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A Submariner in Space - Episode 2
🕑 Added 2021-09-01 09:32:32 +0000 UTCA/N: Hey, guys! So, I've got family visiting this week, and I'm spending most of my days with them, and that doesn't leave me a whole lot of time or energy to write, but I have been striving to maintain the habit of writing. I've been doing some work on Episode 17, but most of that writing involves a lot of figurative heavy lifting with wrapping everything in Act III up and tying it all together in sensible fashion, and I haven't had the energy to make much progress on that (though special thanks to SemperRabbit, he's been a HUGE help with some important details).
That said, I have been plugging away at the next episode of A Submariner in Space. It's a lot easier to write right now, mostly because I don't have nearly as many characters or as much plotting or back story to deal with. Retreat, Hell is still going to be my main focus, but between family visits and work, I'm not expecting to have the next episode finished until well into September.
In the meantime, though, here's another episode of A Submariner in Space! Enjoy!
P.S. In case you missed it, we've got a Discord now! Come say hi!
https://discord.gg/bujmJ6sQxC
A Submariner in Space – Episode 2
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Mark slowly drifted back to consciousness, pulled there by several soft beeps and tones, at least one of which was keeping time with his hear. Am I in a hospital? Why am I … Was that a dream?
He opened his eyes. The ceiling was tall, almost vaulted, with smooth, metal frames and paneling. That doesn’t look like any hospital I’ve ever been in … He blinked. I’m lying naked on a table again. He carefully tried to raise an arm, and found it unrestrained by anything other than a light sheet. Well, at least I’ve got some decency this time around…
With a quiet sigh, he turned his head to the left. Yep. A bunch of fancy touch screens and symbols I don’t recognize. And everything’s at a more reasonable height … He pondered for a moment. They obviously picked me up, and I’m in some kind of medical room, so that’s a good sign … maybe … Still naked, again, but I’ve got a sheet, and I’m not strapped down, and this table is cushioned …
A cart rolled into view. This one didn’t seem to be quite as flimsy as the one he took cover behind. Instead of any of his personal belongings, however, it had an array of what looked like super-whamadyne space age alien surgical tools.
“Oh, fuck, no,” he said, pushing himself up.
The alien pushing the cart yapped in surprise, but quickly recovered. Tail swishing behind it, it started chittering and yammering at him in a completely unknown language.
Mark paused, not expecting the smooth transition to what seemed very much like happy rambling. He looked the russet orange-furred alien up and down. Human-sized, and humanoid, ish … It looks like … something between a red panda, a cat, and a weasel. Sort of. With spots and stripes. He raised an eyebrow. And female? Maybe. Judging by the curves … He shook his head. Nope, no, it’s an alien. Just assume those are venom sacks and it can spit face-melting acid across the room until proven otherwise.
The alien’s yammering stopped in an exaggerated sigh. It cocked its head at him, looking at him with both eyes and one ear, while casually leaning against the cart. They stared at each other for a moment that was just long enough to start getting awkward when the alien rolled it’s shoulders, and started talking again. It reached down and picked up one of the alien surgical tools and took a step forward.
“Nope, no, no, fucking no!” Mark said, pushing himself the rest of the way up to a sitting position.
The alien immediately cut itself off and changed tones, holding both hands up as it took a few hasty steps back.
They stared at each other for another long moment. The alien narrowed its eyes at him. its ears swiveling back and forth. Its tail curved up behind it, the black-furred tip cocked slightly to its left.
Then the unexpected happened.
The alien hopped to its left, gracefully turning mid-air, and started yammering away at something invisible. It said a few words, then hopped to its right, spinning around to face where it once stood. It adopted a very frowny-looking face, and yammered away in a deeper voice. The words this time sounded like repeated variations of the same word.
It hopped back to the left, eyes wide, ears swept back, head tilted, and spoke again. This time, with its normal voice.
Another hop to the right, and with its fake-deep voice, it blathered on with what was starting to sound like the alien version of “Blah blah. Blah-blah-blah. Blah-di-blah.”
Hopping back around, it made more sensible, if unintelligible word sounds, shaking its tool at the other it. It then stepped around next to where it had hopped before, and started pantomiming doing something with the tool in exaggerated motions.
A moment later, it stepped back and spoke again. Another hop, and deep-voice seemed to be able to speak properly now. It hopped again, swapped the tool to its left hand, then held out its right with a few words. Another hop, and fake-deep-voice held out its hand. It pantomimed a shake, then shifted to one half of a verticle clasp, with a few words.
One last hop, and normal-voice rambled a few words before turning to Mark. It passed the tool back to its right hand and wiggled it at him, head and ears cocked.
Mark just sat there and stared, transfixed by the bizarre antics that took place before him. He blinked. “That was … unorthodox, but I think I got your point …” He waved the alien forward, and tapped the device the gray aliens had implanted above his left ear. Am I really being casual about that, already? He thought, before brushing the distraction away. Nope, just don’t have time to freak out. Except for those four hours in the pod …
The alien stepped up to him, and tapped his chest with its hand. Mark looked down, and marveled at how similar to a human hand it looked. The proportions seem a little off, but otherwise you could mistake it for a furry human hand, except that … oh. That’s not a pinky finger, it’s a second thumb. Huh.
The alien fully placed its hand on his chest and gently started to push. Mark got the hint, and laid back down. “Go easy on me, Doc, it’s my, uh … second time?”
