Libor: Katana Krieger #2

by Bill Robinson

  The hatch opens and I watch on Yorktown's camera as two Marines exit the lander, their suits showing sidearms, but otherwise empty weapons attachment points. They are followed by two men in Navy suits, followed by the second pair of mostly disarmed Marines, two large suitcases, and finally the last two Navy suits. One by one, the alien helps them through the airlock and into its ship.

  For the first time I wish I had six screens. I am afraid to take the external view off, yet I want to watch at least the Senator's cam and Ramos' cam. I'm under orders not to initiate comm, and I had assumed the Senator would have the courtesy to talk to us, at least so the record going home would have dialog. They must have been talking inside the LS, but we have heard not a peep of it.

  The Senator's cam goes dark for a few seconds, then it's bright as day. The air lock is large, large enough for all eight humans and the one Libor, with room to spare. Plain metallic white bulkheads, one hatch at the far end. The Libor's legs are visible, about head high, suggesting it's closing the hatch. There's no visible ladder in there, kind of odd.

  The Marines re-position themselves to surround the four civilians as the Libor releases from above and floats to the hatch leading to their ship. It settles onto the ground, pushes a button and sticks. I make a note on my pad, middle button on right arm is for the mag boots.

  It puts a hand up, almost funny, but I'm pretty sure it has no idea who Diana Ross was, and stands still. I'm tempted to look at the suit telemetry feed, but even without it, I can guess the airlock is pressurizing. It takes 18 seconds before the Libor lowers its hand and reaches to unhook its helmet.

  I could have missed this part. We see the slightly furry skin, though darker brown than we've seen before, lipless mouth, holes where the nose and ears should be, and the giant multiple eyes. I've seen it before, I've seen it live, I've rewatched the video many times, I've looked at the photos, and still I have to fight the urge to turn away. Instead, I give an order.

  "RISTA, add that eye to the app database, give it a name."

  "Aye, sir." She said the ‘sir' strangely, I think the homonym got her as it has others.

  Information flies across my screen, and now I see another flaw in our planning, we did not come up with a naming convention. McAdams has called this one "Phil." I'd have gone for L2-001, or maybe, well I don't know, but seriously, Phil?

  It also occurs to me I haven't looked at the others, which I find are conveniently named Red01 through Red05. Phil.

  The Libor has opened the internal hatch, hooked its helmet to the wall of the compartment and is in the process of removing its suit. I hadn't noticed before, but the wall is covered in attachment points. It (the alien, not the wall) motions to the humans, and they get the idea. We watch them strip off their space suits, our video feeds are quickly attached to the wall and go dead one by one.

  I flip to the Senator's body feed, and he finally decides I'm worth talking to. My comm goes live.

  "Captain, do you still have video?" They've all got a standard collar mic, and the usual orange ear bud on top of a shoulder mounted video camera. The cameras are live, but none of the audio feeds except his.

  "Aye, Senator. Your shoulder cam is good to go."

  He switches off.

  Frak him. I cheat, use the command over-ride on the Marines' systems and activate Ramos' audio.

  The now naked Libor stands in the hatch and makes another of those bee/banjo/cat sounds and signals for everyone to follow. The Marines reach to detach their backpacks from the suits, but the Senator interrupts and they leave everything behind as they float out into the passageway.

  "Mr. McAdams?" There's a lot of excitement in my voice, good and bad.

  She been punching her consol for a couple seconds, pauses before she answers, knowing I don't need to hear anything until she's got something.

  "New sounds, Skipper. New sounds."

  It was Courtney who discovered on our last trip that the alien sounds break down into clear words if we slow them down, based on a hint from one of the captured conspirators.

  "Copy. How are we on electromagnetic transmissions?"

  "Olivia has that, Skipper." That's her second.

  "Mr. Gomez, what do you have?"

  "Sir, no transmissions detected. I assume they're using directional systems."

  "Aye, just as we are Chief. Keep me informed if anything changes."

  The Senator's goal is to make friends. My goal is to learn to understand their language, and read their transmissions, hopefully without them becoming aware we can do it. And, obviously, to get us all out of here in one piece.

  Our team is floating down a passageway, not that different from those on Yorktown. Six sided, just like ours, padded, just like ours, green, not like ours. I don't see a ladder system like we use, but they must have something in there that allows them to move under acceleration. The Marines will have spotted it, we'll get it from them when they get home. The professors are moving the suitcases. The Marines' sidearms are hanging in the airlock. My stomach is sick.

  They're halfway down the passageway when they begin a right turn. It's where the ward room is on Yorktown. Don't know if that's what it is here, but it is the same size and layout, 12 feet or so wide, twice that long, with a table in the middle. "Phil" flips a switch and the table rises into the ceiling, opening the space. I make a mental note to set that up on Yorktown next time we're home.

