***Saggitarius Arm – Fast Courier Ship -Reach-***

***Travil, the Ambassador***

As if to prove my earlier prediction, Iris had literally thrown all of us into the cold ocean water. The room was deadly quiet while everyone tried to process the Silent's very special form of insanity.

I turned my attention towards Miredin to find out what he thought. If anyone, then it was he who had enough understanding of quantum mechanics to evaluate Iris's claim. Given that this was even possible on a whim.

But the wizened physicist only sat there, furrowing his forehead with an expression that seemed to be torn between exhilaration and horror.

An unexpected alarm distracted me from the situation at hand.

The room's lights turned red, combined with a howling noise that hurt my ears.

Iris expression turned blank and her eyelids fluttered for a moment. Then the alarm sound cut off and the lights returned to normal.

“I am afraid that your people will have to cut the loading operation short,” Iris commented. “Two G.S. scout vessels were detected within the system. This means that we will have to depart now if you don't want to be found out.”

I swallowed involuntarily. If the G.S. found out about our attempted negotiations with the enemy prematurely, the whole of the Dominion might suffer the consequences. There was no telling what they might do.

Worst case, they would turn the fleet that was passing through our space on us. We would have no gathered forces in place to stop them effectively. Countless worlds would be at their mercy before our military could react.

One of my men was already speaking into his intercom. The loading personnel was evacuating the Silent's ship, but it seemed to happen far too slowly.

“How far away are they?” I asked and looked towards Iris.

She frowned but didn't say anything.

“Iris?” I repeated myself. “Can we help?”

“I am receiving new orders from our central command. They are thinking of a solution.” She pursed her lips. Her mind was apparently somewhere completely different, but she kept talking. “The two ships were detected roughly 54 light-seconds out and they are moving at roughly ten percent lightspeed. This means that we have about 540s until they arrive, assuming that they don't decelerate.”

“How did they know!” Ilinak, one of my people exclaimed. “It's standard procedure for an G.S. fleet to survey the surrounding systems, but we are far outside their routine flight routes! This meeting is too far off their course for this to be an accident!”

Iris frowned. “Indeed. As for how they knew to come directly to the planet, they must have detected your transporter in orbit. As for why they knew to come here in the first place, you must have a leak.”

“A leak?” Eleu gasped. “This meeting was conducted with the highest secrecy in mind. Only the people present on this planet and some very high officials know that it was held in the first place! Even the transport that brought us here is supposed to wait in deep space for a few months before it heads to another planet. Just to ensure that the crew can't talk prematurely!”

Miredin pointed at the screen that still showed the ship's cargo bay. “Our people are clear. Why aren't we starting?”

“Even if we start right now, the scouts will detect us and have plenty of time to take a good recording before we manage to steer clear of the planet's orbit,” Iris mumbled. “Which is exactly the type of proof that they likely want, since it's likely that this ship-type is in their databases. One of the enemy's vessels starting from one of your agrarian worlds at the edge of nowhere. With one of your transporters right next to it in orbit. That's exactly the type of proof that the G.S. needs to pressure your government into taking active action against us. More so than they already do.”

Eleu paled. “Then what-”

Iris blinked. “We wait. Allow them to come closer. As long as we stay within the atmosphere, their instruments are likely not capable of detecting the ship. My people are going through earlier encounters with this ship-type. Let's just hope that they haven't updated their sensors.

She nodded to herself as she apparently confirmed something in her mind. “They will pass the planet closely in an attempt to get a good look while taking the least amount of risk. If not, they would have already started to decelerate. We will make an emergency start when they are too close to deviate from their course easily.”

A ferocious expression stole itself onto her face. “And then we destroy them. Thoroughly, so that all the G.S. knows is that their ships vanished. It will still look bad for your people. But the G.S. won't be able to wave around a holo-cast while they accuse you of collaboration with the enemy. It will be a case of plausible deniability.”

“We can't attack G.S. ships!” Eleu exclaimed vehemently.

“You won't,” Iris clarified. “I will.”

She got up. “Please come with me. The Reach's gravitation drive is capable of dampening inertia, but we will operate at the ship's upper limits to ensure that we get both scout vessels. You need to have the additional protection of acceleration seats to survive that.”

Iris left the room and walked quickly deeper into the ship while we followed. “Send a message to your people to get further away and take shelter. We need at least a one-kilometre radius around the ship free of people. When we deploy the full effect of the ship's gravitation field, we will likely rip up a lot of debris with us. All that will come raining down.”

I looked towards Ilinak who quickly relayed the message.

“I have heard of species using projected gravitation fields to use them as drive technologies, but your ship seems to be relying entirely on it,” Miredin commented while he tried to catch up to Iris. “I have never heard of someone building projectors that strong. It seems like a waste of energy when it comes to propulsion, given the effectiveness of the technology.”

