“I believe there is something in here.”
“The ship has passengers. Interesting.”
“What if they get out?” The other voice was curious, not terribly concerned.
“We could get out, but we aren’t certain we could survive.” She said to Tim, “I also transmitted our requirements for life.”
A large digit appeared out of the darkness and poked the shuttle. It rocked a little, not badly.
“You should not have gotten into our…”
The ship struggled with a translation, Tim noted.
“We did not mean to,” Riina said. “We were on a mission to rescue some of our kind when we were intercepted by…you.”
She glanced at Tim, and half shrugged.
“We will have to consult…”
Again, the translation failed.
“I’m guessing it, or they, are talking about their chain of command,” Tim offered. He hoped he was correct. No question they were in a tight spot. And a weird spot.
Both sets of eyes faded back into the darkness.
“What was that?” Drun’s voice made a demand, but it was, Tim decided more bravado than anything. “It, or they, were large.”
The man must realize they were as confused as he was.
“Yes, they were,” Tim agreed. He’d encountered larger aliens in his years aboard the Najer, but never anything like this. He had, he realized, picked the wrong time to become human again.
“What was it?” Drun asked again, though with a distinct quaver in his voice this time.
“There is no match in our database for the entity or entities,” the Veirn fragment said. “But I am creating a file.”
Somehow Tim didn’t find this that comforting. For the file to be added to any larger database, they’d need to survive.
The entity had shrunk to what his systems said was its original configuration when they’d first spotted it.
They should have been able to make contact with their people now. It was no longer over the area identified as the rendezvous coordinates.
But still no contact.
The contact screen flickered several times, then steadied into…he wasn’t sure what.
Something white filled the image with just a black circle in the center. There was sound, but nothing he recognized.
“I am attempting to translate,” Veirn said. “It is a challenging language.”
The AI had been designed to translate unknown languages, but even it needed time and content to do it.
The words switched as they came again.
“It is broadcasting in one of the languages of Arroxan Prime,” Veirn said.
“Unknown vessel, it is advised not to approach the planet until it has stabilized from…”
There was something that Veirn obviously couldn’t translate, even using the Arroxan Prime data.
