“Well, now that things have been made clear, why don’t we move on?” Trout said, feeling strangely free despite having just had the most awkward conversation since he explained how humanity had… lost… to the shinkies. So… since yesterday. Huh, was this going to be a common occurrence? He hoped not. Even as he resolved to see if there was a topic that the Kaedekin found awkward, the feeling of freedom remained. No matter what the Kaedekin said, he didn’t really need to make sense of it. As long as he didn’t put a foot in his mouth, all he had to do was remain friendly with them and just nod along to whatever new thing they said that seemed strange. “You said you had some matters you wanted to go over?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rain said, picking up Princess and holding the buddy like a phone as she looked at something on the other side its—her?—other side. “Let’s see… now that we’ve been able to establish a viable communications protocol, there are other Kaedekin who wish to speak to… well, literally anyone on the ship. However, the current priority is Ranger Sorceress Hale, our science and engineering advisor, who wishes to speak with your communications officers and any relevant technicians to continue refining the communications protocols as well as establish basic data formats so we can start exchanging data files in some form. Next is Dr. Namine, she’s our doctor and biochemist. She would like to speak with your doctors about the treatments for common injuries to the members of the Confederacy. Abrasions and cuts, necessary steps for debriding, and what antiseptics and tools are safe to use on them.”

  “I assume ‘sorceress’ is a rank in your military?”

  “Yes, it’s the next rank above Paladin.”

  “I see.” Trout made a note to ask about them again later. “May I ask what this Dr. Namine’s intentions are with that information?”

  “Oh, she just wants to be able to start preparing to deal with minor injuries for when you start visiting the planet, and doesn’t want to accidentally use a topical medicine that might be poisonous to someone,” Rain said.

  “Visiting the… you intend to allow us to do that?” Trout said.

  “Of course! As soon as sufficient measures to prevent an epidemic are in place, of course. We’ve been developing a protocol for a non-invasive sterilization of any surface bacteria and viruses, but that can’t deal with internal bacteria, so unfortunately it will probably be a few weeks before we can safely invite any of you down. Besides, we promised that we would give you all a welcome meal, and we still haven’t done so. Serving everyone on the ship, or at least as many people who can be given leave from their duties at a time, would be easier at a function hall. It will give everyone a chance to talk and make friends face to face!”

  Trout felt himself cringe slightly from secondhand embarrassment at someone saying that last unironically. “That’s not really necessary.”

  “Of course it is! You’re our first first contact and you’re not invading us. That’s something to be celebrated! It never happened in the old universe.”

  Morbid curiosity welled up within Trout. “Never?”

  “No, never.”

  “Never? At all?”

  “Never. At least, as far as we recall. If there was a first contact that wasn’t an alien invasion after the Mass Production Models were lost to the Void, we obviously wouldn’t know about it.”

  “I just find it very hard to believe. Are you saying that the Earth of that… other universe—” it’s some analyst’s problem, it’s some analyst’s problem, “—encountered several extraterrestrial polities, who all decided to invade? No one tried to make peaceful overtures, no one tried to open trade?”

  “Does ‘surrender and die for the glory of our Great and Immortal Emperor!’ count?”

  “… no, it definitely does not count.”

  “Then no. Every time aliens encountered that Earth, they tried to conquer the planet. Or just kill everyone on it so they could colonize it themselves.”

  On the one hand, it sounded like bad sci-fi, the kind that got turned into exciting movies with big explosions. On the other hand… the thought that it was a fate some planet—some version of Earth—had experienced was vaguely horrifying. “How many times did it happen, to your recollection?”

  Rain frowned, looking thoughtful. “Let’s see… counting the invasion that the Mass Production Models were created to fight… at least fourteen—”

  Oh. That didn’t sound so bad.

  “—over the past ten years. Of course, that’s only as far as we know. Certain things said by some of the older Magical Girls such as Star Reverie imply there may have been at least two more before then that were not made known to the public. And we have no reason to believe that the trend didn’t continue after the Mass Production Models were lost to that universe, so there have likely been at least five hundred more in the centuries since.”

  “… fourteen over the past ten years?” Trout repeated with incredulous horror and morbid fascination.

  “Again, only as far as we know,” Rain said, shrugging casually. “There’s evidence for attempted invasions as far back as 1886, with the Eiffel Tower having been made to generate some sort of barrier to repel a now-forgotten force, and documents from the period mention rumors of monsters being fought by modern day—for the time period—musketeers in colorful armor.”

  “That sounds absurd.” Oh. He’d said it out loud.

  Rain shrugged, obviously agreeing. “Unfortunately, we can’t really prove it one way or the other, since any records are a universe away, and probably in French.”

  “The fact that so many invasions could even happen, and so close together… the other Earth must have been fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously.” It was heartening that even in other universes, human strength and determination in the face of those trying to grind them down were unparalleled.

