[right][sub]The Meeting Place[/sub][/right]
The mornings after a party were always hard. And damn, the Matuvistans surely knew how to throw one. Kelsie didn’t even think she drank that much and still, she felt like beaten up by a pack of Screechers, all complete with a spear piercing through her head. It wasn’t nearly as bad as her last hangover she drank herself to after the Undefeated lost a Battleship over Zeta-5, but it was still damn inconvenient. 

She crawled into her office sipping some miraculous bubbly anti-hangover medicine that did nothing more than to irritate her stomach and sighed upon seeing a swarm of red flag notifications on her workstation. Of course, everything happens all at once while she is away. She swiped through the messages, astonished to see not one, but two new nations arriving.

The first ones, bearing a strange name The One, have already left the system and there was no way of contacting them now. It seemed that at least it was an ECU diplomat who managed to greet them first and establish contact. So, by proxy of being ECU’s allies, the Undefeated won that one as well.

Kelsie opened the message from the second arriving nation and a loud voice echoed through the room.

[i]"Greetings fellow 'presumably' descendants of Earth! We’re from New Haven representing the New Haven Directorate! We come in peace with the intention of studying Earth and exploring new strange worlds!”[/i] Hmm, so far they sounded surprisingly normal. [i]"To signify our intentions of peace, I shall sing you a song of my people!”[/i] Wait, what?

As the loud music blasted out of the speakers suddenly, Kelsie was torn between the desperate desire to cover her ears and the logical choice of finding the mute button, a stupidly tiny thing placed in a corner of a screen.

“WHAT IN THE FUCKING HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” The ungodly roaring and screeching stopped, Kelsie managed to find and press the button. She looked up to see David standing by the door, with his ears covered and face twisted by tortured expression. “Seriously,” he continued when it was finally quiet, “are you trying to kill me?”

Kelsie had to laugh when she noticed he looked even worse than she did. Bad choice, since wiggling her stomach in that way made her nauseous and dizzy. “Sorry, that was a bit unexpected.”

“I hate you.” David could barely keep his eyes open and as he sat down he had to rest his forehead against the cold metal of the table. Kelsie seated herself in a comfy chair at her desk, trying to at least look normal, but her pale face and blank stare gave her away.

“Is that some kind of a new hangover shock treatment?” The young scientist Julianna Petrova was watching them from the doorway, trying very hard not to start laughing. “It seems to be producing very mixed results.” She looked fresh and rested, just like any other morning.

“I hate you as well.” David didn’t even bother to lift his head up. “I hate everything.”

Kelsie’s eyes narrowed when she realized something. “When did you even have time to drink? Weren’t you following me all night like an overgrown piece of walking muscle, all glum and frowny?”

“Exactly.” David looked at her, sounding a bit angry. “And it was so horribly boring that I kept drinking the bubbly thing in those tall fancy glasses. I mean one of those girls basically stalked me and every time I finished one glass she was standing there with another. It seemed rude and very undiplomatic to refuse.”

“Undiplomatic? Is that even a word?” Kelsie chuckled and groaned when her stomach protested again.

Julianna’s eyebrows went up so high they could barely see them. “Incredible. You two are supposed to be the elite of our society. We’re doomed.”

“Ugh, look at her all cocky and smart,” Kelsie burped slightly which might have made her look like an unmannered pig, but it actually made her feel better. “I mean a few weeks ago by the law she wasn’t even a proper person.” Kelsie could afford to say such a thing because she has come to know Julianna well enough to be certain she would take it as a joke.

“Yes, and right now I am more of a person than you two combined. Officers,” she added with an ironic smirk.

David moaned quietly. “Why are we even here? How many important things could have happened over the duration of one party?”

“You’d be surprised.” Kelsie quickly eyed the other messages to see if there was anything equally as important as new nations arriving at the Meeting Place. “Two new nations arrived, one has already made contact with the ECU, took their representative on board, and left. The other one sent a message which I will not replay for obvious reasons.”

“Yes, please don’t,” David agreed with a desperate expression. “Just send them the normal welcoming bullshit, I’m sure they are swamped by messages from other nations anyway. See, I’m a properly functioning person. Can I go back to bed now?”

“I’ll do that,” Julianna offered, seeing that none of the other two is capable of swift action.

[right][sub]Addressing [@Liotrent][/sub][/right]
[i]“As the representatives of the Undefeated nation, we are happy to welcome you to the Meeting Place, a space station built by the combined efforts of all nations that rose up from the former Earth colonies. We are sure that you must be overwhelmed by messages from other nations. Whenever you have time, we would like to invite you to our section of the Meeting Place where we could talk and establish proper diplomatic relationships.”[/i]

“Right, done. Anything else important happened?”

“Well, things aren’t going well for our allies.” Kelsie scrolled through several reports on the rebellion. “Those White Flowers have apparently gained control of two major cities on New Hollywood. And,” her eyebrow rose in surprise, “other nations seem to be meddling in the conflict. But it’s not our problem.”

Julianna frowned. “Aren’t they our allies?”

“A shitload of good they've done for us,” David grumbled quietly, his head back on the table.

Kelsie shrugged, she didn’t really have a say in the matter. “They issued no request for help, official or otherwise. Plus the Grand General isn’t rushing to involve us in another conflict that could potentially turn into a bloodbath, which is good, I guess. That’s about it from me, so if you guys don’t have anything, I think heading back to bed isn’t such a terrible idea.”

“Amen!” David’s head raised up with a hopeful expression.

“Actually, I think that while you guys have been drinking your asses off… I mean forging diplomatic relationships, I have stumbled upon something. Sorry, Major,” she smirked at David who succumbed back into desperation. 

Kelsie wasn’t surprised, the girl's intelligence and resourcefulness were the reason she had her in this private ‘High Command’ of hers. “You found something when sneaking around?”

“I didn’t have to sneak around at all, they weren’t very secretive about it. Quite the opposite actually, they are looking to sell it. It’s something called the lodestones.”

“The load stones? Don’t we have a ton of stones at home?” David murmured.

“The lodestones,” Julianna corrected him. “They are naturally magnetized pieces of a mineral called the magnetite.” David stared at her with a blank expression. “Magnets, David. They are magnets.”

He rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t you just say so right away? Why do we need magnets anyway?”

“Hey, I know that!” Kelsie exclaimed excitedly, feeling like the dumb kid in a science class that actually knows the right answer to something. “The shields operate with magnets, don’t they?”

Julianna nodded. “Exactly, the plasmatic shields we use on our ships depend on maintaining a stable magnetic field. But there are also whispers of some super-secret new project that requires a lot of magnetic materials as well. But I don’t know anything about it except that it exists and that it is led by…” she paused suddenly, looking at Kelsie with caution.

“My mother,” Kelsie snorted. “Of course. I know she is there, whispering into the Grand General’s ears. And for some reason, he listens to her advice.” Kelsie hasn’t spoken to her since she was ordered to do so before the Zetan war. A message popped up in her inbox from time to time that she deleted without reading.

David wisely stayed quiet. Or maybe he had fallen asleep.

“Fine, if my mother managed to convince Pawlowski she needs magnets, she will get magnets. I’ll get in touch with that Luciano guy and see what deal I can get. Now if you guys don’t have anything, I’d really love to get a few more hours of sleep. Julianna? Nothing. David? David’s out. Meeting adjourned.”