“We focused on the technology once we came upon it and even improved it,” Iris replied while she opened a door and waved for everyone to go inside. “Manipulation of gravitation opens up a lot of physical applications that would be impossible without it. Or at least highly impractical otherwise.”

We entered a round room with chairs that were arranged around a central orb that protruded from the ceiling.

Iris sat down in a chair that was slightly elevated above the rest. “Please sit quickly. The ship is already programmed and won't wait for anyone once the time to act is here.”

“Programmed by who?” I asked, but sat down nonetheless. The situation didn't allow for arguments right now.

“By me and by our central command. They thought of the plan,” Iris explained.

“So, you have FTL-communication,” Miredin exclaimed with a giddy expression. “How fast? Is it real-time? Just as our analysts assumed?”

“It is,” Iris affirmed. “Please, brace yourselves. The ship is built to perform far above the limits of our bodies.”

I could feel the chair beneath me giving way. Its material flexed slowly into a new configuration, forming some sort of harness around me. Some unknown machinery activated with an almost inaudible humming sound and I started to feel weightless.

Iris wasn't concerned when her chair did the same. Instead, she kept explaining. “All of our ships can be operated remotely. The death of the crew doesn't necessarily mean that the ship stops operating. The design principles behind all of our technologies are redundancy and remote operation.”

The central orb that was embedded in the ceiling glowed and lowered a milky sheet of some transparent material in front of me. The others got their own viewing screens. Then it projected a very simplified version of the tactical situation.

There was no warning.

One moment, I was trying to make sense of what the hologram was showing me. The other, it felt like something had given my whole body a good whack! It was only luck that I hadn't bitten off my own tongue.

The force that drove me down into my seat had me seeing black spots until it gradually shifted sideways. Thanks to the harness, I didn't just roll off the chair and break every bone in my body.

Then the direction of the force changed repeatedly. It felt like I was being spun around inside a barrel and someone was trying to bruise me from every side. I was pressed into the seat two more times while I could hear the distant sound of something powerful discharging.

The entire ordeal couldn't have lasted more than thirty seconds, but it felt like an eternity had passed when my body finally transferred back to weightlessness.

“Arrgh...” Miredin complained. “Are you sure that the ship's inertia dampening was working correctly?”

“Yes!” Iris replied in a happy voice.

Ilinak moaned with his mouth closed. “Mm... I... mink I... mit... my... mongue!”

“That's only to be expected,” Iris continued. “We just hit top accelerations of thirty gravitational units. If the inertial dampeners in the seats hadn't worked, we would be red smears on the wall.”

“Why do you sound so surprised by that!?” Eleu asked while she did her best to keep herself from puking.

Another member of our crew, Jerera, our sociologist, did just that.

“Well, this is a fast courier class, a transport ship first and foremost,” Iris explained calmly. “Its systems weren't designed for combat. The Reach has powerful engines for its size, but we lack the heavy weaponry that would be necessary for a true ship to ship battle. In the end, it worked out well enough, since the other side wasn't exactly intended for combat either.”

“What happened!?” I touched my harness and thankfully found a release button that made it retract, allowing me to breathe more freely.

Had we really just taken part in destroying two G.S. ships? How many crew did a small scout have? Twenty? Thirty?

Iris didn't seem bothered by what had happened, further hammering down her alien origins.

I suddenly had to ask myself how old she was. She had talked as if she had seen her homeworld's destruction. How long ago had that been? The Lmir had only become aware of the Silent a few centuries ago. Did that make Iris older than my entire delegation combined?

“We used our over-engineered gravitational drive to rip a part of the landing field with us into orbit. Then we spun, throwing the debris out in all directions while we used a larger part as a shield. Thank the Blues that G.S. scout vessels don't have nukes on board. Their lasers did very little while we brought ourselves into position.”

She pointed at the tactical display in front of her. “One of them flew through our dirt-cloud, which did them no good at their speeds. They are nothing more than debris. The other, we got with our lasers. It isn't destroyed, but we took out the section that holds the engines. We are currently accelerating after the ship to catch up and finish the job.”

“What happens if they go to warp?” Miredin asked. “Preferred trans-light tech of most G.S. civilisations is the warp drive.”

“It's busted,” Iris calmed Miredin's worries. “That's the thing we were aiming for first. The scout-ship's design includes a ring-section that contains the accelerators for the warp drive. Damage those and the ship doesn't go anywhere.”

She was interrupted when the door opened and several bug-like machines entered the room.

The smaller versions had soft and rubbery protrusions mounted to them. Their purpose became clear when they started vacuuming up the mess that Jerera had involuntarily left on the floor.

