Spoiler: The Immortal Seven: First Contact
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Daregense flicked for the hundredth time through the catalogue of holographic options they had spent the last few days devising. The problem was that none of them had any idea which would be appropriate. All of this was entirely new.
“I'm going to the bridge”, she said eventually, and left Tolem to it.
The captain greeted her with a salute and “Your Highness”. The address still felt strange, not yet worn in properly. It was one of the reasons the captain used it so frequently. By the time they arrive,d it was all supposed to feel and appear natural.
“Captain Sharugin,” she replied, with a salute of her own. She wanted to ask about progress, if only for the sake of conversation and to still her own nerves, but she bit her tongue. Anything like that could be seen as questioning the captain's competence, which she did not. And she was also aware that trust between the members of this crew was essential, not only for the success of the mission, but for their very survival.
The mission had been the subject of meeting after meeting, with every possibility thrashed out, queried and looked at from multiple angles. By the time that she was selected for the mission and called in to attend, most of the details had already been figured out and the process was still interminable.
The Empire had been faced with an entirely new problem. Throughout the whole history of the Malak system, despite the centuries of visual deception, there was nevertheless a common core to their understanding which informed their whole culture, and as false as their presentation might be, there was nevertheless a limit to that, because underneath they were all at least still the same species.
Out there, in the wider galaxy, though, the most basic assumptions might itself be fatal giveaways.
This was the reason for the days spent in front of the holographic designer. She, Tolem, the Nisuite linguist, Halish, the biologist, just trying to figure out what they should choose to look like.
And if this whole mission turned out to be a trap, and one of them was taken captive, that was held by many to be an unacceptable risk.
The engagers had won out. The known risk of not taking this opportunity far outweighed the theoretical risk of one of the crew being captured. Nevertheless, there were failsafes upon failsafes. Every function that could safely be delegated to AI had been, hence the skeleton crew. The ship had been fitted with comprehensive self-destruct sequences in case it became necessary. As had the crew.
She was still not entirely used to, and suspected she would never be comfortable with, the implant with which they had fitted her. In the event of capture, it would release a fast-acting necrotoxin designed to destroy as much of her tissue as possible before anything of value could be learned from it. All the delegation had one. And all the crew had the ability to activate any of the others', remotely.
So, trust.
Even the implants, even the constant surrounding threat of death, though, were not enough to detract from the sense of sheer exhilaration that had come over her in the period before departure and had stayed with her ever since. From the moment the Emperor had called her forward to bestow upon her her new name, it had never left.
All the crew had it to an extent, though they had different ways of dealing with it. Halish could often barely control herself, visibly bouncing up and down as she considered the marvels about to be discovered. Himpahach, the engineer, had developed an increasingly irritating habit of singing to himself. The military personnel were more controlled, but it was still visible Dashunul, the military attaché, obsessively ran weapons tests, or cleaned and reassembled her personal equipment. Daregense didn't like to remind her that this was a diplomatic mission and all being well, weapons would be redundant. Tolem jabbered. Medenon, the pilot, tapped his foot, fingers, or anything else he could lay hands on. And the captain, he couldn't sleep.
Some of them had taken things even further. A few days into the voyage, she had walked into Tolem's quarters to tell him and Halish that she didn't care whether they were sleeping together, but she did care that they had kept it secret. The mission came first, and paramount trust was essential. So long as they all understood that, the crew could do what they liked.
All the station crew had been evacuated by the time the Penetrator docked. Captain Sharugin and Medenon made for the command deck while the contact party assembled near the gate. Dashunul ran yet another weapons check while Tolem launched the probe.
“What are we?” Halish asked, as the results came in.
“Bipedal, humanoid, mammalian.” Halish looked almost disappointed. On some level, it seemed she had actaully been relishing the prospect of presenting herself as some abstract tentacle monster.
“I'm going first,” Dashunul said. “No arguments, your Highness.” There were none.
Re: [Empire 5] IC Thread
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