  Unlike us, the Libor have chairs in their ships, not vertical couches. It makes sense, if in fact their maximum acceleration is half ours. The chairs in the aft end of the space remain attached to the deck.

  Three new Libor are floating in the space, all of the tan fur we've seen before. "Phil," the only mocha alien, moves to the side, and non-verbally transfers attention from itself to them.

  "Courtney?"

  "Got them, Skipper."

  The profs float the cases over to the far wall, remove two large portable screens and set them to floating against the wall. There are two Libor screens already on the wall, though who knows what they look like when switched on and what kind of cable you need to connect to them, or what wi-fi signals they recognize.

  Cables from our screens run to the cases, connecting the electronics to a battery pack. They have a ton of them in the LS, and can recharge them there, so no need to figure out what kind of electricity and plugs are in a Libor ship.

  The screens come to life, manufacturers logos appearing briefly. Then each professor plays with his pad, and the screens show a snowflake, and the word "HELLO" written beneath it.

  The Senator moves slightly forward, and suddenly I have his audio again. He places his hand on his chest. The first official words spoken by a human to an alien race (I said ‘freeze' but I don't think that will go down in history, and we're not likely to celebrate the bad guys who were working with them and everything they have said) and he wants to make sure they're on the recording.

  "Senator Paul Piper."

  His picture appears on the screen, with his name written under it.

  The professors do the same in turn.

  The three Libor, each in turn, repeat the motion and add some banjo cat.

  I call up McAdams database. "Ralph," "Rudy," and "Ozzy" have eyeballs attached to them, and short sound clips.

  "Mr. McAdams, Phil? Ralph?"

  "Sorry, Skipper, I am having trouble mentally dealing with these aliens, I needed to do something."

  "Understood, Courtney, I'm right there with you, carry on."

  "Aye, sir." Her first sentence was a little down, but the last one perky, if that's the right word. I need to work on perky myself.

  Happily, we turn back to the visual, and watch while the professors and their Libor counterparts flip through 50 words and a little pantomime to make sure they comprehend each other. Per Naval Intelligence's request, and apparently per normal linguistic protocol anyway, they get the Libor to sound each snowflake. McAdams is in heaven.

  It becomes apparent early on that humans can't
speak Libor, and the Libor seem genuinely unable to speak English, though how I would know if a Libor was lying to me I'm not really sure. There's no facial expression I can see, and body language, well, they talk with their hands just like I do, but I doubt we understand the syntax.

  After the fiftieth word, food appears. Brought to them by "Fred" the Libor.

  My team has rations in their backpacks, and lots of stores in the LS. I'm not convinced of the wisdom of eating alien food, though there's been plenty of contact between our races, and, if I'm right between this home world and Libor who have lived with humans. They should know what we can eat.

  There's a bunch of raw fruit or vegetables, hard to tell which, lots of different colors, and a cooked dish of some kind.

  The Libor point to each, make some banjo cat, and then fire up their screen. It looks fluid, there's no other way I can say it, the image is fluid, but we can still make it out. There's a snowflake next to a picture of one of the fruits. They run through the whole group of them, then "Ralph" picks up a large round red fruit and wrecks it. I hadn't seen their teeth before, not even in the autopsy photos, and once I do I don't want to be bitten by one. They are sharp and small and destructive.

  "Skipper...." I don't think McAdams meant to say it, she was thinking out loud, but I go with it anyway.

  "Courtney?"

  "Sorry, sir, I've been assuming that I could turn the Libor video feeds into something that looked normal on our screens. Stupid. I'll reprogram the computers to look for patterns of all kinds, not only those that would make nice pictures."

  "Aye. Don't beat yourself up, we knew there would be a steep learning curve."

  "Aye, sir."

  She's 23 years old, thinks things through, sees her mistakes, learns from them and moves on. Really not what I was like at that age.

  The group settles in to eat a little, the best part is the Libor keep pausing and talking to each other while McAdams records every word. We add the food types to the database, along with their pictures.

  The casserole turns out to come from a small animal, looks mammalian, but who knows, kinda back end of a rabbit and front end of a rat, plus some vegetables that aren't on the table. We record the pictures of all of it. The team seems to enjoy it, except the Marines who stay on the other side of the room. Maybe we need to see if there's alien spaghetti and meatballs for them.

  Eventually they go back to talking and miming, matching snowflakes to English words to banjo cat sounds. We're at least a hundred words in by the time the Senator suggests to the professors it's time to call it a night. I get the feeling they've been exploring grammar too, but I must have missed it. The professors flash a sequence of snowflakes across the screen, and the aliens get the message immediately.

  It leads to a 20 minute conversation about time, which I believe ends with an agreement of when they'll start again. "Phil" has been standing by quietly all day, now takes the lead and guides everyone back to the airlock, helps them into their suits, gets into his, and sees them off back to the LS.

  I wait until the internal cameras show them out of their suits and assembled on the main deck.

