She and Captain Wagner had met in several muffled huddles. Navigation officer Aaronson had joined in, but the rest of the crew had gone about their business. First contact with a human-inhabited planet this far from home, a planet that had not been terraformed by an Earth-based people, took precedence over any event that was not immediately life-threatening. They each had their field of expertise, and for Meg, Cho, and Jefferson, those fields were expanding with a knowledge curve that was blowing all of their minds.
Meg’s ears had ached with the press of the headphones. ProLingLang, the language system she had designed and reengineered specifically for this mission, hummed with an efficiency that made her want to pound her chest. The enormity of its undertaking could hardly be grasped. The drones she had deployed were dumping in millions of human vocal sounds, sorted by regions of the planet, sorted again by volume, tone, and situation. Broadcast sounds, and the planet certainly had its share of broadcast technology, were the easiest to capture. The program grouped those sounds into types of broadcast and categories of tone and delivery. It also scanned each vocalization for patterns and repetitions.
Meg knew she was working under enormous assumptions. The name of the program itself reflected some of those
assumptions. ProLingLang stood for Protocol, Language, and Linguistics. The fact that she hadn’t chosen to call it ProLangLing was her own little salute to her beliefs in the nature of language. Easiest sounds won out: ProLingLang sounded better and flowed more smoothly for Meg than ProLangLing. Plus it was her program, and she had a reputation for being persnickety, a reputation she reinforced by forbidding the crew to call her by her last name. She hated the way they pronounced Dupris.
For any Earth-based language translation, the assumptions were a given. Whether she was translating an ancient text, making first contact with a lost tribe of the Amazon rain forest, or translating a treaty with a long-isolated renegade colony in deep space, Earth-originated human language had several factors in common. There were limitations to the vocal ranges of humans. Even if the language relied heavily on gestures and expressions, humans could move only a finite number of ways, and thus parameters could be set, standards and equivalents understood. The biggest assumption, however—the assumption that had made it possible for Meg to translate the ancient deep-space message, that had gotten Meg this spot on the
Damocles
, that had Meg listening until her ears nearly bled sorting through the cacophony of vocal sounds—was the assumption that humans didn’t make noise for nothing. They had something to say.
She knew the Space Administration hadn’t fully understood her point, and she’d long since come to terms with the fact that she could never truly explain it. And no, the irony wasn’t lost on her. What made Meg Dupris such an outstanding protocol and linguistics specialist was her intuitive understanding of the underlying human urge to communicate that which could never be truly communicated. It was the eternal need to shout “You should have been there!” that compelled humans to tell stories and pass on advice and seek comfort and safety and love among
their own kind. The only way that need could be fulfilled was for a community to agree upon a set of sounds and gestures to carry consistent meanings. That agreement became language.
She could be wrong. This far out into the universe, a million variables could have made her language program useless. The inhabitants of this planet could be psychic, communicating on a mental level that required no sound at all. But the vast amount of broadcast technology told her that wasn’t the case. They might be isolationists, living like Japanese fighting fish and clashing upon the slightest contact, each person an island. But the first glance at the manufactured topography and population reports told her that wasn’t even close to true. These people lived in dense communities across a long ribbon of land that circled the equator.
The data that really put her doubts to rest, however, was a stream of electronic broadcast that had come into the system two weeks earlier. The vocalizations were drawn out, several different tones in a pattern the system had struggled to categorize. She’d only noticed the file by chance as she’d looked up from a dense packet of what might be a recognizable syntax pattern. When she’d clicked on the audio, she’d winced at the vocalizations, the warble in the tones clashing in her ears with a deep, throbbing undertone. And then, behind all the vocalizations, she’d heard a metallic pinging and what sounded like air being forced through wires.
