The Celestial Way

Chapter 16.5 - Changing Ways

"You want me to what!?" Kiana exclaimed.

The hangar was bristling with action. Drones and robots shuttled components from the fabricators, and grav-fields maneuvered hull sections into place. Technicians, all of them Radiant Knights, walked up and down, inspecting the proceedings or engaging with construction themselves when an operation required manual handling. The head engineers, a human-dragon soulkin pair called Bernard and Zeromon, directed the work crews and automated systems from the hangar's control center.

"I want you as a pilot for this mission," Airo repeated levelly over the commlink.

Kiana scowled from across the AR screen. "And fly against Revenant dragons!? Nuh-uh, no chance even in a biocon hell."

"Look, I did not pick you up because of your charming personality," Airo said. He took a breath. "You are a combat-capable pilot with experience in astral navigation, and you are a Conduit – something I learned is a nearly mandatory requirement for FTL. Your skillset is what I need, not drama acting."

"Just take Zozzy, you bonehead!"

"Knight R'urgal is not a Conduit." Airo was mildly surprised he managed to pronounce the uplimal's surname correctly. "Only you have the combination of qualities I ordered Cloud to look for. I, too, was not pleased when the SAI returned the askping with your name only."

"Gah, fine, I'll take another suicide mission because Fearless Leader says so. Just don't expect Veralla to pull us out of this one if things go singularity. It won't be as easy as dragging you away from a warpstorm. She coming or not, by the way?"

"Oh, yes, I am coming too!" Veralla declared happily, standing at Airo's side.

"Huh, hey whippersnapper!" Kiana craned her head, peeking at the display's corner. "Didn't see you there for a second. That's settled, then."

"I guess," Airo grumbled. He turned to Veralla. "Are you sure you want to come?"

"Yes, I am!" she said. "I am going now to Bernard and Zeromon to talk with them."

"Fine by me." Airo replied. He opened another commlink channel as Veralla – he still wasn't used to seeing her standing upright – walked away. "Zuckeroff."

"Ah, what, uh! Oh, hey Boss!"

"Are you in the bathroom?"

"Um, uh, oh, yeah, I am. Uh, I wasn't fapping or anything. Uh. I m-mean! I was in the process of, uh, taking care of, um, an e-e-entirely natural physical need! Yes, that's what it is. Entirely natural, and, um–"

"I do not need details," Airo cut the fumbling astrior off. "You are temporarily relieved of your usual duties. Your presence is required for a specific mission."

"Oh? Okay? Any particular reason why me? Uh, sure, I'm your guy if you say so, but those Knight dudes are pretty badass, and–"

"Your file indicates you have seen heavy combat action," Airo cut him off again. "In space, no less. The Radiant Knights are exceptionally well-trained, yet most of them are too young. Not that you are any older, however you have practical experience. Just try to maintain some discipline, Lieutenant."

"Uh, of course, sir! Tehhn-hut!"

"No need to salute me that way."

"Ah! No, no, no! Um, eh, I, uh, no problem, I mean, um, sorry, Boss, won't hap–"

Airo cut the commlink. He gazed toward the frantic construction work, and queried Cloud for status update.

"You'll also need someone to activate the psi-gate."

He turned casually. Lylana towered a step away, her red-gold armor barely concealing the contours of her overly-muscular and absurdly endowed physique. Her long black hair and impractical curves were the only inconsistencies in her strict military bearing.

"Are you volunteering?" he asked.

"I am."

Airo looked her up and down. He wondered if modern biotechnology permitted the existence of even larger individuals, and if so, how they coped with the square-cube law; dragons ignored it more or less by controlling their gravitic fields and bending other rules of known physics. He wondered what would make someone like Lylana become a Radiant Knight in the first place. So far most of them were practically indistinguishable from normal humans such as him. It made him think of Admiral El-Qadir.

Something tickled his mind.

"Were there not any more... compact candidates?" he asked, attempting a joke for the first time in seven centuries.

Lylana blinked her amber eyes and pursed her dark lips, obviously confused. "Glawlrhain also offered assistance in his capacity as an aethereal, sir," she said. "But he's even larger than me. Nobody else besides us or Magus Dei can manually recharge the Æther reservoirs if they've run out. Briefing specs wanted the least possible mass to be carried by the transport vessel."

"Yes, yes, you are correct, Elder Darkovitz," Airo said, quickly abandoning his attempt at humor. "Though why did Magus Dei not come himself? He would be more... efficient still."

"He explained he needed to watch over something onsite, Commander. I think it's related to Mentoria."

"Hmm. All right." Airo, too, was severely suspicious about the overall agenda of the exotic, exhibitionist, and highly arrogant Æther-wielding Coastlander mystic. Her behavior and presence didn't mesh with the Radiant Knights at all, yet he didn't have enough time to spare to get to the bottom of this mystery. All in all, although it irked him to admit so, he trusted Magus Dei, a person who was vastly more powerful than him, to be able to handle any trouble on that front better anyway.

"In that case, welcome to this crew," Airo said to Lylana and extended his hand.

She looked at him for several seconds. Her expression shifted subtly, and she traded grips with him. "Thank you, Commander."

It took three days to create the custom-built starship. The engineering team used a LOTV combat shuttle as a base, then gutted everything out of it, including life support, and left only the hull and helm controls. Then they bashed together a dozen stormjet drives into a barebones propulsion cluster; no inertial dampeners, no artificial gravity module. Control surfaces were kept to a minimum, barely enough to clear the atmosphere. After that, an FTL drive was grafted onto the whole mess, alongside rudimentary passive shielding from radiation and micrometeorite impact. Finally, on Airo's insistence, a point-defense module loaded with veronite flechette micromissiles was installed, to prevent the starship from being completely defenseless.

When the construction project was completed at last, Kiana groaned in despair, pointing out numerous perceived flaws, which even to Airo's untrained eye seemed like legitimate complaints. However, Yeoman Cloud insisted the design was calculated to precise specifications, and everything would work as intended. The SAI cited the results of five thousand seven hundred and forty four types of VR simulation, all of which returned positive within critical thresholds.

Trouble was, there was no way to do a live test before the actual mission.