Personal Log Gwenn, Lauryna JC3C

ISS Gyfjon KKV-04, Sector 18
18-16-2102

I’ve started working on the intercepted communication, but I have almost no idea where to start. And Crewmate Gausi isn’t helping….

Lauryna frowned at the computer display, and ran the recording back three seconds.

It wasn’t a code. She felt certain of that. But she couldn’t tease out the semantics of it. It wasn’t the standard click-language of the Insectoid mantids, or one of the variants they’d picked up. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said it was just noise.

But the Rhombil-Dva didn’t lie; there was data being communicated here. She just had to figure out how they were communicating. Even if she couldn’t work up a translation on her own….

“Nothing doing, right? This is a waste of energy, if you ask me.”

“Sir, there’s something here. I just….”

“Oh, grow up, Gwenn. Just because that bronze square is still shiny, that doesn’t mean you have to give everything the good ol’ Academy try. Captain Bass wants us to hunt ghosts, well, we can look for them, but we aren’t gonna find ‘em.”

Lauryna shook her head. “There’s semantic meaning in this, sir.”

“Maybe there is. But it’s no language we know. Send it off to the code wonks at the Dodecahedron, they can play with it.”

“Well…sir, due respect, but if we get rid of this project, what do we do?”

Gausi laughed. “Why’d you go into xenolinguistics, anyhow?”

“I like languages,” Lauryna said, tapping at the screen. “I’ve always been good with them.”

“Hmmf. Well, I’m not bad with them. But unless you’re on a ship at the raw edge of space, what do they need us for? Ms. Gwenn, xenolinguistics is a great slot because nobody expects much out of you. If you start delivering too much, they might start to think you can be useful.”

Lauryna sighed. “Crewmate Gausi…that’s not exactly the Space Exploration Corps attitude.”

“Oh, lighten up, Gwenn! I’ve crossed my ishaytans here. But at some point, you accept you’ve done enough, and you tell the captain that. I’ve already done that, you know.”

“And yet he called me in,” Lauryna said. “He must think there’s something else we can do.”

“Well, Aerty Bass is a good pilot, but he doesn’t know languages. Be honest – does this look like any known form of communication?”

Lauryna shook her head. “No, sir.”

“See? How can we translate it if it doesn’t make any sense? Now, seriously, Gwenn, I know why you feel like you have to keep plugging away here, but if you want to call it quits at any point, you let me know – I’ll back you up.”

Lauryna turned to look at the senior linguist. “I appreciate that, sir.”

“All right. Well, you don’t work too hard, Gwenn. See you in a bit, I’m gonna grab some dinner,” Gausi said, leaving the room.

Lauryna sighed, and turned back to her work.

It was quite some time later – long after one might have expected Gausi to be back from dinner – that Lauryna heard a small voice from the doorway.

“So this is where you run off to when you’re tired of me.”

For the second time that day, Lauryna started at the sound Izzy’s voice. “Iz – how on Archavia….”

“Xenolinguistics lab is on Deck 14, aft. Everyone knows that. Sheesh.” Izzy said, stepping out of the ventilation shaft and dusting herself off. “Decided to go study Dronami in peace?”

“No way. I’d be trying to move the movie up if I was that bored. No, I’m trying to work out a signal from the insectoids, and I’m getting close to deciding I can’t.”

Izzy walked up by the boot of Lauryna, and waited patiently; Lauryna was distracted, but she still reached down and provided Izzy a lift up to the desktop.

“I thought you understood Insectoid?”

“I do, at least the verbal parts. I can even speak the Mantid clade’s dialect – I don’t have the right mouth parts to speak Warrior, but I understand it okay.”

“So what’s the problem?” Izzy said, looking at the screen.

“The problem is that this isn’t any kind of Insectoid language I’ve ever seen. I mean, there are three comm streams – I’ve got those isolated out – but none of them are even close to the syntax of verbal insectoid.”

Izzy looked at the screen, then up at Lauryna. “What do you mean, ‘verbal insectoid?’”

“Well, insectoids also use body language to communicate among themselves, but this isn’t an audiovisual signal, so that can’t be it. And they use smell….”

Lauryna trailed off, and tilted her head slightly. Then, slowly, a smile worked its way across her face. “It can’t be that easy,” she said, as much to herself as anyone. Then, taking care to make sure she wouldn’t knock Izzy off her feet, Lauryna opened up a window, and began to search through three-dimensional images.