Two larger drones fulfilled apparently medical purposes, as they approached Jerera and Ilinak to take care of their medical issues.

“Taking out the remaining scout shouldn't be a problem.” Iris opened her own harness and stood up, ignoring the small machine that crawled around her feet as it searched for more dirt to clean up.

“And since we are already in space, we might as well show you your quarters.” She nodded at the machines. “I can guide you there, but if you feel like exploring the ship, you can address any of the servitors whenever you wish and have it guide you where you want to go.”

“They aren't sentient, are they?” Eleu asked with a wary expression on her face.

“No. The V.C. is very careful not to create any sentient life that's capable of feeling slighted or to be used as a slave,” Iris explained.

“What do your people see as sentience?” Miredin asked, clearly curious.

Iris grinned. “That's a more complex question than you might think. And as a matter of fact, it's still up to debate among my people today. But basically, anything that you cannot distinguish from other sentient beings after a basic conversation is sentient.”

Miredin frowned.

“You give the being that you want to test access to a chat program that allows for nothing more than text messages. Then you allow several people to have a chat conversation with that being, as well as several other participants who join the chat as false candidates. If your testers are unable to distinguish the being from the rest by deductive reasoning, then the being is sentient. In reality, it's more complicated than that, especially with things that don't comprehend the written word, but that's the basic method.”

“What would be incapable of writing?” I frowned, surprised that my extensive knowledge of other species and cultures didn't provide me with a satisfying example.

“Well, there is SymErr,” Iris shrugged. “She is a Blue who intentionally deleted the part of her logical thinking that allows her to draw meaningful connections between symbols and some concrete meaning in reality. Why would anyone do that? According to her, she would likely say that our attempts at describing an almost limitless reality with limited symbols is why we are doomed to fail at understanding reality in its entirety. And in fact, SymErr is one of the leading Blues when it comes to physical philosophy. She never gave us a single explanation for her theories, but she predicted quite a few things about large scale quantum physics that turned out to be true later on. People are still working on sensible ways to prove and mathematically describe some of her postulations.”

I felt somewhat exhausted from playing a hundred questions with Iris. Whenever she told us something about her people, two or three new questions would spring up.

Having only one person to answer all of these problems was getting quite tiresome.

“Excuse me, but we have been at this since you arrived,” I said after a moment of thought. “Is it possible for us to read some kind of encyclopedia about your people? I assume that this isn't the first contact mission for you. If we retreat to our rooms to study, you will also be free to take care of your ship while we follow the damaged G.S. scout.”

“Aw...” Iris looked somewhat put out. “But I like answering the easy questions. Once people read a guide, they always come up with the complicated stuff that I have no immediate answer to. But fine. Once you get to your rooms, you will find a folder there. It contains the "1ooo Q&A" that most potential V.C. allies have.”

“Why didn't you say so earlier!?” Eleu complained. “We are sitting here, pulling answers out of your ears one after the other when we could have just read up on the most burning ones!?”

My way of ending the session was probably a little bit less diplomatic than it should have been, but the longer I interacted with Iris, the less I could see her as a proper diplomat. She was indeed just a guide to her civilisation, and that was it.

Iris rolled her eyes and walked out of the room. “Fine. Do as you please. Come to me once you have more questions. I am here to answer them.”

I had a feeling that Iris was taking her job as a guide just a little too seriously. In any case, I would find my room and read this Q&A before we continued this interview.

Just as said, it was done.

Iris didn't involve us further in hunting down the remaining G.S. vessel. A few hours later, she simply informed the entire ship via loudspeaker that we had caught up to their ship and reduced it to molten slag.

The transport ship that we had come with had been informed to clean up any obvious traces of a battle. Which probably wasn't a big deal because the ship had planned to hide out in deep space for some time anyway. I didn't even question whether the admiral would follow such an order. It lay in our own best interest if the G.S. never found out about this incident.

Meanwhile, we would take a roundabout course to the slowly approaching Silent fleet.

This meant that my mission had truly begun for real now.

It took days, during which I studied the materials that Iris presented to us and had more clarifying discussions with the 'demon', as her people called themselves. When asked, she explained that the name that they used for themselves had some historic meanings.

Iris was evasive regarding the exact mythologic origin of the word, but it apparently referred to a race or group of spirits that were known and feared for their powers and cunning in the olden days. Though I didn't understand why anyone would name himself after something that was generally seen as evil back in the day.

But according to Iris, it started out as an innocent joke and now they were stuck with it.

On the ninth day, we finally arrived at the Expeditionary Fleet 00-23-32-3405. The first three numbers indicated the galactic sector it was operating in, and the last gave a numerical hint at when the fleet had been assembled.