"I certainly do not expect infinite hospitality. I just hope that the fact that you're even talking to me implies you are not so far beyond us that your economy has no use for my talents."

Rule one of dealing with telepaths is to lead with obvious truths.

If the princess manages to read anyone, she needs to remain a trustworthy figure. In some versions of the long game R'vneh is going to leave the Union anyway, but in those she still needs to think of Cardassians as her friends and allies.

Vulcans are straightforward, most of the time, and Romulans prefer subterfuge, but both think of themselves as uniquely capable. (When Ocett first learned how many different subspecies there were she thought it was the biggest joke any sentient race had ever played on itself. The past few years have taught her better.)

Ocett sighs deeply before beginning, "This will all be covered more deeply in your summaries in the morning, - but my people just carried out a successful revolution. The sentiment that lead to it had been building for quite some time, but the desire for a government that was truly responsive to the wishes of the people was actively repressed by a group called the Obsidian Order, who considered themselves responsible for safeguarding the Union from any and all threats. They harmed a tremendous number of people, we still haven't recovered all of their records."

"But a former leader of the Order lead all of them and their sister organization from the Romulan Empire into battle against an incredibly dangerous new foe, the Dominion. The goal was to annihilate a specific planet where the god-kings of the Dominion, the Founders, lived. They succeeded in this, but the Dominion had spies within at least one of the two organizations, they had evacuated the planet well in advance of the attack and hidden a far larger fleet of far more powerful warships near enough to wipe out the entire combined fleet in less than an hour."

"The battle was broadcast live on all Cardassian channels."

"We watched as our indestructible protectors and their highly illegal fleet were mown down in real time."

"There were almost immediately widespread protests and rebellions, we closed our borders and shut down most external communications and travel to prevent any outside attempts to capitalize on the chaos, but within days of the transfer of power to the new Detapa Council, the Klingon Empire invaded."

"They took and are still holding over 20% of our territory, they are currently fortifying it and making raids into what we still control to prevent effective internal trade. They declared victory after a very short time, but that does not mean that the war is over."

She falls back in the chair and slumps a bit, "And the Founders could come for us any day now," glancing back at R'vneh, "we don't know much about them, one of the things we do know is that they hold a grudge. Their vengeance is also brutal and can persist for generations."

The Order could do this better.

The Order hadn't done this.

The Order would have worked out a way to trick her into helping.

But the Order is dead, and lying and tricks take far longer than the Union has left at this rate. There are plenty of reasons not to explain things as they are, but it is damn efficient.

"I know that you still don't have context on any of this, and we will begin work on that quickly, but all versions of the Sundering are clear that your people unleashed weapons that were capable of completely destroying your society as it was. We are not currently in a good situation. While some of your people's weapons will be stopped by modern starship design, we hope you may be able to help us develop something that can allow us to overcome these threats."

"Oh my! These are some significant details, I shall have to think on this for a moment."

Hm.

Interest in weapons technology is optimistic on several levels. Less likely that their current military capacity could prevent escape. Dangerous aliens seeking revenge suggests risks associated with supporting the Cardassians, but could also be intended to present the universe beyond this planet as unacceptably dangerous.

Wrong question. First branch point. Do they actually want military tech? More likely yes. If they don't, they probably want to distract and delay. If they want the help, they'll be more likely to take what they can get. If they want to delay, they'll more likely push for something specific, especially something especially dangerous or horrifying or time-consuming.

Second branch point. Are there actually aliens invading? Leaning towards yes. The woman is still difficult to read, but some amount of emotion sensitivity is coming through, and she seems legitimately upset when discussing the subject. Act as though invasion is real for now, ample opportunities available for additional evidence once more local context is acquired. More thorough thought reading, or access to public data channels.

Selection of "Dominion" and "Klingon Empire" as enemies may be significant or irrelevant, depending on other context. Details to keep in mind, but not viable to process in higher detail yet.

Safest choice is to make preliminary offer of self-defense technology. Less information extracted that way, but since it's probably what they expect, they'll continue with a more standard playbook that might be easier to identify.

"I would need to know more about your current technological and military base, and that of your enemies, in order to have a chance of saying whether my own knowledge is useful. I do not know with what weapons my people eradicated my history, but I do know that annihilating planets was not the focus of most of our tools. Without knowing more of the history and nature of this conflict, I could perhaps offer what my culture would have considered tools of self-defense? The greatest of these are effective at scales of cities. Your own engineering expertise may permit me to retool them for ship usage."

Oh. Oh! Ocett has read intelligence reports on the Stone of Gol, if there is a version of that which can be used against an entire city, and that could be used by warships...

Well, the Union will never need worry about the Klingons again, and it will probably be enough to keep the Dominion away for at least a few months.

