Alanik seemed to relax a bit. It was probably disconcerting to meet people who felt they knew you, but didn’t quite.
FM and Cuna trudged up beside us. I was glad—I could use their help.
“Yes, I know Spensa,” Kauri said. “I was hoping to see her again after her disappearance from Starsight. Is she well?”
I didn’t know if Spensa was well, but I had to believe she was. “She’s on a mission to learn more about the delvers.”
“Ah yes,” Kauri said. “We were there when Winzik summoned the delver. A nasty decision, and one I fear he intends to repeat.”
FM and I exchanged a look. If this ship—stars, it would be a whole battleship to them, given their comparative size—was there in the battle with the delver, then the kitsen had been fighting on the other side.
“Which one of you is the human Jerkface?” Kauri asked.
Scud, I’d forgotten to introduce us. “Sorry,” I said. “That’s me. I’m flightleader Jorgen Weight. This is Alanik of the UrDail. And this is Minister Cuna.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Cuna said. “Your people are quite advanced for a lesser species, and have been very close to acceptance into the Superiority. I hope that we will be able to help you continue to advance, as we consider what is best for all of your species.” Cuna raised their fist in the air with this pronouncement, in a similar greeting to the one Kauri had given me, though Kauri did not look impressed.
Alanik shot me a look. Cuna really had to stop announcing that they found every species we met to be beneath them. We’d brought them along to help with diplomacy, but I didn’t want it to seem like they spoke for all of us.
“And this is FM,” I said. “She’s our…diplomatic specialist.”
FM’s mouth fell open. I raised an eyebrow at her, questioning whether she was going to argue with me. I probably should have put her in charge of this interaction to begin with. I’d been too busy avoiding her to think of it, which meant I was letting my own personal feelings get in the way of my job. That had to stop.
“Thank you for the invitation to your beautiful planet,” FM said. “That rock formation we passed over on our way in—was that a city?”
Cuna bared their teeth in one of their strange smiles, which I thought meant they were okay with FM taking the lead.
Whether they were okay with it or not, it was clearly necessary.
“Yes!” Kauri said. “The Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful! You may call it Dreamspring, if you wish.”
“Dreamspring,” FM said. “That’s beautiful. I would love to see more of it.”
“And I would love to share it with you,” Kauri said. “But we must be careful. Not all of my people will welcome your—oh, how unfortunate.”
She looked up at something in the sky over my shoulder, and I turned to see another starship approaching. This one had a startling number of guns mounted on the front, far too many to be tactically effective.
“Humans!” said a kitsen voice through a loudspeaker on the ship. “Your invasion stops here! You shall not step one more foot into the beauty of the Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful! We will cut you down where you stand.”
Scud. I took a step backward, taking shelter against my ship, and FM and Alanik joined me. If that ship let loose its destructors we were dead, all of us. The rest of the flight scattered, ducking beneath wings and jumping back into ships.
“It’s all right!” Kauri said. “That’s Goro. I will speak with him.”
“He said he was going to cut us down,” I said. “I don’t think that implies a lot of talking.”
“Yes,” Kauri said. “And he wonders why the Superiority thinks we’re primitive.”
The other ship didn’t fire, but instead began to lower itself onto the sand. Bits of grit blew in our direction, and I shielded my eyes.
A host of kitsen poured out of the ship, all of them wearing tiny suits of power armor and carrying guns no longer than my hand. That made them enormous to a kitsen though, and they all wore tiny metal helmets with a visor over their eyes and holes cut out for their ears.
That seemed somewhat impractical—I wondered if they used their ears to regulate their temperature like some animals did back on Old Earth. Or perhaps their ears grew back and were therefore seen as expendable.
In the air above them, riding on another dinner-plate-size platform, was a large kitsen wearing richly ornamented plate armor that looked like something out of another century entirely. His helmet had curved horns jutting out of it, so large that they almost reached the tips of his ears.