The alien brought the tool up to the side of his head, gently folding down the top of his ear with a single finger. Or is that a thumb? It started rambling away again as it worked.
Mark felt a few clicks and a distinct beep in the back of his head as the alien worked. It retrieved another device off the cart with one hand, and plugged a tiny probe connected to a thin wire to something. Another beep in the back of his skull. He felt a twinge cascade through his brain, distinctly smelt the color purple, and suddenly he could understand the alien.
“-and he was just a straight-up asshole, and what’s a girl to do, right? So, I realized I wasn’t going to get out of that situation without a fight, so I kicked him right in the funbox! Only then I remembered that he didn’t have a funbox, so I-“
A door opened behind her. “Yaeri!” A very large, intimidating alien with skin as rough and gray as slate stormed in. It looks like an orc and a gorilla had a mutant lovechild with an elephant that grew an extra pair of little, grabby arms to compensate for getting fake muscle injections in the womb. And told its mother off for daring to show it any affection. “What is the status of the unknown alien? I see it is awake. Can it talk?”
The doctor straightened, fumbling a bit with her stool. “Prefect Ordani, sir, I was just finishing the recalibration of its translator, sir, and have completed uploading the standard language codex, sir!”
“Good, then it can answer questions.” Ordani stepped forward, looming over her and Mark. This guy must be over seven feet tall!
“Uh, no, he can’t.” her ears flicked down, voice heavy with ‘are you an idiot’ sass.
The large, charcoal-scaled alien slowly turned to glare at the doctor. “Why? Is it’s translator defective?”
She scoffed. “No, it’s top-level Ikl’n technology. It’s better than anything we could make.”
He narrowed his eyes at the doctor. “Then why.”
“Uh, because I only just uploaded the codex!” she waved at Mark. “Whatever language he speaks isn’t in our database. The translator has to build his linguistic library into the codex from scratch. That takes weeks, or even months to build a library comprehensive enough to have more than the most basic of conversations, and years to fully flesh out all the nuance and important minutiae of spoken language.” Tail and hands waved in the air. “And that’s also assuming that spoken language is its dominant means of communication! For all we know, it mostly communicates with fart smells and interpretive sneezing!”
Ordani leaned down and slowly took hold of Yaeri’s jumpsuit, pulling her close. “Do not forget your place, Doctor Mreshi. You are a civilian on a military ship. You will show the respect that is due.”
Yaeri swallowed, ears flat back. “Yes, sir. My most humblest apologies, sir.”
The prefect growled, but released the doctor. He turned away from her, pacing about the room. “You have completed your examination, have you not?”
“I have completed a basic medical examination.”
He turned back to Yaeri. “Then what is your assessment, Doctor? Is it military? Are the Ikl’n creating a new war asset?”
“No, sir, he is not military.”
“No!?” Ordani spun around. “I read the initial reports. I saw the initial scans. It’s muscle and bone densities are absurd! It weighs more than I do! Surely, it is military!”
“His DNA structure is built on the standard nitrogen-based nucleotides, and there are no signs of genetic manipulation in his DNA sequences.” She paused. “Besides, he’s virile.”
Ordani narrowed his eyes at Mark. “No genetic manipulation at all? Then how do you explain the muscle and bone density?”
Yaeri shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a doctor, not an oracle. Maybe he’s from some high-gravity world and the Ikl’n snatched him up to steal his DNA. Maybe he’s actually an Ikl’n that got exposed to bizarre radiation from an oddly-colored star and mutated into some freakish super-Ikl’n. It takes more than half a day and a medical examination to figure these things out.”
With a growl, the prefect stalked back over to Yaeri. He leaned close. “Mind your tongue, Doctor, or I will render you as baren as everyone else on this vessel myself. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, eyes and ears low.
“Good. Inform me as soon as it can communicate.” Ordani spun on his heel and stomped to the door. “I’ll have you carving pictures in each other’s’ skin, if I have to.” The doors slid open before him, and a few moments after he departed, slid shut.
Well, that was interesting, Mark thought, having decided it was best to play along with Yaeri for now.
“Prickless … Prick.” Yaeri said to the closed door. “Ha! And jokes on you! My [ovaries] already got destroyed!” She flicked an ear back, tail tip cocked to the left as she looked over her shoulder at him. “Point of fact, freak accidents with high-powered X-Ray projectors don’t actually give you superpowers. Big bummer, I know.” Her ears flicked up. “But all the other bits still work just fine. That’s the important part, I guess …”
She rolled her shoulders, then turned back to Mark, glancing between him and the other tools on the cart. “Now, let’s see, where was I …” She flicked an ear at him, eyes narrowed. “This would be a bit easier if we could actually understand each other, but … I suppose that also means you won’t mind me talking away while I work.” Her ears flicked up. “And you can’t tell me to shut up, even if you do, ha!”
Huh. So she wasn’t bullshitting that Prefect asshole … If they don’t know I can understand them, that could be very useful …
Yaeri grabbed another alien surgical tool from her arsenal, and started rambling on as if he couldn’t understand anything she said. “Ordani is right, though. Your bone and muscle densities are absurd, but there’s no sign of genetic tinkering or tampering.” She shook her head, flicking an ear at him as she slowly waved the tool over his body. “You’re 100% all natural. You also fall right into Kalmsba’s Standard Deviation for intelligent species size.”
