Salvage Rights

Posted on Thu Feb 6th, 2020 @ 9:24pm by Captain Gary Alexander & Karina Tell & Lieutenant JG Talia Flowers

1,083 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Mission 2 - Encounters of a First Kind
Location: Bridge
Timeline: 2168/07/27 1235

Meanwhile... back on the ship...

Talia looked heard an odd sound. It wasn't a ping, or a buzz, or even a radar swoop. It had the metallic pitch to it as though something hit the hull and then stopped.

Had it been feedback in her earpiece? She removed it and heard another clang. Nope. It was definitely NOT over comms...

Gary heard the ping too. What the hell? That came from outside the ship. "KAT, can you run me a scan? Find what just hit us?" He then turned to Talia and asked, "Is this a communication signal of some kind?"

"Haaaalooooooo..." a clear voice resounded against the hull... slightly muffled but still understandable. The rest of the speech was not. "Kaflurgal daskan...?"

Talia raised her eyebrows and gave the Captain a look as if to say, "Um... you really want me to answer that one?"

A rapping followed. One might even say it sounded a bit polite. "Haaaloooooo?" The rapping thunked against the hull.

"Haaalooooo?" Talia responded loudly.

"Skurgal!" came a response, sounding both surprised and angry at the same time, if that was even possible.

Receding taps that sounded a lot like footsteps retreated overhead.

And then something surprising happened. Well. MORE surprising... a tuft of brownish hair appeared in all of its hugeness upside down on the visual display on the Bridge. "Tufkan sirkit al plaisic nadina..." the lifeform muttered and cupped his hands before screaming at the camera, "Haaaaalooooooooooo!!!!"

Gary looked at the screen and then at Talia. "I think I get the haaalooooo but I think you had better figure out the rest and tell me what in this universe it is saying." He then waved back at the screen and replied in the ridiculous tone that the lifeform had greeted them. "Haaaaallllllllooooooo."

The hair disappeared and there was a light clang on the hull. Talia held her breath, half expecting some sort of grinding noise, but instead there was an odd whine in her earpiece.

"Hallooo." It was brief and quite obviously the being on their hull.

"Hallooo," responded Talia. With only audio, it might be difficult to communicate completely effectively but one had to deal with what one had. She hoped that her silence would prompt the speaker to fill it. After all, she couldn't piece a lot together from the brief, one-sided communication she had all but overheard.

"En sika Fornen." Of course this creature wouldn't understand his language. Obviously they weren't from around here; who in their right mind would come towards the prison? Unless... his voice took on a more soothing tone. "En. Sika. Fornen."

'Yay,' thought Talia. "And my name is Talia," she responded. "My name is. Talia." She tried to speak in the same manner and tone as the speaker, she presumed was Fornen.

'This creature sounds challenged mentally,' thought Fornen. But at least he could assume the title it gave itself was Talia. Some sort of military term? Must be if the markings and shaping of the ship could be any indication. Those protrusions could easily be weapons of some sort... "Talia." He tried to say it politely and with some deference that might be bestowed on that gender of the alien species. Had there been no one on board? Salvage...

It was still an option as he heard his name spoken back to him, "Fornen." He clicked his tongue as was the way of his people, to not allow any to hear his name from another's lips.

"Si kenan tai kiti," he continued. "Fell tankitani."

"Keep talking, Fornen," Talia muttered as she recorded every word.

"Tal karliz. Fentar cul vargan."

Talia's eyes narrowed as she whispered words in tandem with the alien.

It took a few minutes, but Talia stuttered out something in his language, and waited. Fornen chuckled softly and responded to Talia, "Very good, far traveller."

She pressed a few extra buttons and fed the new language into the computer. "Let's test this out, Captain," she said, her face beaming. She connected the transmission to the speakers on the bridge.

"Fornen," Talia said. "Please wait for communication from Captain Gary Alexander."

"Who?" came the gruff response, clearly in understandable English.

Gary gave an impressed and approving nod at Talia. She was definitely impressive and now, perhaps, the most important on this ship. Gary pointed at himself and said, "Me. I am Captain Gary Alexander. We are from the Milky Way Galaxy. This is my ship, the USS Horizon. We come in peace and are looking for new friends. May I ask who I am addressing?"

Fornen's rather formidable eyebrows raised in some surprise. "Oooooh," he said. "Formal fleebermes," and chuckled. "Well, Cap. Ten. I am Fornen, leader of the Fornella clan and purveyor of lost and found things." Leaning over, he whispered to what could only be assumed as someone nearby. "Sound equally overblown, dear Kense?"

Gary turned back to Talia and tried not to laugh. He gave her a wink and then turned back to the salvage ship. "We are definitely lost but we are not in need of being sold. Would you kindly release our ship? Perhaps you might do us the favor of joining us on our ship for a meal and exchange of information?"

Fornen's eyebrows waggled a bit and he turned to someone off-screen. The audio was muted for a moment, but his arms and what Talia could only assume were his hands, were waving about strenuously. In pantomime, one might hazard a guess that he was trying to convince someone of something... and then the sound came back abruptly.

A distinctly different voice was raised in pitch, seemingly at Fornen as he batted words away as though they were flies. "Kense!" The voice ceased. "Cap. Ten."

He gave a stern look off-screen at the probable Kense, and then looked back, beaming a welcoming smile, or what could be considered a smile. Talia hoped.

"We would be delighted." Kense's voice was raised and a single finger pointed upward with an angry tone set by his eyebrows which stopped her mid-sentence.

"Yes, Cap. Ten." Another being came into focus, presumably Fornen's traveling companion. Kense's softer features and darting eyes showed how nervous she was. "We would be delighted."

She was clearly NOT delighted in the slightest. She had argued that without fully understanding these far travelers in their odd-shaped ship THEY might indeed be the meal.

"Wonderful! We shall see you soon. I also shall notify our away team."

 

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