Return to Krell

"Hold my calls Helen, I don't want to be disturbed," she barked as the secretary watched her pass by the front desk. "I have work to do..."

***

Over the next few days Lena worked tirelessly on the Krell translator, consuming more coffee than was healthy and toiling until she collapsed at her desk. She tweaked the software and added more simple phrases to its growing library. She managed to bypass the security features on the wrist computer and access the kernel, loading her own custom firmware that allowed her more direct control over the device's internal components. She disabled the GPS and wireless connectivity features in order to free up battery life for the boosted speaker, as they would be of no use to her on the primitive Krell homeworld, finally reaching a low enough frequency that it got a reaction from Sleethe.

It was all coming together, Lena always worked well under pressure. Barnes hadn't given her a deadline to meet, but she felt that three or four days was probably about as long as his colleagues would wait around for her. They were no doubt as impatient as she was, and she suspected that being out of the loop on the first expedition to the remote planet had hurt their egos. They would be eager to make up for it, and she suspected that the UAS logo would be plastered all over whatever publicity this venture generated.

Sleethe helped where he could, feeding her new words and phrases, doing his best to convey their meaning in his own limited way. He was invaluable for actually testing the device, as when it was working correctly Lena's human ears couldn't pick it up. He simply nodded, or shook his leathery head depending on the tone and frequency of her synthetic communications, helping her to fine tune it.

On the night of the third day, she felt confident enough to perform a real test in order to find out if she could hold even a simple conversation with her Krell companion. They wouldn't be discussing philosophy or current events, but with the words that the device could accurately reproduce she expected to at least be able to ask some basic questions. The conjugation of the verbs and her general grammar would be atrocious of course, as she had no real way to uncover the underlying rules that governed the language. Did they use masculine and feminine nouns? Did they have massive tables of conjugated verbs for past, present and future, or did they use a simplified system? What was their concept of time, and how was it referenced in their day to day conversations?

All of that was out of her reach, at least for now, but simple greetings and questions should be attainable in theory. She would just sound like a tourist reading from a phrasebook.

Lena stood up from her desk, rubbing her red eyes. She hadn't worked this hard since she was an undergraduate. She disconnected the wrist computer from her terminal and slotted it over her forearm. It looked like a medieval gauntlet with the glove removed, the padded lining ensuring that it didn't chafe or catch on her clothing. It had a holographic display and a touch panel that she could interact with, and she had slapped together a graphical user interface that was designed to work in tandem with her translation software. The onboard CPU paled in comparison to that of her work terminal, but it was good enough to process and synthesize Krell speech, and she had expanded the flash memory in order to fit her entire dictionary on the device. It was as portable and as optimized as it was ever going to get.

She taped the pickup to her throat, then synced it with the computer, popping an earbud into one of her ears and plugging it into a jack on the gauntlet so that she could hear Sleethe's replies without the conversation becoming more confused than it needed to be.

"Alright you big lug, let's do this."

Sleethe seemed to realize that the serious business was about to start, perhaps due to the tone of her voice, and so he rose from his usual heap on the floor of her office and sat up straight and alert. He watched her with his amber eyes, waiting for her to begin.

"Ok, let's try something simple for starters," she muttered, tapping at the touch panel with her fingers as she played with the settings. It was a learning algorithm, which meant that it would theoretically get better over time and that she would have to make fewer manual adjustments, but at this early stage she had to modulate the frequency herself. Once the algorithm had assisted with enough conversations, it would be able to judge when an exchange was happening and what settings to use all by itself. At least that was the intention. There were already existing programs that could assist with translating Borealan languages, Lena knew because she had helped develop many of them, but their languages were already very similar to those of humans. Krell was a whole different ball game.

She cleared her throat and hit the activation icon, the holographic display indicating that the program was waiting for her input.

"Hello Sleethe, can you hear me?"