  … and Rain looked confused again. “Uh, no? While there were years the Earth faced more than one invasion, they were never at the same time. Even the ones that lasted longer than usual tended to be localized to a single city, but that was before the Association was formed and everyone was protecting their own little patch of the planet.”

  Trout was forced to reassess his assumptions. When Rain had said ‘invasion’, he’d assumed it was a sizable force that would require the mobilization of all of that Earth’s fledgling space force, but… “I think I need context again. What was the average size of one of these invasion forces?”

  Rain looked thoughtful, as if she was trying to recall something she’d heard in class several years ago. “Hmm… I’m not sure as to the ‘average’ size, since we only have records of the last three invasions, but I suppose I can share them with you. I already told you that the last known invaders, the ones the Mass Production Models were made to fight, used infiltration tactics. I’m sure you can imagine how this made it extremely difficult to properly estimate what sort of so-called ‘conventional forces’ they could bring to bear. However, over a period of six months, the Mass Production Models were able to detect and deal with over five hundred confirmed infiltrators, and there are a couple of hundred more that were detected by other groups dealing with the same problem.”

  Honestly, Trout thought it sounded like an absolute nightmare to fight and a ruthlessly effective way of prosecuting a war, provided you had no concept of war crimes… and as the ones in question weren’t human, perhaps they didn’t. While he’d heard rumors that there had been traitors who had cooperated with the Hegemony over the course of the war, they had only been rumors. There had never been any sort of announcement or brief, public or otherwise, that had confirmed humanity had had turncoats in their ranks. He could only shudder at the thought of having to fight a war after society had basically torn itself apart fighting each other and all their defenses had already been sabotaged…

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “When the Mass Production Models were finally able to trace where the infiltrators were coming from to the Void, they met conventional forced that numbers somewhere between fifty and seventy thousand warriors. While not all were capable of magic to the same degree as the infiltrators, they were equipped with plasma-based energy weapons, mechanized cavalry, and area-suppression weapons. Even after dragging the Frilly Pink Fortress of Friendship down to the Void to use as a mobile bulwark to power through their heavy weaponry and destroy the means they were using to transport their troops to Earth, by the end of the battle there were less than three thousand surviving Mass Production Models out of an original force of twenty thousand. The final fate of their forces is unknown. The only thing we can be certain of is that they were no longer able to access Earth.”

  “.. sorry, did you just say ‘Frilly Pink Fortress of Friendship’?” Trout said incredulously. He couldn’t help it. While there were more professionally relevant details just mentioned, that was the sort of name that just begged a response.

  Rain looked sheepish, in that way you did when you just revealed your grandparents did something really embarrassing, or when something that had once been a point of national pride was now considered somwhat less than admirable. “Yes. I know, it was considered a bit of a mouthful even back then, which is why everyone mostly just referred to it as the Fortress. And admittedly why our own fortresses have much shorter names. Although painting the interior walls pink is still traditional.”

  Ah. That explained the wall behind them. “We’re familiar with traditions that can seem a little strange when divorced from their original context,” Trout said. “The space force is still referred to as a navy, for instance.”

  “We’ve noticed,” Rain said. “I can’t really say we understand. We try to avoid going out into the seas. Can’t see anything and sonar tends to attract sea monsters.” There was just the slightest disconnect between what Trout heard and the way her lips moved that let him know the Universal Translator had kicked in.

  “That would certainly deter wanting to go into the water,” Trout agreed. “May I ask how long the campaign against these… I’m sorry, I don’t think you mentioned what these infiltrators called themselves.”

  “To be honest, we don’t know,” Rain admitted. “The Mass Production Models were never able to take any alive, and they weren’t very talkative before then. Once they were discovered, they activated some sort of explosive device or spell, then fought like they had nothing to lose. The priority eventually became trying to take them down and getting the body to an isolated area so it could explode safely. The best they could do was get some samples and readings to help locate more of the infiltrators.”

  Infiltrator saboteur suicide bombers. Trout found he was very thankful the shinkies had never resorted to those. “I suppose it can’t be helped. How long did the campaign against them last?”

  “Fifteen months. It was the most protracted alien invasion in living memory. Most were usually dealt with within two weeks. Even the Kyperiels were dealt with in three months, and most of that time was spent disarming the equipment they left behind that was too big to be moved immediately.”

  It was some analyst’s problem, it was some analyst’s proble—two weeks?-!-?-! “I see. Was there anything that made the… the Kyperiels?” Trout knew none of the known intelligent spacefaring species were called that, even as Rain nodded in confirmation. “What made the Kyperiels different from the others that they took… that long to deal with?” Two weeks?-!

  “Well, the circumstances of the Kyperiel invasion had some similarities to the infiltrators. They opened by sabotaging Earth’s space monitoring stations while they hid their forces behind the moon, and attacked during a period when nuclear powers had agreed to start taking steps to disarm themselves. Both were the results of Kyperiel infiltrators removing Earth’s ability to detect the oncoming threat and immediately retaliate with their nuclear arsenal. After that, they attacked all the world’s major cities simultaneously, and used their orbital energy weapons to shoot down the few nuclear missiles that could be launched.”