  "Senator, Krieger. Anything I need to know?"

  "No, Captain," comes the immediate reply, a rather annoyed sounding immediate reply, "we have everything under control."

  He disconnects his mic and I watch on the camera as he pulls the ear bud out of his ear. There's a message there, and I got it.

  Fortunately, I have my own secret I'm keeping from him. McAdams and Gomez are buried in their screens, going through the day's audio and video. I detach myself from my couch and float over to them.

  "Ladies, what do we have?"

  "Skipper," McAdams is joyful, her blue eyes shining, "I think we have everything. The message that Orion sent in Gamma Omicron is about half decoded, I'm 90 percent sure it's telling someone in system that we're coming and they are running and leaving the crew and ship behind."

  "Someone who might still be in GO."

  "Aye, Skipper. Can't tell where they were running to, but if you have the chance, you might ask the professors to ask about their solar coordinates system. We have a bunch of numbers in the message that might be a location."

  "Will do, if I get the chance." I look at the two of them. "We're going to be here a while, get some rack time, I don't want either of you working 20 hour days. Understood?"

  I get simultaneous unhappy ayes.

  We're late for shift change, I hand the bridge to Shelby and go to my cabin. I spend the evening going through McAdams' data, reading the report the Senator flashed over for download to the president, and munching on human food (if rehydrated dehydrated caesar salad counts as human food). I don't know if he knows I can read his messages, but I don't care. If he didn't want anyone reading them, he should have encrypted them. It makes clear that he likes the Libor better than he likes me. He thinks they are extremely friendly, and predicts some kind of basic agreement within two weeks.

  Based on our schedule, Decatur will have jumped back to Gamma Upsilon by the time I read the report, and another ship will be back on Earth by 0800 with the report. Be interesting to see if there's a reply.

  Nothing else of importance to do, I take my own advice and hit my rack.

  We spend four more days watching language lessons. We don't learn a whole lot. Each of their fingers has a name, they have no word for ‘fingers.' They also have no word for toes, and, yes, though I might have forgot to mention it, they have an extra long skinny big toe and only three smaller fatter toes. Each little piggy has its own name.

  Oh. We do get that "Libor" is them pronouncing their species name slowly (for them). It's actually them saying something like "Most Favored Children of the Eternal Giver of Life in All Its Wisdom and Grace Forever."

  The professor's report home equates the grammar of the aliens with ancient Celtic: the verb is the first word in every sentence. Makes them sound like a particular short green mythical movie character.

  The sixth day the professors talk to them about men and women, birds and bees. As we suspected, the Libor are unisex. And, we learn why there are so few of them. Most Libor, maybe 98% of Libor, have one child in their lives, born well into adulthood. A very few have multiple births, which accounts for the entirety of their population growth. They seem rather fascinated by human biology. They don't couple, they don't have much of a family other than a parent and a child, or maybe a child and a grandchild. Seems rather unfortunate to me.

  On the seventh day, our team broaches the topic of religion. They have one, and only one. They believe in one spiritual force (not The Force) that links them all together. Apparently, there's only one big sin, killing another Libor, which makes sense since they have so much trouble making new ones. Preserving their race absolves all other sins, which explains why they are so willing to kill us. Blowing up a human is not much of a sin to begin with, and enslaving us probably isn't a sin at all, especially if we're a threat.

  I'm watching the discussion, which takes place on competing screens, us putting snowflakes on ours, them putting English words on theirs, when suddenly the topic switches. The next three minutes are me grabbing the arm rests of my couch way too hard, praying the Senator is not as stupid as I know he's about to be. They're throwing around numbers and "Phil" calls up a map of the planet, a globe actually, and indicates a particular site.

  Piper gets on the comm circuit, a call from the Senator as if I don't know what he's done, since his mic was off and he might not realize the professors and the Marines are live and within range.

  "Krieger, Senator Piper." Why he doesn't think I know it's him, I have no idea.

  "Yes, Senator?" I'll play along as if I don't know what he's about to ask.

  "Captain, we're moving to the planet. Yorktown is to follow the Libor ship and establish orbit according to information I will be messaging to you. The landing craft will return to you tomorrow first thing, we're staying on board for the transition to orbit, and I believe
we'll let the Libor move us to the surface. Clear?"

  "Aye, Senator. Awaiting the information."

  He's been happier lately because I haven't talked to him, even when he's aboard the LS. His messages home have stopped mentioning me. There haven't been any replies. I would have been happier if he'd kept on not talking to me.

  Courtney and I have also been sending messages home, our's on Admiral Everingham's orders direct to Admiral Quintana, which we assume are being shared with Admiral Hilgenberg. The Senator, to the best of my knowledge, is totally unaware of that communication. My chain of command is more like a web, enough to make me skittish, not at all certain where people think they fit and whose cheeks I'm unknowingly slapping.