CHAPTER 5: "DEBRIEF"
When the shuttle began its return to the Frontier, the Vanguard fleet was even busier than before; swarms of ships that had previously been docked in the Seeker and Frontier were out in full force, weapons poking out of hardpoints and arrayed in defensive positions. The shuttle landed back in the Frontier's pimrary hangar bay, and as the shuttle clamped onto the landing pad and popped its rear hatch, Jane noticed that there were no engineers present; instead, several dozen heavily armed EF soldiers were waiting for the crew, alongside a couple of scientists and researchers, all wearing hazmat suits. Jane offered a hand to the blue alien; she took it, and the two of them slowly made their way down the ramp. KN simply slung the grey-suited alien over his shoulder and carried him down to the hangar floor, and tossed him unceremoniously to the ground. Captain Ryder - wearing a hazmat suit- and Captain ED stepped forward from the crowd of soldiers; Tagak gave a quick salute.
"Tagak. Nicely done," Captain Ryder said, looking at the two alien arrivals.
"No need, sir. Pilot Shepard, Titan KN and the rest of the team did all the work."
"If you say so." Captain Ryder nodded at Jane and KN, then waved over a few soldiers, as well as several medical staffers with a stretcher. "Take the blue one to the medical bay with Dr. Lewis, and the armoured one to the blackout brig. Jane, KN, the rest of you- with me. Captain ED and I need to debrief with you once we're through the decon room." The group watched the aliens as they were escorted away; the blue alien made a gesture and smiled at Jane as they left. After a quick detour into a decontamination room, the group followed both Captains to a debriefing room where Ryder stripped out of the hazmat suit. "Looks like we're all clear- no risk of contamination," Alec said, shoving the suit into a nearby locker. "Let's skip the formalities- helmets off, no need to be polite. Let's have the full story."
Jane and KN told the two captains about what had happend; both listened with careful, neutral expressions. When they'd finished, the room remained silent for several minutes before Ryder spoke. "Well, to be completely honest, that went about twenty thousand times better than I'd expected," he said, nodding to himself. "It's not much to go on, but whatever was going on in that complex- and that ship- I get the distinct impression it wasn't exactly pretty."
"Slavery or some other form of trafficking," ED noted sourly. "It resembles operations IS has taken down before. It does raise the question of where the rest of the, well, other hostile party is. Perhaps they'd left, and only this one grey-suited one was left behind?"
"There's not much point in us sitting here trying to work off limited intel, especially coming from an alien- literally- source," Ryder said, sighing. "We can dedicate a large portion of the science team to getting some rudimentary translation software going as soon as Dr. Lewis clears the blue one for questioning- but even if we put all the binaries in to time-dilated sim, we're still stuck with one source for language who is uncooperative, and one who's clearly been through a rough time- and both are organic. In any case, you'll understand that the ship is on minor lockdown right now, and that you all need to be available in case- for whatever reason- we need you guys for questioning as well. In the mean time you're welcome to use the rec facilities on the hangar deck. Decompress, clean up, have a snack. KN, you'll find a charging port in the main rec room if you need one. Captain ED, anything you'd like to add?"
"No, that about covers it. Jane, KN, CT- you'll all be filing paperwork about this, but I'll do my best to have XO Lawson fill as much as she can in for you. We'll also need to prepare a debrief for the crew of the Demeter as well as the Vanguard Fleet in general- then I need to get on the QEC to speak with IS HQ to discuss how the higher-ups want to handle this. That can wait a few minutes while you lot get cleaned up and have something to eat."
The group left the room shortly after; Kanu and Frost lead the way to the hangar deck's temporary barracks and rec facilities. Jane didn't bother showering with the rest of the combat team, instead stripping out of her Pilot suit to her combat undersuit, and settled with washing her face, joining KN in the rec room's small mess a few minutes later. KN was plugged into a nearby wall charger and seated at a bar table; he tossed a can to Jane as she walked in. "I tried to get you a real beer," KN said, "but the idiot binary in charge of the drink dispenser says that since we need to be maintaining readiness you don't get a booze dispensation."
Jane caught the drink and eyed it; it was a can of "Expeditionary Fleet Brown Ale (Non-Alcoholic)." She shrugged. "Augs would probably filter it out, anyway," she said popping the tab and taking a drink. "Huh, it's not bad. Almost tastes like the real thing." KN simply shrugged and made an amused noise, and Jane sank into a nearby chair. "So. Aliens."
