Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (14 page)

* * *

"Record as many channels as you can," Gordon ordered. "We'll be able to translate them later, I hope." There was a
lot
of chatter.

"Luke, let me know as soon as you have the video format figured out. Brownie, there's too much traffic here to rush insystem. Bring us to a stop from moving further in. G and a half max, we don't want to look panicky. They may have some traffic rules we'll mess up if we proceed.
Retribution
, you have the most powerful radar. Take a good look around, not a single pulse and then shut it down."

Jon Burris on com spoke up. "Most of the radio traffic seems to be in system about thirty degrees to our right. When you point a telescope at that area there is a planet. I don't know yet if most of it is from the planet or from around it."

"What sort of modulation?" Gordon asked.

"I see at least some FM that looks to be audio, some very high density video and radars too."

"
Champion William
, tuck yourself behind the
Retribution
relative to that area with all the radio traffic and
Sharp Claws
get behind us. Put
Roadrunner
behind
Murphy's Law
too. If they don't have
very
good radar and paint us hard with high frequency stuff, they may not see how many ships we have. I'd be just as happy to keep them guessing until we see how friendly they are."

"Give me a high sign when I have a live mic, FM at moderate power, aimed at that area, but not too narrow a beam. I'll say a few words rather than wait for video. If they have anybody even moderately bright they'll say, 'Hey, that's speech, but it isn't any language we know.' And figure out we have no clue what to do. It buys us some time until we can do video."

Burris turned in his seat a bit to look at Gordon and made an elaborate pointing gesture to cue him.

"This is the deep space explorer
High Hopes
and escort vessels. Commander Gordon speaking. I know you aren't understanding a word I'm saying, but it should register as some alien language. You'll be looking back and translating this soon enough I'd wager. We'll transmit video as soon as we figure out how you like to view it. We'll wait to try to talk to you before we come closer. We have no idea of your traffic rules and don't want to create hazard. Now we'll sit and be patient awhile," he made a chopping motion to Burris.

"Send that twice more, with five minute pauses in-between."

It would be a bit over two hours until the wave front of their entry hit the planet. The number of signals that came back almost four hours later was overwhelming. All different power levels and some obviously narrowly aimed. It was certainly different than the Bunnies' initial silence.

"Make sure the recordings of this new chatter are time tagged and labeled to differentiate them from stuff we heard before they became aware of us. A lot of the current stuff has to be responses and more importantly, some might be instructions, some inquiries," Gordon guessed.

"Some of them might be, Docking at our space station? Visit Alpha, the best casino and restaurant in the system, mention this transmission for a free gaming chip! The finest cuisine and drinks for every species and palate!" Lee predicted.

"Heh, I hope so," Thor said grinning. We can give some of our rabid gamblers leave. I bet the house  won't take IOU slips against their claim shares."

"It will take awhile for somebody to come out to us," Gordon said. "Or explain sufficiently on video how we should approach. Let's stand down to the alter-shift bridge crew, not a stripped orbital watch, but minimum crew to get under way quickly. Weapons watch can stand down all but one greaser crew and a missile tube slaved directly to the bridge board. No need to keep a loading crew standing there. Thor, I want either you or me in the duty bunk behind the bridge. With orders to rouse us if there are any big developments."

"I'll take it," Thor volunteered. "It's none too big and I fit better. Go to your cabin where you can stretch out and get some decent rest."

* * *

Gordon awoke feeling rested. Looked at the corner of his wall screen, the time showed in dimmed numbers in the corner. Two hours to shift change. It was amazing nobody found reason to wake him up. He stretched and scratched. Thor was right, his own bed was a luxury. Breakfast sounded like a good idea. He went in his shower stall, one of two private baths on the vessel, and set the head to maximum pulse. That would reach all the way through his fur to the skin and still have enough power to be invigorating. He smiled remembering the first time Lee had encountered a Derf shower. He'd heard the water start, a squeal, a thud and ran in to find her sitting to the back of the tub, butt bruised by the fall and a huge raw water jet abrasion on one shoulder. The next day it had been yellow with purple highlights and they'd had to keep ointment on it to fight infection and supply a slowly infusing pain reliever.

