There was a marked air of uncertainty about my guests as I led them to my office. We walked through the mostly empty halls of the upper floors of our headquarters, closed doors leading to other spaces in the structure that sat in current disuse. Eventually, Doug would be making full use of these spaces to form the backbone of our political structure.

I wasn’t so naive as to believe that we could avoid politics, and it would be prudent to have a division dedicated to our representation to others. My own approach was a far cry from perfect, and eventually I knew that I would tire of dancing around a topic. Sunvilla had come close to showing me just how little patience I had for such situations. Had they been even less helpful, I had to wonder if I would have simply had the Legion march in afterwards.

Now, though, Sunvilla was under the careful eye of Doug’s hand-picked agents, no small amount of which had inserted themselves fairly seamlessly among the masses. And, in spite of my earlier misgivings, it was clear that Sunvilla was a valuable resource for the Legion.

“It seems a little eerie up here.” I heard the Scynoi Princess speak. She said it casually, and if it weren’t for the stiffness in her posture, I might have believed the casual smirk on her face was real.

Then again, perhaps she wanted me to be aware of how uncomfortable she was.

‘Politics? No, I think that falls under social skills,’ I indulged myself with a moment of amusement before speaking over my shoulder, “There’s not much reason for these offices to be filled at the moment. The political situation on our planet hasn’t developed enough to warrant most of these conference rooms to be in consistent use.”

She nodded, bright emerald green eyes flicking to cameras that rested in the hallways.

“I’m told the Scynoi seem to be somewhat more aware of our culture than would be considered common,” I heard Derrick speak beside me, filling the empty space with conversation, “is that true?”

“Only bits and pieces,” she replied off hand, “like how your people think your planet is flat, or how vaccines are dangerous.”

Both myself and Derrick slowed and exchanged grimaces.

A wide, sharp toothed smile spread across her face, “I joke. Every species has their idiots. Honestly, there are many cultural parallels between Scynoi and Humans. We both have an obsession with entertainment and creature comforts. Unlike some people…”

Uthakka let out a single humorless gaf, “We have our own entertainment! We even use animals for it.”

“For fighting pits.” Querax interjected, “You use them for fighting pits.”

“Of course! The meat is even more tender after a little fighting!” Uthakka grinned, his crocodilian jaws barely moving. Arianna hid some of her disgusted expression behind a foldable fan, one that I couldn’t help but stare at.

“Is that… Japanese? Kanji?” I blinked rapidly at the sight of the object in her hand.

As quickly as it came, her expression shifted to genuine excitement, “Yes! Ever since you showed up at the council, we’ve been rooting through-” she stopped herself cold then, clearing her throat and then recollecting herself to a facsimile of control “-we’ve been studying some elements of your culture and entertainment. We especially found certain elements to be quite informative.”

“I still liked your sci-fi movies,” Yamak nodded to Querax, “we binged all of Stargate.”

“Which one?” I tilted my head.

There was a moment of silence between the pair, “Uhh… There’s more than one?”

I grinned as we entered the double doors, sleek black steel sliding out of the way with a barely audible click of locking mechanisms behind them.

“Not what I expected,” Arianna nodded with satisfaction, “I half expected some of those boring offices that only had a desk in it, considering the drab hallways.”

“It’s left to the owner to customize things.” I nodded to them, “Make yourselves at home, there’s plenty of space.”

And there was, the first room being a thousand square feet. The entire east-facing part of this floor belonged to me, staring straight out at the Obelisk in the center of town. We were high enough to also see much of the surrounding city, and could see the ocean beyond. The windows were reactive, dimming at a moment of thought from myself. Currently, I changed them to block sight into the building, but allowed us to see out without difficulty.

The center of the room bore a wide disc that would allow for holographic displays. I could sit in the middle of it should I desire, or have it display screens outward. The ceiling bore several subtle pods that contained metal dust, each bearing controllers for magnetic output and small machines.

Long ago, we’d come into the knowledge that nanites were a thing. However, we’d run into a hitch. The technology to create them ourselves was highly advanced and while we could supplement our tech with the Obelisks, buying the nanites outright had rapidly become too expensive.

Especially because no one wanted the nanites to self-replicate. At least, none of the ones we bought. Sis had rigorously informed us that nanites without such limits could quickly create a “Grey Goo” type of apocalypse. One that was, frankly, terrifying.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I wanted them.

Regrettably, getting nanites to perfectly replicate on the fly without fatal errors had proven to be a massive issue. As such, I was now sporting some pretty significant upgrades with nanites that could replicate with oversight.

My room was filled with canisters. If something happened, I’d have one of the most flexible defense systems at my fingertips.

Besides that, though, my room was also flush with large, multi-purpose furnishings. Many of them were fit for larger beings to rest in, and I could tell that Arianna at least was taken aback by the fact that there was no genuine “Have a seat” moment.

I sat myself down unceremoniously on a large, plush coach that faced the holo-disc, each of the coaches in the ring facing inwards.

Uthakka did not stand on ceremony, immediately sitting himself down a respectable distance to my side. “Hmm,” he blinked, “I half expected it to break.”