The resulting synthesized sentence sounded like hissing and warbling to Lena's human ears. The speaker on her arm vibrated, the rumbling tones that it emitted were so low that they were barely audible. She watched with bated breath as her reptilian friend cocked his massive head, listening intently. After a moment he replied, his powerful growl shaking her bones.

The software took a few moments to process the new input, and then she heard a halting, text-to-speech voice speak into her ear.

"Yes. The noise of you reaches my jaw."

Lena resisted the urge to throw her arms into the air in triumph, not wanting to tear her earbud out, and she settled for a more moderated fist pump instead. Sleethe's reply had been borderline nonsense, but he had understood her words, and she had understood his. The meaning had been conveyed, even if the dictionary was limited and the translator needed more work.

Her scaly partner slapped his heavy tail on the floor as he picked up on her excitement, the clapping sound echoing through her office. She hopped on the spot for a moment, elated that her hard work had finally produced tangible results, a grin brightening her tired features.

"We did it Sleethe! This is gonna work!"

She remembered that she could now speak to him in a facsimile of his own language, tapping on her touch screen and then repeating the phrase. The device released another burst of hisses and grunts, Lena waiting for his reply with bated breath.

"Success, the structure does not sway."

More borderline nonsense, but it sounded positive enough. Her heart began to beat faster as she considered that for the first time since she had met him, she might really be able to hold a conversation with her boyfriend. They understood one another well enough even without the ability to communicate verbally, getting by on gestures and body language, along with the limited vocabulary of human words that Sleethe had learned as part of his military training. She had never felt that there was anything lacking in their relationship, but things could only get better from this point onward.

Lena wanted to make a fresh pot of coffee, she wanted to stay up all night and talk with Sleethe until the station's sun lamps turned on, tweaking the software as they shared their secrets like schoolgirls at a slumber party. She needed sleep however, she was close to collapse, and now that she had finally cracked the enigma code that was Krell language she felt as if she had earned her rest.

"I need to sleep," she said, theorizing that simple phrases would be more accurately translated. "Will you come to bed with me?"

Sleethe rolled over onto his side, raising an arm in invitation. Interesting, even with the translation software he didn't seem to speak unless it was necessary. She wondered if that was for her benefit, or if all of the Krell behaved in the same manner. She had to admit that she had rarely seen what might be interpreted as an in-depth conversation between two of the giant lizards during her studies.

She walked over to him and dropped to the floor, letting him hook her with his strong arm and hug her small frame up against his soft underbelly. She was too tired to head back to her apartment, too exhausted to remove her clothing. She immediately felt a wave of calm and relaxation overcome her as she pressed her face into his chest and took in his familiar scent, his slow, heavy breathing somehow therapeutic.

Lena wanted to tell him that she loved him. Not that he didn't know it already, but putting it into words held special meaning for her. Would he understand the importance of the phrase? Did the Krell have a concept of love that approximated that of humans, did they have any cultural or social parallels? Perhaps it was too risky, too easy to misconstrue, too likely to be lost in translation.

Instead she wrapped her arms around his massive chest as best she could manage, it was like trying to hug an oil barrel. She felt him blow warm air in her hair, his many fingers pressing gently into the small of her back. She hadn't told him that they were going back to his homeworld yet, she would break the news tomorrow using her newly minted translator. Lena hoped that he would be as excited as she was.

CHAPTER 3: FIELD WORK

The Courser emerged from superlight like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean, a spray of colorful gases expanding in its wake like a miniature nebula as it tore a hole back into reality. The long, slim ship drifted for a moment, inertia carrying it along as it tumbled slowly. After a brief delay its engines flared to life, thrusters spaced along its sleek hull righting it with bursts of blue flame as the flight computer took control.

Lena opened her eyes and blinked away stinging tears, struggling back to awareness and straining against her safety harness. She felt like she had been worked over with baseball bats, every muscle in her body ached. She spat the plastic bit out of her mouth, intended to prevent her from biting off her tongue during the jump, and unclasped the catch that bound her to her crash couch.

