"They're bringing us in for a landing," Rivera observed as they dropped towards a complex outside of one of the largest cities.
"Do you think we're the first aliens they've met?" Ian asked, frowning, "I really don't fancy getting the ET treatment."
Penny wasn't listening, focused on a large, cathedral like building at the center of the city they were dropping towards. It was massive, bigger than any building Penny could think of on earth, not just tall but wide, taking up many of the hexagonal squares that Penny had been mentally regarding as city blocks.
She would have bet money it took up exactly six of them, and began to wonder if that number had religious importance here. The cathedral's gleaming bastion walls were paper white, rising into spires as delicate as spun sugar and capped in gold. There was a ragged hole in one side, collapsed inwards, bigger around than a house. The crater glistened wetly like a wound, oozing golden fluid.
They were lowered towards an open roofed building. The weird craft that was carrying them rearranged itself with ease to drop the Oshun through the opening, its plates shifting across the webbed grid of its structure.
Penny reached for Rivera's hand as the ship touched ground with a thump that rattled all of them. Rivera squeezed it, and reached for Salome, who took Cho's hand as well, standing to join the other women.
Cho grabbed Ian, who was still staring out the view screen, looking shaken. He jumped at the touch, and then accepted it. They presented a united front as they stood in front of the shuttle doors, waiting to see what would become of them.
A moment later, the ship's view screens caught movement and they looked up, holding each other tightly for reassurance, as the first aliens came into view.
There were seven of them, a six unit squadron and their leader. They moved together perfectly. It was nothing so forced as a march, but was nonetheless formation, as natural as birds or fish.
Watching for even a moment, you could tell how the entire group reacted to even the slightest twitch from one of their number. They might have been six bodies with a single mind.
For all Penny knew, that's exactly what they were. All seven of them were nearly indistinguishable from one another. Penny couldn't tell if the shiny black chitin plates that covered their mostly humanoid forms were exoskeleton or armor.
Whatever it was split like cracked obsidian at the joints and seams, which were filled in with gold like living kintsugi art pieces. Iridescent green chelicerae glittered like the shards of strange jewels from what were either helmets or unmoving, inscrutable insectoid faces. Penny trembled.
"They're bugs," Salome groaned, "Why did it have to be bugs?"
"Well, statistically speaking, it was always the most likely result," Cho replied, looking unnerved, "There's more than nine hundred thousand species of insects on Earth that we know of. That's more than four times all the other species combined, including mammals, of which there's about five thousand species. I did prepare a pamphlet on this."
"None of us read it." Ian reported with no humor in his strained voice.
"I know none of you read it," Cho replied, "We were all really hoping they'd be mammalian."
"This is going to make things more difficult," Penny tried to keep her voice even, but it shook, and Rivera's hand was clammy in her own, "But we can still do this. Just everyone stay calm."
"Helmets on," Cho suggested, "We don't want a small pox blankets situation here."
"We haven't had a chance to test the outside air quality yet either," Rivera agreed, "Everybody seal up."
They let go of each other’s hands briefly to punch the buttons below their jaws, the transparent polyurethane unfolding to encapsulate their heads.
There was a bang on the hatch, a moment of strange scrabbling, and then it opened outward with a hiss as the cabin depressurized. Penny squeezed Rivera's hand anxiously.
For a few tense seconds, nothing happened. Then the squad leader stepped through the door. He was holding no visible weapon, but the beetle like spikes on that shiny black carapace made Penny certain he was armed somehow.
A weird buzzing hum filled the shuttle, emanating from the armored man. He didn't move, but his chelicerae worked, his weird, wet black glossy eyes watched them unblinkingly. After a moment, Penny realized the buzz might be some form of vocal communication.
"Hello, I'm-"
She started to speak and the squad leader recoiled instantly, buzzing loudly, angrily at the sound of her voice.
"Is something wrong?" Rivera asked, seeing the way it flinched away from them.
"I don't think it likes our voices," Cho suggested.
"Hush!" Penny said quickly, but the armored alien was already scrambling back out of the ship, buzzing loudly.
A moment later the other units burst in, waving sharp, dangerous looking stingers, filling the air with angry buzzing.
"Don't resist!" Penny called to the others, "Just stay calm!"
This only agitated the aliens further, but as they pinned Penny's team to the floor of the shuttle they only circled the Ambassador warily, as though unsure what to do. They looked back at their leader, who stared at Penny with inscrutable eyes.
"We're not here to hurt anyone," Penny said as calmly as she could, staring back at the insectoid alien, "We only want to learn and understand. We intend nothing but friendship. Do you understand me? Can you learn to understand me?"
She moved forward cautiously, offering a hand to the lead insect. In response, he grabbed her by wrist, his grip painfully tight, and forced her to her knees, buzzing a message to the others. Their hands were bound and, Penny ahead of her team, they were forced out of the ship and away.
Penny and the rest put up no resistance as they were led through a strange building, its walls webbed cells of white stone. She found it curious that there didn't seem to be a single rounded shape in all their designs. Everything was straight lines and sharp angles.