“Are those molecules?” Izzy asked.

“Yup,” Lauryna said, stopping on one. “This one’s nonacosane; it’s a hydrocarbon the Warrior clade use for communications….”

She hit a couple keys, and had to wait only a minute before shouting in triumph and clapping her hands; the communication logs lit up with unmistakable representations of nonacosane.

“Izzy, I could kiss you!” Lauryna said. “I don’t know how much longer I would’ve beat my head against this if you hadn’t stopped by. I need to see Crewmate Pir right away, but I promise, just for this, I promise, no more pink nightgowns.”

“You already promised that!” said Izzy, who was trying to recover from Lauryna’s rather cacophonous outburst.

“Well then,” Lauryna said, kissing Izzy on the top of her head, “that’ll have to do. I’ll see you later, Iz! I’ll bring gok’ma pie!”

“Darn it, stop messing up my hair! And Red –”

But Lauryna was already exiting the room on a quickmarch. Izzy sighed. “Girl could at least help me down,” she sighed.

*   *   *

“So thanks to Crewmate Pir and Dr. Geen, we’ve managed to work out all but two of the molecules they signaled; based on their location in the transcript, my suspicion is that they’re specific designators used to describe specific individuals within the hive. Basically, telling them who this message is for.”

“I agree with Ms. Gwenn,” Dayun said, leaning back in his chair in the conference room. “It fits with some of the information we have on warrior behavioral patterns. And it’s not important, not compared to the other information.”

Lauryna felt quite proud of herself, so proud that she was barely aware that Crewmate Gausi was staring daggers at her. She’d been quite politic; she’d praised his work as the foundation of her own. That was, to put it gently, nonsense, but she saw no need to alienate her senior officer.

“Well done, Crewmate Pir, Dr. Geen. And especially to you, Ms. Gwenn,” Captain Bass said.

“Really, we just did grunt work,” Dayun replied. “Once Ms. Gwenn had her insight, the rest followed naturally.”

“Hardly true, sir,” Lauryna said. She tried not to blush, but Aerti simply smiled back.

“Now, why would they choose System Gamma-Upsilon-Niner-Four-Niner-Zero-Gimmel?”

“It makes strategic sense,” Lemm said, looking at her notes. “It’s a system they’ve long claimed, and there’s no system of ours closer to Hive Prime. Understandably, they don’t want to go much further into our space for the pick-up.”

“Anything of note there?” Aerti asked.

“It’s a triple star system, nothing of note circling Ashay or Beth, but there are seven planets in the Gimmel system, and while none are habitable, there are large moons around the sixth planet, including a hadean world; past experience suggests that as a likely rendezvous point.”

“All right, so if Ms. Gwenn is right, we’ve got about fourteen hours to intercept. Crewmate Dermish, how fast can we get there?”

“At best speed, under an hour; keeping it to Warp 5, about three. Of course, that’s to reach the system. We’ll have to be a bit more careful once we’re there.”

“Warp 5 will do fine, crewmate. All right, Commander Tam, go relieve Engine-Fixer and Crewmate Dermish, get us moving. Everyone else should meet back here at 8200. Dismissed. Ms. Gwenn, could you spare a minute?”

Lauryna had been about to get up, but she sank back down at Captain Bass’s request. Aerti moved from the head of the table, and sat across from Lauryna, pausing only to say, “Crewmate Gausi, I said you’re dismissed.”

“Sir…Ms. Gwenn told you….”

“She told me you helped, and that’s quite honorable of her, and officially, I believe her. Dismissed, Crewmate.”

Gausi stared at Bass for a moment, before rising, clicking his heels, and with a formal salute, saying, “Aye-aye, sir!”

Bass tapped his temple disdainfully, and waited for Gausi to leave. When the door slid shut, he turned back to Lauryna. “Nice job, Ms. Gwenn. And since I see you thinking it, don’t worry about Crewmate Gausi. For a variety of reasons, I don’t expect him to be a problem for you.”

“I…hope you’re right, sir.”

“I do too,” Aerti said. He paused, and looked at a data pad. “Ms. Gwenn, you know that our translator matrix is not the best when it comes to insectoid languages.”

“Agreed,” Lauryna said. “When I’ve had a chance to talk with insectoids, I turn mine off. I understand it better.”