"General civilian technology will be included in the morning summaries, there will be quite a few of them at this rate. I will need to petition my superiors for permission to grant you military clearance, it may take several days for that to come through, but I am sure we can spend those days productively."

Ocett is planning to go off duty for the day and get some rest, is there anything R'vneh needs before the morning?

There is not, so long as the replicator and some further opportunity to think remain available.

Of course.

Ocett leaves to file some reports and officially request clearance for an alien military contractor.

And R'vneh rests.

Circulatory system basically working, now. Repairing muscles and organ damage will take longer. Also high priority is stretching psionic senses, and especially trying to get a better read on the Cardassians.

She relaxes into herself and the world, heart rate and biometrics slowing to something closer-resembling sleep. Her mind spreads out into the surrounding space, hampered by the psychic shielding in the walls, but not wholly-so. Set the body to slow repair, and listen for anything interesting. Close enough to sleep to be restful, but not enough to miss an attack. A princess has her fair share of assassination attempts.

Ocett returns in the morning with a pile of datapads, she says good morning to the princess and stops at R'vneh's replicator for a cup of gelat before sitting at the table.

"This is absurdly inefficient, I have a team of engineers working on a pad you'll be able to use properly, but our universal translator does not interact with user interfaces well. This was the functional workaround they had to organize files in Old High Vulcan."

"Hah, a small sacrifice of inconvenience. I appreciate the reading material."

Silly inconveniences point towards attempts to distract and delay, but the quality of the translator is itself confusing. They noticeably improve in a handful of spoken sentences, but text is apparently more difficult? Even heavily selected reading material will be very helpful, though.

She really hopes R'vneh can slow down the impossible achievements a little bit. It's hard to project a proper aura of mastery and competence when all of your timelines are constantly being shortened from several weeks to as soon as physically possible. The situation has at least allowed her and Legate Hoval to grow closer commiserating over the insanity of former Order projects.

"This one," she pulls the first pad off the pile and hands it to R'vneh, "has historical data for Romulus and Vulcan from your father's lifetime to the present day. He's one of only a handful of figures from that period we know by name, I am sorry that we do not have specific information on any other members of your family, but Vulcans and Romulans refuse to share their family names with other species. We were able to read yours in the cryopod computer, but if you care to find any of your siblings' descendants, you will need to personally request that the appropriate governments check their records for relatives of yours in the future."

"Given the current state of military affairs, the Cardassian Union cannot currently guarantee you safe passage to Romulan or Federation space. I am sorry, but once things are under control, we would be glad to escort you anywhere you like." She is genuinely sad about this, Romulans are the only people she is aware of who truly understand the importance of one's family.

She has started drafting a message to ask Commander Galathon to assist in research, but she's still working on plausible reasons to even be asking the question.

Slow down the impossible achievements? R'vneh will (not) do her best.

"I suppose there are few other figures that loom larger to my recollection. I wonder how accurate the recollections are."

R'vneh skims the file. Is this the right Sudoc she remembers? Is there any information to suggest why old katras haven't been consulted? Have all the old katras been destroyed? That would be deeply horrifying, the worst atrocity in history. Well, T'Khasan history. Who knows how bad the rest of the universe is.

It is a very long file, but on a cursory glance there does not seem to be any reference to katras.

Unfortunate. Is Gul Ocett leaving R'vneh to read the file, or would she like to explain the next one first?

"I am afraid that you are the only person who could really know that."

"This one is an overview of current interstellar factions and their relation to each other. Current and former alliances and battles."

"This one is on Cardassian culture, and I would recommend reading it before this one, which should explain our history and the current system of governance. Finally, this one has engineering details, tolerances, and schematics for a few interesting pieces of civilian equipment. And we should have this one set up so you can take notes, the stylus can be used as a psionic interface."

She is leaving! R'vneh can speak to the computer if she requires anything additional.

"Thank you!"

And she reads. Particularly looking for general local context. How do the Cardassians want to present themselves, are there any inherent contradictions in the presentation? What seems to be the extent and scale of their engineering knowledge, does the psionic interface imply they already have psionic weapons, or the building blocks of them? And at lowest urgency but high priority, what's a rough outline of modern "Vulcan" history? Are there clear derivations from historic T'Khasi, or does it look like the culture was near-completely reset?

There are no contradictions present in any of the material on the Cardassian Union! How could anyone even consider speaking of the state inappropriately!

There are tremendous contradictions present in the materials on how the Cardassians present themselves, but there are some indications that these contradictions are most present in the past few years and may be based in the political context that Ocett mentioned last night.

Engineering knowledge is not vastly beyond her, most of the differences are the sorts of things that can be derived from easy access to replicator technology, with the possible exception of transporters. Much higher precision machining and unfettered access to most rare materials make many projects far more practical, and reduce the cost of prototyping significantly. The civilian engineering documentation has nothing relating to psionics, either they are mostly used for military purposes, or it's just interfaces and they weren't considered important enough for the first round of documentation.