She’d listened to the sound, turning the volume up as much as she could without the deep undertones hurting her eardrums. The sound resonated through her jawbone and some notes even made her eyes water. She’d listened and listened, and when the vocalization and background noises repeated themselves she’d grinned, and her eyes had watered for an entirely different reason. Every fiber of her intuition told her that she was hearing what this planet called music. If they made music, they wanted
to talk. Meg listened for over an hour, finally finding a complex rhythm hidden beneath all those sounds. She’d fallen asleep with her headphones on. She couldn’t wait to meet them.
But that didn’t mean she wanted to go right now. When Captain Wagner had agreed with Prader’s assessment, he’d called them into the kitchenette at once. The Gro-Walls had been responding to a malfunction in the Chelyan crystal, the self-regenerating propulsion crystal that made deep-space travel feasible. Maybe
feasible
wasn’t the right word since the crystals could be so capricious that they were often thought of as an extra and particularly prickly crew member. Something about the excessive solar radiation in the multisun system had, as Aaronson phrased it, “put her off her feed,”
her
being the crystal. Getting her back on her feed involved shutting down the systems and venting the
Damocles
for a full space freeze.
The isolation pods did not have enough room, power, or resources needed to shelter all six crew members. The fewer requiring life support, the quicker the crystal could be reset. It was decided, therefore, that Aaronson would isolate herself in a pod tethered to the outside of the
Damocles
while the rest of the crew loaded into the shuttle and headed for the planet’s surface. Once the ship had been thoroughly vented and frozen, Aaronson would reboard, reboot, and run diagnostics to repair and reactivate the propulsion crystal.
Jefferson, the resources officer, abandoned his data research and began implementing the emergency ship-to-land protocol. All around Meg the crew exploded into action, barking packing lists into the computer and prioritizing inventory for decontamination before loading into the shuttle. Nobody panicked, but five crew members seemed to arrive at the same panic-worthy conclusion quite a few moments after Meg. Wagner spoke the
realization she could hear pounding in her chest, and Meg thought he sounded much more optimistic about it than she felt.
“Listen up, everyone.” Wagner had the chiseled good looks of a movie star and the deep voice to match. His dark-brown skin seemed always to catch the light just so, and as he stood there, every inch the captain and commander of the
Damocles
, Meg felt a sense of unreality washing over her. Part of her mind tried to tell her that this was a training video. This was that simulation she’d been so afraid of learning about just weeks ago. This simply couldn’t be real. Wagner must have seen the look in her eye because he kept his gaze level, his voice calm. He knew his crew; he’d picked them himself. He hadn’t hit his rank by misjudging the men and women who relied on him at moments like this. One by one, everyone settled down to listen to him.
“In less than thirty hours, we will be on planet. We will be making our first contact with a non-Earth-originated species of human.” One by one, he looked into each person’s face. “Officer Jefferson, Officer Cho, Officer Prader, Officer Dupris, Officer Aaronson, there is no finer crew with whom I would like to make history. To preserve the integrity of orbit, the
Damocles
will burn on slow thrust for the reset, which means she will be on the dark side of the planet for the majority of the diagnostics. Assuming everything goes according to plan, Aaronson will be light side again within ten days. We’ve set the countdown on your screens.”
Aaronson gave her usual stony nod, her face unreadable as always. If there was anyone who could stand the isolation of space all on her own, it was Samantha Aaronson. Wagner cleared his throat. “Obviously we are preempting our schedule.” Prader muttered a string of profanities and Cho rubbed his hands over his face. They all knew how grossly unprepared for contact they were, but none of them knew it better than Meg.
“We don’t know what to expect upon arrival. We may be landing very hot. The possibility of attack is high since Jefferson’s research has revealed warfare technology. We have no way of knowing if these people have had interplanetary contact or if they are even open to the possibility.” He leveled his gaze at Meg, who could feel sweat dampening the hair around her face. “Officer Dupris, it is asking too much to expect you to have a language and cultural protocol in place, but that is exactly what I’m asking you to do in T-minus thirty hours.”