She waved her tool about in the air, before going back to intently running it back and forth over the approximate location of his left kidney. “Turns out, with standard nitrogen-based nucleotide DNA and carbon-phosphorous cycles, there is a certain range of optimal neural configurations, and a certain optimum size of brain, and brain-to-body-mass ratio, to produce an intelligent, tool-using species. Has to do with energy densities, chemical system potentials, and a bunch of other hogash I haven’t needed to remember since Second Sequence, ha!” She poked the scanner in his direction, tilting an ear and narrowing an eye at him. “That’s why all the different species we’ve encountered are mostly close to the same height and body proportions.”
She moved the scanning tool around his abdomen, stopping over his right kidney. “Ha! You got two of these! Whatever they are …” She proceeded to do another slow scan. “This would go a lot faster if the full body scanner worked.” She flicked her ears back. “Well, it does, technically, but your super-dense skeleton causes it all sorts of problems, and modifying it to work better isn’t allowed.” Her ears splayed to the sides as she shook her head. “Can’t go doing anything that makes sense, now, can we?”
She moved the scanner along. “Got any more of those? Heh.” She passed the scanner around his abdomen a while.
She’s a talker, isn’t she? Mark thought as she continued to ramble on while scanning his torso. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing … Not sure if it’s a good idea to give them scans of my organs, but everything I’ve seen so far indicates she’s just trying to help … Information trade? Didn’t Bruce Lee say something about watching and listening? Pretty sure there’s some Sun Tzu shit there, too …
“You’re being awfully cooperative, you know,” she said, moving the scanner up his torso. “Heh,” she swung an ear around and leaned towards him. “Do you let all the ladies scan you? Heheh.” She straightened up. “Sorry, I’m crude, and not good with being appropriate and respectful. Mama always said it would be the death of me, but, hey! I’m still kickin’!” She grinned. “Besides, what’s a life lived without a little fun?”
“Plus,” she moved the scanner up to the bottom of his ribcage and started moving it back and forth. Her ears swept low and she half talked through her teeth. “I’ve been stuck on this military ship as a ‘volunteered replacement’ for their regular doc, who went and got himself killed or something, for eight months, and a girls got needs, you know?” She frowned at the scanner, then waved at it him. “This ain’t cutting it, anymore. Time to break out the big guns!”
Grinning, she walked back to the cart. “So, yeah, you go long enough without scratching an itch, and it’ll start driving you bonkers.” She set the scanner down and picked up a large device that looked like a cross between a circular saw and an ultrasound scanner. “Aw, yeah, this should do the trick!” Mark started to get a little worried.
“Not that I haven’t tried to scratch that itch. And, I mean, I can take care of myself and all, of course. Heh.” She nudged him with her elbow. “Nobody knows what you like better than you, am I right?” The scanner turned on with an ominous hum. “Now THIS is scanning power! It won’t irradiate you. Probably. Too badly.” She winked at him. “Just kidding! I have no idea how this works! Because, plot twist, I’M NOT THAT KIND OF DOCTOR!”
Mark grit his teeth as the scanner wound up and she started passing it over his ribcage. He tensed in anticipation of pain that. Never. Came … Yaeri giggled. “Look at you, getting all scared. Sorry, I might have played that up a bit, but I’ve been going out of my mind here. First, I’m the only maohni onboard. Which is fine, I ain’t speciesist or anything, but it’s nice to see a face that kinda looks familiar now and then, you know? Second, well, we already talked about problem number two.”
She rolled her eyes. “And, trust me, I’ve tried, none of them are even interested in helping me play with my toys.” Her ears flicked up. “Which I made all myself!” She grinned. “Had to get creative for a while.” She switched to an exaggerated whisper. “And none of them even knew about it!”
Pausing her scan of his ribcage, she polished her fingers against her chest. “Pretty proud of what I put together, if I do say so, myself. I’m a bit of a tech hobbyist.” She turned the scanner back on. “And I by a bit, I mean, I’m a huge tech hobbyist. It’s a lot of fun to play around with.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Not a career. Definitely not a career, thank the ancestors I didn’t wind up in that field, but it is fun to play around with.”
Shifting the scanner to the middle of his chest, her ears shot up. “Woah, there’s your thumper. I’m no medical doctor, but I am a xenobiologist. I mean, I did get stuck with a year-and-a-half of medical understudy before I was able to convince the system that I should be studying a much more interesting field, and I’m sure anyone with more than two brain cells to smack together can figure out what a heart is, but that’s definitely a blood-pumper!”
She grinned at him as she held the scanner over his heart. “You wanna know what I studied? My field of expertise? My passion in life? Go on, guess. I’ll wait.” She waved a hand at him. “Nah, I’m just playin’, I’ll just tell you.” She met his eyes. “Clams. Freshwater clams.”
Yaeri gave him probably the dopiest dumb look he had ever seen in his life. Did she just make her eyeballs go sideways? It was all Mark could do to keep a straight face and not burst out laughing on the spot.
“Ha, no, I’m just joking!” She chittered a laugh. “Can you imagine!? Someone devoting their whole life to the study of freshwater clams?!” She coughed and straightened herself. “I mean, I’m sure it’s an important field of study, and has great importance in both ecological effect and indication of ecological health. But, still.” She snorted. “Freshwater clams! Ha!”
