Soopee-31P lay ahead of the Odyssey, a singular point of light that lay on the borders of Farndos, Cultarvian and S’Grael space. A star that none of the three people wanted or could make use of but to the Avali Illuminate could be quite useful. It was a Pulsar, a hyper-dense neutron star that was billions of years old spinning rapidly on its axis as it emitted two beams of electromagnetic radiation into the void of space from its magnetic poles.
The remnant of a star that had gone supernova, the core of matter left behind had collapsed and compressed into a small dense knot of energy; millions of kilometres smaller than its original star size. But with its original angular momentum intact giving it a regular, super fast rotational speed which manipulated the magnetic field of the new denser star which created the beams of radiation from each of its poles. The pulsar itself was surrounded by a field of stellar matter, a halo of dense cool gas clouds, the ejected layers of its former self from the supernova. As well as a debris field; rocks from the smallest grains of dust up to moon sized lumps of what might once have been planets before the final growth phase of the star engulfed them.
Apart from a corridor of perfectly clear space that had been swept clear by the regular spinning of the star's magnetic pulses. The entire system was a radiometric hell, an energetic radiation flooded zone of charged particles, plasma storms that ionised the gas clouds of the former star and made navigation a challenge. Gathered on the bridge of the Odyssey the Trail pack watched the forward screen as it resolved the glorious coloured bands and flickering, lightning discharges of the storm bands surrounding the star.
“So why did we want this place?” Cal asked curiously, “This doesn’t look like a great location.”
Cri, his twin brother, turned from the view and nudged him, “Because, silly, unlike the Cultarvian, S’Grael or Farndos the Avali actually have the technology to harvest a stellar system like this.”
“Well… I didn’t know that,” Cal grumbled as Seinu spoke up.
“I sort of threw it into the negotiations at the last moment,” Seinu said, “As a sort of thank you from all of them to us for stopping a war from breaking out,” the silver avali smiled warmly, “It went down quite well, they have waived their rights to the system and its contents, we agree that if we do start to mine the system we will consider all three of their governments our preferred and favoured market for whatever we extract after ourselves.”
“That’s not bad,” Taran smiled, “I was asleep when this was decided as our next destination, why are we doing the survey?”
“Because Seinu’s next meeting is on the Earthian homeworld in six months,” Selenu said from her seat in the Captain’s chair, “Seinu needs time to prepare and we are already out here. So the Odyssey can do an initial system survey whilst he is preparing for our trip to Earth.”
“Which means this is my time to shine,” Chantelle beamed, “I am drawing up a survey plan, we have six months which is plenty of time to survey everything of interest here.”
“It might be worthless,” Firi grumbled, “I mean it is a neutron star, worse: It is a pulsar. The stellar wind from the pulse beams has been pushing stellar material out into the void between stars for millions of years.”
“Yes and no,” Chantelle gestured, “You can see that array of gas and debris around the star? Some of those rock fragments are as big as moons and they will be solidified core fragments from when the solar system that used to be here went nova and ripped its planets apart. It might be worthless or it might be chock full of riches; we won’t know until we survey it.”
“Ok then,” Ki stood up, “The cartography and survey drones and exo vehicles are all ready to go but I want to go recalibrate their sensors for travelling through that dust cloud.”
“I’ll help,” Firi said and hopped up, stretching in her armour, “I have some weapon scanning systems that might help cut through the dust you should look at.”
Ki nodded and started for the door, “Ok send me the specs and we can reformat things.”
Chantelle smiled and hugged Cal then started for the door as well, “Come on bunnies, I can show you two how you can help, Seinu doesn’t need a bodyguard whilst he lounges in his office reading about Earth.”
Both bunnies chirped in excitement and followed Chantelle, they did love learning how to use new Avali tech. Taran shook his head and sighed, “You know I’d rather we had stayed on Felosta in the Farndos Continuum, that resort world was nice, Seinu could have learnt about Earth just fine there.”
“Oh, so I’d have had to work whilst you all relaxed around enjoying more downtime,” Selenu replied with a huff, “That doesn’t sound fair.”
“It was a really nice resort!” Taran complained with a grumpy chirp, “This sounds like really boring work.”
“We just had eight weeks of downtime,” Selenu said, “Relaxing on a resort world doing anything and everything we want,” she pointed at the forward viewscreen and the solar system ahead of them, “Now stop complaining, you’ve got the easiest job of them all, Six months of doing very little whilst loads of drones and scanning devices look for stuff.”