He slathered a conditioner on, otherwise his fur stood up all over with an effect that wasn't very pleasing. It reminded him of some show dogs he'd seen on Earth long ago. Blow dried and fluffed out. With a fancy bow added somewhere too. Not his style at all.

He entered the Ward Room / conference room / reading room / and at least temporarily the translation room, as Luke and his assistants were set up against the back bulkhead. They didn't know where else to put them. They pulled the end section of table toward the wall so they could be gotten around easily. Gordon sat to the other end. He'd tried sitting right across the gap at the end of the near table before, so he could listen to their chatter, but they'd clammed up, started speaking by text between screens and looked worried. He figured his continued proximity would damage operations and stress them. They didn't seem to notice if his big triangular ears scanned them like a radar horn from the other end of the table. He had
very
good hearing.

The second cook was the steward too, their crew was so limited. He took Gordon's order and vanished. He'd probably have to help cook it. He poured coffee for Gordon without asking, but he'd refill it himself. There was only so much two guys could do. There were already two of his shift eating.

Thor stumbled in, poured his own coffee and sat opposite Gordon, stretching one shoulder and then the other, working his neck. He'd volunteered for the duty bunk, so Gordon was careful not to say anything humorous that might not be well received. He really was appreciative. He might even take it tonight.

The ward room was Thor's traditional duty to regulate, though most big ships had three times the staff. He looked to the door squinty eyed, like he was ready for the steward.

"He just took my order. I think he may have to start it cooking too. The other cook is probably cleaning up from off shift supper and trying to get lunch started too."

"Yeah, deep space explorers aren't supposed to have double shifts, weapons techs and other extras. The idea was to have
short
crews, not extra. It's a good thing they are built to go out long with
lots
of storage."

"On the plus side if anybody gets shot up and has to abandon ship it will probably be us, being slower and not as well armed. Then we can move over to a nice roomy war ship."

"I love how you can always find the bright side of anything," Thor said. He didn't look sincere.

"We have a video standard now," Thor informed him. The images are very interesting. I'd like to do a new transmission to send to them using it. We are getting some very good tutorials sent to us. Far better than what we could do with the Bunnies. Our old video would look fumbling and amateur."

"I'm surprised you didn't wake me up to tell me."

"Why? Would you have stumbled out half awake and sent off a reply? Bad enough they woke me up to little purpose. I wouldn't want you in a group reply before you were fed and caffeinated. You'd probably smile at them and when you do that before breakfast it sends entirely the wrong message. It looks more like, 'Feed me your young' than it does, 'Hello new friends'. Unless you
want
to scare the crap out of them before they ever get to meet you."

"You..." He hesitated and swallowed the first word he thought of. "
Exaggerate
," he said instead.

"A couple of them look like they might be herbivores or omnivores," Thor revealed. "I'm not sure but what they might bolt in your presence even without showing any teeth."

"It's amazing Humans have the same reflex, isn't it?"

"Indeed, at a glance you'd mistake them for prey." He wouldn't have said that but Lee wasn't on the bridge yet."When we finish breakfast I'll show you what we've found."

* * *

Gordon watched some of the video tutorials. They had avatars of their races that moved smoothly and looked detailed enough to do complex actions. They saw facial expressions, but didn't know what they meant. There was also plenty of live video of real people to compare.

"These folks have met others recently. They wouldn't have such slick contact methods if they'd all known each other for ages and hadn't used these tools lately," Gordon decided.

"Absolutely and the basic word lists are very well thought out and in a very good sequence to build on the previous words. We are building a response to the word lists, but waiting for you to transmit video before we respond to the pictorial lessons. Once we are feeding them those we'll dump the word lists on them at the same time," Thor said.

"Let's get set up and do it then. Do you want to use the same people?"

"Yes, but I got the Hinth group to agree to have their image sent as long as they can put their masks on while dealing with unrelated strangers. Ha-bob-bob-brie will let us send his image bare faced, so they will know what the Hinth look like beneath them. I'm sure they'll see the masks as a peculiar cultural affectation."