He leaned back, and flinched as the couch began to flex with a silent motor shifting the seat into a more comfortable position for the hulking mass of scaled muscle.

Barking with laughter, he looked up to the others, “That surprised me. What are you all waiting for, an invitation?”

They glanced at me, which I viewed tacitly as a ‘yes.’

I gestured again, “For the time being, this room and the rooms adjacent are at your disposal. You’ll find that I may not be here often. We’ll be busy, but as far as I’m concerned most of you are guests.”

“I appreciate your hospitality,” Arianna curtsied at the edges of a dark blue dress that shimmered against her humanoid form, save for the lengthy serpent tail that emerged from said dress.

Querax nodded to me, still in full battle-gear, though he’d allowed his helmet to recede, as mine was. His species was more elven than I’d expected to see, complete with the otherworldly androgenous beauty that I’d expect of space-elves.

I didn’t linger, though, watching Yamak virtually throw himself onto the couch, “You have any drinks?”

A light ding resounded as a menu appeared in front of Yamak. He glanced it over, arching an eyebrow before looking up at me.

“It comes from the cafeteria downstairs. It’ll be made fresh and delivered.” I informed him, “Use it as you will, the room will clean up after you.”

Uthakka punched in an option a heartbeat later, his tail flapping loudly against the furniture.

He stopped when we all looked at him with amusement, “What? I’ve been waiting to gorge myself on food for weeks. Nothing wrong with it.” He huffed, mild embarrassment coloring his turquoise scales a shade more violet.

“Now, as much as I’d like to put this off, what happened?” I levelled my eyes to Yamak, “Why was your ship so damaged?”

The man nodded gravely, “Seems that Earth breaking up that asteroid wasn’t just sheer luck.”

“You have an active defense grid in orbit,” Arianna spoke up, stealing Yamak’s buildup, “one that is a fair bit better than what I’d expect from a species that hasn’t yet begun colonizing other planets.”

Yamak huffed, “Yes, that. You’ve got what looks like a couple of mass drivers and full-blown railguns. Sensors are a helluva lot better than what I expected too. Predicted where we’d be out by Neptune, probably fired a long time in advance, but still, impressive.”

“Alright, stop, back it up.” I groaned, “let's start with your ship getting hit at Neptune?”

“Well.” He breathed deeply, “while we were talking last time, we suddenly noticed an object being propelled several hundreds of kilometers a second. Now, usually a shot like that from a primitive system would go wide by several hundred kilometers, harmlessly missing a target like us. But, one shot got lucky and hit my comms array on my flagship.”

I blinked at that, “And did actual damage?”

He grimaced at that, “I realize that you have media and such that says alien tech will be so far beyond yours that you can’t hope to damage it, but if you throw a tungsten rod through space and pick up momentum off of gravity wells, that thing does damage. I don’t care who you are or what your ship does.”

“It didn’t help that we didn’t have shielding up or defenses online.” Querax shot Yamak a cross look, “Yamak’s flagship has hard-light barriers, they would have been enough to dull the shot before it hit the ship to do little more than leave a dent.”

I nodded as he explained, and Yamak sighed, “It still would have done damage, but it’s true that it would have been far less. It was a glancing blow as is. We went radio silent afterwards, just in case we were being detected. The rest of the fleet is hiding in the asteroid belt currently. A few more shots were deployed, but we evaded them, but the accuracy is better than I expected.”

“So you came here with a smaller vessel?” I considered things, recalling the satellite that I’d attempted to connect to before, only for it to self-destruct. Was it coincidental?

“Figured that if it was just mass drivers we could dodge easier with this. There was a vote to destroy the weapons platforms-” he cast a glance to Uthakka “-but I figured you’d want to try to take control of them instead. Could be useful in the future.”

“We attempted to contact the platforms themselves, or hail any kind of identification network, but there was nothing,” Arianna huffed, “quite the welcome.”

Gears turned in my mind as I considered possibilities aloud, “We didn’t have that kind of accuracy in the old world, I’d think. And I’ve recently run into some things that make me believe that perhaps there’s at least one other group taking control.”

“I don’t like the idea of someone else controlling an orbital weapons platform.” Yamak grinned, “Wanna steal it?”

I shook my head bemusedly, “Well, we’ll definitely need to find some location with an uplink.”

Just then, the ceiling above Uthakka vibrated, opening seamlessly for twin arms of nanites forming solid structures to reach down and deposit a large iron tub with a cooked hog within it.

“Ugh,” Arianna made a face, “please tell me you’re not going to ea-”

Uthakka lifted the still steaming meat and bit the head off, crunching its skull loudly between powerful jaws, only to laugh at the mortified looks on our faces.

Other dishes quickly joined the others, who busied themselves with pulling up blackout screens covering most of Uthakka’s own meal.

“Anyways,” I ignored the crunching in the background, “we’ll figure out where a nearby uplink is. For now, rest up and I’ll have someone show each of you around later.”

With that, we ate and spoke of lighter topics, diligently ignoring the possibility that an orbital weapons platform was in potentially hostile hands at that very moment.