“Yeah,” Seinu chirped, “I’ve got the difficult job, I’ve got to try and get my head around the most baffling civilisation in Galactic society, Earth.”
“So stop complaining,” Selenu told her brother, “Go lend Ki and Firi a hand whilst I decide where best to park.”
Taran sighed and slouched off grumbling about how he’d have preferred to stay on the resort planet to a planetary survey. Seinu smiled and walked over to hug his twin sister and chirped.
“This was a good idea,” Seinu murmured, “Despite Taran’s grouching it is a nice reward for Chantelle, a chance for her to do something other than play secretary for me.”
“I thought so,” the lime Avali chirped in response as she hugged her brother, “I saw the size of those data files the Directorate sent you about Earth. Is it really that complicated?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Seinu sighed, “I am going to need months to prepare for this, anyway did you want any help picking a place to park?”
“Nah,” Selneu smiled, “I wouldn’t say no to company though if you want to hang around some.”
Seinu chirped and kissed his sister on the cheek and then sprawled out on the floor in front of her chair and started to download and decrypt his guidebook to Earth whilst she focussed on piloting the Odyssey into the Pulsar system. It started with an introduction from the chief alien anthropologist at the Directorate of Foreign Affairs.
“The Dominant species of planet Earth, the Humans (Earthians in galactic parlance), have for the majority of their history been alone. Their world is situated in a relatively young sector of their galaxy, a local cluster of new stars and they are the only inhabited planet in the entire region. As such the majority of their history has been spent in very insular pursuits pertaining to their own world without the vision, drive or visitors from the stars to help their society advance.
Our anthropologists think that this isolation is the reason why humans developed the way they have. Many consider their bio-forming their home world to make it a tamed death world a prime example of this'. Stuck on Earth the humans destroyed the natural ecosystem, ending countless species and redesigning the land to suit themselves. Once they developed Industry they continued with this transformation of their home world but without any thought to the damage they were now doing to their already unstable biosphere. Having stripped out most of the natural defences of the world to force it to conform to their ideals for agriculture, horticulture, intensive farming and mineral extraction with Industry added on top to make their lives comfortable they started destroying the world.
Humans themselves don’t excel at anything in particular, but they're very good on average at almost anything they want to do. Their endurance and single minded pursuit of what they want is very hard to match. That's why humans have been making a name for themselves in space after being introduced to the galactic community. This is why the Illuminate takes time each year to talk to them and make sure despotic races like the Horkers, Kalinta or Feliton aren’t leading them astray. If humans allied with a race like the Horkers we predict that it’d be extremely dangerous and very damaging.
In general humans as individuals and a species are *heavily* distrusting of anything that looks a bit like themselves but is different somehow. Not only does this mean that humans tend to be wary of aliens who look like them, but a lot are even wary of other humans who happen to look too different. Humans have been trying to overcome that lately, but there's still a very large number of them who will discriminate against others by colour, body shape, weight, etc. Due to this, Seinu I have been asked to note that transforming into a human is an absolute no. Your orders are not to do this, our advantage with the Humans stems from the fact you are an Avali in their eyes.
While other species may find it nice and commendable that you're trying to learn how they live, the things they go through, etc. humans are the opposite; they will very likely see it as a threat, not as something nice.
You also need to keep in mind that Humans have an odd sense of “pack bonding” that lies outside our understanding. They will emphasise with and anthropomorphize anything. They’ll feel an attachment to say a vehicle and family travelling in the same direction as them simply because they are going the same way. Welcome strangers into their family based on something as simple as liking the same thing as them. They will see a Tanranvanlin Renderer and feel sympathetic toward it because they think it is cute or adorable, heedless of the fact it is a mental menace that will eat them without a care in the world. They are a very mercurial, open and welcoming species but at the same time hostile and closed to those outside their “pack” “society” or “nation.”
Your mission to Earth will be officially to meet with the Earthian branch of Hastalan Waste Removal. An intergalactic mercantile consortium who specialises in toxic waste removal. Primarily they are hired by planets that have recently suffered wars or ecological catastrophes to help clean them up and make the landscape safe again.
Hastalan started working in the Earthian solar system to help reverse the damage from three hundred years of rampant industrial pollution. Whilst this commendable goal has mostly been thwarted by vested industrial interests; various human governments and individuals purchased shares in the company and they now have a large presence in the system with a regional corporate headquarters based in orbit of Earth’s moon Luna.