Penny didn't dig in her heels until she saw the aliens behind her beginning to shuffle off Cho down a different corridor.
"Hey!" she shouted without thinking, "No!"
The aliens jumped away from her at once, the antennae of their suits quivering with shock. Even the leader released her arm, body language surprised. Penny didn't waste the opportunity, hurrying over to Cho and, as the xenobiologist's guards dodged back to avoid her, Penny herded Cho back in line with the rest of the group.
"We stay together," Penny told the alien's leader firmly, planting herself as stubbornly as she could in front of the others to try and make what she was saying obvious, "We stay together."
The emphasis she put on her words sent a visible shudder through all the aliens and a thrill of worry through Penny. What kind of power did her voice have over them, and was it wise to be using it this way?
She had to look after the safety of her team before anything else, but she couldn't help fear that whatever she was doing would only endanger them more in the long run.
Regardless, no more attempts were made to split them up. They were herded into a hexagonal room, bare and windowless. And then they were left alone. The leader of the alien squadron stared at Penny as the door closed between them, and Penny wished she knew how to read their emotions.
"Should we try to get loose?" Rivera asked, her mouth set in a thin line.
"No," Penny shook her head, staring at the door, "We need to show we're cooperative. This might be their first contact with another species as well. Hostility or perceived hostility was always a possibility."
She spoke with confidence, but her hands were trembling, her emotions a wild clash of excitement and fear. This was as fascinating as it was terrifying. She was on an alien planet, in an alien city. It was enough to make her head spin. And this species!
They seemed to be bipedal, basically humanoid in shape, but if that armor was an exoskeleton who knew what their biology might be like. She was already getting a sense of their culture, which she had a feeling would turn out to be quite rigid and communal,
judging by the uniformity of all their structures, the stark color palate of white, black, and gold which she'd seen deviated from nowhere so far.
Even just looking at the flawless synchronicity of the squad that had brought them here, it was clear this was a society, which valued cohesion in all things.
She was scared too of course, terrified. But even if they died here, what a way to go! She knew she wasn't the only one excited. She could see Cho practically vibrating with intensity, examining everything in awe.
"Alright everyone," Rivera ordered, "It looks like we might be in here a while. Let's huddle up. Figure out what we know and what our plan is."
They sat in a corner of the large room and began discussing what they'd observed and what they should do next.
"Greeting us with military right off the bat like that," Salome asked, "Do you think that means they're a militaristic culture? Or maybe just xenophobic?"
"We can't know those were military," Cho pointed out, "They may all be like that, for all we know. It might have been a family group."
"Those definitely looked like weapons they were pointing at us." Rivera said with a frown.
"Being greeted by warriors might be an honor in their culture," Ian suggested, "It's possible they were trying to be respectful. We shouldn't assume the worst."
"We should try not to assume anything."
Penny was running her hands over the strange hexagonal white cells that made up the walls of the room they were in, wondering what it was made of. It felt rigid as metal, but with a waxy texture.
"We have to do our best not to let preconceived notions cloud our perception of them. If we start regarding them as military or families before we know for certain, we'll attach incorrect emotions to things and there will be misunderstandings. It's vital we keep an open mind."
Rivera frowned, balancing her chin on her closed fist in the way she always did when she was anxious.
"But if we don't draw any conclusions," she asked, "If we dismiss every interpretation as 'it could mean anything,' how will we begin to understand them? And more importantly, how can we be prepared if they become genuinely aggressive?"
Penny laughed, a little high-pitched with nerves.
"None of us signed up for this because it was an easy job," she shrugged, leaning back against the waxy wall, "No one has ever done this before. The best we can do is try to find common ground and figure out the language."
"They seemed noticeably startled by us speaking," Cho mentioned, scraping at the wall curiously and examining the waxy residue under her fingernail, "I mean, if their startle response looks like ours, that is. I think that buzzing might have been them communicating with each other. Of course, with them not being mammalian they could be communicating any number of ways we can't actually perceive. Vocalizations might be a completely new concept to them."
"That would certainly make things more difficult." Penny ran a hand through her hair as she thought about how they would deal with such a situation.
"If they allow us back to our ship," Salome offered, "I could possibly use the ship's sensors to detect certain kinds of communication. Or at the very least get some screens of their written language. Writing back and forth is better than nothing."
They talked a while longer, discussing how they would handle the situation. Considering how little they knew, they couldn't plan much beyond stay together and try to communicate. And if things went south, they would book it for the ship and try to get back to Earth.
They were still talking when the door opened, surprising all of them. Penny stood first, taking point in front of her team, as the leader of the squad that brought them here (or someone in identical armor) came inside.
Behind him followed several other beings so dramatically different that Penny was momentarily stumped. The alien in the black armor stepped aside to allow the others in, tipping his head back to bare his throat in what Penny assumed was a gesture of respect. The three creatures that followed him were, in many ways, shockingly human.
They had the basic appearance of human men, tall and graceful as elves in a fantasy and breathtakingly beautiful, their night black skin glittering with iridescence. Their eyes were compound, throwing colored light like huge gemstones. Their hands were strange, with long narrow palms, and Penny realized they had only three fingers plus a thumb.