  Trout frowned in confusion. Nuclear arsenal? Why was this Earth still using such primitive weapons? “Did they also sabotage Earth’s orbital weapons platforms?” Five hundred years ago, Earth’s orbitals were brimming with weapons platforms, even if most of them only had skeleton crews and were being repurposed to become orbital refineries. Extremely depressed skeleton crews on some of them, since they were using the then-state-of-the-art artificial gravity systems.

  “Earth didn’t have any orbital weapons platforms because of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The closest thing to one there was in orbit was the Frilly—the Fortress, and maybe Knight Queen’s dragon mecha Alphard when she parked it in space to enjoy micro-gravity. Even then, the Fortress wasn’t armed.”

  1967 Outer Space Treaty …? But that had no longer been in effect five hundred years ago, it had ceased to be followed in the mid-22nd century during the war with… argh, who was it again…? He’d always forgotten this name…

  A thought occurred to him. It was a slightly insane thought that he wouldn’t have even considered speaking out loud half an hour ago, but… “Rain, what year did the Kyperiels invade the Earth?”

  “2012, in the Gregorian calendar,” Princess’s voice replied.

  2012. Given all their talk of ‘almost five hundred years ago’, Trout had assumed it would be closer to 2319. He could almost see a primitive, 2319-era earth repelling alien invasions. They had already discovered quantum energy by then, the Granger Engine had been in use for a decade to allow humanity to get to space and start mining the asteroid belt, the first practical handheld laser weapons had just been developed…

  …

  Well, it was some analyst’s problem.

  But if that was the case… then those invasions hadn’t been part of some small force getting past whatever defensive fleet Earth had established and directly attacking the planet. There hadn’t been any defensive fleet, or any real defenses worthy of the name. Just a planet barely entering the modern age, with all the modern corporations basically still in their infancy, North America not yet blasted into a shattered archipelago by civil war, and the China Sea not yet a sea…

  Suddenly an invasion force of fifty to seventy thousand with plasma-based weapons being able to threaten the planet made sense… and made a force of over twenty thousand being able to stop them make even less sense, since they’d only be wielding non-railgun ballistic weaponry and chemical explosives. “What happened to the Kyperiels?” Trout asked as he wondered again if this was some sort of prank, before he firmly reminded himself he’d decided to stop trying to answer that question and leave it to the analysts.

  “Oh, they were defeated by the Earth’s Magical Girls and superheroes,” Rain said. “The heroes that would form the Outguard managed to identify the Kyperiel’s central command and land a decapitation strike, then used central command’s remote controls to sabotage the equipment of most of the invasion force. Without coordination, the Kyperiels were easily dealt with, and their ships in orbit were either destroyed by the Courts of the Falling Sky, the Black Heavens and the Twilight Cosmos, or attacked from the inside by those capable of teleporting up to them like Xynodob and Judgement. There was also at least one case of a Magical Girl shooting them down from orbit.”

  …all right, it had been repeated enough times he couldn’t keep ignoring it anymore either. “You keep using the term ‘Magical Girl’,” Trout said. “Could you please expound on what you mean?”

  “Oh, sorry! I thought I would be obvious. A Magical Girl is a girl who can use magic but is not a wizard. They include Thaumaturgists, Symbols, certain kinds of Pyrothurgic Ember savants… even Crystalborne, although most Crystalborne identify as superheroes.” Rain shook her head. “Which really isn’t accurate. Hero is something other people call you, not something you call yourself. The most you can be is heroic, and hope other people agree.”

  “… what exactly do the Kaedekin consider magic?” Trout asked carefully.

  And Rain was looking confused again. “Magic is… magic,” she said. “It’s using the power of the soul to perceive and act on the world and other souls.”

  “I believe it would be best to table this topic for the moment,” Princess said. The… buddy… had been so quiet and still—although Trout got the feeling the latter was perfectly normal for it—that he’d all but forgotten they were there. “According to records, it is difficult to explain and define magic without a live, empirical demonstration.”

  Rain frowned, looking thoughtful—or as if she was trying to remember something—before nodding. “Yeah, you’re right. I think we’ll have to save that explanation for later, Captain Trout. Magic is easier to understand up close where you can touch it.”

  Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all. “I’ll trust your judgement on the matter,” he said.

  “And… we seem to have gotten sidetracked a lot. Uh, do you mind if I go back to my list?” Raid said, looking a bit embarrassed.

  “I have no problems with it,” Trout said.

  “Thank you. Let’s see… After Dr. Namine, there’s Ranger Sorceress Cloud. She’d like to speak to someone with extensive knowledge of history, specifically Earth history. She wants to compare the two Earth’s histories and see if she can draw any conclusions as to how the previous universe is doing. If what we’ve been able to decipher from your transmissions is true, your Earth has never been invaded, and we’re eager to find out how you managed to prevent them from happening…”