Your mission to the system is to discuss their desire to purchase new ships from the Illuminate to replace some of their ageing ships. Whilst you are there to see an Intergalactic Corporation we expect the Odyssey to be inundated with unofficial visits from the nation states and corporations of Earth. They will use this informal visit to bypass our ambassador and allow us to meet with the various “super-powers” and vested interests of Earth without being accused of playing favourites as you are there to officially visit the Hastalan Corporation.
This information package is designed to train both yourself and your pack in how to deal with the Earthians. Our estimate is that it will take you about four months to absorb and learn the critical information. As humans consider it rude for visitors and aliens to be referencing live updates you will need to memorise a lot of it.
We hope you enjoy the Earthian induction package and if you have any further questions please contact the Directorate alien anthropology department.”
Seinu finished reading the introduction package and then had to scroll through a directorate security briefing on how the package must not be stored on any device other than his centralised diplomatic system. In effect it had been uploaded to his air-gapped Embassy core and could be accessed by up to four security clearance 0 peripherals like his visor or his desk. As if it fell into the hands of humans it would damage relationships with them. This was going to take some reading just to visit one planet and its rather strange dominant species.
As usual when preparing for a survey Chantelle’s office had retracted all the furniture into the floor and walls leaving the chamber as a plain cylindrical room of white and orange materials. Standing near the centre of the room the blue and white Avali let the real world fade away as she released the limiters on her virtual augmetic goggles and allowed her virtual space to wrap around her.
Taran was always urging her to replace her eyes like he had with the latest implants that would allow for seamless virtual interactions. But Chantelle liked her eyes and sometimes she had to exist in the real world, her goggles were good enough for her. The field of vision they created as her virtual space wrapped itself around her was flawless. Besides the additional augments she’d need to have; eyes that could process VR data as well as the visual spectrum were ugly. All the extra tech she needed fit perfectly and unseen into the frame of her goggles, she didn’t want extra visible augments spoiling her good looks.
Lifting one arm she shut down Seinu’s calendar, he had one job for the next few months and that was to learn about Earth. There were a few all pack training sessions scheduled as well but she had set reminders about them so for a bit could ignore the dry, boring calendar of the Diplomatic and focus on the fascinating wonders that was Soopee-31P.
Chantelle placed the madly spinning pulsar in the middle of the room, the bright blue-white star was a strobe of energetic annihilating power that bisected space with the constant whirling of its magnetic axis. It was a beautiful stellar phenomenon but a deadly one; based on the scans and radiographic intensity she updated the borders of the no-go zone to the Odyssey’s navigation array. She also pushed an update to all shuttles, exo-vehicles and drones; straying into the path of the magnetic fountain would be a very bad idea.
With the pulsar and its movements in place the Avali started to sketch in the rest of the neutron star’s accompanying system. Even outside the direct path of the magnetic pulse fountain the energetic atmosphere of the star had far reaching effects.
The plasma clouds that had once been the outer layers of the supergiant red star that had exploded and left behind the stellar remnant that collapsed into the pulsar where arrayed to galactic North and South of the star, forming two hemispherical clouds of energetically charged plasma and massive rocky fragments trapped at the peripheral edge of the neutron stars terminal gravitational pull.
A lot of matter and debris would have been ejected into the inter-stellar void to drift off but as the intense density of the stellar mass that had been the core of the star collapsed it caught and held the closest material into two banks of stellar material that could be worth a lot to the Illuminate and Avali society. Most other races did not have the shield technology to explore such a deadly environment, let alone exploit it, but the Illuminate had long ago invested in the technology and equipment to be able to exploit such an inhospitable location.
The question was, did this star have riches or was it a wasteland of plasma? Their job was to work out which it was, though from their long distance scans there were definitely some very large mass objects in stable orbits inside the plasma clouds. The problem was the solar system wide storms made it almost impossible to get anything but the most basic scan returns; Taran and Ki were busy adapting their cartography drones for the plasmatically charged atmosphere to start gathering more detailed results.
Humming to herself Chantelle started to circle the virtual projection, pulling up the live scan results from the Odyssey’s forward array and began to plot the suspected locations of those heavy mass returns. It was going to be an interesting and fun challenge either way!
Ki was nestled in the centre of the drone maintenance bay watching Cri and Cal excitedly working on putting a drone back together. The bunnies were a good team and both of them were fascinated by the sleek machines. Cal because they went fast and he got to look at engines and Cri because of all of their varied sensor devices.
