He settled into the alcove booth across from the girl. Uixtr and Yykth made square face-to-face eye contact before sinking into semi-relaxed seated stasis and closing their eyes. The vocal channel they were maintaining unfolded into innervisual branching aetherspace, where they could exchange entire idea and information veins.

YYKTH SLDR: Thanks for meeting with me to consult. Though my mixed peoples groups have formed bonds of ingenuity and capability, it can be stressful trying to get interactions right with humans.

UIXTR XKCD: You might already be better at it than I. Your groups are larger and more even, and they’re less accustomed to conflicted situations than the individuals with whom I have worked.

YYKTH: They’re adapting quickly, including the guardians.

One branch freed itself from Yykth’s knowledge trees and floated over to Uixtr’s point, where he examined it. Therein was a set of context observations of human crisis parenting, including evolutions of strategy sessions. The eagerness of the young to fight for a better future, and the passions of the elders to protect the young had caused leaps and bounds in the realms of possibility. There were certain points of requested expertise.

YYKTH: You might know who can help us really dial in vehicle interfaces for the excelling operators. These aren’t a matter of averaging for wide usage, but optimizing for particular performance.

UIXTR: You may be aware of successes in my recent history of human pilot to Vedani vehicle technology apprehension. The records are accessible, so you might have looked, or you may.

A branch of this information synthesized from Uixtr’s flow and floated over to Yykth’s bunches, where she highlighted it for priority processing.

YYKTH: This is more extensive than I had hoped, I’m very grateful. I flagged LKCD:AELRN for the other topic of this meeting, so she might be joining us.

Aelrn’s voice drew into aetheric proximity.

AELRN LKCD: I’ll be there in a matter of moments, glad you asked me.

UIXTR: Oh! Splendid.

Uixtr opened his eyes to continue sipping his green drink, still warm. Yykth opened her eyes as well and stretched into a relaxed lounge against the wall curve for the time being, poking the springy floor pad.

Moonshadow watched the Vedani leave the cozy nook, then scanned the area and released air from its vents. Attendants that beep are cute. Of course they know that a vehicle like Moonshadow can understand ordinary language, but it is strangely comforting to be recognized in nonlinguistic tones.

It went over to the purple gemstone. This is a thrilling material. As programmatically instructed, it used its tools to snap off and chemically pulverize a portion of a point, which it took into its system. Moonshadow supped on a few additional fuels and mulled over this combination. It calculated a strong boost in certain propensities, which it hoped to practice with someone soon. This stone was a very nice gift from their Aureny friends.

Moonshadow began tabulating, organizing, and updating its translation logs. Being asked to translate on Ombd was unexpected, but the results of increasing that ability with the encouragement of Rosy Glow had been so enjoyable. Moonshadow likes learning with non-Vedani. It was also neat imparting some programs to the human-Vedani spaceship Drift X, before it left Ombd. Moonshadow also likes teaching. Maybe there would be other machines or programmers to talk to via the terminal.

Reflecting on all that had happened, Uixtr decided he liked the idea of mitigating antagonism between factions. That had been the core of the Vedani approach toward the Pan-Galactic Imperium. They only changed their tactic when not met in kind, and many opinions had been soured by violence, his included. Of course sentient lives were worth saving, but he thought beyond the recent event to the personal exchanges which he was appreciating more and more. The human pilot Wendel Harper had gained command of the modifications to her ship, some experimentally improvised, with quick familiarity. She herself must have made some unconventional fixes on the fly and worked with it. They had, naturally, built with the machine’s existing personality, and she knew her vehicle as though she communicated with it like a Vedani. On the topic of natural pilots, Soleil, the Imperium’s Scion Princess, continued to surprise and impress in other ways as challenges surfaced.

These peoples share space now, short of one set eliminating the other. That would truly be a horror, one which Vedani were only partially prepared to confront.

With a thrill, Draig realized that these were Dragon voices, a greater number than he’d ever heard in one place. It could be that he was hearing them in more complete translation, as their speech possessed additional textures of expression. He could understand various meanings, without knowing exactly which words originated them. Abnormalities of lattice observation; visibility reports; strategy, structure, formation, and response from different corners of the Pan-Galactic Imperium. The General recognized these matters, could place a voice or two, and understood what was going on. He’d connected to the Viridian Phasing, by some actualization of his part in the draconid defense network that he helped form. Possibly, it had been catalyzed by the trauma in the dream of his great-grandfather. He was connected now as a dragon might be while in activation, through some human process instead, probably only by way of the deep connection forged by his involvement in its inception.

Draig took a breath to speak with his mouth, but that gave him a foolish feeling. Instead, he tried thinking to the others in clear speaking sentences, phrased in the sound of his own voice. “Hello, this is General Draig Claymore of Alisandre. Can you hear me?”

Attention turned toward him, with surprised exclamations of nonhuman personality. “Well, I wasn’t expecting this – though it isn’t entirely unexpected. You met enough of us in the seeking, and your unique role in the teamwork would afford you possibility of this access. There must be some dire need, because human minds are not inclined toward these folds of perception.”

“A need felt, perhaps, though not logically known or grasped… yet.” Claymore opened one eye hesitantly, and then the next. He could see his darkened bedroom, while also still observing the cosmic flow of their dimensional lattice. He also noticed disruption phenomena swirling in the air around his head. He did not know that Arkuda had also seen this same thing on the person of Raev Sturlusson while he’d been in capture. The General closed his eyes again to keep this simple.