Aerti smiled. “Ms. Gwenn, that almost sounds like bragging.”

Lauryna smiled, and this time, she was certain that she did blush. “Sir…I know I haven’t been a model officer….”

“You only considered insubordination and the theft of a shuttlecraft one time. I’ll let it slide. Since then, you’ve done very well. Now, you know that we’re going to have to get aboard that ship, let them think we’re just inspecting them. We can’t just blow them out of the sky, not with the things they could be carrying.”

Aerti looked down again, and said, “I’ve been preparing a three-officer crew to go over and conduct the inspection. Commander Tam will take lead, and LerTarrgh will be there for muscle. I had Crewmate Gausi slated to serve as the third member of the group. I’ve changed my mind. Ms. Gwenn, I want you to get your armor ready.”

Lauryna blinked. “I…don’t have armor, sir.”

“You do. I sent through the fabrication order halfway through your presentation. You’re going to serve as translator and cultural observer. If, that is, you think you can handle it.”

Lauryna’s heart fluttered. A remote mission? Her? JC3Cs almost never ended up on remote missions. She swallowed hard.

“Sir…I will do my best, sir.”

“I’m sure you will, Ms. Gwenn. I want you back here at 8100 to meet with Commander Tam and LerTarrgh, suited up and ready to go. Dismissed.”

“Aye, sir,” Lauryna said. She nearly bounded though the door, her head swimming.”

Aerti chuckled as he watched her go, then hit his pad twice. “LerTarrgh?” he said, as his call was answered. “I need you to check on something for me.”

*   *   *

“Finally!” Lauryna gushed, as she squeezed herself into her body suit. “I’m finally going to do something, Iz!”

Izzy was trying not to watch Lauryna slide into said suit; it wasn’t particularly easy, given that Lauryna was the size of a skyscraper, and Izzy wasn’t entirely successful.

“Kidnapping me didn’t count as doing something?” Izzy said, when Laryna was finally sealed up.

Lauryna always felt a slight pang when Izzy teased her about that; she knew that her diminutive friend had forgiven her, at least up to a point. But that didn’t mean Lauryna didn’t still feel regret every time she remembered it.

“Red, if you’re gonna tear up every time I tease you, I swear….”

Lauryna stuck her tongue out at Izzy, and started locking her yellow, black, and gray armor into place. “Kidnapping you was easy. And, you know, almost got me time in the brig. This…Izzy, they think they might have humans aboard, or Dunnermac roe, or something else awful. If we can stop this….”

Lauryna pressed a button, and her left boot locked into place. “Izzy, this is why I joined the Fleet. To stop stuff like this, to see the universe, and okay, to meet some stranger who would sweep me off my feet…but, you know, this is a big part of it.”

Izzy sighed, as Lauryna pulled her long hair into a braid. “Lauryna…combat isn’t all that fun. I nearly got blown up by an IED outside of Fallujah, and the driver wasn’t as lucky…it’s scary as hell. Scarier than running around a ship with a bunch of giants.”

Lauryna paused, and turned to Izzy. She forgot, sometimes, that Izzy was a soldier too. She talked a lot about guarding Eyrn Fitzgerald, but not that much about the time she spent in…what was it called? Irak?

“Trust me, I know this could be dangerous, but….”

“But nothing! They sent you armor, they expect things to go wrong. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is why you joined the Fleet, just like being in Falljuah was why I joined the Army. Wasn’t fun, but it was my job. But Red…you stay sharp, okay? Trust me…no matter how much training you have….”

Lauryna smiled gently. “Thanks for the advice, Iz. Really, I…I’ll be smart.”

“’Course you will. More important, stay focused. And come back in one piece. I’m not moving in with Dermish.”

Lauryna laughed at that. “All right, Iz, I’ll stay safe. Now, I’d better head up, it’s almost 8100; you get some sleep, hopefully I’ll be back before you wake up.”

Lauryna paused for a half-second, as if there was something more she wanted to say, but instead she simply waved, and headed out the door.

Izzy sighed. The kid had no idea what she was getting into. And while Izzy didn’t either, really – well, at least she had some experience in a battle zone.

She knew this could get her into trouble. But still, she hopped off the bed, and headed for the ventilation system. She wasn’t going to make Lauryna face this alone.