The pilots told her that superlight got easier every time you did it, some of the more experienced captains could even stand unaided during the dimensional transition, so she had heard. It hadn't gotten any easier for Lena however, and she doubled over, a wave of nausea overwhelming her.

She was a linguist, and so she didn't claim to understand the intricacies of the process, she would leave that to the theoretical physicists. What she did know was that faster than light travel was impossible, at least in our three dimensions of reality. The laws of physics did not allow it. The jump drive drew energy from an onboard power plant, charging up and creating a quantum mechanical black hole, better known as a microhole by the pilots and engineers. It manifested in front of the ship, tearing a breach in the fabric of spacetime, which sucked in the ship and everything in its immediate vicinity.

In doing so the vessel was granted access to a higher dimension of space, or perhaps an entirely distinct universe, where the laws of time and physics operated very differently. You couldn't exceed ninety nine percent light speed in conventional space, but in this strange void it was possible to be massless, for time to run in peculiar and illogical streams. A ship could travel at impossible speeds and follow the swells and currents of time in order to reach a destination far sooner than would otherwise be feasible.

The big downside was that the wracking energies played havoc with nervous systems, the symptoms ranging from seizures and uncontrollable muscle spasms, to hallucinations and temporary insanity. Something about the jump dimension didn't agree with organic life, almost as if some higher power didn't want them to be there.

At the end of the process the vessel was spewed out dozens of light years closer to its destination, the range of the jump dependent on the power capacity of the ship in question. Coursers were small vessels compared to the massive jump carriers and freighters, but they were designed to be as fast as possible. The vessel was shaped like a knitting needle, the engines and nuclear reactors housed far away at the rear of the hull. It was the most optimal ratio between mass, carrying capacity and power consumption that the Navy could build. One of the vessels had been docked at the station, and the security chief had requisitioned it for her, a short hop from the Pinwheel to the 61 Cygni system wouldn't even take a day.

Lena walked across the cramped cabin on shaky legs, making her way over to where Sleethe was strapped down. There were no chairs on the Courser that could accommodate him, and so he had to be tightly strapped to a cargo pallet for his own safety. The giant reptile risked killing both himself and everyone in the immediate vicinity with his inhuman strength and weight if he was not properly secured.

She knelt and began to untie him, loosening the belt that was holding his jaws shut first, then moving down to his limbs. Once free, he stood and shook himself like a wet dog, having to stoop lower than usual in the confining space. Krell did not commonly travel this way, Coursers were not built with their kind in mind.

"Beginning approach," the pilot said, his voice coming through on the intercom along with a burst of static. The Courser was too small to carry a landing craft, and so the plan was to rendezvous with a Broker vessel that would ferry them down to the surface of the planet.

Lena wasn't sure how she felt about how closely the mysterious aliens were becoming involved with the expedition. They obviously wanted to keep a close eye on her, but why? What damage could one unarmed academic possibly do?

She walked over to the one of the small portholes, scarcely larger than her own face, and she peered out at the blackness of space beyond. She could make out the twin suns of 61 Cygni, two red dwarf stars that looked like a pair of evil eyes hanging in the sky. They were smaller and darker than the sun, but Krell orbited closer to its parents than the Earth did to Sol. She couldn't make out their destination, it was directly in front of the ship, but she could feel the acceleration as they burned towards it.

Before long they began to decelerate, Lena feeling the inertial change in her inner ear.

"You excited to be back home, big guy?"

Sleethe huffed affirmatively, but he didn't seem very enthusiastic. She wondered if he even cared where they were going as long there would be a heat source to bask under. As they drew closer, she started to notice Broker drone ships coming and going, buzzing around the orbital defense platforms that encircled the planet like clouds of flies. It was hard to judge distance in space, but there were small ones that were vaguely spherical, and larger ones that were bulky and no doubt built to carry cargo. They had entered orbit, she could just make out the green haze of the planet below.