"Can we make it happen in an hour?"

"I'll page everyone to come," Thor told him. "The video of the Hinth is already done. Alex said he thought he should do it with just shorts on to let them see Human structure better. "

"Makes sense to me. Once you have everything set in motion, come back here and explain to me what I'm looking at, please," Gordon said.

* * *

"That's a sweet production," Gordon said of the video when done, pleased. "Nothing to be embarrassed about like we're fumbling around and haven't done this before. Do you know by any chance... Did the Hinth change something on their masks?"

"You are observant. They added that little black symbol. It's like a chevron with a revered one overlaid. Sort of an X with a box in the middle," Thor said, drawing it with a finger.

"What's that mean?"

"They invented it. It means the same as the black brassards and ribbons the crews started wearing. Showing they belong to the Little Fleet. When they get home there's a registry for mask symbols. The shape they will register as showing service on starships as crew. But the solid black is reserved to service with this group," Thor said.

What Lee had noticed wasn't any new markings on the masks. She'd seen the three Hinth stayed away from Ha-bob-bob-brie when they'd been called to stand in a group. They'd managed to keep Thor and Lee between them and ignored Ha-bob-bob-brie like he wasn't there. It irritated her. She was sure they'd be happy to see other Hinth, but apparently not. She wanted to say something, but Gordon wasn't stupid, and Ha-bob-bob-brie himself hadn't complained, so how could she? Maybe they'd think it wasn't any of her business. Instead what she said was, "Now that they aren't under the Earth Human's thumb it's going to be interesting to see what the Hinth can do, isn't it?"

"It is. The purser on the
Retribution
told me one of his juniors was sewing a name tag on his jacket by hand and one of the Hinth said he couldn't stand to watch him anymore and took it away. He had it sown on flat and neat in about as much time as the clerk took to thread the needle. So I suspect they may excel in anything requiring very good dexterity." Thor said.

"Maintenance already figured that out. You should see one shoot," Lee told him. "They shoot like a robot. So fast it's scary. I wouldn't shoot skeet with one for money if he had to use a rifle."

"They'd probably make good shuttle pilots then," Gordon decided. "If things go bad and you have to fly one manually those are the sort of reactions you need."

"I'll ask Ha-bob-bob-brie if he can handle Human controls or what we'd have to do to accommodate them," Lee volunteered. "It's not like I have a whole lot of duties right now." She scrunched her nose up in thought. "I'll ask him if the Hinth would
want
to be shuttle pilots before I assume too much. He has other duties right now but I suspect we are wasting his talents in maintenance."

"Even if they are flightless now, what do you want to bet they have a brain suited to three dimensional thinking?" Thor predicted.

"He's a surface explorer," Gordon remembered. "For all I know he was qualified on Hinth shuttles. I'm at fault really because I never asked him to sit and write out all the skills that includes for Hinth. I'm afraid we just did a verbal interview. I was so intent on getting Hinth for crew so I could demonstrate we can work together I wasn't as thorough as I might have been for Derf or Humans."

"Dear gods, whatever you do, don't tell Ha-bob-bob-brie he is a
token
Hinth," Lee said.

* * *

"Impressive isn't it?" Luke asked of the return video they were getting.

"Yeah, they're slick. They just keep sending new stuff and not repeating.  Even though I just gave them the one short audio transmission? They must assume we are not stupid. That's good."

"Yes, after we send our images and we dump all the replies to their tutorials back to them, it will be interesting to see how fast they sort it all out and incorporate it."

"Yeah, especially how fast they switch to using avatars of our races as well as theirs."

"This race," Luke showed the avatar and then still pix cut from video, "we've taken to calling Sasquatch. That's a possibly mythological creature in Earth history. They fit the description because they are man-like, but just a bit larger and hairy. The head is unusually round and note the ears are small and the eyes large. We are not assuming that means they have good vision and poor hearing, it's just a matter of appearance. We have yet to see their teeth to try to guess if they are omnivores."