The next few minutes were taken up by her chuckling to herself at her own joke. “Ahh… Ancestors, I’m going crazy.” She shook her head. “It’s so nice to have someone to talk to. I’ve decided to pretend that we’re the best of friends, and you are such a good listener. I really do appreciate it. Because, and this brings us back to problem number three, I can’t talk to aaanyone here.” She rolled her eyes. “Military types are aaalll the same.” She threw on a fake-deep voice. “It’s all ‘orders’ and ‘proto-col’ and ‘remember your place’ and ‘do not speak to me, civilian. Uggh.”
She sighed. “You want to know what I managed to convince the system to let me study?” She glanced at him. “My real passion?” She was silent for a moment as she adjusted the scanner. The first time she had stopped talking for more than the time it took to take a breath.
“Birds,” she said, running the scanner over his collarbone. “Specifically, feather shape, pattern, and coloration, and the evolutionary pressures that drive it.” She smiled. “I always liked feathers, especially the ones that had sexual pressure to develop incredible colors.” She smiled in silence for a moment, until she had finished scanning the base of his neck.
The heavy scanner beeped as she turned it off. “Alright, I’m pretty sure even this thing isn’t going to be able to make it through that dense skull of yours.” She returned it to the cart and retrieved the other scanner. “So, it’s time to start heading in the other direction! Because, you know, I’m an idiot and started in the middle instead of picking an end.” She laughed. “But that’s okay! Because I have no idea. What. I’m. Doing!” She punched her hands in the air with each word.
“Ha, okay, so I’ve got at least half an idea of what I’m doing. Or maybe even, like, seventy-five percent. But Ancestors, I’m a xenobiologist, not a medical doctor!” She sighed, wiping a hand across her face. “Ugh, sorry. It’s just been really hard. All by myself. Alone. On a ship filled with military.” She patted his arm, then paused. “You know, I don’t even know your name. I’ll have to figure that out when we’re done here. It shouldn’t be hard to do that much, even without a calibrated translator. If your people even use names …”
She shook her head, ears waggling. “But, still, unnamed person that I have just met, you are the closest and bestest friend I have on the entire ship!” She glanced at him, quirking an ear at him, then looked him from head, to toe, and back. “You know, you’re even kinda cute. In a weird, furless, flat-faced kinda way.”
Quirking an ear, she glanced towards his waist. “Though your bone’s a bit, uh, floppy. And undersized.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Freak X-Ray accident in your youth, too?” She scoffed. “Happens to the best of us.”
Mark struggled to repress another laugh. I don’t know if I should feel insulted, or scandalized …
Her gaze drifted back towards his waist. “I wonder, though,” she brought her hand up to scratch her chin, resting her elbow on his chest. “If I could make it work.” She sighed, shifting her hand to slide up the side up her head and tug at an ear. “Ancestors know it’s the only one I’ll find aboard this damned warship.”
Mark snorted, unable to keep himself silent any longer. “Jeez, Doc, buy me dinner, first.”
“AAAHHH!” Yaeri disappeared, followed shortly by the clatter of her scanner on the deck.
Looking to his left, Mark found her crouched on the far side of the room where she had thrown herself. She stared at him wide-eyed, her ears laid back flat against her skull. “You can talk!”
“Yep.”
“How can you talk?!”
“Uh … Super-whamodyne alien translator doohickey?” He waved a finger in the vicinity of his left ear as he sat up, swinging his legs off the table bed.
Her ears twitched. “Yeah, but, uh …” she shook her head. “You shouldn’t be talking right now! It takes days to even start to develop new languages, nevermind converse …” She fell silent, her ears swinging upright, tail raised with the tip cocked to her left. “Those sneaky bastards! They already had a translation codex for your language! All the translator would have needed to do was merge the data from the standard codex!” She frowned.
“Wait.” Her ears swept back as her eyes went wide in horror. “How long have you been able to understand me?!”
“Uh,” he scratched the back of his head. “When you were talking about kicking a guy in his funbox, right after you fiddled with the translator in my head.”
Mark didn’t think her eyes could get any wider, but they did. She emitted a sound that was halfway between a screech, a mew, and the death knell of a Tamagotchi. “By the ancestors, please don’t tell them I’m crazy. I turned the recorders off in here, and there wasn’t anyone to actually hear all the stupid shit that goes through my brain, I’m not really like that, I always try to be respectful and-“
“Woah, woah, woah, Doc,” Mark said, waving a hand at her as he pulled the sheet around himself. “I didn’t hear anything that sounded like actual crazy, to me. I’ve certainly said and heard a lot worse, myself.” He chuckled. “Trust me, I know what it’s like to be cooped up in a small space with a bunch of assholes for an extended period of time.” He hopped off the table, taking a moment to find his balance, before tying the sheet around his waist. Gravity here is stronger than the Gray ship, but it definitely ain’t Earth.
“Heh, yeah, it’s not been fun, I’ve had to- Great Ancestors, you heard everything!” She buried her head in her hands, smoothly dropping from her crouched position to the deck. “I’m just going to go find a whole to crawl into and die of embarrassment, now …”
“Hey, I have three sisters, I’ve heard worse. Not that I wanted to, but I’ve heard worse.” He stared into space for a moment as a long-buried memory of walking into the garage to find his older sister and her boyfriend resurfaced. He shook his head, burying it back down. “So, anyway, uh … Can I get my pants back, please?”
“Yeah, um … Sure,” she said, pulling her head up from her hands. “They’re, uh,” she ran her hands over her head, folding her ears down and scratching at the back of her skull. “Yeah, I put them over here.” She stood up with fluid grace, and walked across the room.