"We're about to dock with the Broker lander," the pilot said, "stand by. You'll hear a loud clunk, don't panic, it's just the docking clamps."

There was a rumble that reverberated through the metal deck, and the porthole was filled with a silver hull as the two vessels mated. Lena felt a sudden wave of apprehension. In a few moments she would be passed from the care of the UNN into the hands of the Brokers. She didn't even know what they looked like, and despite working extensively on Borealan and Krell languages, she had never heard so much as an audio clip or seen a single character from the Broker language. While all of the other races of the Coalition mingled and shared their culture and technology, the enigmatic Brokers seemed to go out of their way to keep themselves separate.

At least she had Sleethe with her, but she would soon be dozens of light years from any other humans. She might be the loneliest and most isolated mammal in the entire galactic arm.

There was a pneumatic hiss as a door in the Courser's hull slid open, its small cabin now linked to the Broker vessel via a short umbilical walkway. Lena hefted a large rucksack that contained a wide variety of scientific gear and instruments, her reptilian companion lifting a duffel bag that was larger and heavier than she was with ease. She had packed enough gear and supplies to last her for weeks. The pilot's voice came in over the intercom again, hissing and popping with interference.

"Good luck Doctor Webber, watch your step now. Have a safe journey, and don't let the Brokers try to sell you anything."

She swallowed hard, steeling herself, and began to walk towards the open door. The Broker ship was better lit than the dingy UNN vessel, the industrial interior of the Courser giving way to bright, clean metal. Lena peeked nervously inside the umbilical, bathed in pale light from the alien ship, and she urged Sleethe to follow behind her. While he seemed unconcerned by the strange design of the Broker vessel, he was sniffing the air intently, perhaps picking up on something that Lena's human nose could not detect.

As Sleethe stepped into the metal tunnel, there was a worrying creaking sound, as if it was about to give way. Instead, Lena's eyes widened as she watched the umbilical grow to accommodate his exaggerated stature. The metal was flexing like a sheet of silver flesh, expanding and shifting, until it looked as if it had been built to spec.

Lena was amazed, awestruck, but Sleethe simply plodded along the tunnel as if it was all routine for him. Of course, he had no doubt been on Broker vessels at some point in the past. He must have been brought from his home planet to the Pinwheel on one such ship.

She hurried along behind him as he began to outpace her, his long tail dragging across the smooth floor. There were no windows to space, and no visible light fixtures, the glow somehow seeming to emanate from the very walls themselves.

It was a short walk to the alien vessel, and after a moment she found herself standing in an empty room. It was made from featureless, silver metal, much the same as the umbilical. There wasn't so much as a chair in sight, no readouts or consoles to be seen anywhere. The passage behind them closed up rapidly, like footage of a wound healing that was being played back in a time lapse. She reached out a tentative hand and prodded the metal, feeling it give a little under the pressure. It was flexible, more like hard rubber than the gleaming steel that it so resembled.

The room gave her the willies, it was too empty, so unnaturally featureless that it was making her snowblind. She found herself clinging to Sleethe's powerful arm, the Krell warbling sympathetically as he coiled his long tail around her, like a knee-high wall of scales to keep her safe. She realized that there was no noise, that was part of what was making the chamber so unnerving. All that she could hear was her own blood rushing in her ears, and Sleethe's heavy breathing, the usual creaks and hums of a spaceship were completely absent. Somehow she got the impression that this was a holding cell, rather than accommodation for guests.

She stood up straight and brushed herself off, feeling a little embarrassed. She was a professional woman damn it, and there were no doubt cameras scrutinizing her. She wasn't about to give the Brokers a bad impression of humanity.

"H-Hello?" She asked, her voice echoing in the room.

"Doctor Lena Webber, please remain calm during transit, you will be reaching the surface of the planet shortly."

The reply came from everywhere at once, in perfect clarity and unbroken English, as if a native speaker was talking not an inch from her ear. It was a little disarming.