothing there.”

The words didn’t make the warriors shift nervously, but that was just discipline. Everyone knew that description: a human magicshaper. Encounters with human magicshapers with survivors who could attest to it had been extremely rare—there were barely enough to count in two hands—but all surviving watershapers agreed about that.

“Calm,” Tiikasia said quietly. “We start nothing. We will ask the Kaedekin. Perhaps they will have an explanation.”

When Tiikasia turned back to their hosts, it was to see Rain stepping out of the flames, eyes still closed and visibly still holding her breath. According to his suit’s onboard timekeeper, she was in there for over twenty fingers. She waved one arm expansively at them, then made an arm gesture that seemed to indicate they should pass through.

“Wozyogen Ahgido,” Tiikasia said with absolutely no malice whatsoever, none at all, “go and check the decontamination procedure, if you will.”

“Acknowledge, Ohmadia,” Ahgido said, and while he tone was exactly polite, it still felt like the words translated to ‘go impale yourself’. Still, the warrior confidently stepped forward, not even testing the barrier before passing through it. The flames enveloped him, and Tiikasia saw it curl unnaturally to wash over his back where the rest of his body blocked it. He stood there for about five fingers until the allegedly-soulless Kaedekin waved him forward, at which point he stepped out of the fire with great calm and dignity.

“Armor is undamaged, Ohmadia. No errors from the plasma sprayer, and none of the explosives went off,” Ahgido said in the complete deadpan he did when he was going ‘I’m still alive, hah ha!‘ on the inside. “Initial results suggest it’s safe to pass through, but I wouldn’t recommend lingering.” His tone became slightly less professional. “At least it doesn’t seem to leave soot on anything…”

“Shall we?” Rirris said cheerfully, not putting away her portable scanner before she stepped through the barrier and followed. Tiikasia followed her, and the Kaedekin who was maintaining the flames expanded its area in response. He had to hold back the scholar to keep her from rushing out of the flames, waving her portable scanner and cycling through the different spectrographs functions. “Fascinating! The scanner says this is primarily nitrogen plasma, but the temperature is far too low! It’s barely above the temperature of the deck around the ferry! Is this from the magic being used? But how—”

Tiikasaid gently pushed her to get her out of the flames as Rain signaled for them to move, keeping the scholar close as she continued waving the scanner and taking temperature readings from both the plasma and the landing bay’s normal air. As Ahgido not-so-subtly placed himself between them and the Kaedekin, Tiikasia raised one arm in greeting. “Paladin Rain,” he said in freespeech, the strange sounds of the Kaedekinspeech word semi-familiar to him now. “We thank you for the invitation.”

“Bawipu guranah weepuh ninibong!” Rain greeted. “Greetings, Free Ones! Welcome to Lamppost Fortress! I am Paladin Rain, and with this is Paladin Princess.” She held up her left forearm, gesturing towards the device mounted on it, before continuing on to gesture towards the Kaedekin with the conduction tool who was overseeing the decontamination. “These are Seraphine and Ataraxia, who are here to make sure no one gets infected and no bacteria or viruses get transferred between our environments. We’re sorry that we can’t really offer you anything to eat or drink while you’re here, but we’ll do our best to make sure you enjoy your stay!”

Tiikasia’s antennae twitched in surprise, and a glance at Rirris and Ahgido said he wasn’t the only one. “Our compliments, Paladin Rain. Your freespeech has greatly improved.”

Rain made a sound that he immediately recognized as a laugh, and it wasn’t because he’d heard Rirris making human laughs before. Despite the literal alienness of the sound, it felt like a laugh to him, and Tiikasia was even to identify what kind: delighted, with a touch of embarrassment and chagrin. What? “I’m flattered you think so, Ohmadia, but I really can’t take any credit for this. I’ll be honest, I’m cheating outrageously with magic.” She held up the device with the flame inside it. On closer inspection, the device had been painted a tasteful green, and was clearly some sort of lamp or lantern burning some kind of oil-based fuel. “This is a something the College of Flame recently developed. It’s called a Translation Candle, and as long as it’s burning, everyone around it will be able to understand each other no matter what languages they’re using. So today we can just all talk normally and not have to worry about not understanding each other.”

“Your magic can do that?-!” Rirris exclaimed.

“Well, not mine, but we have a magic that can do that,” Rain said. “The candles are made using Flame, which is a versatile kind of magic. While we’ve been studying more and more of your language, not all of us are very good at it, and we didn’t want to keep asking Wozyogen Rirris to translate for us. So we gave everyone a candle and a lantern to carry it in so that everyone can communicate clearly during this visit!”

“Fascinating! How does it work?” Rirris asked, straining as she tried to lean forward and get a closer look at the Voidbrewed candle. At least, Tiikasia assumed that’s what it was. For all he knew, the actual magic was in the lantern, with the candle merely acting as a power source or conduction medium.

“Ah, I don’t really know beyond the basic idea,” Rain said, looking towards the other Kaedekin controlling the flames of the decontamination spell. “Seraphine?”

“Huh? Oh, the candles? They’re a bit hard to make, since they’re a bit more meta than most spells,” Seraphine said as the last of the exploration team stepped into the decontamination. “But one of the big sisters who uses the spell to translate those historical dramas about the Band of Descending Claws said it’s about using Change Flame to alter the meaning in words into ones that they could understand. I’m still in the middle of learning it myself so I can use it in First Contact activities.” The flames were snuffed out as the decontamination finished.