"Yup."
"I wonder what the one in the grey suit looks like," Jane said, staring at the can.
The next few hours were uneventful; the group hung out in the recreation room, playing cards and snacking on whatever the dispenser would give them for free. Jane was considering hopping into one of the sim pods in the room when the shipboard comm lit up.
"Pilot Jane Shepard, Titan KN to deck eighteen immediately for debrief."
"That's us, I guess," KN said, unplugging his charging cable and letting in snake back into his chassis. "Come on." The pair left the group and made their way to a nearby service elevator, went up several decks, and were greeted by XO Lawson. The pair saluted as they entered the corridor and Miranda nodded at them. "What's going on?" KN asked.
"The blue alien- we think her name is Waliya- wanted you two to see some sort of explanation," Miranda said, escorting the pair down the corridor and past several armed guards. "She couldn't explain with words, so she drew a picture of your helmet, Jane, and we assumed the square next to your helmet was meant to represent you, Kenneth."
"I resent that," KN said quietly.
"The FC team and I will still be there, but she seems to want to work with you two, presumably since you rescued her," Miranda explained. "Don't do anything rash, or stupid." She turned to a side corridor, passed by several guards who saluted at her, and opened a security hatch and ushered the pair into a small room before following them in; inside, the blue alien was seated at a conference table with several other scientists. Someone had provided her a freshly-cleaned set of fatigues, and no less than six medical patches were visibly stuck beneath her shirt sleeves. A medical bracelet hung from her neck, and she was sipping a blue-green fluid from a canister marked with the medical team's red-cross symbol. The alien noticed KN and Jane, and waved at the pair with a weak smile; Jane smiled back and KN gave her a thumbs-up, which elicited a confused look from the alien. One of the researchers pulled two seats out for the pair, and nodded at them.
"Dr. Altis," the man said somberly. "We've been working on translation software- it's coming along slowly, but with only one frame of reference it's unlikely that we'll be able to have something functional any time soon. The other alien doesn't seem to speak the same language, in any case. Waliya wanted to show something or explain something to you two- thank you for assisting us."
"Of course, doctor," Jane said smoothly. She turned to Waliya, and smiled. "Something to show us?" She mimed writing, and Waliya nodded slowly. She grabbed a slate from a nearby pile and pulled the stylus from its holster, and began scribbling furiously. A few moments later, she slid it across the table at Jane and KN; it was a series of pictures. The first line showed stick-figure-esque representations of Jane (represented by her Pilot's helmet with an X for the visor slit), KN (a square with a circle for his chassis' mono-eye), and Waliya (a circle for a head with lines representing her head tentacles.) The second showed Jane and Waliya closer together, with a line between their heads; the third showed KN and Waliya with lines that didn't meet, instead veering away from each other. The last line showed Jane and Waliya, and several items above the line between their heads that Jane didn't recognize. Jane scratched her head in thought before looking up; Waliya made a humming noise and nodded at her.
"Siari mayan oyen sura," Waliya said, gesturing at her head, then at Jane's. "Loroyen surasen, surasenna eia."
"I think she is, uh, psychic? Or has some sort of way of connecting mentally," Jane said slowly to the researchers, "to allow for transfer of information. Hold on." Jane turned to sit next to Dr. Altis, and pulled two slates from a nearby stack of research books and computers. She drew a circle on one of them, and a square on another; she showed Waliya. Dr. Altis nodded in understanding, then leaned forward so that his and Jane's heads were touching; with their heads connected, Jane pushed the two slates together, and drew a square on the slate with the circle, and vice versa. "Like this, Waliya?"
Waliya nodded vigorously.
"Her pictures would seem to indicate that this information transfer mechanism doesn't work on binaries," Dr. Altis noted with obvious disappointment. "It would have been helpful to have one of the binary researchers do a nice, deep dive to get as much linguistic information as possible. XO Lawson, your thoughts?"