Their hair, long and black shot through with gold, had a feathery texture and rustled strangely even when they weren't moving. Most spectacularly, huge, shimmering wings hung behind them, long enough to trail the ground, translucent and pearlescent and mesmerizing to look at.
They were narrow and double layered like a dragonfly and, as the alien men examined Penny's team, looking at her down their elegant flat noses with what Penny did not want to assume was disdain but certainly felt like it, those wings hummed and vibrated, perhaps in some secret communication between them.
"Hello," Penny greeted them, hoping they might have a better reaction than the black armored individuals, "We're honored to meet you."
All three froze at her words, their wings standing out stiffly. A moment later, they were buzzing more rapidly than ever, their gem stone eyes narrowed at her suspiciously as all three of them made a gesture with their hands near their mouths. Penny's fell silent quickly.
Speaking out loud was clearly not acceptable here, if she was reading their expressions correctly as being offended. But if she couldn't talk to them, what could she do?
She scrambled for an answer and remembered the touch pad built into the arm of her suit. She opened it and located a note-taking program intended for the explorers to jot down their observations.
If she couldn't communicate, she'd show them math. She held out her wrist to them and, as she'd hoped, all three leaned closer to see as she drew on it with her finger.
"Okay," she murmured to her team, "Let's see if these guys have ever heard of Lingua cosmos."
She started with pulses. First one, then two, and so on, demonstrating them on her hands and on the screen until she reached ten. Unsure they had understood, she started over, taking it slow, but soon she could hear their wings buzzing in time with her silent counting.
She smiled, delighted, and moved to the wall, tapping each side of one of the hexagonal panels and counting out pulses to six. The aliens observed, but whether they were taking note or understanding at all, she couldn't tell. She was at least demonstrating that she was intelligent, she supposed. They wouldn't be mistaken for mindless animals.
She went on for hours, slowly defining the meanings of mathematical symbols like greater-than and equals, going over everything multiple times to try and make sure they understood. Whatever she did, the aliens observed, unresponsive, aside from occasionally counting along with her.
They only reacted whenever she slipped up and spoke out loud, naming a number or expressing her frustration, recoiling and occasionally hissing in what she assumed was annoyance or offence.
Finally, as Penny was beginning to become exhausted, one of them gestured to the pad on her arm and held out his hand. Penny, hoping it would pay to be trusting, offered him her arm. With a long, tapered finger, he pointed at himself, drew the greater-than symbol with its open end towards him, and then pointed at her.
Penny, fairly certain she'd just been insulted, could only stare as the alien dropped her arm, wiped his hand on his flowing robes, then turned and left, the others following him.
The black armored alien had stood by the door this entire time, waiting. He paused now before following the others, to stare at the still stunned Penny for a long moment. Then he exited, closing the door behind him.
"What was that?" Rivera asked. The entire team had been waiting in tense anticipation behind Penny for hours as she struggled to communicate. "What did that mean?"
"I don't think they like us." Penny replied, staring down at the symbol written on her touch pad and wishing she could interpret it some other way. 'We are better than you' was not an encouraging first co
mmunication.
Chapter Four
They were left alone for another several hours. All night, Penny would have said, but she was fairly certain this planet had a longer day/night cycle than Earth-standard 24hrs.
Going by the size of their sun, they might be anywhere between 48 and 96 hour days. Penny really hoped they weren't ignored that long. They were all already getting hungry and thirsty. Staying close together, they slept in shifts, no one comfortable sleeping entirely unguarded after the message earlier that day.
Penny was starting to worry they'd been forgotten when the door opened again. Penny got to her feet immediately as the rest of the team gathered themselves. Cho, who'd been asleep, yawned and rubbed her eyes in confusion.
The black armored alien, if he was the same as the previous two times, stepped in alone and closed the door behind him. He was carrying a strange device, hexagonal in shape (of course) and about the size of a microwave.
The inside of it was golden and webbed with tinier combs. He ignored the humans at first, crossing to a wall and wedging his long, dangerous looking claws in between the edges of one of the panels.
He pulled down and it opened out into a surface, a table jutting from the wall. He set the device on it, and then pulled two more, smaller panels out closer to the ground, creating seats like barstools.
He turned to Penny, and then gestured at one of the seats, sitting in the other himself. Penny, unsure what was happened, sat down. As she watched, the alien reached under his chin and she saw him pressing at strange latches.
There was a hiss of decompression and he lifted off what she now realized was a helmet after all, not an exoskeleton. Penny's eyes widened as she saw the man underneath.
Like the glittering winged men who'd visited before, he was very close to human, enough so that Penny was caught off guard by how attractive he was. His skin was just as dark as theirs, but matte and smooth rather than iridescent.
His eyes weren't compound jewels, but seemed to mirror human construction, although when Penny looked closer she saw the iris was composed of tiny compound panels, their color a startling blue-purple shifting as it caught the light.
The Warrior's Proposal (Celestial Mates Book 7) Page 10
