Dignity Vessels. Then I have to remind myself: everything I’ve heard might be wrong.
The group lines up in front of us, two deep, with the woman who came first only a few meters from me. She’s taller, and looks stronger. She’s also younger. Her eyes are dark brown, her chin raised slightly.
Her posture is military.
Finally, a woman emerges not wearing an environmental suit. She’s wearing a black uniform with gold decorations down the sleeves and along the shoulders. Her hair is red, her skin unlined, her bones large and strong from being raised in gravity.
The door closes behind her. She’s the one who walks up to me.
She nods and says something completely incomprehensible.
I’ve done this a few times before, usually on a space station, usually in a bar where someone else can identify the language and save me from myself.
But I’m here alone with my team, and all of my people who can understand various languages don’t have the damn genetic marker.
“I’m the boss of this crew,” I say. “We’re explorers. We didn’t expect to find your ship. Is this your base?”
The woman tilts her head slightly, and I can tell from the expression in her eyes that she doesn’t understand me any more than I understand her.
She nods at me, holds up a band as if to say, Let’s try this again, then taps herself. She makes four distinct sounds.
Then she points to me.
I don’t say anything, not yet.
She repeats the gesture and the sounds.
Her name and/or her rank. Her identification, at any rate.
I tap myself. “Boss.”
She repeats that. Then taps herself a third time, and repeats the four sounds.
I say them. She smiles. Communication of a sort.
She glances at the rest of my team, then says something very slowly. I don’t understand a word of it, but I make sure I’m recording it all. Maybe someone back at the hotel will understand.
I shrug, and feel someone near my side.
Al-Nasir has joined us. I glance at his hands, worried about his laser pistol. It remains in its holster.
“I think I understand them, Boss,” he says.
How can he, when I don’t?
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I had fifteen years of linguistics in school,” he says. “We went backward, looking at the way Standard evolved. I think she’s speaking a variation of it.”
“Give it a shot,” I say.
She’s watching us closely, as if she’s trying to understand.
He nods at her, then extends his hand toward her and repeats those four syllables.
She nods.
Then he taps himself and says, “Fahd Al-Nasir.”
She repeats his name. Then she says very clearly, “Boss,” and I jump.
“Yes,” I say.
She looks at me sharply. She seems to understand yes.
“Yes?” she repeats, but her emphasis is odd.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good,” Al-Nasir says, but he says it oddly, almost unrecognizably. “You speak Standard.”
His inflection is weird.
She frowns at him and says something in return.
“Yes,” he says.
“You’ll have to translate for me,” I say.
“I think she said, You’re speaking Standard?”
“You think?” I ask.
“I think,” he says, looking at me.
She’s watching closely.
Al-Nasir taps himself again. “I am Fahd Al-Nasir.” Then he puts his hand on my arm. “And she is my boss.”
The woman’s eyes light up. “Boss,” she says just as clearly. “Title?”
At least, I think that’s what she says. Al-Nasir seems to understand it that way, too.
“Yes,” he says, and gives me a sideways glance. He’s not going to explain that it’s also what everyone calls me. Probably too confusing anyway.
He looks at her, then at the ship. “Are you the boss?”
“No,” she says.
Even I understand that. So there’s someone else in charge.
“May we speak to your boss?” Al-Nasir asks.
She says something in response. Al-Nasir repeats the question. She slows down what she says. At least, I think it’s the same thing she said. I don’t have a facility with language. Clearly, Al-Nasir does.
He repeats the question a third time, and this time she says, simply, “No.”
My heart sinks. “Do they want us to leave?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says testily. “I can barely understand her as it is.”
“Try this,” I say. “Tell her we’re recording the conversation. Tell her that we’ll find someone to translate her message if she just repeats it a few times.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says, “with my magical ability to speak a variation of Standard I’ve never heard before.”
She’s looking at us.
I sigh. I hold up my hands and say, “We would like to figure out a way to communicate. Does anyone on your ship speak Standard?”
She answers me. Al-Nasir says softly,