Mark followed her to a counter that had been obscured from view, where all his clothes had been laid out. He stumbled a few times, a lot lighter on his feet than he was used to. The lack of a handgun with his clothes was briefly concerning, before he remembered that he hadn’t been wearing it when he passed out. Hopefully, everything’s still in the Bronco …
He picked up his clothes, then looked at her. “Um, a little privacy?”
“Why? I’ve already seen everything.” She gave him her dopey dumb look, ears sagging in opposite directions. “Ha, no, I’m just kidding!” She tapped his arm. “I’ll just be around the corner.” She jerked a thumb towards the bed he woke up on as she stepped away. “Though, I gotta say, watching you move despite being so heavy is interesting, even if you’re tripping over yourself.”
“Yeah, the gravity’s a bit lighter than I’m used to,” he said, struggling a little to find his balance in said lighter gravity as he got dressed.
“I figured you were from a high-gravity world, as dense as you are. Physically, I mean, not mentally. Though maybe also mentally. Ha!” she chuckled. “I’m from a high gravity world, myself! The ship’s set to galactic standard, which is okay, but Khatsen is twenty percent above the standard, so it makes me feel like I’ve got super-strength.”
“Heh, yeah, definitely a lot lighter than I’m used to,” he said, straightening his shirt as he stepped back around the corner, socks and shoes in hand. “Though it’s not as bad as the Gray ship.”
“Gray ship?” She quirked an ear, head tilted at him. “Oh! The Ikl’n! Heh. Yeah, they’re from a light gravity world. Like, two-thirds of the galactic standard. Makes ‘em kinda squishy.” She shrugged. “They’re supposedly crazy smart, and some of their tech is insane, but they’re also known for being kinda panicky under stress.”
“Yep, all of that checks,” Mark said, leaning against the bed to put his socks and shoes on.
“So how did you end up in a Ikl’n cargo pod, floating in deep space?” Yaeri asked, pushing the cart back against a bulkhead before walking over to study his footwear.
“Woke up on an operating table when they were finishing up with this thing,” he tapped his translator. “I freaked out, they freaked out, I threw a couple of them against a bulkhead, then their security teams chased me around their ship and into the cargo pod. I killed one of them in a power suit, then they sealed my pod and jettisoned it.”
“Huh. Those power suits are pretty tough, even for heavy worlders like me. They’re designed to stand against military forces. That must have been a nasty fight.”
“Uh, yeah,” Mark scratched his head. “I, uh, I had to hit it pretty hard.”
“I’ll bet,” she shook her head. “What were you doing on their ship, in the first place?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” he shrugged. “Last I remember before that, I was back on Earth, driving to my new apartment. It was late, I was in the middle of nowhere, and then a bright light cut out gravity, and I passed out.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Earth!? You’re from Earth?!” She straightened and grabbed both his shoulders. “You’re telling me that your people named a planet dirt!?”
“It’s our homeworld.”
“Pfff hahaha! That’s even worse!” Yaeri doubled over in a breathless fit of giggles. “Let me guess, if you guys had a moon, you’d name it, ‘The Moon,’ wouldn’t you? Hehehehe.”
Mark just stared down at her, clenching his jaw in silence.
“Hahahahaha! Great Ancestors, you did! Tttktkchtkkahaha!” She gasped for breath, falling to her knees. “Hahaha! I can’t breathehehehehehehehe!”
“It’s not that funny,” he said, trying not to smile.
“Dirt! Ahahahahahahahaha!” Yaeri pounded the deck, literally rolling on the floor in laughter. “The moon! Ehehehehehehehe!”
Chuckling despite himself, Mark leaned against the bed and waited for her to laugh herself out.
“Hehehehahaha ohhh. Ohhh. Hehehehe,” she gasped for breath. “Ohh, sorry, ehehehmmhmm. Mmm. Hmhmmmm. Sorry. Hehe.” She coughed, clearing her throat as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. “Sorry, I get, heheh, I get all giggling when I get stressed.” She coughed again. “The dumbest things can set me off sometimes.” She snorted, clamping both hands to her snout, trying to suppress another bout of laughter.
“You good?” he asked, chuckling.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m good now. Heh. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “We use humor and laughter to deal with stress, too.” He reached down, offering her a hand up.
She took it, and he hauled her to her feet, still amazed at how light she was. “Woah!” Shooting up with unexpected speed, she put a hand against his chest to keep herself from crashing into him. “Yeah, you’re strong.” She retrieved both hands and proceeded to straighten her jumpsuit. “So how strong is the gravity on your world? Like, half again standard?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how strong galactic standard is. We’ve only had manned spaceflight for a few decades. The furthest anyone’s been has been the-“ He glanced at her, clearing his throat. “The Moon.”
Yaeri snorted again, but managed to contain herself. The rest of what he said registered, and her ears shot up. “Wait, you’re from an uncontacted species?!”
“Yup, at least, as far as I know, anyway.” He sighed, crossing his arms. “Though given how closely those Iklin, Iklna, whatever, the gray dudes. Given how closely they resemble the classic aliens from the Roswell site and all the different alien abduction claims, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve ‘visited’ us a few times before.”
