Disclaimer: I do not own these franchises and they are the property of their respective owners.


Chapter 9:

Red took in the man with interest. It was one thing to spy on your own people, but it is another to calmly do so for a group you have barely met….

"HOW DARE YOU TELL ME TO SPY ON THE EMPIRE!"

The bridge was quiet as the imperial officer glared at Doran, who cowered slightly under his rage. Things weren't going well. The Arcana was heavily damaged and was in desperate need of repair. Although the Imperial warship agreed to a cease fire, its captain was not exactly a calm negotiating man.

"Just because I have decided to ally myself to you does not mean I will go around divulging Imperial secrets!" Captain Ratula roared, his face becoming redder. "Grand Admiral Thrawn will have my head that I have already slipped up and told you about the ship!"

Kagami shook his head and tried to step in before matters became worse, already the man had fatally shot the couple from the small shuttle seeking refuge…

Mentally slapping himself, he shrugged the strange vision away and pulled out a slight grimace. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Eri with a similar expression before quickly snapping to and interrogating the officer.

"Why would you spy on your own people? Do you know what you are saying?"

Ratula took a quick look at her, a look of slight annoyance yet at the same time a distant emotion that she couldn't read. 'Something was not right' she thought. There was a strange ripple in the Force a few moments ago; as if someone did something very far away, but then again it also felt like as if it happened in the same room as her. A chirping sound caught the attention of the small group, interrupting her train of thought and saving Ratula from answering her question. Red looked down and tapped his combadge.

"Captain Kagami here, go ahead."

"Captain? It's me Horace, are you okay down there? We are about to beam back."

"Acknowledged. I will come up to transporter room 3 to meet you."

Turning around, he ordered a few engineers to grab some equipment and head down to the shuttle bay to repair Eri's shuttle before going back to his guests, who were back to being questioned by the chief.

"Do you have any plans or schematics to aid us in your repairs?"

The redhead nodded.

"Yes, the interface may be a bit slow from damage but the data is still in the shuttle's computer." She paused for a moment, before continuing. "The problem though is that it's written in our language, so you'll need me to translate the script."

Red stepped in, nodding to the chief.

"Just see what you can fix for now, I will join all of you shortly after my sister and the others are back aboard."

Leaving engineering, he turned and took the turbolift back to the transporter room. As he waited for the others to beam over, the swish of the doors announced the arrival of Ambrosio.

"There you are! Where have you been? You disappeared right after the meeting and I had to take care of the tour myself." Red scolded lightly.

The security officer raised an eyebrow.

"Tour? Oh…our guests." He muttered, his eyes flickering with something before he apologized. "Sorry captain, I had to take care of some personal business…again."

"You have been attending to a lot of personal business today Mister Ambrosio. If it weren't on Starfleet's personal request, I would have imposed some penalties." Red replied with a look before turning his head at the whine of the transporter.

Three figures materialized on the receiving pad as the beam over was completed. The captain of the Arcana noticed that Doran had dyed his hair as he happily jogged up to him.

"Captain!" The teen laughed, waving a small stack of old-looking paper booklets. "Aunty Haumea gave me some new manga! I decided to dye my hair to look like the main character from this one!" he exclaimed, holding up the mentioned book.

"I tried to dye Hora-sama's like the other character but he didn't want to…"

Red looked over the officer's shoulder to see Horace grimly pulling on his hair in the background, half of it colored a bright yellow. His sister stood on the side, a large grin on her face at the doctor's misfortune.

"Doctor, is everything alright? Did my sister try anything too dangerous?"

The normally brown-haired physician scowled at him.

"Unless you consider her giving the teenage sugar-addicted alcoholic some old Japanese comics ("MANGA!" shouted the two) and both of them trying to paint my hair as dangerous, not in the slightest. She just wanted a report on your…condition." He supplied, still tugging at the blond locks. "I hope this isn't permanent…"

The large grin on Haumea's face said otherwise.

-AO-

Eri looked up as the four Starfleet officers walked up to them. The shuttle was still being examined and repaired by the Starfleet engineers, with some reluctant help by the stormtroopers.

"Welcome back….why is his hair pink?" She asked, pointing to the first officer. Glancing around, she also looked at the patch of gold on the doctor's head.

"I do not want to talk about it." He helpfully answered.

Red chuckled and turned back to her.

"Have you been able to complete your message?"

"Yes, the imp….I mean captain has a copy of it but your officers were having a bit of difficulty with some other repairs so he is helping them…"

"Captain Aka'ula! Captain Haumea! You both want to take a look at this!" an engineer called, stepping out of the shuttle with a PADD alongside a science officer.

Eri glared at him for being interrupted, but the officer just shrugged and waved them to come closer.

The group strode over, Red taking the PADD from the man.

"What is it?" He asked, looking down at the alien glyphs and diagrams.

"General information that we gathered from the shuttle's computer. With captain Ratula's help, we were able to create a formatting-conversion program to communicate between our systems. However, I want you to take a look at this."

The engineer scrolled down the page, stopping and pointing at a series of schematics. Red examined it carefully, looking at the various images that dotted the screen. Zooming in to a few blocks of text, he let out a short gasp. Intermingled between the glyphs were…

"Are those Arabic numerals?" Haumea asked, looking over her brother's shoulder at the PADD.

"Arabic numerals?"

Ratula walked around from the other side of the shuttle, looking at her with a curious look. Eri also looked curious, looking between the PADD and the group."

"They are numerals that were developed as a part of one planet Earth's native languages." Horace explained, taking the PADD and looking at it closely.

"But those have been part of the Aurebesh for eons!"

"Aurebesh?"

"It's what we call that script. But how can we have the same numeral glyphs as an Earth language?"

"That is not the only strange thing." The scientist interrupted, indicating that she still needed to speak.

"I am a xeno-linguist and had taken a quick look at the script and compared it to those in our database. Look at the comparison."

The group huddled around the PADD as the linguist pressed a few buttons. The screen split in two, one side with the original screen, the other translated into Federation Standard English. Doran spoke up as he noticed something odd.

"The spacing and lettering are the same."

"That's because I think that despite the Alphabet and the Aurebesh being from different places, they are merely substitution ciphers of each other…which means that each letter corresponds directly to one in the other script." The linguist explained after receiving blank looks from the others.

"But…" Eri started, more confused. "…how is that possible? I mean, even if Aurebesh and your…Alphabet are the same, why would the spacing be also? Just a while ago we were having trouble communicating! Basic and English are two different languages! The only way the spacing should be the same is if were speaking the same language."

'She really does think rationally' Ambrosio and Ratula thought, both not aware that each other was having similar thoughts. They were interrupted however when a storm trooper ran up holding a comm-link.

"Sir! The Admiral somehow escaped his cell! He is attempting to steal a shuttle!"

"What? How did he…? Never mind, inform the crew to seal off the hanger!"

The Starfleet officers watched the exchange in surprise, before Red turned back to the linguist and engineer.

"I'm sorry but we'll have a more thorough debriefing later. Just transfer what you can into the ship's database. But for now…yellow alert!"

Eri was glaring at Ratula, barely registering the Starfleet crew packing up and the storm troopers anxious at the klaxon and blinking yellow lights. 'I'd bet anything that they let him go on purpose.' She continued glaring at him as they followed Haumea, the storm troopers right behind.