Ki smiled at them then turned back to the control board he was re-wiring, the attachment his cybernetic hand had morphed into sparkling as it soldered connections onto the aerogel board. This would be his fourth attempt at launching a drone into the plasma fields, so far the other three had been disasters.
“Ki,” Chantelle’s voice interrupted him and he sighed, lifting his head to stare at the screen that had just opened. He loved his sister but she was being a big pain.
“I am working, Chantelle, what do you want?”
“We need a drone that can survey the plasma fields, I just wanted to ask if you had an ETA for the next test”
“I know you are impatient but if you rush me it will take twice as long,” Ki replied, pushing back his two thick red crest feathers as they flopped in front of his eyes, “We can't use the usual survey drones made for the vacuum of space and the planetary survey drones are too bulky, I am testing new shield configurations for the regular drones but you will have to wait until I am done.”
“But Ki,” Chantelle grumbled, “We have gathered as much data as we can on orbital flybys with the Odyssey, we need a full spectrum drone cloud.”
“I know, and if you’d stop ringing me every twenty minutes I’d get my tests done faster, do not call me, I will call you when I am ready.”
Ki sighed and glanced at another screen, “Ifelse… put me in privacy mode please,” he then typed a quick message into the pack-chat group. “Love you all but if another one of you calls me to ask when the new drones will be done I am going to flood the room you are in with cold water! Let me work please everyone.”
“Ki we are done,” Cri said as the grey and copper coloured bunny walked over, his tech-glasses sparkling in the low lights, “It’s all ready just waiting for you now.”
“Thanks Cri, Cal,” Ki smiled at the twins, “Can you start assembling the next one,” he nodded to a row of components scattered around another drone chassis, “I’ll have both shield matrixes ready to test in about forty minutes, it’d be good to send out two to test.”
Ki then moved his left hand and resumed soldering the circuitry together, running his eyes back and forth across the shield control board as he shuttled the calculations back and forth between his back-pack computer, tail-unit processor and his own brain. There was a lot of maths involved in tweaking the shield geometry and energy scales needed. Ki had their scans of the plasma cloud, the radiation levels emitted by the star, the results of the first three drone tests. He also had long range scientific data from S’Grael University and the Kombolian Coalition warp traffic data. After all, a pulsar was both a scientific curiosity and a navigation hazard. He had several centuries of long range data which had revealed certain weather patterns that he could link up to local data now they had real time scans. It all helped him to form a better picture of the star and its environment.
Ki was busy examining all of it and using it to build a new shield system that he hoped could weather the energetic environment out there whilst allowing the drones to continue to make sensor sweeps.
Tilting his head Ki finished re-wiring the board and then quickly copied the design on to a second one. That was a lot easier, he just shunted the design he had just made to his back-pack computer and let his cybernetic arm work on automatic to duplicate the design. Whilst his arm got to work Ki turned to a set of screens and attached power to the new board and hooked it up to a test shield emitter, running low level integration tests and forming a series of shield planes to see how it worked in the safe, secure environment of the workshop.
“That looks fancy” Firi said as she loomed up behind him and Ki ignored her, continuing to run the test, “Chantelle would say we didn’t need to run so many tests and should just fire them out there to get to work.”
Ki rolled his eyes and glanced at his yellow and white feathered sister, “She’s not in charge of the machines, we’ll do this right and my way or not at all.”
Firi grinned and held out a small circular white device, blue aerogel points and curves glistening at the edges and curving down to form a nozzle underneath, “I know, I finished the motivator you wanted.”
“Oh great,” Ki took the device off of Firi and started to look it over, his visor scanning it and connecting to the open ports in the module, “Perfect, this is just what we need,” he smiled, “The engines we are currently using can’t get nearly the right level of speed in the plasma clouds, can you give this one to Cri and Cal and run through a test routine with them? Once that is done and if you are satisfied we can start installing them in all the drones.”
Firi smiled, showing off her fangs and nodded, “Leave it to me brother,” she licked his snoot and then headed toward where the twins were busy assembling the prototype drones. Ki turned his attention back to the shield board his cybernetic hand was busy wiring. He had just finished with the second board and was testing it when Chantelle breezed into the workshop.
He sighed as he saw his sister skip out of the elevator and make a bee-line toward their construction area. She was dressed in a utilitarian ship-suit, the dark grey with orange stripes that technically were a part of the ship's uniform. Same way his overalls were or Seinu’s fancy set of grey and orange mantles. She had accessories of course, she had a long scarf of white nano-fibre draped over her shoulders and interleaved through her wing feathers. The crystals sewn into the fabric creating a trailing edge of frills that chimed and jingled in a pleasing way as she moved.