“Yeah,” she frowned, scratching the base of an ear. “They’ve gotten in trouble for that sort of hogash before.” She sighed. “The Ikl’n aren’t officially a part of the Council, but they’re a major associate, and they’ve been slapped with sanctions before for abducting people.” She snorted. “That’s actually how we found you. We were tracking that Ikl’n ship you were on. We got intel on some new project they were working on for the Concordat, and we were trying to intercept them. But they’re real good at being sneaky. We only picked them up when they jettisoned you, because they did a hard drop from hyper, and a hard jump back in. Lit up a beacon three sectors over.”
“Huh. Lucky for me, I guess.”
“Yeah, though, um … It might be a challenge to get you back home.” Her ears sagged. “We’re way out beyond the edge of settled space.”
Mark nodded. “I was kinda into astronomy as a hobby. Not hugely so, but space has always fascinated me, and I know a few things about where our star system is located in our galaxy that should help, but I understand how big a place the galaxy is.”
Yaeri’s ears swung up. “What’s your home star called?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye. “Is it The Sun?”
“No,” Mark said, head held high. “It is Sol.” She narrowed her eyes at him, her ears slowly sweeping back. He deflated. “Which is old Latin for ‘The Sun.’”
“HA!” she shouted, pointing at him with one hand while clutching her stomach with the other. “Hahahaha!”
Mark chuckled as she stomped her feet, then joined her laughter as she danced about the room in another fit of giggles.
When she recovered, Mark helped her to her feet again, this time with a little more control. “Hooo, woah, boy, heheh. Ahem. Right. Uh. Gravity!” She patted his arm. “Your world’s gotta be, like, half-again Galactic Standard.”
“Nine-point-eight meters per second, squared,” he said.
“What?” She cocked her ears.
“Earth Gravity. One Earth Gravity is nine-point-eight meters per second, squared.”
“What’s a meter?” Her ears cocked in the opposite direction.
“Uhh, standard unit of measure, about, uhh…” He tilted his head. “You guys know the speed of light, right?”
“Uh, yeah.” She rolled her eyes, her ears flicking back.
“Well, for us, the speed of light is just under three hundred million meters per second. I’ve got a watch,” he said, holding up his wrist, “So we can compare units of time measure, and if you’ve got a calculator, we can go from there.”
“Huh.” She tilted an ear. “That’ll work.” She walked over to a console mounted into the bulkhead, waving him after her with her tail. “Let’s start with the time thing, the rest is just math.”
“Right,” he said, following and bringing up the stopwatch function on his watch.
Yaeri tapped a few commands into the console. “Uh … one moment.” She stepped over to the cart and came back with another tool. “Scanner can measure how frequently your watch thing changes, and tell me how many tics to a second.”
Mark nodded. “Makes sense.” He started the stopwatch. “Ready whenever you are.”
Another set of commands tapped into the console, and then she held the scanner over his watch. An image of the watch face showed up on the console, and as the milliseconds and seconds ticked by, the digits were highlighted, and linked to new symbols.
“Huh. Looks like you’re second is about half a tic.” She highlighted a set of symbols that Mark couldn’t read. “Point five zero zero one eight tic, to be exact.” She tapped a few more commands. “So you know, there’s twenty tics in a tam, one hundred tams in a galactic standard hour, and twenty-five hours in a galactic standard day.”
“We’ve got sixty seconds in a minute, and sixty minutes in an hour, and twenty-four hours in a day.”
She dipped an ear at him as she tapped a few more commands into the console. “Alright, math machine time!” She paused mid tap. “I’m an idiot. There’s a converter tool!” She tapped a few more commands, bringing up another window. “Just plug in custom values for time and distance, and trem’s your bobber! Nine-point-eight meters per half tic equals …” Her ears shot up. “Twice the galactic standard gravity?!? That can’t be right.” She re-entered the data, then flipped back to the calculator screen and ran it all manually. “Damn. Are you sure that’s right?”
“Absolutely positive.”
“That can’t be right. You said you’ve sent people to your moon, but that’s above the Olmahjktz Spaceflight Limit!” She frowned, her ears sweeping back. “Let me double-check.” She tapped a few more commands into the console, pulling up more screens and windows. “Yeah, right here,” she pointed at a paragraph of text Mark couldn’t read. “The Olmahjktz Spaceflight Limit is the calculated maximum gravitational pull of a planetary body under which a developing civilization could achieve spaceflight, without advanced material sciences and construction techniques that require spacefaring capabilities to develop and produce. This limit was originally calculated at one-point-six times Galactic Standard Gravity, but was later revised to be one-point-seven-three times Galactic Standard Gravity with the presence of meteoric deposits of certain elements that are only present in trace amounts in planetary crusts.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve definitely put people into space. We’ve sent men to the moon. We’ve got an international space station that’s been continuously manned for a close to a couple decades now, with regular crew rotations. We’ve sent probes all over the solar system, landed a couple SUV-sized rovers on Mars, one of our neighboring planets, and private industry is on the verge of kicking off an all-new space race.”
“Hmm …” Yaeri snagged her tail, fiddling with it with both hands while resting her chin on one of them. After a moment, she flicked her ears. “Heh, whatever. I’ve lost interest in that.” She closed all of the screens down. “The important part, though, is, like, Great Ancestors, you hella strong!” She released her tail, leaning forward. “Can you even walk upright on your homeworld? Do you die if you fall over? How terrified are you of falling?”