"As useful as such a power would be," Miranda said, voice neutral, "that poses an incredible security risk. I'm sure you understand that even the lowest-ranked grunt in the Vanguard Fleet possesses knowledge that could be unbelievably dangerous in the wrong human or binary hands-let alone a possibly hostile alien. Not to mention that we have no way of knowing if the power is limited to information transfer. We'd be risking a subversion of whoever the procedure is performed upon."
"I wonder if that power of hers would work via a sim pod," a different researcher cut in. "We'd be able to filter the flow of information and data to prevent any unwanted, ah, happenings."
"Still unacceptable," Miranda replied coolly. "IS policy dictates that the security of the Alliance supersedes everything else."
Waliya watched the proceedings, and frowned, clearly understanding Miranda's tone of voice. Miranda watched her groan and mumble to herself, and shrugged. "Let's assume we continue with the current rate of progress. How fast will we have the translation software ready, or at least in a decent state?"
"We're not sure. Simple communication should be ready in a week or two, probably less, but with only one...person to work with, it's going to be a while before anything complex can be conveyed," Dr. Altis replied. "Several of the linguists and archaeologists are working around the clock on this, and the binaries we have are running at one-to-sixty time dilation, too."
Jane raised a hand. "What about the other alien? The one in the grey suit?"
Miranda snorted. "The other one has been less than co-operative; in fact, last time I checked the alien hasn't even left his- I'm going to assume he's male, for simplicity's sake- hasn't even taken his damn helmet off. He's just been sitting in his cell shouting at whoever tries to talk to him, although one of the guards said he's been staring at the toilet quite a bit."
"I meant in terms of communication, Miranda. You guys pulled the cam logs from my helmet, right? They don't speak the same language, so how do they understand one another? Maybe they've got some sort of translation augment."
Dr. Altis furrowed his brow. "It could be useful if the augment contains repositories of language, but the medical team reported that the few augmentations Waliya does have are all subdermal. Given what she's been through, I'm not sure how comfortable I, let alone she- or hell, the medical staff, for that matter, given the fact that they only have a cursory understanding of Waliya's biology- would feel with us tearing it out of her."
"Well, for the time being," Miranda replied, "we'll have to keep working at it with what we have now. Perhaps you could try and convey a surgical removal of her implant? Until then, we can't risk anything else."
Waliya watched the proceedings, frustration at her inability to understand the proceedings obviously etched on her face. Jane turned to her, grabbed a slate, and began drawing again. She drew the same figure of herself and Waliya and drew a line between their heads, then drew a crude representation of one of the dropship they'd ridden as well as a pistol on top of one of the lines. On the next line, she copied the diagram, and added a third stick figure with long hair, meant to represent Miranda, with a line from Miranda's head to the shuttle and gun with several crosses and exclamation marks; lastly, she drew Miranda between Jane and Waliya. Jane slid the slate over to Waliya, who stared at the diagram for several minutes, before making a noise and nodding. Waliya pointed at the representation of Miranda, then at Miranda herself; Jane nodded, and Waliya nodded back before sighing, setting the slate back down, grumbling to herself.
July 20th
The week passed by with far less fanfare; a thorough examination of the tunnels had found more abandoned supplies, and another makeshift hangar leading to the surface of the planet, though this one was completely empty; a large chunk of the rock ceiling had been missing, presumably by a ship's pilot trying to escape in a rush. The Vanguard Fleet continued to take on new personnel, too; several more ships from the Expedition Fleet had arrived to reinforce their position. Jane and KN spent most of their time either running drills for the Vanguard Fleet's new personnel, or sitting in on the fleet's scientists working with Waliya to devise translation software and teach her to speak some Standard; the staff had noticed that Waliya seemed more at ease with Jane around, and that the presence of the ship's binary personnel made her perhaps not anxious, but a little uncomfortable.
The other alien, however, had removed his suit after a day, revealing himself to be a different sort of alien; four-eyed, with greyish-yellow skin. Waliya had said his name was Brakal; he- Waliya had confirmed he'd been male, or some equivalent to male- had "furiously" (in the words of one of the guards) relieved himself with the cell's toilet, then promptly returned to sulking and shouting at his captors. Waliya had explained as best as she could that he'd be able to eat the rations that she'd been eating, but the medical team had been forced to restrain him and give him a thorough examination with the medical team's nanites to make sure. Ultimately, they'd determined that he could probably eat the shipboard food. Brakal had refused to eat or drink for about a day and a half before giving in with obvious distaste, though he still refused to co-operate with any attempts to learn his language.