Of course it was wholly inappropriate for an actual workshop environment with wyvern drones and machinery and half assembled drones all over the place.
“Chantelle stop,” Ki shouted and she slid to a halt, a surprised look on her face, “Goggles off and stay there,” he ordered as he left his workbench behind and marched over toward her.
She sheepishly lifted her goggles then shook her head, ears perking back up as she prepared herself up for an argument, “Ki why are you hand making these things instead of using the factory, we are behind schedule.”
Ki shooed her back towards the elevator, “You can’t come into the workshop dressed like that and using augmented reality goggles. None of the machinery will show up in your AR vision and this,” he lifted the trailing edge of her scarf, “Could get caught in a machine, it is dangerous.”
She huffed and folded her arms, “They are fine, besides the only heavy machinery down here is S4,” she gestured at one of Firi’s wyvern shaped construction drones which was lumbering past carrying things, “Now why are you building these by hand.”
i sighed and leant forward to rest his head against hers and hugged her, “Because,” he chirped, “These are a new design,” he held her out at arms length, “I am doing actual material engineering down here, there is no blueprint or design schematic to print from for this environment. We are building each drone by hand so we can test and adapt and change them.
We'd have even more delays if the nano-lathes crashed every five minutes with a new error. Once I have a working prototype we will mass produce them but until then we are making them by hand.”
Chantelle pouted, her ears wilting, “But why, I know other ships have surveyed Pulsar systems before, heck we have whole mining colonies orbiting them.”
“Because every Pulsar is different,” Ki explained patiently, “You should know this, we’ve tried the drones from other pulsar environments and they all fail and have issues, so we have to build something from scratch.”
Chantelle pouted and chirped huffily, “But Ki, we have a schedule to keep.”
“No we don’t” Firi said as she strolled over with a grin, “You have a schedule you made,” she smirked, “She is just bored and impatient as she’s run out of data to work on, we are on what, day four out of six months, we are in no rush.”
Chantelle pouted more and huffed, “But I am bored, like we can’t get any more data out of the gas clouds and Selenu won’t let us go any closer.”
“Of course not,” Firi rubbed Chantelle’s ears, “Now either take off the fancy clothes and help or go back upstairs and help Seinu learn the seven hundred and eighty ways to say hello to a Human.”
“Oh god no,” Chantelle started to pull off her scarf, “I think he’s thrown his visor across the room twice now at some stupid rule he has to obey, I am not touching that rule book unless there is mandatory training.”
“Oh there is,” Cri chirped, “Seinu was telling me about some of it this morning before he got up.”
“Was he?” Cal asked suddenly, “I don’t remember this?”
“We talked about it whilst you were still asleep,” Cri said, “I didn’t think you’d be interested in boring Earth stuff.”
“I want to hear about these things,” Cal grumbled, “You should have woken me up.”
“You can ask Seinu later,” Chantelle re-assured Cal as she hung her scarf on the back of a chair, “Show me what to do and I will do it, if I help we can have working drones faster and getting my claws dirty with machinery is way better than going near that Human guidebook.”
Ki smiled happily and dragged his sisters back to his work bench, he was excited to work with them. Chantelle would usually not come near physical work or manual labour, busy as she was with Seinu’s schedule and her own work. She may have been a pain at times and bossy and wanted to groom them all to her ideas of fashion but he loved spending time with her and Firi. With the twins to help as well they’d have a working prototype in no time!
Taran set the final template instructions into the factory array and ran a final integration and design cross implementation check. The factory had a template for the new survey drones and now it was just checking to see if the blueprint could be translated into physical hardware automatically by the factory.
“Well there we go, now we just wait and see,” the teal and orange Avali said as he leant back on his chair and glanced at Seinu. His silver feathered brother wiggled his ears to show he was listening but didn’t look up from the tablet he was reading. He was sitting on the floor next to Taran, one arm wrapped around his leg as he read through some boring documents. Smiling fondly, Taran ruffled his mohawk, “Are you even listening to me Seinu.”
“Hmm what, ah no sorry,” he smiled up at Taran, “I heard you say wait and see, wait and see what?”
“The new survey drones,” he pointed at the array of screens in front of him, “We are nearly ready to print about six hundred of them to survey the Soopee-31P system.”