“…you watch ‘Wings of a Thousand Taon?’” Tiikasia couldn’t keep himself from asking.

“Yup!” Seraphine said, and he somehow knew that sound was an affirmative. “We don’t really understand all the context, but the broken friendship between Guntez and Mulifeg is so tragic! If they could just talk to each other…”

Several of the Kaedekin made a sound that he only recognized was a massed sigh because Rirris made it sometimes. The fact that Ahgido stayed silent must have taken a heroic effort on his friend’s part. Ahgido had opinions about people who thought the friendship between Guntez and Melifeg could be reforged, and Tiikasia had heard more than one lecture about how the historical context of the setting meant that— No, no, he was not going to listen to one of Ahgido’s fanboy rants inside his own head!

“How very interesting,” he said diplomatically. “I’m sure Rirris would like to learn more, as she would about many subjects concerning the Kaedekin. Allow me to say that we appreciate the lengths you have gone to facilitate communications between us. Hopefully this will allow matters to proceed smoothly and peacefully.”

“We hope so too!” Rain said, and the cheerfulness in her tone was clear even without the magic they were using letting him know. “Oh, but you should know, this spell doesn’t affect recordings. Ah, that is, if you’re recording what we’re all saying, you’ll only record the sounds we’re making and not the translation. You should know so you can account for it.”

“We thank you for the warning, and shall keep it in mind.”

“Great! If you’ll please follow me? The landing bay is great, but there’s not really a lot to see here that’s interesting.”

Tiikasia turned his head to glance at the barrier still separating the ferry from the landing bay’s atmosphere. The Kaedekin had wanted to decontaminate it with fire the same way they had wanted to decontaminate the exploration party, but that had been considered too much of a risk, so it was just being completely isolated in case there were any micro-organisms on the hull that might enter the station’s atmosphere. “Lead the way, Paladin Rain.”

As Rain began to lead them towards the obvious—and open—door out of the landing bay, Tiikasia carefully fell into step beside her, Ahgido at his other side ready to throw himself in the way of any sudden weapon’s fire. In addition to the sheathed weapon at her waist—which Rirris identified as a human-style sword—she also had a small ranged weapon on the opposite side, a strap of some sort secured keeping the weapon secured to its holster. “If I may ask, Paladin Rain, which of your companions is Paladin Princess? I was hoping to properly make their acquaintance.”

Rain’s eye organs looked wider than usual when she turned to look towards him, and he fought the impulse to writhe out of his shell. The way the Kaedekin’s faces changed shape like that was so disconcerting. Tiikasia knew he would get used to it with time—it wasn’t that different from freshly-hatch softshells—but there was something uncanny about such a face speaking so eloquently. “Eh? But I... Ah! Oh, I’ve never mentioned that, did I?” One hand carefully removed the device on her left forearm and raised it up towards him. “This is Paladin Princess. Princess is a buddy, a digital consciousness.”

“Greetings, Ohmadia Tiikasia,” came a vaguely familiar voice from the device, distorted slightly from being heard through his vacuum armor. The words were in freespeech, not Kaedekinspeech, although it was still in the archaic phrasing the Kaedekin used. “We apologize for the ambiguity. Even with our practice communicating with humans, we are not used to having to explain the nature of buddies such as myself.”

…Oh. What a very science fiction-like development! Tiikasia forced himself to stay calm, in every sense of the word, even as he became aware of how Rirris seemed to be vibrating hard enough to shed her suit. “I’m worried I might be misunderstanding you, despite your… very fluent freespeech. I apologize if this might come across as offensive or crudely phrased, but… Paladin Princess, are you… a sentient and self-aware machine?”

“Your apology is accepted, though we are not offended. Yes, I am, as you crudely put it, a sentient and self-aware machine, in the same way that Rain and yourself are, equally crudely, sentient and self-aware chemical reactions.”

There was a brief pause in the conversation, and the air was filled mostly by the sound of their footsteps.

“Are you… unique?” Tiikasia said. Calm, calm. Speak your hopes where the demons might hear, and they would ruin your joy…

“Not at all, Ohmadia Tiikasia,” Princess said. “Approximately half of all Kaedekin upon Lamppost Fortress are buddies, with the other half consisting of girls.”

His claws slicked so slowly they might as well just be rubbing across each other. “So… correct me if I am wrong,” he said, “but in encountering the Kaedekin, we’ve made contact with not one but two sentient species?”

“Yup,” Princess said.

…

“Then it is doubly a pleasure and an honor to be welcomed by your civilization,” Tiikasia said. “Although… it raises many, many questions.”

“We’ll do our best to answer then,” Rain said. “Uh, is Wozyogen Rirris all right? She’s making strange sounds.”

Tiikasia glanced at the Head of the Science department. “She’ll be fine,” he said with the sort of flippant disregard of and old warrior watching a softshell having a first-week-of-training breakdown… or in this case, a scholar becoming manic with glee.

“Are you sure? She sounds like my crèche-sister whenever she’d excited about making a breakthrough and can’t wait to tell everyone but has to hold it in so she can tell everyone at once.”

Tiikasia nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“Oh, well that’s all right then.”