The society currently present on T'Khasi sounds most like the cult on P'jem. About 200 years ago there was a major cultural resurgence of Surakian Cthiism after a copy of Surak's original writings were rediscovered in the Forge. Before that, they were more warlike and had been involved in imperialist conflict, but still with a weird insistence that they have no feelings or interests on any subjects. The images included look mostly like the world she remembers, but less fortified, and the temple on Mount Seleya looks much less worn, but otherwise the same.

Apparently, the modern name for the world is Minshara, but the residents are not particularly concerned with what aliens want to call it.

Sudoc died either after over a thousand years of rule, or after about 200 years of rule, unclear which. He died when a meld with one of his generals caused an embolism, and shortly before the Sundering.

The Sundering is just recorded as an unknown disaster, which caused many to flee T'Khasi in a fleet of colony ships. Vulcans and Romulans seem to have some records on the matter, but sparse and highly contradictory ones.

Modern Romulans are descended from a fraction of the fleet that fled. Most of those who survived had identified themselves as the Children of Ket-Cheleb, lead by Tellus, before leaving T'Khasi. There was a Surakian leader as well named S'task. S'task abandoned the governance of the people shortly after settling the new world, and Tellus lead the remainder of the council that had lead them to Romulus until his death, roughly 90 years after they settled the planet. With the loss of Tellus, the clans fell upon each other in a series of wars that rendered their ships impossible to repair, and shut off the Romulan people from the stars for centuries. Eventually, they came together as a planetary government in order to launch a space program. They quickly started colonizing other worlds and currently hold hundreds of inhabited planets. It has been 700 years since the Romulan Empire was ruled by an emperor, currently the military is overseen by the Praetor, and other matters are debated in the Senate.

Still no reference to katras.

So their records are obvious propaganda, but look like they're probably the same propaganda the civilians get. A promising level of sincerity!

Cardassian society overall looks remarkably stable and peaceful. While clearly imperfect, their anti-revolutionary structures appear to have been broadly effective. Even in their recent rebellion, the revolutionary forces were able to replace the existing world government wholesale, maintaining a unified administration. Fewer psionic tools for crime prevention, too. If they actually have a singular interstellar government, they must be incredibly effective at suppressing criminal activity. Lots to learn about their methodology.

The engineering documentation suggests there is room for additional innovation, though obviously some of the modern techniques will take adjustment to figure out. The existence of the psionic interface and the possibility of psionic shielding in the walls suggests they do have psi-reactive materials, too. Seems workable, they want to encourage actually working on the weapons.

Vulcan history (Minsharan?) is more concerning. In a certain sense it is optimistic that the Cthiists seem to have taken a while to improve their governance. Better leadership may have been possible, but it did not automatically fall out of giving in to cultists. The "Sundering" must have happened not long after the departure of the Koon Heya. Consistent with other information. The Koon Heya was heading in the approximate direction of Romulus, and would have identified it as a viable candidate if not interrupted. Possibly it even reported back that identification. It is unclear when the cryopod was lost.

Cause of the Sundering is unknown to Cardassians. Sufficient to cause the collapse of the empire. Perhaps father's death was enough in itself. Tellus wouldn't have killed him, it must have been another of the generals. That suggests the Romulans may remember father in a positive light? He never expected to be well-regarded, but followers of Tellus who left immediately after his death might preserve his status as a hero where others would let him pass more maligned. No need to be unnecessarily optimistic, but something to investigate.

R'vneh will spend several hours reading, taking occasional cryptic notes. A T'Khasan mind can't implement public key cryptography on handwritten text, but a trained psion can chunk writing in ways that make simpler encryption readable. No time to try hacking the datapad yet, though.

Well, it is generally ineffective to attempt to rush any movements of the Great Machine that is the Cardassian Union, however much it would help to be able to provide military schematics to... okay, working out Princess R'vneh's specific status on Cardassia may be the order of the day, along with glaring at the technicians that handed her six pads to pass on this morning. In retrospect it is a good security measure to make the user interface on military pads unable to interact with the universal translator software, but it is frustrating to be stymied by counter-insurgency protocols again. She had more than enough of that when taking the facility.

She appreciates the efforts to establish her as a living person who exists. Also for reestablishing the "living" part. That was handy.

R'vneh will spend a few hours sketching out a design for a rudimentary emotion sensor that works on Cardassians using materials they have available in the replicator. She'll talk the design over with them before actually building one. In between design concepts, she'll also poke around the pad to see how easy it would be to interface with directly. Can the psionic interface be used to upload and execute code?

No actually, that is exactly what this particular protocol is designed to prevent!