"Why would they board us with only two people?" Rosaria asked as she trailed after Solae. The longer she was with the couple the more she took advantage of the fact that they would answer her questions. Thorne's employees would not permit her to speak out of turn and, on the rare occasion she was openly defiant, they refused to honor any request, much less an idle query. They had viewed her as an object with which they would infuse the knowledge deemed necessary. When she had been liberated, it was both physically and intellectually. It was for this reason that neither the linguist nor her lover would deny her reasonable explanations; they wanted her to stand on her own as a person, and that required giving her the tools to understand the world around her outside the limited scope in which she had been allowed.

"It was a risk assessment," the duchess replied as she made her way to the bridge. Mia had already been instructed to navigate them through the system towards their destination. Typically she would have guided their vessel herself, but Solae felt the circumstances warranted the precision of a computer, as a slight deviation could be interpreted poorly by the Kalderi. The AI lacked the 'finesse' to perform the landing, however, so she had to be prepared to handle their touch down.  It was a task made slightly ridiculous by her regal and refined gown that glittered with each step.

"Imagine you are the Kalderi," Solae elaborated as she sat down. Her full skirt overflowed on the chair, making the sight even more comical, but she didn't have time to dwell on the ludicrous. "Besides merchants, you don't have many dealings with an alien race, and your first contact was when they massacred one of your settlements just because you could. You'd be skeptical of anyone coming to you with proposals of peace. Even if you're technologically superior, they could still have crude weaponry, and if they are lying about their intentions they could damage or kill your people if you allow them to land. Alternatively, you could send a couple scouts to board their skip and try to verify their story and at least make certain they aren't armed to the teeth with explosives. The worst case scenario is you lose two scouts, but you'd still be able to eliminate the threat before they are near any civilians."

"You understood all that from two Kalderi on our ship?" Rosaria asked skeptically. It made sense, and she did not disbelieve the theory, but she was slightly baffled as to how such a large leap had been made from a brief interaction.

"They didn't show much interest in conversation, wore armored suits, and were trying to evaluate an unknown factor," Solae replied with a soft smile. "If that's not a military scout, I'm not sure what is. If they had sent one of my fellow diplomats we'd still be waxing poetic about the details of the Stellar Empire's treatise with the Kalderi," she lightly jested with sincerity. Sooner or later they would run into one of her professional peers. She estimated that even Rene would tire quickly of listening to her spending hours lost in chatter.

"Yarue, Dasin," she called over the speaker, "would either of you like to simulate what a landing would be like? Mia, activate the co-pilot seat like we did with Rene that once. Have my station maintain the controls, but ghost them to the other station so they can feel when it's aligned." It would be a harmless exercise. No input would actually be processed from the second chair except to give a sensation of whether or not they were in synchronization or if had made an error. It occurred to her that just because her fiance did not have the aptitude did not mean any of her companions might share in some of the necessary strengths. The offer was not made to Rosaria on account of her age; she was much more reluctant to let a non-adult learn the system.

"I will try," Yarue announced as he quickly moved from the main hold to the cockpit where Solae and her handmaiden were watching for visual cues they were in range to begin the landing sequence.

"Three minutes until we enter orbit," Mia declared breathlessly as they watched the planet grow larger on both their screens and in their generously sized window. The two warships had moved to maintain a safe distance, just in case the humans acted erratically, but were strictly monitoring, not threatening the freighter.