Thirty-three hours later, the
Damocles Sub 2
cooled and groaned on its landing legs on an enormous limestone pad Aaronson had spotted during recon. The nav system had calculated which landing spots were most advantageous for the situation and Meg had insisted the choice be narrowed down as quickly as possible. The shuttle had the capability to circle the large planet several times to scout out landing sites close up, but every minute within the atmosphere was another minute they were exposed to the military intelligence of the planet. Plus, the sooner they knew where they were landing the sooner Meg could eliminate language data gathered from other parts of the world.
She knew she had to pinpoint the regional language as quickly as possible. Dumping 85 percent of the data tore at her heart in ways she would deal with later, but for now she focused the program’s attention solely on data gathered from a two-thousand-kilometer region stretching out from their landing site. It helped that the site was coastal, the strange platform resting on an otherwise abandoned stretch of land not far from a saltwater sea. Both Wagner and Jefferson had remarked on the distinct lack of population along the saltwater ways, raising questions about contamination or other natural risks in the seas, but Cho’s research showed nothing overtly dangerous about the waters themselves.
“This site might be religious. It could be sacred.” Meg chewed her lip as she voiced just a few of the millions of thoughts she struggled to get in order. “Our first act on this planet may very well be the act that damns us forever.”
Prader squinted into the eyepiece that opened to the camera scanning the quiet horizon around them. “Well fuck them if they can’t take a joke.”
Cho unlatched a biokit. “Thank God you’re not our protocol liaison.”
“Hey,” Prader snapped. “Which would they prefer? We leave skid marks on their church parking lot or set fire to their kids’ schools with our plasma burners?”
“Focus, people.” Wagner shuffled packs along the narrow shuttle, pushing a heavy bundle before each of their seats. “It won’t be long until we have company. If they have any air-monitoring systems, they’re sure to have seen our afterburn.”
“Hold that thought,” Prader said, spinning the viewfinder. “The welcome wagon is here. And I don’t see any muffins. Oh shit.”
The four of them continued to unpack and repack their supplies as Prader gave them a play-by-play of the arriving vehicles. Most came over land, while several flew in. Although she could not make out anyone inside the vehicles, she felt confident that the open-ended cylinders pointed their way from every direction were weapons.
Cho tapped Meg’s leg, giving her the sign that he would pack her kit for her. They knew she had better things to do at the moment. Her data pack hung in a pouch on her belt, and she used the screen on the shuttle’s wall to work. She’d save her drag screen until necessary. The wall screen was easier to read and Meg needed every bit of her focus on the work before her.
With most of the data removed from the calculations, ProLingLang had recognized syntax patterns more quickly,
grouping them into sets and subsets. But for all the program’s efficiency, for all the tags and triggers Meg had programmed into its workings, she knew actual translation was going to require intuition and luck. Lots of luck. All the way down from the ship, even at maximum gravity pull, she’d been listening to vocals that most closely matched what they needed.
Data still streamed into the system from the drones she had kept contact with, but when a rash of profanities broke out around the ship, first from Prader, then from Cho and Jefferson, and finally from the captain himself, Meg didn’t need to look to see the data stream had stopped. Whoever was parked outside their shuttle had set up some sort of jamming technology. All any of them had to work with was the data they had brought with them. They all knew it wasn’t enough and they all knew there was only one solution. They had to go out there.
“Am I in trouble?” Loul held his hands up to the two men blocking his way. Now that he looked at them he saw they weren’t wearing uniforms. They had on the same suit jackets as most of the men around him, but that didn’t change his perception of them as guards. Just the size of them, the solidity of their broad chests, told him these men were soldiers of some sort. When the one on the left held out his arms to block Loul’s way, the butt of a gun came into view. Not that he knew much about guns, but something told Loul that was a big one.
Loul stood almost a head taller than the taller of the two men, but side by side they were more than double his width. There was no question they could stop him if he chose to flee, which he quickly ruled out as an option. The men stepped even closer and
slightly to his side, flanking him. It felt like an incredibly mismatched game of Pummel, a game in which even one-on-one he was usually mismatched for.