“Oh yes,” Seinu shook his head, “I heard we had a working design, that took ages?”
“About nine days of prototype building, but we finally have a design that works to my, Ki and Chantelle’s requirements. We also learnt some good lessons about the plasma storm to make adjustments to the shields on the exo-vehicles.”
“That’s good,” Seinu stretched then tilted his head back to rest on Taran’s side, “How long until we can start printing.”
“About an hour,” the Avali said, “I am running a final check then I’d like you to run your eyes over the settings before we turn the factory on. You deserve a break from all of these documents, what are you studying now?”
Seinu glanced at his tablet then handed it up to Taran, “My schedule for when we arrive at Earth, I am making a first draft of all the places Hastalan Waste Removal will be taking me for talks.”
Taran’s ears quivered in surprise at the list, “This is a lot of places on different stations, moons and continents, surely you should just meet on their space station?”
“Oh we will,” Seinu sighed with a soft smile, “I reckon me and the Hastalan rep could get their new ship requirements locked in with about three or four days of negotiations,” he tapped the screen, “But our Ambassador to Earth informs me they want to show me the Earth so of course I need to have agreed a plan in advance for both my security and so enough Earthian diplomats and Government ministers can just happen to be at the same event or cultural monument as me for informal “accidental” meetings.”
“This is so bollocks,” Taran said, “Why don’t they just book a proper meeting on board the Odyssey?”
“Oh there will be one of those, ugh I need to book entertainment too,” he took the tablet back and scanned through it, “Ok let me send a message to Sawi, see if I can get MMF to play at my party in orbit of Earth,” he paused and sighed, “No, they are on vacation. I’ll ask Sher to suggest a band I can hire,” he made a note to send a request then sprawled out against his brother.
“It’s a mess, this place has Super Powers who think they rule everything, commercial interests who actually think they are moving the pieces and then the Banking institutions who control all the money. And it is all tied up with like twelve very influential and very rich people who get a say.”
He sighed and shook his head, “I need to walk this tightrope of making sure they all get a chance to talk to the Avali Diplomat and be heard whilst not officially being there to visit any one government whilst I might add helping our actual Ambassador secure whatever thing he needs to do his job properly.”
“Why don’t they just pick a couple of Diplomats to represent the whole planet and send them to meet you?”
“Because the decision to pick that Diplomat is a factional nightmare, the Supreme Ambassador of the United Nations isn’t recognized by a third of the countries on the planet as representing them,” Seinu shook his head, “Another third support the Ambassador but think their countries interests aren’t being raised loudly enough and claim the other third have undue influence, it’s all factional and territorial and tribal and then you add in all the vested commercial and industrial interests. Last time we agreed to a formal meeting on an annual basis it almost set off a war.”
“This sounds like a mess,” Taran sighed, “What makes them so difficult to negotiate with?”
“Because unlike most Alien societies they have no central government, at least not in the way we know it,” Seinu shook his head, “They have individual countries with no unifying central institution. Avalon is composed of packs and tribes but we all work for the greater good of the Illuminate,” Seinu waved his tablet, “Most space-fairing civilisations have a central governing structure, humans is a joke, it is just another avenue for them to try and get power and prestige and wealth over the others.”
“Why do we bother with them then?” Taran asked with a frown, “There are plenty of other aliens we could spend our time on.”
“Most humans individually are good and fun but collectively they get competitive, they literally hold issues with other humans based on what part of the world they come from, or the colour of their hair or skin or which imaginary creator they think is real,” Seinu sighed and shook his head, “But they are inventive, they are clever and they are very dangerous when they club together, so we want to try and keep the humans from falling in line with a species like the Horkers,” Seinu stared at his notes then tossed the tablet aside.
“They are very easily influenced and apparently the Illuminate only sends the best for this annual informal tour to help our Ambassador with his day to day work.”
“Well hey,” Taran smiled, “Go bro, that means you are the best.”
Seinu laughed humourlessly and shook his head, “I am not sure it is worth all this,” he stretched his arms up then stood up and turned to look at the Manufacturing control station, “So let’s forget about Earth for a bit, show me what you got and I will see if I spot anything you’ve missed.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Taran smiled, “Let me show you the design and how it all bolts together and then we can run a test print?”
Seinu nodded, leaning on his brother and watching as the holographic screens started to update with the new survey drone schematic. It made a nice change from planning for his crazy, upcoming visit to Earth.