Curious about the seraphic guests, the Emperor tapped in to Beatrice's audiovisual feed in order to watch them make their wa through the capital vessel to the meeting room where he waited. The fact that these aliens were of impossible beauty with feathery wings matched very well with certain Promethean legends of celestial messengers and warriors in service to ancient deities, but so far it was impossible to tell whether these were indeed such creatures, or merely styled to look like them. Regardless, there were clearly no small amount of genetic modifications involved in the design of these alien girls, as such beauty didn't exist naturally in all of the known galaxy.
He approved of the way Beatrice answered their questions without providing any classified information, as these alien girls most definitely did not have clearance. One girl's question about rape didn't surprise him... after all, it wasn't unusual for matriarchal cultures to view men as savage beasts... but even he didn't realize just how low the rape rate was in the Imperial Armada. He would have preferred it to be nonexistent, of course, but knew such things weren't realistically possible with sentient life forms.
Once they did enter, he chuckled somewhat at Beatrice's slip of speech, wondering if it was truly accidental or intentional. It was hard to tell these things, when it came to hyper-advanced artificial intelligence life forms who could perceive an entire year of events within a nanosecond and calculate accordingly. "Thank you, Beatrice," he said to the hologram. Switching to neural induction input, he thought his next question to the Cytherean without speaking aloud or showing any sign of communication. "Did you want to bring your body here?"
Trying not to show any reaction to the blushing girls, he didn't make eye contact with them as he seated them, admittedly somewhat nervous to be in the presence of not one, but four such beauties. "Of course..." he managed to reply to Irida, her adorably shy reaction causing him to feel a bit more confident, as she had suddenly become ten times cuter than the more serious expressions she had used in her long range communications.
As the smallest girl noted the concealed battlesuit in the corner and mentioned it to others, the Emperor gave a sigh. Due to the high level of stealth technology utilized by the Imperium, very few aliens were capable of noticing them at all, and none without some additional detection technlogy. The fact that the Seraphkin were capable to seeing Gunther's battlesuit with nothing other than their own highly augmented bodies indicated that their level of biotech enhancements equaled... or perhaps even exceeded... those of the Imperium itself.
"That level of firepower is normal for heavy combat operations... which this is not," the Emperor stressed in response to Celeste's question. "Gunther, get out of that thing and sit over here." He gestured to the chair on his right hand side, and the battlesuit reluctantly complied, opening up to reveal an equally scary looking muscle man with a large longsword on his back. Gunther silently made his way over to the seat next to the Emperor, the battlesuit remaining in position.
"Don't just leave it there," Donald III muttered, "Take it out of the room at least." As the battlesuit's combat systems were fully capable of operating remotely through neural induction, Gunther was hesitant again to reply, but gave a simple nod, the battlesuit walking out of the room to leave the three Achenarans alone with the four Seraphkin girls.
"Now then..." he said, once again directing his attention towards Irida as she was the leader of the four girls. "You'll have to excuse Gunther.. after a series of assassination attempts, he has become far too overprotective. We should discuss the upcoming battle, instead. To do that, however, I'll need to know more about your fleet, and their combat capabilities. Any information you or your strategist can provide regarding the nature of your technology, firepower, tactics, and how you measure up against Asmodean war vessels would be useful. Withholding information or other lack of cooperation is likely to result in higher CCC casualties in the upcoming battle, after all."
He knew it was normal to withhold information of tactical significance when dealing with civilizations whose intentions were unknown, but he wanted Irida to be aware of the fact that doing so would be detrimental to the cooperation that she had agreed to in the upcoming battle. Glancing over at the other Seraph girls, he noted the dark-haired girl and the blonde, figuring one or the other was an experienced military commander with knowledge of strategy and tactics that would prove useful when coordinating combat efforts against the Asmodeans.
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