Waliya, on the other hand, was making progress, and was able to speak a little bit of Fleet Standard; she could, at the very least, communicate basic needs and wants without too much difficulty. A good portion of the Frontier and the Demeter's staff had the most complete version of Thesserin, which seemed to be an equivalent to the Common speech of the Alliance. She'd managed to explain that there were several alien species that seemed to co-exist wherever she was from; her species was Asari, Brakal was a "Batraeen," part of a society that either promoted or at least didn't punish slavery. She'd drawn crude sketches of a few others, including a hulking "Kai-roghann", "Tuhree-ahnsa," an odly spiked sort of creature, "Salarias," almost frog-like creatures, and several others. Explaining much more in detail was difficult; Waliya's drawing skills were not very good, nobody was willing to plug her into a sim pod until the medical team was 100% sure it'd be safe to implant her with a dataport, and several items that Waliya drew or tried to explain didn't seem to have an obvious counterpart to Alliance culture. In the mean time, retrieval teams had recovered several Asari corpses and extracted their implants; a few had functions that the science teams were still trying to work out, but they'd managed to find several translation implants, devised a basic cable link between the implants and their computers, and were working furiously to try and figure out how to properly interface with the devices. The corpses, in the mean time, had been sealed in burial caskets and frozen until they could understand what Waliya would want done with them.
Most of the fleet's rank-and-file soldiers were incredibly excited to test the small stockpile of small-arms they'd recovered from the cave's caches; Waliya had expressed a lack of knowledge about their internal workings, and nobody was willing to hand Brakal a firearm. Research staff piloting remote chassis had begun testing the weapons and disassembling them, and much to the dismay of the fleet's soldiers the only people with access to the weapons were those working on the research teams. Jane, thus, found herself settling into the familiar shipboard life of training, sitting with Waliya, or otherwise not doing much at all. She'd woken up this morning, washed up, packed away the makeshift bunk she'd placed inside KN's Titan chassis, and was on her way to bother Petty Officer Gardner for some hot breakfast. She made her way to the mess hall and found Rupert Gardner chatting away with KN and a few other soldiers; Gardner waved her over. "It's congee today; not sure what the Frontier is serving today."
Jane yawned, stretched, and shrugged. "Depends. What's with it?"
"Assorted vegetables, fish cakes, some beef."
"No eggs?"
"We ran out a few days ago, so no."
Jane made a show of thinking, then nodded. "Yeah, sure. Cup of coffee, too."
"Get it yourself, princess," Rupert said, scowling. He grabbed a mess tin from his workstation, and filled it with congee, a few rehydrated vegetables, and a few pieces of beef and two fish cakes. Jane took it after filling a mug with coffee, looked at it, and stared at Gardner, who rolled his eyes. "I'm not giving you any more fish cakes, so sit your ass down and eat."
KN snorted in amusement, and waited as Jane sat down across from him. "Good sleep?"
"Yeah, not bad," Jane said before shovelling a spoonful of congee into her mouth. "Wow, Gardner, you didn't fuck this up. It's not bad."
"Piss off," Rupert shot back as he ladled out more congee for another crewman.
Jane was about to say something rude when the ship's comms lit up. "Shepard, KN," Captain ED said, "please join me in the QEC. Director Harper is on the line." The mess hall went silent and somebody whistled. Jane swore, shoveled a few more spoonfuls of food down and jogged to the main elevator, went up a deck and entered the QEC room. The interior was cramped; the only open space was a small, circular stage with enough room for maybe four people to stand in a square, surrounded by holo-projectors and various computers. Captain ED was already standing in the stage's centre, and a projection of an older man wearing a well-cut suit strained to see the room's new arrivals. ED motioned for the two to join her; they both saluted and did so, waiting as the room's scanners finished creating holograms of Jane and KN.
The older man had pale skin and greying hair, and his prosthetic eyes flitted as he took in the images of Jane and KN before he settled back into a chair and pulled a metal case from his blazer pocket. "At ease, Jane, Kenneth. I know we're not sitting together in-person, but I hope you won't mind if I treat myself to a kretek."
"Of course not, Director," ED responded.