Mark chuckled. “Yes, we can walk upright just fine. We don’t do all fours very well. Falling over doesn’t kill us, usually. Only if you fall on something hard or sharp and crack your skull or break your neck. And I’m not afraid of falling. It’s the sudden stop at the end that I’m worried about.”
“Ha! Nice!” Yaeri grinned, tapping his chest. Glancing past him at the door, she groaned. “Ugh, we should probably get to the important work questions, though, before Ordani gets back.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. He seemed like a raging cockbag, and I don’t want to get you into trouble.” He frowned. “I can’t promise I can answer everything, though. Some things I don’t know, and I won’t answer any questions that I think might be used against Earth or Humanity or my home nation.”
“That’s fair, in my opinion,” Yaeri nodded. “But Ordani might not agree.” She frowned, her ears going sideways. “He can be pretty one-tracked and self-important even for military kind.”
“Yeah, I’ve met guys like him before.” Mark rolled his eyes.
“Ancestors, I hope they’re not a universal constant …” Yaeri sighed, then shook her ears. “Anyway. First question that Ordani will definitely want a clear answer to: are you military production? I’m assuming no, because your genes don’t look it, and all your, ahem, equipment seems to work.” She looked away from him, her ears sweeping down. “That might have been the first thing I scanned …”
Mark tilted his head, eyes narrowed. Well, that’s awkward … But moving right along … “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“Were you manufactured or bred to be a military warfighter, or are you a civilian?”
“I wasn’t bred or manufactured for anything,” Mark said. They’ve got a weird concept for military, I think … I’m not sure I want to be categorized as that just yet … And I’m not a POW, so I don’t think I’m required to identify that I am …
“Right, that’s what I was expecting. Ordani won’t be happy about it, but he’s only the Prefect. He is not the Commander or the Commander’s Second, much as he wishes he were.” She walked back over to the cart and snagged a tablet from it, waving Mark over to the bed. “So all your strength and mass is just a product of evolving on a ludicrously high-gravity world.”
“Yes,” Mark said. “Though I’m not all that big, for a human. Kinda on the short side, actually.”
“Hm?” Yaeri looked up, her ears quirked in interest.
“I mean, I’m only five-and-a-half feet tall. The average from where I’m from is, like, five foot nine inches, and people over six feet are pretty common.” He held up his arms. “I’m also in okay shape, required by my job, but I’m by no means strapped.” He looked down at his stomach. “I’ve slimmed up a bit, recently, but I’m still not in as good of shape as I was right out of high school.”
“Huh.” She made a few notes in her tablet. “And what is your job, actually?”
“Well, uh …” he scratched his head. The best lie contains elements of the truth. “I’m a sailor. I work on ships that specialize in, uh, the international delivery of heavy equipment, with rapid delivery methods.” Yeah, that sounds good. “Until recently, I was a mechanic. I maintained and operated those rapid delivery systems, hit things with wrenches to make them work, that sort of thing, but I recently got picked up to be one of the ship officers.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I was on the way to a school for that, actually, when the gray bastards picked me up.”
“Ha, hitting things with wrenches! Funny!”
He chuckled “You’d be surprised how often it works.”
She looked at him askance. “You’re joking, right?”
“Nope!” He grinned. “Percussive Maintenance: Guaranteed to either fix the problem, or make it not the problem anymore!”
Her ears swept low, hugging her table to her chest. “If you hit any of my stuff, I will gouge your eyeballs out and feed them to you in a stew.”
“Hey,” he held up his hands. “That’s not the only thing in my toolbox. Sometimes you gotta spit on it.” He waved a hand to calm her down from the icy glare she was giving him. “But don’t worry, I don’t usually mess with anything electrical. I leave that to the wirebiters.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, staring for a long moment. “Dirt,” she finally said, sticking her tongue out at him.
He chuckled. “So, yeah. I worked with hydraulic and compressed air systems, and hauled heavy equipment around a lot, but between work credits and my own studies, I managed to get a Bachelor’s degree in general physics. More distance learning than I wanted, but it’s hard to attend regular campus classes when you’re out to sea a lot.”
“Hmm … We’ll have to dig into the specifics of your education system later,” Yaeri said, making a few more notes on her tablet. “Or maybe someone who isn’t bored to tears by the thought can ask you.” She looked up, pointing her tail at his arm. “Next question, what’s with all the die on your skin?”
“Oh, well, um …” He glanced at the tattoos visible on his arms and right hand. “They mean a few different things. Some of them I got when I was drunk, and thought they were a good idea at the time, but most are just places I’ve been to or things I’ve done sailing the seas, or other stuff I thought was cool.”
She made another note in her tablet. “I’ll have to ask you more about them, later,” she said, glancing up at him with a smile. “That’s a me question, ‘cause I wanna know.” She glanced back down at her tablet with a frown. “But if I know Ordani, he’s going to be back to pester me soon, so we need a few more questions answered to satisfy him.”
Mark nodded. “What do you need to know?”
“Do you know what the Ikl’n wanted or were doing with you?”
He sighed. “Well, I mean, I have a few guesses, but really I have no idea. They snatched me off a road in the middle of nowhere. I woke up on an operating table before I was supposed to, escaped, caused a ruckus. They chased me into the cargo pod, then jettisoned it. Didn’t really have time to ask a whole lot of questions with them shooting at me, and they weren’t very chatty themselves.”