"Thank you." He pulled a fat cigarette from the case, and used a built-in lighter on the cases's side to light it; he took a deep lungful, then put the case back into his coat. "Ah, much better. We haven't met face-to-face yet, so allow me to formally introduce myself. Director Jack Harper, Alliance Intelligence Services. It's a pleasure to meet new operatives who already perform beyond my expectations- and show potential to continue to grow." He gave a slight nod.
"Thank you, Director," Jane said.
"I reward excellency," Jack responded, taking another drag. "In any case, I'm not here just to shower you with accolades. First Contact is no laughing matter, and while the Alliance's highest-ranking members have been briefed on the situation, I- or more accurately, the IS, has been called upon to help draft a framework for how this information is made public. Captain ED and XO Lawson have already provided me with as much information as they've been able to collate, but I'd like to hear your take- and KN's- on the situation."
Jane looked at KN; KN nodded and stepped forward slightly. "Jane and I have thought at length about the situation, Director, and we're both in agreement on most of the details."
"Oh? Go ahead, then."
"The primary issue is that most of our FC training, from the IS, Pilot School, even our schooling, tended to assume that we would come across civilization, right? Say, a colony, or an outpost, or something along those lines, KN said.
"In our case," Jane continued, "we've run across two aliens- from different species, no less- and our first contact has been with what is clearly an...alien trafficking ring. Of the two aliens we've got to work with, one is a survivor of some pretty terrible abuse, and the other is a slave trader, or a similarly unsavoury profession. True, those things exist in our own culture, but that's several steps removed from running into it first-hand, let alone having it be the first slice of alien culture that we see."
"Mmm. Yes, that's true," Jack said, nodding slowly. "I've already come under pressure by some of the higher-ups to, ah, downplay the more lurid aspects of what we've found."
"There's the other problem," KN noted. "We've barely found anything besides the slaver's camp and the artifact, and while Waliya- the blue alien- has explained that the artifact facilitates travel somehow, we have no idea how for it'll take us, or how to even make the thing work. Waliya explained that we have to interface with the artifact, but she's not an engineer, pilot, or soldier, so she's got no idea as to how the actual process works on a base technological level. Not to mention that we've got no idea what's waiting for us out there. Waliya explained- we think- that we're pretty far from what she considers home, or a safe space. Apparently lots of these Batraeen folk operate as pirates past wherever the artifact goes, too."
"So, KN and I settled on two options. Since there's only two aliens, one option would be to shore up OPSEC and simply claim that we've found proof of sapient life- the ship, weapons, et cetera- but deny that we've found alien life, dead or alive, until we find a source besides Waliya. The other is to go open with everything, and be as honest as possible; spin this as us finding ourselves on the edges of lawless alien space where some bad folks are known to hang out, thanks to alien informants. Both have their downsides, of course. KN and I think the second option is better, but you'd have to be careful to ensure the fear of an FC doesn't spiral out of control thanks to the whole slavery thing- you'd really have to focus on how this isn't a normal thing."
Jack took several more drags of his cigarette, and stared into space thoughtfully. "Of course, the two of you are operating on the assumption that Waliya's information is correct. I understand that Brakal has been less than co-operative, but let's say hypothetically that he did provide us information, and much of it contradicted Waliya. Would you take her word over his due to their positions?"
KN shuffled uneasily. "I can't say that I'd be inclined to, but we'd be forced to reconsider our current base of knowledge."
"Yes. We would," Jack responded, drumming his fingers on his chair. "Assume Waliya is wrong- not necessarily lying, but she's promoted a very optimistic view of things. Let's say that the Batraeen people aren't the only ones who are okay with slavery and the conditions we found her in, and that she wants to use us as a third party to shake things up. What then?"
Jane shrugged. "We roll with it, spin our previous information as being incorrect due to a lack of sources, and go from there. We're not lying and, frankly, there's not much the general public can do about it given the remoteness of the fleet and the security surrounding the issue."
Jack finished his cigarette and placed it into an ashtray, a thoughtful expression creeping onto his face. "I agree with that point of view, Jane." He paused, then sat straighter. "Thank you for your time, both of you. I"m proud to say that despite a lack of formal intelligence training, you're both proving to be very useful indeed. Captain ED, please stay here- we'll continue our discussion. Pilot Shepard, KN, dismissed."