Licking his teeth, he frowned. “I did catch some snippets while I was on the table, before the translator fully kicked in.” He closed his eyes, playing the memories back through his head, and recalling his analysis of them during his extended stay in the pod. “It wasn’t much, or very clear, but it sounded like I wasn’t the first human they had abducted, and it also sounded like previous abductions hadn’t gone well. Got a distinct sense of ‘I told you so’ from one of them when I started ripping free of the straps holding me down.”
“Interesting,” Yaeri tapped away at her tablet. “Do you think there might be other humans out in the galaxy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He sighed, leaning heavily against the bed. “Fuck, this is crazy,” he said, rubbing his face with both hands. “I’ve always wanted to go to space, for as long as I can remember, but not like this.”
He felt a hand touch his shoulder. “Hey.” Yaeri lowered her head to put herself in his line of sight, her ears locked on him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, for now,” he said. Huh, she’s got purple eyes, and cat’s pupils. He ran a hand through his hair. “I had some time to freak out about all this while I was stuck in the cargo pod, but I still haven’t really processed all of it.”
“We can slow down, if you need a break,” she said. “Ordani won’t be happy, but I can just tell him your translator is still calibrating.”
“Could that get you in trouble?” he asked.
Her ears flicked back, then forward again. “I’ve been in trouble before.”
Mark shook his head. “No, I don’t want you to get yourself in trouble for my sake.” He sighed. “I’ve been Shanghaied and shotgunned into a chaotic clusterfuck that I’ve got to navigate my way through, but I don’t want to start off First Contact, however informal, with dishonest.” Not that I haven’t already done that with a lie of omission …
“Are you sure?” She lightly touched his shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks, though.”
“Of course, uhm … You know, we never actually introduced ourselves.” She straightened and held out her right arm. “I’m Doctor Yaeri Aeiyanesheni T’lui Mreshi, Xenobiologist and Acting Medical Officer of the Brekmani Council Warship Vendetta. But you can call me Yaeri.”
“Mister Mark Arnold, currently between ships.” And not technically a lie, he thought as he took her hand. Just didn’t specify my rank …
Yaeri shook his hand as expected, then took a step closer as she brought their forearms up vertical, shifting to something like an arm-wrestling grip. Mark kind of fumbled it. I’ve always sucked at the secret handshake thing …
The doors into the sickbay hummed open. “Yaeri! What is the status of the-“ Ordani stopped, staring at them as they still held hands.
“Ah, Prefect! I was just about to call you,” she said, letting go of Mark’s hand.
Mark turned and held it to Ordani. “Mark Arnold, human, from Earth,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Ordani narrowed his eyes. Mark eventually lowered his hand. “I thought you said it would be days, Yaeri.”
“Weeks. I actually said it would be weeks,” she said, struggling not to roll her eyes. “But we got lucky! Turns out the Ikl’n already had a translation matrix for his language programmed into his translator, they just hadn’t submitted it for inclusion in the galactic standard codex. When I uploaded the standard codex, instead of waiting weeks for the translator to sort out words from scratch, we just had to wait for it to integrate the existing matrix with the codex.”
The Prefect growled. “How like the Ikl’n to keep secrets instead of sharing findings of galactic import.” He glared at Yaeri a moment longer than waved his concern away. “No matter. It benefits us, this day, and gives us all the more reason to pursue the Ikl’n ship.”
He turned to Mark. “Are you military?”
Mark straitened his back. “I was born a free citizen of the United States of America.”
Ordani leaned down, bringing his face close to Mark’s. “Then how do you explain your mass?”
“He’s from a high-gravity world,” Yaeri said. “We just finished the math on it. His world is double the galactic standard gravity.”
“Is that so?” Ordani gave her a frigid glare.
“Yeah, the gravity here is so light, I’m tripping over myself.”
With a huff, Ordani stepped back. “What were you doing on an Ikl’n ship, and how did you end up in a jettisoned cargo pod?”
“I don’t know why I was there,” Mark said. Hopefully I don’t have to explain this to everyone I meet … “They abducted me. I woke up while they were finishing up the surgery to install this,” he tapped his skull. “Everyone freaked out, things went sideways, and their security chased me into the pod before jettisoning it.”
“Mmm…” Ordani growled deep in his chest. “That would explain why they hard dropped out of hyper, and hard jumped back in.” He slowly brought a hand to his face and tapped his lips a few times. “We were concerned that it was some kind of trap or lure.” He glared at Mark. “It still could be.”
He turned back to Yaeri. “You will do an assessment of the … citizen, and find what roles he may be of use in. You will also have him assess the contents of the cargo pod, and identify anything that might be of use or value. Everything else will be recycled.” He gave Mark another glance. “The citizen is now your responsibility, Doctor.” He turned and walked out of the sickbay. “Any trouble he causes will be on your head!”
Mark watched the door hum shut behind him. “… Well, he was nice.”
Yaeri’s ears flicked up from where they had been plastered to her skull. She turned and gave him her dopey-dumb look. “Nicest boss ever.” Her left eye drifted to the side, independent of the right.
“Gah, goddamnit!” Mark cringed. “Fuck, how do you do that?”
“Ha!” Yaeri snorted, pointing at him. “Made you flinch! Haha!” She draped an arm over his shoulder, barely even making him sway. “It’s my special talent. I’ve got another special talent, it’s called ‘The Most Annoying Sound in the Galaxy,’ do you want to hear it?”
Comments
Taylor Tilbury
This is Definitely something worth reading, More please!
eoin gordon
This series is awesome looking forward to more
